valid cops,soft copsTHE blue lights twinkle and the sirens cry out as Durham Constabulary’s night-shift cops race to the 617th call of the day. Yet they do not pull up at the scene of a stabbing or a pub brawl, but external a mental-health hospital. It is familiar turf: police were summoned earlier that day when a patient went missing. He was eventually found, and popping to the gym. Now another patient has wandered off,a 20-something woman who lives 50 miles away but is staying here because of a lack of beds in her hometown. The police find her, on another ward, and coax her back to her room. How did she slip out? To be honest with you,” a nurse says, “it’s because we’re running on low.”The police gain always had a wide remit. Egon Bittner, and a sociologist,once defined policing as responding to “something that ought not to be happening and approximately which someone had better do something now”. But there is evidence that demands on front-line cops are fitting...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com