I am not influenced by the media. I have plenty of personal experience that demonstrate the innefectiveness of the police. I'm not prepared to go into them here for personal reasons.
Well that I certainly can't comment on and would not ask any further.
It's not police officers generally that I have an issue with, but the priorities of the police these days have changed for the worse. I think most people expect the police not to be helpful these days and I'm sure a lot of petty crime goes unreported as a result.
Police priorities are set top down. The Government / Home Office states that this is what we need to do and how we want it done and this is taken into practice by the force on the instruction of senior management. Policing priorities are not set by the cop on the street who, I assure you in most cases, love to be on the street and not tied up with beaurocracy. It is no spin that we are burdened with paperwork and I give the following example of my 10 hour shift yesterday. While the Government may have political objectives, they differ from the cops on the street in most cases.
I had three persons answering police bail and also has two appointments with the CPS prior to this for charging advice. One of the three was NFA ( No Further Action ) but a cut down file still had to be submitted and the other two were charged with offences but I had to re-interview one of them to show further evidence for which an admission was made. This was made simpler by the fact that none of them wanted legal representation which would have meant I would have been tied up even longer due to disclosure and then consultation with his client which can sometimes take an hour and more. I then had to submit a file about an inch thick with A4 which had to be submitted the same day.
In between this, I managed to attend two immediate response jobs to assist colleagues which were an elderley lady knocked down ( thankfully not injured badly ) and a 3 vehicle RTC which allowed me an hour out of the station. When I am not burdened with a mountain of paperwork I do enjoy being on the street and patrolling areas where the intel says to go and responding.
You don't need special training to help a drowning child. Sure, it would be useful, but it's not essential.
In certain circumstances you do and this was one of them. The lake was large, deep, dark and when they arrived the child was not seen and had been under the water for some time. When you have such circumstances the job say don't go in. You don't know how deep the water is, where the shelf is, what debris is on the bottom that could tangle you and cause the same thing to happen to you. If the child had been seen struggling in the water then it's a judgement call but this was not the case and wither way, PCSOs are still not trained to rescue drowning people and even police officers are not trained to a particularly high standard.
While I accept you won't discuss your personal issues with the police I will say to you and anyone that while we are not perfect and never will be, we are certainly not ineffective. Ask me to tell you how to run a hardware supplier and I would keel over, pulling my hair out. I wouldn't have a clue where to start and what to do. I do know enough about policing and associated law to back my views up 100%.