‘Young people have zero respect for today’s police’

When I was a kid in London in the Sixties and Seventies, I and most of my mates had an almost instinctive, reflex respect for policemen and women. A touch of fear mixed in there too.Coppers were an empowered elite, with no hesitation in stepping in to feel a malefactor’s collar and haul them before the local magistrates (who back then were a lot less reluctant to send someone down than they are today).Officers looked smart, too – crisp white shirts, sober ties, smart navy tunics, pressed trousers, gleaming black boots. These days most of them are indistinguishable from sloppily-dressed traffic wardens (who also looked the business once upon a time – remember their peaked caps and dark uniforms with those distinctive yellow flashes?).Unless you were a hardened criminal, or mentally unbalanced, the idea of attacking a police officer, or even swearing at one, was pretty much unthinkable. Try any funny stuff with a copper and the roof would come down on your head. EMPOWERED ELITE: But is it now time for root-and-branch police reform? (Image: GETTY)Compare that to what happened in towns and cities across Britain this week. Teenagers lit bonfires on busy main streets, blocking them, and when police arrived they came under a barrage of attacks from large fireworks; rockets, thunder-flashes, mortars, all aimed directly at officers without the slightest hesitation or apparent fear of the consequences.This is incredible. When I was an adolescent the thought of attacking police with fireworks would have no more crossed my mind than offering to fight Muhammad Ali. And these potentially lethal assaults were, in many cases, clearly planned in advance.Some forces reported responding to what turned out to be hoax 999 calls luring them into well-organised ambushes. This tells us two things. Firstly, that many young people have zero respect for, or fear of, today’s police. And secondly, that they have no fear of the courts either.Magistrates dispense the soggiest of justice now, especially to juveniles. Laughable lenient sentencing is the norm. (Unless, of course, you are caught doing 24mph in a 20mphzone on an empty road at three in the morning.Motorists are the new whipping boys, the soft targets, for our enfeebled justice system. We know that burglars and car thieves don’t give a thought to the risk of arrest as they ply their trade, because it’s fallen close to zero.Meanwhile it emerged this week, shockingly, that thousands of officers are themselves criminals – they have records, are linked to gangsters, and pose a direct threat to the public. But ludicrously lax vetting means they are allowed to continue to ‘serve’ – or, rather, ‘self-serve’.Our new and embattled Home Secretary Suella Braverman could do a lot to shore up her position if she bared her teeth and announced root-and-branch reform of the police. Someone’s got to do it. Braverman by name… you get the rest.I don’t mean in the way battlefield injuries do; I’m talking about the psychological effect of prolonged exposure to life-or-death combat. Recently, thousands of portrait photographs from the First World War were discovered in a French attic. They were taken in the little town of Vignacourt, which in 1916 was only about 30 miles from where the Battle of the Somme raged.Vignacourt was the nearest safe place to send British Tommies and their Australian allies for some brief rest and recuperation before they were duly returned to the sheer hell of the trenches. The distant rumble of heavy artillery would have been clearly audible in Vignacourt’s bars and cafes. Some R&R, eh?Their faces show haunted eyes. Forced smiles. Preoccupied, strained expressions. These were men who had not only come straight from Hades – they knew they had to go back. They realised these snapshots might be epitaphs; their farewells to loved ones.This week, dedicated researchers appealed for funding in their attempt to put names to more than 3,000 anonymous young men featured in the photos. It is a noble endeavour. We owe it to those lost boys.Very much to my dear wife’s embarrassment and my daughter’s delight, I picked a Taylor Swift track (Hey Stephen) as one of my Desert Island Disc choices.It has a cool, almost country sound (you could imagine Dolly Parton singing it). Forget all her imagery – Swift is a superb songwriter.Her new album Midnights has broken all sales records in its first week. That’s not down to PR and hype. It’s graft and gift.Ever tried talking to an ant? That’s how aliens would find trying to communicate with us, according to Prof Michael Garrett, director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics.Why? Because our bit of the universe is young, compared to the rest of creation. If other intelligent life is out there, much of it will have evolved way beyond our puny ant-like intellects.But if we ever do pick up signals from faraway civilisations, they’ll probably be extinct anyway. That’s how long radio waves and light take to cross deep space. It’ll be a case of Ant and Death.