When enforcing the law of the land becomes a war on the innocent something must be done.

Locally we have a history of significant crimes (of which a large number are fires) going unsolved but of minor offences being prosecuted as if they were international crimes. We see councils using anti terror laws to push non terror related agendas and we see situations such as one single real police officer to deal with all of Millmead, Dane Valley and Palm Bay.

These crimes cost us all and make Thanet less attractive to investors and scare away what scant tourism we might have left. There is, therefore, not a single one of us that does not pay directly and indirectly for this failure of the police to do the one thing they are paid to do - their job.

We do not pay police to help the council fine people, we do not pay them to keep huge databases on people with a political opinion we pay them to make sure that cars are not stolen that people are not murdered and that buildings are not burned down. We expect them to arrest currupt politicians, judges and abusive officers in thier own ranks but what we get is a lot of highly paid office clerks filling out forms or beating up on bystanders.

The purpose of the law is to protect people and to keep us safe as a group from our own individual baser instincts. When that same darker side is most often seen in those supposedly protecting us it has clearly all gone wrong. Worse yet when these very "protections" become a tool against us then it is time to demand reform.

When I speak with people I get two distinct impressions. The minority group are those who one or more officers have taken the time to get to know and they feel safer with the police around. The magority, however, feel that the police are at best a waste of time and money with many voicing the opinion that the biggest danger in Thanet to the average person is from the police themselves.

I have even heared otherwise intelligent men and women suggesting they would vote BNP and citing the police as a leading reason. While this is insanity to me it clearly suggests that our local force need to get their act together.

In the understatement of the centry Sir Paul Stephenson told BBC London that policing of the G20 protests and a lack of patrols caused people to think the police were "not on their side".

This huge distance is underscored locally by the Kent Online Article "Whistleblower reveals plan to cut police numbers in Herne Bay and Whitstable" which tells us police area commander, Ch Supt John Molloy has been forced to admit he is considering taking away staff to bolster policing in Canterbury and Thanet where, he says, the need is greater.

We need radicale change and an answerable police force. There are insufficient officers (and I am not talking Tesco Value Police Officers but real ones) and too much ludicrus paperwork. Added to this that many officers have been shown both nationally and locally to be unpopular, biased, brutal and excessively violent often towards those who have commited no crime.

What can possibly result from this but a fear, hatred and distrust of the police resulting in more work for fewer officers at a higher cost to tax payers. We currently have a multi class system where only a few officers have the power of arrest (or any real power at all) or full training and so as they become scarcer their is a decreasing chance that "minor" abuses of that power will even be noticed.

Until we find ourselves electing local police chiefs as one think tank has suggested or have a more transparent and open policing system by some other method we shall continue to hear about needless deaths from police actions, innocent people on terror suspect lists and "regular" crimes going unsolved.

Indeed Tony Flaig (Big News Margate) commented (Kent police have they become politicised?) that the behaviour of police is becoming increasingly political. The very agencies supposedly in place to investigate are alarmingly silent and unsatisfyingly non communicative on these maters.

Kent News (Police slammed over high-tech protest surveillance) remarks on the feature creep of current "police technology" and demonstrates that just becuase it was created to do X in no way means that it might not be used to also do Y. In this case we are talking about number plate technology that we were told was to stop stolen, uninsured and dangerous vehicles but is being used to spy on political and environmental protesters. Given the ammount of effort we as a country have gone to to try and keep freedom of speech and the right to protest (and the number of soldiers that have died for it) this runs counter to the whole point of democracy.

Indeed, the BBC reported Met boss wants political freedom when Sir Paul Stephenson spoke out about allowing political bodies any form of control over the police something Boris Johnson disagrees with having pushed for more control of the MET.

Yet this politicisation of the police force is exactly what the use of number plate technology suggests has already been happening for some time. If, for some reason, this is not a politically motivated action then the police really are out of control and need to be brought into line with reality such as by the control of elected officials.

Year on year we pay an ever increasing ammount to sustain the police but we do not see the same year on year reductions in crime proportional to the rising costs. No we see our police bragging about a reduction in one type of crime while being silent on the sudden increases in other types of crime.

The reason for this failure is, I would suggest, that disproportionate resources are being spent tracking the innocent, posting fines and chasing shadows. The rate we are going I would not be supprised to see another round of embarrassment for the police like in 1975 with the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven wherein the use of police torture and other threats were used to get false convictions.

When we get to the point that a researcher can be billed on a most wanted list of arms traders but the criminals he was researching fail to make the list we can be sure that the whole system is dead on it's feet. The researcher in question, Mark Thomas, adds that the very phrase "domestic extremist" defines protesters in the eyes of the police as the problem, the enemy. Spying on entire groups and organisations, and targeting the innocent, undermines not only our rights but the law...

The only hint of sanity in all this is a suggestion from the police that scheme to monitor political campaigners may be scrapped as part of plans to make national policing more accountable. Note that they are not saying that they will scrap it only that they might. This blogger will only believe them when and if they act.

Don't think that this inefficiency does not effect you because you have a well paid job and never protest outside of your voting habits. Talking car owners and insurence brokers has led me to discover that the average insurance cost for an average car in Thanet is up to three times that of other parts of the country famed for their crime rate. Insurence companies know that Thanet is a very high risk area and we all pay for it which only hurts the already damaged economy of the area further.

So I will close with this question - how can Thanet clean up it's expensive crime rate with or (as is most likely) without the help of the police, the council or any other authority that should not have let it get this bad to start with?