No, I don’t think it is on the whole. There certainly is an issue with recruiting as firstly, you can’t recruit the calibre you need. The devaluing of the roll, the lack of appropriate pay and conditions does not attract those that it needs to.
And during a conversation a few weeks ago with a retired cop, he said something I never thought of before. In the need to stamp out “canteen culture”, the canteens have been effectively wiped out. Police bars in stations no longer exist and even the slightest inappropriate comment and behaviour faces the full weight of the disciplinary process.
At one time coppers rarely took the work home. They weren’t the domestic abusers that they have present in their ranks now, and they weren’t the rapists and murderers we have seen recently… and that’s because there was a “safe” environment to unload the stresses and strains of the work. It’s not elitest to say that “only a copper can sometimes understand what a copper goes through”.
There would always be the one that slipped through, but on the whole, people could be taken care of, the wrong ‘uns could be sorted. The last 30 years has brought changes not, in some cases, for the better.
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