You need more police on the streets conducting more stop and search and not being tied up with pointless bureaucracy. The good old 5090 stop slip when I started out was a very small bit of paper that basically recorded the persons name, desc and reason as to why they had been stopped...well the goverment wanted us to be more accountable and decided to make a form that was so long it would take half hour to complete just for one stop.

It is only now they have realised that it was ridiculous to record so many things that they are reverting back to the old form.

What annoys me is, parents of the kids... well some of them. You stop a youth, conduct the search with a negative result and then hand him a little bit of paper saying you were stopped for x reason. They then take the paper home and show it to mummy or daddy. The next thing is you either have them in the station office or on the phone complaining that their child was stopped by the police, they want to make complaints etc etc. What is the big deal about being stopped by the Police? ok your liberty, (if you want to go into the realms of human rights ) is taken away for a very brief time whilst a search is conducted but if it was my son that was being stopped I wouldnt have a problem with it. Is a 5 min search going to have that negative an effect on his life. I would prefer to think that maybe the Police will actually stop that person with a knife and arrest them, and later that day that person may not stab another youth or worse still their child. I just cant get my head around why parents dont support the Police.... If someone said, we are putting people onto the streets to protect your child you would be over the moon... well thats who the Police are, and that is what we are tring to do!!!!!!

We are fighting a losing battle in my opinion, as no matter what we do, especially around stop and search, we are seen as the bad guys. We are in a no win situation. Policticians, the do gooders and the public should get behind the Police and support them as we agree that knife crime is getting worse... How many kids were stopped wearing body armour 10 years ago!! I think it is a sad world which we are living in... I think we need to take drastic action to take our streets back... no i dont mean being vigilantes, but allow the police to do their job.

I dont believe for a min that youths take knives for their own protection... they take them to look cool in front of their mates and to potentialy use it against someone..

I like many others have a young son and wouldnt like to see him being injured or even worse killed when he is a bit older. I want him to go out playing with his mates in his normal clothes, not dressed up in either a ballistic or stab proof vest. I want him to go to school and being greeted in the morning by his teachers...not by Police officers making sure they walk through a knife arch before they enter..How sad life has really become.

obviously the above is a very small part of the problem.. we need to seriously look at the justice system with regards to sentencing.....

Sorry to rant on, but I really believe that the Police can deal with this problems if we are allowed to.. yes I am a Police officer, I love my job and want to really make a difference.

Oh and as for the comment with regards to number plates and traffic offences.. well we do that as well, and that is a very small part of our work. You may think traffic offences are minor (most of them are), but Policing the roads is as important as policing the streets... criminals use vehicles to travel, and if we can intercept someone before they get to their blag, then we have done a good job... unfortunately a lot of good people get stopped by the Police for your minor offences, ie number plates... all I can say is, if you dont want to get stopped for that reason then dont put them on, simple..there are good reasons why we dont allow non standard font and spacing.. I use to get stopped all the time for mine.. I learnt my lesson and dont use them anymore... They look shite anyway