Officer Bob

Thank you, Times Online. For how long have we officers of the law labored under the suspicions of those very persons we are sworn to protect and serve? For too long. And now, you have put your finger right on the pulse of the problem.

When a police officer is swayed by temptation and surrenders to the urge to fill his pockets or to obstruct justice, he is not responsible for his own actions. No. The pernicious influence of social networking sites on the Internet, that’s who to blame.

It’s not just the internet that opens up the service to corruption. The ever-growing police family and wider use of volunteers gives more people access to information. “I am not saying community support officers are a source of corruption,” Cunningham says. “I am saying that as we open the doors to different staffing make-ups, we also need to be alert to people who are coming into the organisation, how they are vetted, how they are recruited and what access to information they have.”

As intelligence of organised crime groups advances, he proposes that intelligence of internal threats keeps pace because “corruption will thwart our ability to counter external threats”.

Thank you, Times Online, and thank you United Kingdom. Between writers as intelligent as yours filling your country’s newspapers, and that sophisticated way you talk, I might even consider forgiving you for fighting us inna revolutionary war.