The police force in the UK has fallen victim to political correctness, red tape and process-obsessed management. The result is, it is now so difficult to apprehend and successfully prosecute criminals that, for the most part, the police don’t waste their time trying.

As Theodore Dalrymple writes:

The uselessness of a police force that once excited the admiration of the world is now taken for granted by every Briton who calls the police only to obtain a crime number for insurance purposes, not in the expectation or even hope of any effort at detection. This is not because the individual policeman is lazy, ill-intentioned, corrupt, or stupid, though in the present system he might just as well be: for the system in which he works imposes upon him all the effects (or defects) of precisely those qualities.

David Copperfield, a UK policeman now working in Canada chronicles this in his blog – to the intense frustration of the UK government – and in his book, Wasting Police Time. So it comes as no surprise that the full investigative weight of Britain’s finest is being brought to bear on a clergyman who put his children on a chimney pot to photograph them: after all, if you simply must arrest someone make sure it is a non-violent clergyman who will neither resist nor sue:

From here:

Mr Blake, an archbishop of the Open Episcopal Church, placed his children on top of his home and took pictures of them reading for a school project.

But worried neighbours called the police and Mr Blake, 52, was handcuffed before being taken away for questioning.

The pictures of his sons Nathan, eight, and Dominic, seven, were taken for a school book week competition themed on people reading in unusual places.

Mr Blake, a father of five, insisted the boys were used to rock climbing and adventure sports and were not worried by scaling the house in Welling, south east London.

He said the boys had climbed onto roof by clambering up onto a flat-roofed extension after he had attached them in a secure harness.

And he said the boys were already back in the house “full of excitement at what they had done”, when police burst through the front door, marched upstairs and slapped him in handcuffs.

He said: “It was utterly ridiculous. We were doing it for a school project.

“The boys were asked by their teacher to be pictured for their book week competition reading in an unusual place.

“When they got home we discussed it and came up with this idea.

“I was very proud of their creativity and had no reservations about allowing them up there because they have both experienced rock climbing and are active participants in adventure sports.

“Not only that but the chimney stack is adjacent to a flat roof and I supervised them.

“They were quite safe.”

Accusing officers of harassment, he said: “It was a total shock and my family were traumatised by the arrest. The children were weeping as they watched their father being frogmarched to a police van.