A regular meeting between the town's Liquor Licencees and Police.
An aside: Boy do you get some red hot quotes from the coppers in these meetings - out of the mouths of babes etc. It is amazing how middle aged men (Sgts) can be so clueless about how the world works. This is of course the inevitable outcome of for most serving officers the Police being their first job, having been sworn in as teenagers.
The recent acceptance of mature aged recruits (i.e. late 20's, possibly 30's) will eventually result in an infusion of Police Sergeants with a less isolated worldview.
This can only be a good thing.
Simultaneous to acceptance of "mature" recruits has been "equal opportunity" recruiting, a fancy way of saying that previous physical requirements have been scrapped.
This was confirmed (unintentionally) by the Sergeant at the meeting. When asked why Police walk-through a licenced premises at 9pm on a Tuesday (when the place is empty) instead of midnight Friday? (when a patrolling Blue Shirt will have a positive impact upon public behaviour)
"They prefer to not patrol pubs at that time, as they get cat-called & ice is thrown at them from the crowd, who's going to want to put up with that?" - He expected us to agree, being too clueless to understand the grim reality of working life for those who don't wear that protective blue shirt.
At this point in the meeting the town's publicans, rarely able to agree upon anything, & who can't stand the sight of each other, never mind actually.. (ugh) ... talk to each other, stared at each other gape jawed. Their opinion of the police (based upon the reality of actual police competence, performance, consistency and morality) vacillates from suspicion to open contempt, however this was breaking new ground.
Mine Host has known plenty of police whom nobody would have been game to cat-call or throw ice at (no matter how dark or how crowded a pub was). It would seem those days (and men) are no more.
An aside: Boy do you get some red hot quotes from the coppers in these meetings - out of the mouths of babes etc. It is amazing how middle aged men (Sgts) can be so clueless about how the world works. This is of course the inevitable outcome of for most serving officers the Police being their first job, having been sworn in as teenagers.
The recent acceptance of mature aged recruits (i.e. late 20's, possibly 30's) will eventually result in an infusion of Police Sergeants with a less isolated worldview.
This can only be a good thing.
Simultaneous to acceptance of "mature" recruits has been "equal opportunity" recruiting, a fancy way of saying that previous physical requirements have been scrapped.
This was confirmed (unintentionally) by the Sergeant at the meeting. When asked why Police walk-through a licenced premises at 9pm on a Tuesday (when the place is empty) instead of midnight Friday? (when a patrolling Blue Shirt will have a positive impact upon public behaviour)
"They prefer to not patrol pubs at that time, as they get cat-called & ice is thrown at them from the crowd, who's going to want to put up with that?" - He expected us to agree, being too clueless to understand the grim reality of working life for those who don't wear that protective blue shirt.
At this point in the meeting the town's publicans, rarely able to agree upon anything, & who can't stand the sight of each other, never mind actually.. (ugh) ... talk to each other, stared at each other gape jawed. Their opinion of the police (based upon the reality of actual police competence, performance, consistency and morality) vacillates from suspicion to open contempt, however this was breaking new ground.
Mine Host has known plenty of police whom nobody would have been game to cat-call or throw ice at (no matter how dark or how crowded a pub was). It would seem those days (and men) are no more.
3 comments:
I thought Aussies were rufty-tufty tough guys. And pretty tough gals. Maybe it's the gradual move away from agriculture?
You thought wrong!
Aussies are (possibly) the most urbanised nation on earth (Singapore & HK excepted perhaps)
The population left the land after WW1. Most Aussies would find the thought of living & working on the land to be abhorrent.
We are a nation of townies.
I stand corrected! But character traits persist for some time after the conditions that formed them.
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