Perception........its a good word.

Perception.

Now we are into the school holidays. Great for the teachers but bad for the Police and most neighbourhoods. To add to the weekend drunken madness of people who behave like assholes because they've had too much drink on their nights out for an alleged good time, we have the hoardes of juveniles who seem intent on mirroring their slightly older brethren by getting drunk and behaving like morons. Dozens of calls to add to the drunken bouts of fisticuffs and handbags at ten paces along with all the other drunken dross associated with the weekend revelry.

Every collection of young people seem to be targetted by the curtain twitchers 'taking an interest' in their local universe or those who have their peace disturbed by these groups of yoblets who are developing their taste in anti-social etiquette. Drinking, abusing passers by, damage to fences and walls, graffiti, talking loudly, shouting even louder, swearing, playing loud music, taking drugs, threats and intimidation, riding mopeds with no helmets, the list seems apparently endless.

We can easily draw on extra resources to deal with the influx of calls and deal with the problems as we see them as well as how they are perceived by the public who take the time to ring the jobs in to us.

But can we ? Exactly where are these resources ?

We haven't got any, thats where they are. How reassuring. Both reassuring for the public who call the jobs in and for the frontline officers who have the security of knowing that if it all goes pear shaped their backup will be along, well some time and hopefully soon.

I'm beginning to understand why so many of the older generation refrain from going out at night and prefer the 'safety' of their own homes. Safe from the drunken antics of these idiots, from unnecessary involvement with the old bill if they decide to try to resolve an issue themselves.

At least we are safe in the knowledge we have our targets to fall back on. That makes everything alright.

Now where was I ? Oh yes, perception. I nearly forgot. A good word is perception.
Its all about how you see or understand things.

The word perception comes from the Latin perception-, percepio, , meaning "receiving, collecting, action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind or senses."