I nearly had to laugh yesterday when  I read about the case of Colin Farmer, a partially sighted man, recovering from a stroke who was taking a stroll to the pub for a pint.

You see, it turns out that Mr Farmer, 63, was carrying out the offence of using a white stick that somehow (please don’t ask me how) looked like a samurai sword.

So what did Mr Farmer get for this dangerous act? Why he got the taste of a policeman’s taser of course, straight in the back, from approximately six feet away. You couldn’t make it up could you?

So what happened to the police officer, the crime buster who, ignoring advice from his radio control, shot this poor bastard? Was he suspended from duty or fired perhaps?

Oh no, no, no…He was issued with a “written improvement notice” and told that he should apologise to Mr Farmer for the inconvenience of shooting him with a stun gun and handcuffing him as he lay semi conscious on the  ground, one would presume, in a state of total shock.

Now, I run a company, and what I do is supply electrical tradesmen to the building services industry. If I was to mistake, lets say, a bus driver, for an electrician and I sent him to a site where he proceeded to burn the building down, I would be in the shit so deep, it would finish me off as a business, cost me my last penny and very likely, result in a custodial sentence.

They are the consequences for any of us who display gross incompetence in our profession that is a genuine threat to life. None of us complain about these facts of the working environment because we operate in a way where we are conscious of risk (that is why any of you in business will know all about risk assessments and method statements).

I have no doubt that there are, indeed, I know there are, thousands of police officers out there who join the force through a desire to make the country a safer place; however, there seems to be plenty who, when confronted with accusations of incompetence, seem to be allowed to rise above the laws they enforce.

I’m sorry, but if the police force are to give out signals to the public that they are there to protect us and not violate and persecute us, that police officer should have been sacked instantly, not given some pathetic timescale warning where he has to learn the difference between a white stick and a samurai sword.

All that the majority of the British public want is a police force that is working on their side and that can only happen with the transparency that is apparently just not there for anyone to see.

Whether it is the case of botched and corrupt case of Stephen Lawrence, the Hillsborough tragedy, the Birmingham Six, *Plebgate, or the murders of Jill Dando and Rachel Nickel, there has been cock ups and cover ups where the police are protected from the law.

We pretend we are not living in a police state but we are, and that is an awful place to be. The police should be free from political persuasion, left or right and banned from any organisations where persistent lobbying can affect their judgement, otherwise it wont work.

Becoming a police officer should be a respected profession that is well paid and carries strong relations with the public in a fight against crime. It should be a profession where Jo Public know that they are protected and are not in danger of being a victim of mistaken identity or injustice.

Sadly, the case of Colin Farmer is just another example that the police and the public are not in partnership and that my friends, is not only of detriment to the man in the street, but also to men and women out there who join the police in the deluded wisdom that there is equality across the nation where the law is concerned.

It is impossible to stop corruption or incompetence in any large organisation, but surely, when it is discovered, it should be dealt with like in any other walk of life?

Is that not obvious?

* Keith Walls, who lied about the Plebgate incident, did get jailed, however, the suspicion remains that he took the rap whilst others got off.