It should hardly need saying, but we need a well-respected police force to ensure public confidence in the enforcement of the law. Generally, our police do an excellent job, and we should all be grateful to them for that.

These coronavirus times are unusual, and I don’t envy the police their job. We have been told we need to maintain ‘social distance’, and the Government has laid down the circumstances in which we may legitimately be out and about. I am becoming increasingly concerned that Cambridgeshire Police are over-interpreting these regulations, and as a result are in danger of losing the confidence of the public.

Three days ago it was a misconceived Twitter campaign encouraging people to report their neighbours online https://twitter.com/CambsCops/status/1247589993071226884 Following sustained public criticism, this message was reworded, but the comparisons with nastier and less democratic political regimes had already been made.

And today, an extraordinarily ill-thought out Twitter message congratulating themselves on policing Tesco at Bar Hill and welcoming the empty ‘non essential aisles’.

The response was entirely predictable. What is a ‘non essential aisle’? Who decided what was ‘non essential’ (that’s certainly not laid out in the Government rules the police are supposed to be enforcing)? Are biscuits essential? Wine? Baby clothes? Birthday cards? Why can’t you pick up those things if they’re on the supermarket shelves when you go in for bread, milk and apples? This outbreak of making-it-up-as-you-go-along zealotry has been rightly mocked.

Cambridgeshire Police need, in the popular phraseology, to wind their necks in on this. They also need to be held effectively to account – and of course following the resignation of the county’s Police & Crime Commissioner last November, we are left with a temporary Commissioner who even the chair of the panel that appointed him admitted wouldn’t be up to the job on anything other than a stop-gap basis. His term has been extended for a further year by the coronavirus outbreak, and the new law scrapping all elections until May 2021.

The operation of law enforcement in this country is assessed against three ‘PEEL’ criteria – Police Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Legitimacy. Legitimacy is assessed in relation to whether the force operates fairly, ethically and within the law.

There is also a concept known as ‘policing by consent’, which is well described here. This recognises that in a functioning democracy, ‘the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect’.

The ham-fisted actions of Cambridgeshire Police in response to the coronavirus are very much in danger of losing that public respect. And if we here in Cambridgeshire reach a point when we can no longer respect and trust our local police, we will be in a very dangerous place indeed.

Update: while I was writing this, it looks as if Cambridgeshire Police has withdrawn the tweet snapshotted above.