Neil McNicholas: We want to defend law and order, so why can’t the public help the police?

And of course, as admirable and desirable as the principle may be, he is just one person and couldn’t possibly be expected to carry out what would be an impossible task.

So he deputises a band of the good townsfolk and off they ride as a posse, the goodies in pursuit of the baddies and, of course, they always get their man.

Sir Norman Bettison, the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, quoted on this page on Friday another “Sir” – Sir Robert Peel – who said that “the people are the police, and the police are to be the uniformed representation of the people”.

If he was right, then why is it that our police flatly refuse to entertain the idea of deputising the citizens of this country to assist them in enforcing law and order?

Amid all the angst and analysis of whether the police could have done more to control and quell the recent riots and lawlessness, whether more police should have been drafted in more immediately, and what tactics should have been deployed, one common concern has been police numbers and any possible threat to adequate policing that cutbacks could pose.

It should, I suppose, be an accepted fact that at any point in time there will be a finite number of police officers available in any community to deal with the enforcement of law and order – just like the sheriff in the Wild West.

And if current economic constraints mean that numbers of police adequate to deal with all eventualities simply cannot be employed and maintained, then surely some system of deputising the local citizenry makes eminent sense.

I’m not for a moment suggesting that the man in the street should be drafted in to quell riots or arrest robbers – that would remain the responsibility and duty of our trained police force (including, hopefully, adequate numbers of special constables – do they still have them?).

But, less dramatically and more mundanely, why couldn’t properly trained and deputised citizens assist the police in, for example, enforcing the rules of the road?

If motorists knew that a considerable proportion of their fellow road-users (who, of course, would be in their own, unmarked, cars) were actually police deputies, authorised to note and report the registration details of those who are speeding, driving while using a mobile phone, or in any other way driving in a dangerous or careless fashion, I suspect there would be a lot less disregard for the law given that the odds of being caught and reported would be considerably better than they are at the moment.

This same principle could be applied to all sorts of other areas of life where, at present, the police (and even uniformed community support officers) are conspicuously never around when you need them.

So, convinced that such an idea might at least be worth consideration, I have shared my thoughts with one or two Chief Constables in recent years, but all to no avail.

Their immediate response (often quicker than the one you get when you try telephoning your local police station for help!) is a consistent refusal to consider any such involvement of untrained and unqualified lay people in the business of the police.

The fact that I was suggesting that they should be trained and qualified (albeit it to a lesser degree than a professional police officer) seemed to escape them (as easily as failed asylum seekers seem to escape).

And there was not even a hint of support for amending current legislation which might otherwise make legally unacceptable the eye-witness reports of non-police.

I am sure that if a process of deputising members of the public was approved, then so could whatever changes to the law were necessary to support them in that role. Does the out-and-out rejection of such an idea reflect their opinion that they don’t trust members of the public to be as honest and trustworthy as they think we think they are? (Witness recent events involving the upper echelons of the Met – and elsewhere – for an answer to that question.)

I suspect we have been within a hair’s breadth in recent days of bands of vigilantes taking to the streets to protect homes and livelihoods that they felt the police were failing to protect appropriately.

Surely it would be better to harness and channel such concern for law and order, and the desire to protect neighbourhoods and maintain peace and order, in a more constructive way that would complement and assist the efforts (albeit, all too often, with one hand tied behind their back) of our police forces.