In an amazing move by an already substantially underfunded and overstretched Police force, a senior spokesman has outlined a strategy to help them cope with the burgeoning demands of having the odd pay strike.

After spending a considerable amount of taxpayers money on focus groups and consultants a spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers presented a case for DIY crime fighting In a press conference the spokesman announced the formation of a new volunteer organisation “Government Established Scheme To Aquire Police Officers” or GESTAPO for short.

The spokesman outlined the requirement:

“Basically we face many challenges in policing the modern UK. Long gone are the days of Dixon of Dock Green where a police officer was clearly a servant of the people. In this day and age modern officers have to contend with dangerous amounts of paperwork which threaten such things as paper cuts and RSI. Frankly speaking this alone justifies our marching through the streets of London to demand lots more money. However, we of course recognise and acknowledge that if we are to get lots more money then the requirements to take bobbies off the beat to march through the capital demanding lots more money goes hand in hand with large job losses to find lots more money. Now, we are clear that the job losses and the strikes should be no impact to our crime statistics, because lower statistics equals lots less money, and so we have to devise strategies to maintain the stats whilst fighting for the things that matter to us.

To this end we propose the introduction of the voluntary scheme GESTAPO. Fundamentally it is an extension of the current Neighbourhood watch and the community policing schemes where ordinary people who have either a leaning toward looking in neighbours bins or decide that their own view of the world is better than anyone else's can get either a shiny uniform to make them look official or a bit of paper telling them that they are right to be nosey gits. Of course we won’t be paying them and they won’t have any real power outside of being unbearably nosy and smug, but hey, it’s a step in the right direction.

Of course we are aware that buying shiny uniforms for anyone with low personal sexual esteem is expensive, so we are recommending that this will be an undercover operation. Not withstanding the fact that there is a high likelihood of people getting their faces smashed in for sneaking around at night taking registrations of non tax paying cars so we can come along and crush the vehicle and a uniform just serves to highlight who had submitted a General Request Automobile Security Survey form.”

The spokesman went on to say:
“It should be noted that this is just a realization of a New-Labour dream started a few years ago under the banner “It’s your street too”. However, we are enhancing these initiatives, integrating them with modern technology, for example the Mosquito Device, a low budget, low level sonic weapon that can be deployed by shop owners who don’t like the look of  young people. We anticipate that, through proactive secret policing, ASBOs, and devices like Mosquito, we should be able to move youths causing trouble  at least a few hundred feet away from where they were originally. Of course we are aware that the costs of implementing this are high, however we feel that we can recover these costs by closing unessential facilities such as youth clubs and sports halls. We don’t see this as detrimental however, mainly because the little buggers will be too busy trying to spot who the narks are while trying to observe all the ASBO restrictions, and making sure their tagging devices are working whilst attempting to meet Government lead health and fitness initiatives with no sports halls. That should keep em busy.”

The Spokesman was asked if this was nothing less than Policing on the cheap.

“Not at all, for starters it’s policing on the free, we aint paying anything. Besides there’s a good chance that we will get a large number of assaults on GESTAPO members, and they really do push up the stats and increase the size of the DNA database, and I get a bigger bonus and loads more money.”