Friday, June 22, 2007

Battling the Menace

Yes, I'm sure this is a highly necessary use of scarce police resources:

Police in Indian Kashmir usually accustomed to fighting separatist militants have a new target in their sights -- teenagers canoodling in parks, restaurants and at Internet cafes.

The crackdown aims to curb "immoral activities," a senior police officer said on Friday, adding that dozens of places had been raided across Srinagar, the main city of the region, and at least 10 couples detained over the last three days.

Restaurant and Internet cafe owners had also been asked to get rid of cabins and cubicles as they were being "misused" by teenagers in the Muslim-majority region, he said.

"We received a number of complaints from parents that their children, mostly teenagers, would stray into cyber cafes and restaurants instead of schools and colleges," Parvez Ahmad told Reuters.

"Many boys and girls were seen in objectionable postures ... we informed their parents to take them home," he said.

Srinagar, the centre of a 17-year revolt against Indian rule, has seen women separatists raid restaurants, Internet cafes, liquor shops and suspected brothels in the past to stop what they say are immoral and un-Islamic activities.

So it's not just at home that we have the prodnoses wasting police time and money then.

When will people wake up to the idea that you don't want expensive things like the police chasing the easy things? We don't want courting couples to be harrassed. What we actually want is the police to do the difficult things. Hassling inappropriate boyfriends is a job for parents. Chasing down the burglars and the murderers is what the police are for.

They're expensive, so use them for the expensive jobs, not the cheap ones.

No comments: