A 28 year old police constable made a routine vehicle stop after spotting an uninsured van in East London. He and his woman colleague chased the van with their lights  and sirens on  until it stopped.

“Having engaged the driver, who was quite aggrieve…. he then tries to make off, gets back in the van and a violent struggle ensues where he produces a weapon and stabs our officer in the head and around the body”, said  Chief Superintendent Richard Tucker.

The assailant slashed the hands of the officer with a footlong blade as he tried to defend himself and cut him about the face and head in a frenzied attack, but as he was forced to the ground the officer used his taser to disable him until the police arrived, and pinned the screaming, violent offender down.

Scotland Yard Chief  Tucker said the attack was “a symptom of people having less fear of the police.”  He added, “Ive been in the police a long time – there’s certainly a sense a lack of respect, not just of the police but for authority”. He called for harsher sentences for the increasing knife crime against officers.

But is that really the solution to the knife crime on our streets, or to violence and misbehaviour anywhere, when in days gone by just a couple of police sergeants could control the crowds at a football match?

DCS Tucker was right in that respect for authority has been lost, but the solution is the recognition that behind all law and authority lie the Commandments of an all powerful God. Once that recognition is lost, there is no more right or wrong, and the slippery slide into chaos begins. Only when we recognise that parents have the responsibility to instil respect in their infants by teaching them about God, and by the use of loving discipline, which political correctness has made an offence, will children grow respecting the instructions of their mother and father.

Then, later, those children will respect and learn from their teachers too, and finally, on leaving school, they will naturally respect the law of the land and our protectors, the police.

Proverbs 13:24, ‘Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them. ‘Proverbs 22:6, ‘Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.’