In response to your first question, let me just say this. Here's the frustration.
I represent front-line cops, and that's where my experience comes from. We're already talking about savings and reinvesting those savings. We're having a discussion around the economics of policing and what's sustainable and not. To Mr. Mukherjee's point, no one has defined yet what sustainable funding for policing is in this country. No one wants to talk about what core policing in the 21st century is, so what is it that we're not going to have police officers do? When are we going to engage the community in this discussion so that we can hear from them what they don't want police officers to do?
To your first point around where we would reinvest savings, we're not even scratching the surface when it comes to financial crime, white-collar crime, cybercrime.
This has to be part of the discussion of what we expect police to do in the 21st century, because we're not the agency of first resort. We've become the agency of preferred choice in this country. People phone the police because they know that we will come and deal with whatever their issue is. The trick is what happens after the police come. How can we use the other opportunities that exist out there to be more efficient in the aftermath of the police response? That's what's missing, so to your point around what do we do with the savings, I'm not even sure we've had a discussion around what we think the police should be doing in this country.
In terms of the court piece, police officers go to court to provide their information. In my experience as a front-line police officer going to court, I can't tell you the number of times I've sat in court all day long, only to be told at the end of the day, or after the defence counsel knows that I'm there to give my evidence, that there's a rescheduling or there's a reason to find a way to delay the trial. It's become part of the strategy, because if witnesses don't show up, then the trial can't go ahead. That means the accused person gets to walk, or whatever. There have to be ways of using technology, particularly in the minor cases, so that my evidence could just be admitted as part of the record.
If it's a contentious issue. It affects a person's right to have a fair, appropriate, and full defence. Fair enough; let's have the officer come in and give evidence, but there have to be ways we can use technology so that the police officer won't be sitting in court from nine o'clock in the morning until four o'clock in the afternoon.