My sincere apologies to all concerned; it seems that I was given out-of-date information. My "informant" was quite old and now runs a cafe in Dorset!
Ron.
You fell into the trap, which we can all do, Ron of listening to someone who thinks "it's not like it was in my day". Those individuals fail to update their knowledge of their "specialist" area.
I have mentioned in the past how we used to work alongside the police in my old profession, and actually had join our team two retired senior police officers to head up a Security Department to take the pressure off our aims to fight crime withing the organisation. These two retired officers, one a Detective Chief Inspector, the other a Detective Chief Superintendent, were pre-PACE. They had, in their time, completely different ways of bringing serious criminals to justice before PACE, and recognised in discussions with me how they used to cut corners and use what would be now considered unsafe methods to secure convictions. They would consider modern Police Detectives as snowflakes, and would certainly state, as they did, that the Force is not like it used to be "in their day". Even my close friend, who I saw rise from a PC on the beat to retire fairly recently as a Chief Superintendent of a Traffic Division, would identify with the fact that policing has changed dramatically and the pressure is unnecessarily on them to keep the thin blue line strong. Even modern hi-tech devices, like all the on board the patrol car equipment and even hand held units whereby they can avoid sitting at a desk back at base and write up statements, and much more, that are processed into the central system 'on the move', does not replace the bodies that the Police once had.
Times have changed greatly, but for the worse when it comes to fighting crime