Apparently the Home Office in Great Britain has money to burn, as they’ve just given the Christian Police Association £10,000 (or about $16,000) to help their campaign aimed at getting the public to pray to help prevent crime. They are already claiming that the program, which they’ve already initiated, is having some major success:
In one particular area, an officer was investigating an incident but he had not been able to apprehend a suspect. He encouraged a church to pray for him and within days a suspect had been arrested and charged.
In another area, an officer encouraged churches to pray about domestic burglary and over the year it came down by 30 per cent. We do not discount good police work, which is why we call it circumstantial evidence.
You have to love the faithful; any time there’s a study done that proves that prayer does exactly jack-shit (and jack left town), they completely ignore it, no matter what the evidence is. It’s plainly obvious to everyone else that talking to your invisible friend doesn’t do more than bring a sense of comfort for the delusional, let alone “solve crime”. Could the 30 percent reduction is domestic burglary be possibly related to the crime rate falling in the UK for the past few years (the government reports a simultaneous increase in illicit drug use; am I to assume using their logic that using drugs prevents crime?) Where did these clowns graduate from: Police Academy 5?
Is it too much to as that governments not spend their taxpayers hard-earned money on nonsense?
January 29th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
*sigh* Typical.
January 29th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Not as silly as it might appear, there are black, Jewish, Islamic,gay groups within the UK police forces that get the same consideration, and £10,000 is peanuts compared to the millions spend in law enforcement. Of greater concern is the growing number of faith schools, now that IS a waste of money.
January 29th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Considering we’re just crawling out of recession here in the UK, this is pretty disgraceful. It’s not a lot of money in isolation but added to some of the other hair-brained schemes paid for by British tax-payers it soon becomes appreciable. It’s a shame the twit who made this daft decision isn’t named.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:54 pm
Pete, i fail to see how promoting diversity in a police force [to better relate to the populace, i assume] equates with the allocation of law enforcement £ to prayer (or as i like to call it, “special, god-magic thinky-time”).
I’m sure the subject of faith schools will come up later…
“…we call it circumstantial evidence”?!?. ugh. when you hear cops misappropriate legal terms, fear for your freedom.
surprised this happens in the UK. seems more like some US [aka us] shit.
January 30th, 2010 at 4:19 am
They couldn’t find any psychics?
January 30th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
“We do not discount good police work, which is why we call it circumstantial evidence.”
Even if their police work sucked ass, it would STILL be circumstantial.
I say fire the lot of them.
January 30th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
True fact: eating iced cream causes drowning. Never mind the x factor of both swimming and the consumption of iced cream increasing during summer, thus causing a shared increased likelihood.
Find your x factor, Britain. (To speed things up, x ≠ Jesus)
January 31st, 2010 at 1:20 am
If Christians are inside praying they’re not out commiting crimes. makes perfect sense.
February 25th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Seemed like a good name for a blog but after reading further it should be “small minded intellectual barbarians”
From the raw cynicism above – and the lack of intellectual reasoning, I doubt that faithlessness is doing much to bring you any kind of happiness – can’t quite see the point of sniping together