Rich said police forces should take a harder line on anyone caught carrying a weapon and urged the courts to use their maximum sentencing powers.
He told TalkTV, he said: “We’ve got to cut the crap really. There’s been too much messing around with mantras like ‘let’s not criminalise young people and children’ for the last 10 years.
“We’ve gone through a phase where we have caught kids with knives but they haven’t been arrested because there are policies in place and people in the system with a very liberal mindset and that is causing a big problem.”
Rich said many police officers were frustrated by some of the sentences handed down by the courts.
He said: “We have sentencing issues where even repeat offenders aren’t getting sent down.
“There are supposed to be rules to make sure they are sent away and they are not getting sent away because somehow the courts are finding a way ‘in the interests of justice’ not to do so.
“They use that reason in the majority of cases and that’s got to stop.
“Having been around the courts myself I just think a lot of judges and lawyers live on another planet. Perhaps I am generalising but I don’t see that they experience the real world.”
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