POLICE forces across the country are being told to recruit gypsies. Senior officers are so concerned about hitting the new quotas they have been inviting young travellers to their training colleges.

This could be interesting as officers gaze into a crystal ball to see what crimes you may be thinking of committing. Reaction has been mixed, to say the least.

Conservative MP Philip Davies said: “I absolutely despair, this is utter nonsense.

“It should be irrelevant whether police officers are black, white, gay, straight, muslim or Christian, gypsy or not. The only consideration should be whether they are people who can uphold the law without fear or favour.

“Furthermore, this is potentially dangerous because police forces could end up recruiting people who might not be the best people, just to meet their quota.”

Emma Nuttall, a spokeswoman for Friends, Families And Travellers, an organisation that campaigns for the rights of gypsies and travellers, said: “Gypsies get a bad press. We welcome this recruitment plan wholeheartedly.

“We are already in discussion with a number of police forces, including Sussex and Kent.”

On the basis, of ‘takes one to know one’ – we might be advised to support this move, for it does help to have some idea of the mentality of the people you are dealing with……..read this…….HERE in the original French. Or here, translated.

The presence of Gypsies from Romania in the Roubaix area [north of France] has always brought its load of problems, but a new threshold was reached when a difficult arrest was made last Thursday: a young woman grabbed a baby by its foot and used it as a weapon to hit a policeman.

Last Thursday, around 6.30 p.m., a police patrol stops a young man driving without a licence or insurance. [A common practice, it seems, among Gypsies.] […] Tempers flare. Extra police are summoned to the place. Around ten of them are present when the exchange takes an astonishing turn. A young Gypsy grabs a one-year old baby from the arms of a man belonging to the camp. She steps in front of the policemen. The police think she is trying to prevent the arrest by acting as a human shield. Far from it.

First, she grabs the baby by an arm and a leg, and hits a policeman with it. Then, she grabs it by one foot only, and hits again. What’s happening is awful. The baby cries. The police try to hinder this explosion of violence. This baby used as a weapon; it’s unbearable. Then the woman tries to throw the baby on the ground. Policemen manage to catch it before it falls. They rush it away to the hospital, far from this scene of hysteria.

But wait. Other women bare their breasts, and splatter the police with their own milk. One Gypsy man mutilates himself: he slashes his belly with a 20-cm wound. The police provide him with emergency care and press the wound in order to keep the blood from flowing. The baby-swinging woman, who is not the baby’s mother, is brought to the police station. The baby is in a state of shock. An inquest is begun. The baby might be put under the care of a foster family. Legal proceedings have been started for violence and rebellion.

Why such violence? At the football club next door, people are waiting eagerly for the Gypsies’ departure. The situation has been very tense for the last month: “They steal our footballs, they send their children to relieve themselves on the football ground right while we’re training,” says the coach Hassen Hamidi.

People from the neighbourhood have been helpful to Gypsies. But [the Gypsies’] aggressiveness and lack of respect are unbearable.