There are no votes in policing. And there is almost no knowledge of 21st-century policing among the political elite. It is doubtful if there is a single member of the Oireachtas who could name even one of the sociologists who lead the debate on policing and police science in the Western world.  If any of the spokespersons on justice from among the various Dáil parties have ever read a page of Robert Kane or Dennis Stevens or even the various reports on the Garda Síochána, starting in 1969 with Conroy, it is not apparent. Hence the vapid, cliched utterances in…