Says police chief Cressida

I FEAR Commissioner Cressida Dick’s new funds will be wasted. There is little doubt that if a large sum is removed from the budget of any organisation – police or otherwise – it will have some impact on performance.

But in my experience as a senior officer in the Metropolitan Police, I saw a lot of waste in the force. Here are some examples. Too many civilians were recruited to tell police officers “the bleedin’ obvious” – for example, analysts pouring over crime reports to find that lots of robberies are committed near tube stations or that more burglaries occur when it gets dark early.

Vast sums were also spent on IT projects that had little or no impact on policing. Met police chief Cressida Dick In 2015 the Met’s Department of Information spent £390million on IT, none of which seems to make any difference to frontline police. There have also been fortunes spent on “silver bullets” to solve crime, the latest one being automated facial recognition. Time and time again it fails, but more money is spent. Perhaps most critically, there is always money to spend on politically correct schemes. Even if the police “cuts” were reversed, I doubt that any additional money would be used to combat violent robbery, burglary, theft, car crime or other mundane offences.

Today’s “right on” senior officer sees such matters as rather boring and unworthy of police attention.

So there is always money to spend on buying police horse livery and saddles in rainbow colours or supplying two warrant cards (and two full sets of uniform) to an officer, who cannot decide if they are a man or a woman.

It is little wonder the average person is losing faith in the police.

Cressida Dick is promising to recruit new officers – but who will they be?

Ex-servicemen, with common sense, or more university types committed to the new religion of “equality and diversity” who are not interested in robbery or burglary?