Old Bill in La-La Land as burglars run amok

Has Harvey Weinstein ever set foot in Wiltshire? I only ask because, if he has, how long before Chief Constable Mike Veale sends a copper to stand outside swindon Odeon appealing for victims of the Hollywood mogul to come forward?

Veale probably became terribly excited when he heard one of Weinstein’s alleged assaults took place in the Beverly Wilshire hotel. No ‘t’, admittedly, but close enough to Wiltshire to justify calling a press conference and scrambling the nonce squad.

Now they’ve just about exhausted all lines of inquiry into lurid claims that former Prime Minister Ted Heath took part in serial satanic sex crimes, Veale has to find them something else to do.

scotland Yard has already got in on the act, announcing it has launched an investigation into allegations that Weinstein sexually abused four women in Britain, including actress Lysette anthony in the late Eighties.

The time frame probably makes it a job for the ‘historic’ sex crimes mob. It’ll be a relief for them to have a live one to investigate, given that so many of their previous targets have all been dead. But what is the Yard’s involvement supposed to achieve?

OK, so four of Weinstein’s alleged assaults are said to have taken place on British soil. But the chances of him ever being brought here to stand trial are less than zero.

He is an american citizen, living in america, facing accusations of sexual harassment and worse from just about every actress you’ve ever heard of — and plenty you haven’t. They include a woman who appeared in smurfs 2. Where are they all coming from?

Before the usual suspects start bouncing up and down, taking offence, don’t bother. I’m not trying to make light of some of the more serious allegations.

Look what happened to James Corden when he cracked a couple of harmless gags about the affair. One of the actresses involved called him a ‘mother******g piglet’. seems like a nice girl.

No, this isn’t about Harvey Weinstein, even though by his own admission he is a predatory slug. It’s about police priorities in Britain. He’s already being investigated by virtually every law enforcement agency in the United states — the LaPD, the NYPD, CHIPS, the FBI, Law and Order SVU, Hill street Blues, Cagney and Lacey, Hawaii Five-O. Book him Danno! If he is eventually charged and convicted, he would serve at least 30 consecutive 100-year sentences in some kind of celebrity supermax prison. so what is Knacker of the Yard going to bring to the party? The americans aren’t going to extradite him to Britain to stand trial at the Old Bailey.

Yes, the Met has a duty to take all allegations of sexual assault seriously. But they should tell Lysette anthony and the other complainants that, unfortunately, they won’t be getting their day in a British court.

These women can, however, console themselves that if found guilty in america, Weinstein will spend the rest of his days behind bars, being nice to sexually frustrated sons of anarchy and some of the more unsavoury members of Black Lives Matter.

SO REGINA v Harvey Weinstein can safely be left on file. No further action necessary. That’s obviously not how the Yard sees it. No doubt the remnants of the Jimmy savile squad are already packing their swimming trunks and factor 50 sunscreen, and booking their Jolly Boys Outing to La-La Land.

They will then spend several weeks, as a basis for negotiation, at the aforementioned, five- star Beverly Wilshire conducting exhaustive inquiries into the complaints against Weinstein.

(I can personally recommend the hotel’s in-house Wolfgang Puck steakhouse, chaps, particularly the 20oz bone-in ribeye. go for the tempura onion rings, too, and a decent bottle of Napa Valley pinot noir, while stocks last. These California wildfires are going to play havoc with the 2017 vintage.)

Think I’m exaggerating? It wasn’t that long ago, scotland Yard detectives flew all the way to australia and back as part of the Rolf Harris investigation.

There’s nothing the Old Bill likes more than a high-profile case, particularly if it involves sex and celebrity, plus the opportunity for foreign travel, running up the exes and claiming endless overtime.

Timing, in policing as in comedy, is everything, though. and the announcement of the investigation into Weinstein coincides with the revelation that scotland Yard has abandoned any pretence of tackling ‘routine’ crimes — including burglaries, thefts and assaults.

Under new guidelines, thousands of offences will no longer be investigated if they fail to meet certain criteria. Inquiries will be dropped unless the victim can positively identify the perpetrator, or there is conclusive CCTV evidence and easily obtainable forensics, and the lost property is worth more than £50. Otherwise, forget it.

actually, they’ve been doing something like this for 30- odd years. I’ve just found a piece I wrote for London’s Evening standard in 1988 about the Yard’s new ‘screening’ process, which used similar rules to justify not investigating crimes such as burglary.

The excuse, then as now, was to save money and free up more officers to investigate other offences. But often these everyday ‘minor’ crimes are those which concern the paying public most.

There never seems to be any shortage of dosh when it comes to spending millions of pounds on pursuing innocent journalists for simply doing their job, or setting up task forces to investigate longdead politicians and disc-jockeys falsely accused of sex crimes by chancers and fantasists.

I have some sympathy for the Met, which is under constant political pressure and lumbered with the disproportionate costs of dealing with terrorism and mass demonstrations in London.

But regional forces are equally guilty. Look at the small fortune Mike Veale’s carrot- crunchers have wasted pursuing the ghost of grocer Heath.

Further west, a duty sergeant revealed that in Devon and Cornwall there are often times when no officers are available to answer 999 calls from the force’s 523,000 residents — because they are all attached to specialist units. Patrolling the streets and responding to emergencies are given low priority.

Devon and Cornwall Plod may have deserved the benefit of the doubt had they not announced in the same week a crackdown on ‘hate crime’, to which they were devoting considerable manpower and money.

Police officers these days seem to spend more time scouring the internet for ‘ inappropriate’ comments than walking the beat.

avon and somerset has just disbanded its burglary squad, after managing to solve just 10 per cent of 70,522 break-ins reported, and failing to recover £40 million worth of stolen property. Forty million quid here, forty million there. It soon begins to add up.

Burglary victims will be relieved to know avon and somerset yesterday announced a bold new initiative to crack down on ‘genderbased hate crime’, which it claims has increased by 41 per cent. Really? What this appears to mean is that instead of investigating burglaries they have decided to concentrate on advertising for people to report alleged ‘hate crime’.

As I HAVE pointed out countless times, socalled ‘ hate crime’ is a matter of opinion, not fact, in the eye of any beholder who chooses to make a vexatious complaint.

The deliberately vague definition should be struck from the statute book. It should never take priority over genuine crimes.

What could be more hateful than breaking into someone’s home in the middle of the night and stealing their most valued possessions? No wonder so many women equate being burgled with being raped.

Elsewhere, as the Mail reports exclusively today, the police have decided off their own bat effectively to decriminalise drugs crime. Hundreds of criminals caught cultivating cannabis are being let off with a caution — despite supply and possession being punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

since when were the police given the power to act as judge and jury and decide which crimes they will and won’t investigate?

still, at least we can sleep more easily in our beds knowing the Old Bill are cracking down on hate crime and sexually abusive Hollywood film producers.

That will come as a great comfort when scotland Yard’s finest jet off to La, leaving a trail of unsolved burglaries behind them.

and at least Harvey Weinstein, unlike Jimmy savile and grocer Heath, is still alive.

‘W einstein is already being investigated by Cagney and Lacey’