CRIMINAL STUPIDITY
When PAUL KOHLER suffered a savage assault in his own home, only help from his local police station saved his life. Now he asks: why ARE so many being shut down?
THE criminal savagery will stay with me for ever. It was about 10pm in August three years ago and I was playing a card game with my wife at our home.
Suddenly there was a loud knock at the front door.
I went to answer it without much concern, thinking that it was one of our daughters returning home.
But immediately I opened the door, I was met by an explosion of physical violence like something from a Hollywood mob movie.
A gang of four, clearly fuelled by drink and drugs, burst through the entrance, then began to attack me with extraordinary ferocity, all the time screaming: ‘ Where’s the money?’
The beating grew in intensity as I was dragged into the dining room, while my wife was made to lie on the floor upstairs with a hood over her head and forced to listen to me being beaten.
Fortunately, one of our daughters, who was at the top of our South-West London house, heard the commotion, locked herself in her bedroom and phoned the police.
Her anguished tones certainly conveyed a sense of urgency, for within eight minutes, two officers reached our home from nearby Wimbledon police station.
Battered
They arrived just in time. At the very moment they rushed in, one of the assailants was standing over me, holding aloft a broken wooden cocktail cabinet door which he was about to bring crashing down on my battered head.
Given the escalation in the violence, I would probably have been murdered if the police had not intervened so quickly and bravely.
As it was, I sustained a fractured eye socket and a broken nose, as well as requiring multiple blood transfusions.
The attacker with the broken door was apprehended immediately, and another was caught soon afterwards hiding under a car.
The other two men fled and took longer to arrest — the last was only caught because of a tip- off received after a reward, partly funded by the Mail group, was offered for information. All four eventually went on trial and received long jail sentences.
Even now, three years on, I have double vision from the assault, but I know I am lucky to be alive — and it’s thanks to the police.
Indeed, at the gang’s trial, the judge said: ‘Without the swift arrival of the police, this attack would no doubt have continued. There is no way of telling how long. The violence was increasing and showed no signs of stopping.’
One of the key points about the effectiveness of the police’s heroic action was that they did not have far to get to our house, since the local station is 300 yards from our home.
My case is a clear illustration of the vital importance of having police stations based in local neighbourhoods, so officers can respond immediately, act as a deterrent and provide reassurance to the public.
Tragically, these factors seem to be lost on our misguided, unimaginative politicians, who appear to be happy to allow police stations to close for reasons of superficial, short- term cost- cutting without any real thought to the long-term consequences.
If an attack similar to the one I endured was mounted next year at another home in Wimbledon, it is unlikely that there would be such a swift police response — because the area’s station is earmarked for imminent closure.
Its planned demise is part of a drastic programme conceived by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who wants to shut 37 police stations in the capital.
This would mean that almost half of all police counters open to the London public will go.
Sadly, this is a pattern being repeated across the country. According to a recent study, since 2010, the number of stations with front counters open to the public has fallen from 901 to 510 — a reduction of 40 per cent in just seven years.
Some of the cutbacks have been even more brutal than those proposed for London. In Derbyshire, for instance, the number of stations open to the public fell by 84 per cent, from 25 to just four.
Of course, the impact of closures can be fatal.
Absurd
In February, a man was stabbed to death on Wealdstone High Street in North-West London, just yards from where a police station had stood for decades. It had been sold for development into flats in 2014.
Like other politicians and police chiefs, Mr Khan’s justification for his closures is the need to make savings.
In fairness to him, the Metropolitan Police budget has been cut by central government to the tune of £1 billion. But his approach appears ill-conceived, counterproductive and lacking in any public support.
In the case of my local station in Wimbledon, the closure seems particularly absurd, given that the area has such a large night-time economy and is a vital transport hub for South London.
Safety
I have tried reaching out to local political figures from both the Right and Left to create a cross-party challenge to the Mayor’s proposals. However, while I have received the enthusiastic support of the local Liberal Democrats, neither the Tories nor Labour have joined the campaign. I fear this is because they are reluctant to criticise the role both parties have played in ushering in police cuts.
On a deeper level, closing police stations runs counter to the principles of British policing, which have been a model to the world since the early 19th century, when Sir Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police.
The central aim has always been to promote public safety by providing a visible presence on the streets, both with constables on the beat and with well- staffed stations in neighbourhoods.
Traditionally, as a symbol, the blue lamp outside a local station has been as reassuring to British people as the helmet of the bobby on patrol.
Under Mr Khan’s plan,
some police stations will be retained to function as bases for the officers — but they will not be open to the public. By utilising new technology, such as smartphones and tablet computers, it is planned that officers will be able to work remotely from their cars or even local coffee shops.
Yet the reality is phones and tablets are no substitute for the visible and reassuring presence of a proper police station, particularly given that the most vulnerable victims of crime are the least likely to be confident in using technology.
The public is paying a high price for the police with drawing behind computer screens.
According to the police’s statistics, recorded crime is rising after decades of decline. In the 12 months to June 2015, it went up 5 per cent, followed by a 7 per cent increase in 2016, and then, in the year to June 2017, a disturbing rise of 13 per cent.
What makes these figures all the more worrying is the surge in violent crime. In England and Wales, during the 12 months to June 2017, there was a 27 per cent increase in gun crime, a 26 per cent rise in knife crime and a growth in robberies of 25 per cent.
Similarly, the overall category of violence against the person — which includes murder and serious injury — showed incidents up by almost a fifth.
The present approach is plainly not working. We must bring back the police to our neighbourhoods.
At a time of worsening crime and an unprecedented terror threat, the closure of stations is the height of folly.
One of the most ludicrous arguments for shutting our local branch is that, compared to the national average, it is in a low-crime area.
Perhaps the station’s very presence, acting as a deterrent to law-breaking, might have something to do with that.
Those behind the misguided decision to shut police stations across the country should be reminded of the wise words of Sir Robert Peel: ‘The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.’
The great man would have been appalled at what is being inflicted on the force he created.