Police numbers alone won’t stop the killing
THE BBC headline played straight into Labour’s hands – ‘Police cuts likely to have contributed to violence rise’.
Leading the morning bulletins, the accompanying story suggested that a leaked Home Office report had made the positive link between falling police numbers and soaring knife crime – despite Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s protestations that they weren’t connected.
Predictably, Labour went into a frenzy of pious indignation. Miss Rudd was ‘either incompetent or misleading the public’, said shadow police minister Louise Haigh. This was proof that Tory cuts are costing lives.
But was it? A closer inspection of the leaked report tells a very different story.
True, it suggests a 5 per cent reduction in officer numbers may have encouraged offenders. But it goes on to state that the cuts were ‘unlikely to be the factor that triggered the shift in serious violence’.
Tellingly, the report adds: ‘forces with the biggest falls in police numbers aren’t seeing the biggest rises in serious violence.’
So why did the BBC give such a one-sided picture? Answer: Because it has swallowed the Left’s anti-austerity propaganda and become addicted to shroud-waving.
The truth is the reasons for the frightening rise in knife crime have little to do with police numbers. In the early 2000s, knife crime spiralled despite rising numbers of officers. After 2008, when police numbers began to fall, knife crime fell dramatically.
Yes, the police need to use resources in a smarter way, spending less time investigating ‘hate crimes’ and historic sex abuse and getting more officers on the streets. They must get closer to communities where stabbings are endemic and use stop and search powers more effectively. But even this is only part of the solution.
fuelled by social media and aggressive rap music, a gang culture has evolved in parts of London where brutality is seen as glamorous and human life cheap. Unless families, community workers and local politicians work together with the police to tackle it rather than constantly playing this absurd blame game, the slide into anarchy will only get worse.
One thing is certain. These problems will never be solved simply by throwing public money at them.