WE ALL BACK REAL POLICING
Top officers join the battle to forget ‘trivial’ offences and go back to basics
A STRING of police chiefs emphatically backed calls for a ‘back to basics’ approach to crimefighting yesterday.
Amid signs of a revolt on the issue, top officers said forces should not be made to waste time on ‘trivial’ matters against a backdrop of rising violence.
The calls came after Sara Thornton, chairman of the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), said police should be allowed to get back to tackling burglary and violence rather than wolf-whistling. In the wake of her intervention: One senior officer said 69,000 children had been seriously wounded in just one year on violent streets resembling the ‘Wild West’;
Scotland Yard Commissioner Cressida Dick said she backed ‘traditional values’ and said police had to stand in for other public services;
The leader of the Police Federation said officers are ‘not social workers’ and must focus on victims of crime;
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said police ‘should not have to pick and choose’ as she called for more funding.
Senior officers queued up to echo ‘chief of chiefs’ Miss Thornton, a former Thames Valley chief constable, yesterday. She said on Wednesday that forces lack the manpower to pursue every issue raised by campaigners, adding that officers want to prioritise emergencies and investigations.
She questioned the benefit of a two-year trial to record acts such as wolf-whistling and sexism – a scheme which led to just one conviction. Nevertheless, the Home Office has asked the Law Commission to consider whether groups such as women, the elderly and goths should receive protection under hate crime laws.
Senior policing figures insisted that vulnerable victims, including those singled out because of their race, religion or sexuality, will always be treated as a priority. But West Midlands Chief Constable Dave Thompson said there is a ‘limit’ to what police can do.
‘I think the police service takes violence against women very, very seriously,’ he said. ‘ We think hate crime is important. But we’ve also got to be careful how many things we begin to add to that list.’
Cressida Dick, head of the Metropolitan Police, said she too was focused on ‘traditional values’.
‘We are undoubtedly on occasion substituting for other public services,’ she added. ‘ I’m beginning to take a harder and harder line on what we do there and where we do it. I do some of that with a heavy heart, but I think that the police are being asked to do functions that we are not as well- skilled for. It’s not appropriate for us and to get back to the priority and the core we will have to stop doing that.
‘The mission is getting wider and wider. We do have to make some hard choices and I’m staring down the barrel of several of them as we speak.’ Police chiefs believe they are at a turning point, after years of struggling to meet high public expectations and soaring demand. Recorded crime has risen by 9 per cent – including rocketing levels of knife crime and robbery – as 22,000 officers were lost from the frontline.
Bedfordshire’s Assistant Chief Constable Jacqueline Sebire, the NPCC spokesman on serious violent crime, said colleagues faced ‘constant and sustained’ demand, with 69,000 children aged between ten and 15 suffering stab wounds or other major injuries in the year to June. ‘Wild West? It can be ... it’s happening in broad daylight, they’re in public spaces,’ she said.
Police want ministers to help them shed responsibilities which do not involve directly catching criminals and protecting the public. These include helping the mentally ill and tackling social problems after council staff shut their doors for the day.
John Apter, who leads the Police Federation, said ‘we are not society’s social workers’ as he revealed he was once dragged into a dispute over a TV remote control.
‘People who expect and deserve a police response often don’t get one,’ he said. ‘The increase in the
recording of trivial matters impacts on the ability to answer 999 calls quickly. It also means that for some victims we are not with them at their time of need.
‘You can get the most hostile comments made on social media platforms, but police officers should not routinely be dragged into rows.’
Tory MP Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs committee, said: ‘It is good to hear from a senior police officer wanting to catch real criminals and prevent serious crime rather than the usual PC nonsense.
‘This leaves ordinary people scared stiff to open their mouths and exasperated at the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” approach that seems to have taken hold.’