‘No time to target builders’

A TOP police officer says wolf-whistling should not be a crime as he goes to war on the “court of Twitter”.

Sergeant Richard Cooke says his officers do not have time to waste targeting builders.

Instead he wants the force’s scant resources spent on investigating “genuine crime”.

“Unsociable, offensive people” were best dealt with by families and the community, said the new chairman of West Midlands Police Federation.

Sgt Cooke warned the drive to target hate crime is forcing them to spend more time probing bad manners and insensitive comments. The Home Secretary Sajid Javid is asking law chiefs to consider if ageism and misogyny should be hate crimes.

But Sgt Cooke urged him to invest in more officers, and let them “focus urgently on genuine crime”. He warned policing has never been in “greater peril” than today, with the fewest officers in over 40 years.

Sgt Cooke said genuine crimes motivated by intolerance and prejudice “should be investigated”.

However, he added: “Are we really going to be required to routinely record, and potentially act on, incidents like a builder’s wolf whistle?”

The motives seemed “noble” but there were already laws to address anti-social behaviour, he said. COP “CRISIS”: Sgt Cooke