Our Columnists Lisa Armstrong & Bryony Gordon
My toddler daughter was sitting on my lap, craning her neck to look out of the bus window (“I looking for princesses, Mummy,” she said, which seemed a little optimistic given we were outside the Brixton Academy) when she started banging on the window frantically.
“Mummy! What they, Mummy? What they with the hats?”
I turned to look at the cause of her excitement and almost started banging the window myself, such was my shock: for outside on the pavement were two policemen strolling the streets of south London, on patrol. “Why, that’s the lesser-spotted bobby!” I exclaimed. “When Mummy was your age, you used to see them on the streets all the time, but now you can’t even find them in police stations, because the police stations have been shut down and turned into luxury flats, and if you have a concern you have to visit a branch of Costa Coffee between the hours of 2pm and 2.17pm on alternate Thursdays.”
I thought I would continue this history lesson by explaining what a lesser-spotted bobby did, but I couldn’t remember. Fight crime? Fill out forms? Use every opportunity to complain about pressures created by austerity measures? Yes, maybe that was what they were doing – reminding us of all the hard work they can no longer do because of the cuts. I think that’s what they mean by a “reassuring police presence” nowadays: one in which the police do nothing but reassure each other that the fact they do diddly squat is all the fault of the evil government.
I’m sorry if I seem flippant but I no longer have much time for the police – if only because they long ago stopped having time for me, or anyone else for that matter.
A few months ago I wrote sympathetically of the pressures on the police after our car was written off by a dangerous driver. I excused the 999 operator’s assertion that it wasn’t a police matter, and expressed sympathy for the woman at the Criminal Justice Unit who had been assigned our case, because when I spoke to her she spent much of the conversation complaining to me of the terrible strains put on her and her colleagues.
But since then a number of reports have drained me of sympathy: the one on Thursday, about police refusing to break up an illegal rave in Somerset because doing so in the dark would compromise health and safety; and the news earlier this month that Leicestershire police had trialled a three-month scheme in which they only investigated attempted burglaries that had occurred at houses with even numbers. And that’s before I even get to the report out yesterday that four in five burglaries were written off by the police last year without the suspect having been identified.
“Crime is changing in this country,” said Chief Constable Sara Thornton, the head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, last month. “There are a lot less burglaries than there used to be, a lot less car crime, but the sorts of crimes that are on the increase – sexual offences, concerns about terrorism, cyber crime – that’s where we really need to focus. We need to move from reacting to some of those traditional crimes to thinking about focusing on threat and harm and risk and really protecting the public. If we’re serious about putting a lot of effort and resource into protecting children, for example, that might mean that if you’ve had a burglary and the burglar has fled, we won’t get there as quickly as we have in the past.” This despite a watchdog announcing just weeks earlier that most victims of child sexual abuse are being failed by police forces.
This week, two police officers were pictured in Majorca. Fine, you might think – everyone deserves a break. Except PC Martina Anderson and Sergeant Brett Williams were not on the Spanish island for a holiday. They had been sent there to patrol the streets of Magaluf in an attempt to police British holidaymakers drinking themselves silly. But their shifts end at 10pm – well before most of the partying starts on the island.
Their presence in Spain, where they have no powers of arrest, made a mockery of Ms Thornton’s claims of a need to prioritise serious crime.
In February, it was revealed that complaints against police had reached a record high, the most common being that they neglected their duties. To a certain extent this can be blamed on cuts. But you don’t find NHS chiefs saying people with broken arms are going to have to sit out their ailments at home so doctors can focus on people with cancer. Schools do not announce they are going to stop teaching children who can read to focus on those who can’t.
I am sure there are many brilliant police officers out there doing their jobs the best they can. But they are sadly let down by the ones who see austerity measures as an excuse to paint themselves as victims – all the while forgetting the real ones, sitting in their burgled homes, waiting for justice that will probably never come.