Police priorities

The police today face a variety of new challenges. Cyber crime takes up much of their time, whether it be fraud perpetrated online or other offences carried out over the internet, notably sexual grooming and child pornography. So when the Met announces that it will not be investigating so-called low-level crimes in order to live within tighter government-imposed budgets, should we be sympathetic?

New guidelines issued to officers suggests that some car crimes, burglaries and assaults should not be investigated unless a suspect is already identified or violence has been used. CCTV should only be analysed for crimes committed in a 20-minute time frame. “We are having to ‘balance the books’ with fewer officers and less money,” one senior officer said.

Yet dozens of officers were deployed to investigate allegations against a dead former prime minister, Sir Edward Heath. Operation Midland, another child sex abuse inquiry into a supposed high-level paedophile ring, cost £2.5m but yielded nothing except further payments of compensation for those wrongly accused. Three separate probes arising from phone-hacking allegations against newspapers cost the Met more than £40m.

Overall, crime is far lower than it was in the 1990s, with significantly fewer burglaries and car thefts. Offences of violence have dropped by two-thirds and robberies by more than half, reducing pressure on the police dramatically. Terrorism is a preoccupation, but so it was when the IRA mainland campaign was at its height. In the end it is a question of priorities. The public regards burglary, theft and assault as serious crimes and expects the police to investigate them.