Police are seen as irrelevant, warn MPS

Policing is becoming “irrelevant to most people” due to the falling number of front-line officers and a failure to investigate and solve crimes, MPS have warned. A report found that just one in 200 victims of fraud saw the perpetrator brought to justice, while many cases of burglary and theft were never even investigated. Also, child sexual abuse online was said to be at “epidemic” levels. The MPS warned that forces in England and Wales were “struggling to cope”.

POLICING is becoming “irrelevant to most people” in Britain because of a falling number of front-line officers and a failure to investigate and solve crimes, MPS have warned.

A report by MPS found that just one in 200 victims of fraud saw the perpetrator brought to justice, while many cases of burglary and theft were never investigated and child sexual abuse online was at “epidemic” levels, with 80,000 possible perpetrators.

It concluded that officers were not well trained to spot online abuse, forces were “woefully under-resourced”, and many offenders were never caught or prosecuted.

The failure to investigate and prosecute crimes had led to victims refusing to report them, undermining the role of the force in society, the report found.

MPS warned that forces in England and Wales were “struggling to cope”, and predicted damaging consequences unless police were given extra funding by the Home Office, which it accused of a “complete failure of leadership”.

The home affairs select committee urged ministers to pump more money into the police, reorganise the way forces work and focus officers on preventive methods.

It also called for more mental health training for officers.

MPS highlighted concerns that the number of neighbourhood officers had been cut, resulting in a damaging effect on the public’s view of policing.

In many forces, officers who were meant to be patrolling town centres and providing visible reassurance were asked to help on other cases instead because of cuts to overall police numbers. It said data suggested forces had lost at least a fifth of their neighbourhood policing capacity on average since 2010.

Flagging up the role played by neighbourhood teams in tackling terrorism and gang crime, the report said: “It is absolutely vital that this cornerstone of British policing is reaffirmed throughout the country … This is particularly important in communities in which distrust … is rife, and in which those local links are all the more important.

“In all neighbourhoods, without local engagement, policing is at risk of becoming irrelevant to most people, particularly in the context of low rates of investigation for many crimes.”

The committee concluded that policing was suffering from a “complete failure of leadership” from the Home Office, saying: “As the lead department for policing, it cannot continue to stand back while crime patterns change so fast that the police struggle to respond.”

The report urged ministers to prioritise policing in the Autumn Budget.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The Home Secretary has already been clear that he will prioritise funding for the police.”

♦ Foreign criminals should be deported even if their children live in the UK, the Supreme Court has ruled.

The court dismissed appeals in four cases after criminals, including a sex abuser and a drug dealer, argued that they should be allowed to remain in Britain to be with their families.

The judge said it was in the public interest to deport the criminals to keep the public safe.