Let’s stop the retreat of bobbies on the beat

If the police are reduced to tackling violence from behind their computer screens, society will suffer

Last week came the news of the 250th death by stabbing this year. Like so many others, the victim, John Ogunjobi, was male and young – 16 in this case. As the grim tally rises, politicians, police chiefs and academics offer answers that are confused or wallow in despair. Two years into the job, the current Mayor of London, who has responsibility for policing the capital, has said that it could take 10 years to tackle the issue.

Yet if you speak to senior officers, it boils down to this: the police have withdrawn from the streets. The Commons Home Affairs Select Committee agrees, stating that forces have lost on average a fifth of their neighbourhood policing capacity.

This withdrawal is partly down to the fact that crime is changing. The police are now dealing with things that their predecessors 10 or 20 years ago did not, such as cyber crime, which includes fraud and child pornography. They are also devoting more time to crimes committed in the private sphere, such as domestic abuse, sexual crime and modern slavery.

These new criminal battlefronts have opened up at a time of significant police cuts – the number of police officers in England and Wales fell by over 20,000 between March 2010 and March 2018. The change raises serious questions about how to best apportion resources without neighbourhood policing losing out. Is it right, for example, to remove a highly skilled officer, trained in community policing, evidence gathering and riot control, and redeploy him to sit behind a screen to investigate online fraud?

In addition, the police are now being asked to enforce crimes of offence. South Yorkshire Police, despite losing 15 per cent of its neighbourhood officers, has asked people to report “non-crime hate incidents, which can include things like offensive or insulting comments”.

Fortunately, the pushback against this worrying trend has already started. Last month Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, declared: “I want us to solve more burglaries and bear down on violence before we make more records of incidents that are not crimes.” She was later backed up by the Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick. That they will be heard cannot be taken for granted, though. Moral outrage is still landing in the police in-tray, and they are constantly being asked to investigate hurt feelings.

Old-fashioned, bobby-on-the-beat policing will be crucial to tackling knife crime. Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s announcement last week that the police will get enhanced powers to stop and search suspects is an encouraging sign. Senior officers who oversaw the previous reduction in violent crime when Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone served as London mayor also testify to the importance of having dedicated officers gather intelligence by establishing a relationship with their local patch.

More widely, police presence has a reassuring effect. If you live in a dangerous neighbourhood with gang members roaming freely and haven’t seen the police in days, you might wonder who’s in charge of the streets.

Senior officers think a full return to neighbourhood policing can turn around the problem in as little as 18 months. This might sound ambitious but, as the death toll rises, surely it is right that the police should show resolute determination?

While the priority must remain tackling serious violence, more focus on local policing would also help address the wider impact that the police’s retreat from the streets has had on society. In the absence of uniformed officers, rough sleepers are abandoned, tensions rise on congested roads, assaults on the transport system seem more commonplace and petty crime is not investigated.

The British policing tradition is one of unarmed community law-enforcers. Our officers are distinct from their more militarised counterparts on the Continent. As the founder of the Metropolitan police, Robert Peel, put it: “The police are the public and the public are the police.” By patrolling the streets they give us confidence in the rules that govern our society and make our cities liveable. We need more of them back on the streets. Until they are, more young lives will be lost and public order will continue to fray.