No excuses for rising crime, Patel tells police

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has told police chiefs there will be “no excuses” if they fail to reduce crime after the Government’s pledge to fund 20,000 extra officers. She said at the police chiefs’ and commissioners’ annual summit that the extra injection of taxpayers’ cash meant police “must deliver the crime cuts that [the public] so desperately want” by 2022-23. “In three years’ time, people must see a difference. Less crime, safer streets. No excuses.” she said.

PRITI PATEL has told police chiefs there will be “no excuses” if they fail to reduce crime after the Government’s pledge to fund 20,000 extra officers.

The Home Secretary said the extra injection of taxpayers’ cash meant police “must deliver the crime cuts that [the public] so desperately want” by 2022-23.

“In three years’ time, when the 20,000 additional officers are through the door, people must see a difference. Less crime, safer streets. No excuses. The public won’t accept them and neither should we,” she said.

Speaking at the police chiefs’ and commissioners’ annual summit, Ms Patel told them they would be held to account with national centrally-set policing “outcomes” to reduce crime in the target areas of murder, serious violence and neighbourhood crime including burglary, mugging and theft.

The outcomes will be set by the National Policing Board – comprising senior police chiefs, ministers and officials – and a new crime and policing performance group chaired by Kit Malthouse, the policing minister.

She said: “We’re setting you quite a challenge to start with: to reduce murder, serious violence and neighbourhood crime. To improve victim satisfaction, to help those whose lives are torn apart by domestic abuse and to roll up county lines. An ambitious list but no more than the public expects.”

David Thompson, West Midlands’ chief constable, warned that officers were already having fill in for so many local services that they were “close to emptying the bins in some cases”.

He said officers were being distracted with more than a quarter of their time handling people with mental ill health or missing person cases.

“These other things have to be dealt with in another way. We are carrying the can for other services,” he said.

Martin Hewitt, chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said it was “helpful” for the Government to set priorities though it was not yet clear if there would be percentage target reductions as Boris Johnson had as London mayor when he demanded 20 per cent cuts in seven crime types.

It is also not clear if there will be sanctions other than “naming and shaming” failing forces.

Ms Patel admitted public confidence in the criminal justice system had fallen as “community crimes” such as theft and burglary had been deprioritised. She said she now expected police to “investigate every type of every crime with the rigour that people expect”.

She admitted a consequence of police overstretch, after cuts of 22,000 officers, was that people no longer saw police on the streets and that the proportion of offences solved had halved to under 8 per cent.

“That is why we are all working together to turn the page. Putting more bobbies on the beat in our communities, tackling low-level offenders before they can graduate from being shop thieves to knife carriers and investigating every type of crime with the rigour that people expect,” she said.

She also urged chiefs to focus on the “core job” of cutting crime rather being “pen-pushers,” announced £41.5 million of funding for forces in 18 areas worst hit by violence and launched an eight-week consultation on plans to enshrine a police covenant in law.