What kind of police force lets gangs rob charity shops?

Talk about poacher turned gamekeeper; from being the best shoplifter in my year,

I have become a scourge of the light-fingered loiterers, keeping a beady eye out for them at my volunteer job in a Mind shop. Once you’ve made the depraved decision to steal from a charity shop, there are no depths you won’t sink to; my young boss was once threatened with a used syringe by a thief she chased.

So I wasn’t surprised to read that charity shops like ours are dealing with a “painful” epidemic due to the police turning their backs on us, with clothes being the main items pilfered, along with bric-a-brac and vinyl records.

The whole high street is suffering; a report from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) shows losses from criminal activity topping £1 billion for the first time last year. More importantly, there are more than 400 cases of violent or abusive behaviour against shop workers reported each day, with seven out of 10 retailers reporting that the police response was poor or very poor.

Helen Dickinson, the head of the

BRC, has called for a stronger police response to retail crime, and legislation for tougher sentences for those who assault staff. But it’s not going to happen, is it? For the same reason that numerous police forces turned a blind eye to the trafficking of children by grooming gangs for so long. The police have for many years been abandoning the tasks they are paid for – tackling crime and catching criminals – for the far easier job of policing thoughts and words.

What is it with the forces of law and order? With the new technology, they appear to have morphed en masse into teenage girls, turning their back on the mean streets where they might be in harm’s way in favour of hanging around on social media, like a monstrous regiment of flat-footed Kardashians.

I can imagine these PC Pcs poring over the morning’s Twitter feed as they drink skinny lattes and catch up on who has hurt whose feelings while minding their pronouns: “Bitch disrespected my kween – they’re going down!”

In California, shoplifting has reached pandemic proportions due to the introduction of Proposition 47, a referendum passed six years ago which means that stealing anything worth less than £950 is a misdemeanour rather than a crime, and brings with it little chance of either pursuit or punishment. Professional shoplifting rings use addicts, illegal immigrants and children to steal for them, to the extent where some shops have seen losses double since 2014. Big chains can cope, but smaller shops, often run by legal immigrants – invariably the hardest-working of people – are the ones which suffer most.

I’m all for referendums, but this one had Big Mistake written all over it. Tellingly, it was championed by Jay Z (one of those clowns who preaches inclusivity from the patrolled lawns of his gated community) and was originally referred to as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, named by the ultrawoke Californian senator, Kamala Harris. How on earth a law that makes it easier for professional criminals to induct children into a life of crime makes schools or neighbourhoods safe I have no idea, but maybe it loses something in translation from the Orwellian.

For years, we too have been going down this route, and the result of turning a blind eye has been the level of knife crime currently eviscerating our capital. How refreshing it was to hear Priti Patel’s speech to the police last month in which she promised increased funding and recruitment, but also said: “We need to pull out all the stops to deliver the decline in crime that people want to see. These outcomes will be non-negotiable and I will be unapologetic about holding you to account – less crime, safer streets, no excuses.”

The dog-day decades of forgive and forget – forgive the criminal, forget the victim – may well be drawing to a close, thanks to our splendid Home Secretary.

The decades of forgive and forget – forgive the criminal, forget the victim – may well be drawing to a close