Phone the police!

DID you hear the one about the male voice choir? No? Well you are about to. It’s certainly a laugh, but it’s also no joke. The Derbyshire Constabulary Male Voice Choir is no longer to be supported and financed by Derbyshire police. According to their chief constable, the choir no longer reflects the gender equality policies of the service. I see. In other, less politically correct language, he means there are “no women in it”. Well there wouldn’t be, now would there? (That is the case in any sane world, but obviously today’s Derbyshire police don’t inhabit one.)

This unbelievable nonsense sadly reflects all that is wrong with today’s UK police. The day they ceased to be police “forces” and became “services” instead, was the first sign that things were going badly wrong. By the time we get around to shutting down male voice choirs on grounds of “gender equality targets” we know the Plod have definitely lost the plot. Shouldn’t their only “targets” be bringing criminals to justice and protecting the public from them? Of course they should, but they aren’t.

That is why the public outcry against the arrest of pensioner Richard Osborn-Brooks, on suspicion of murder, following the killing of a violent intruder in his house, was so immediate and angry. Not content with the obvious trauma the elderly Mr Osborn-Brooks had gone through during his struggle to protect himself, his wife and his property, the police shoved handcuffs on him, marched him off into custody and kept him guessing for days as to whether he would be charged. By anybody’s standards, his treatment was an absolute disgrace, even though he was eventually freed.

Mr Osborn-Brooks now finds his house boarded up and reportedly “lives in fear of his life”. In other words, he has no confidence in the police’s ability to protect him from revenge attacks. And why should he have? Nearly two-thirds of crime reported to the UK police remains either unsolved or not investigated fully. The police have virtually abandoned tackling burglary — you’re on your own, mate. The only point in reporting such theft is to obtain a crime number and claim on your insurance. No wonder screwdriver-waving thugs (and worse) feel they can invade any property they like, with impunity.

Then we disbelievingly read that for the first time in history, London has overtaken New York in the murder stakes. There have been 55 murders on London’s streets so far this year, including a massive increase in street gang knife attacks and killings. Yet here again, political correctness is at the heart of the police’s inability to tackle the problem.

Theresa May is much to blame. When Home Secretary she called a halt to police “stop and search” policy. Why? Because the politically correct lobby howled “racial discrimination” due to there being more “black people” stopped and searched than “white”, so she caved in. Since then knife crime has become an epidemic. The reason? Ask Trevor Philips, lifelong community relations campaigner and former chairman of the Race Relations Board. “It’s not white boys in Surrey who are being stabbed,” he says. No, he’s right, it isn’t.

It’s mainly (though not exclusively) black youngsters, in areas inhabited predominately by ethnic minority populations. That is the stark, staring truth, so why hide from it? (Well, I suppose the fact that saying so might cause some UK police force to charge you with a “hate crime” might be a consideration urging some caution, but what the hell.)

Until these harsh realities are recognised, there is no way the police can protect those lawabiding ethnic minority communities from the knife violence that plagues them (and increasingly, everybody else). We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not just minority communities the police are abandoning. It’s the lot of us.

When you were last in the UK, how many police did you see wandering Britain’s streets? Oh, yes, you’ll see the odd couple of Community Support Officers (pretend police, with no powers of arrest), but real coppers? Forget it, chum. It might be the fact there have been cuts in police numbers over the last 10-15 years, but there are still 123,142 of them at the last count. It’s no longer the likes of Cliff Richard who are commanding their attention, so where the hell are they? Surrounding some dead suspect’s grave?

I don’t like rubbishing the UK police, but then it’s not me that’s doing it. They have become a politically correct joke and it’s them that’s doing the telling. One last thing: why is it, the more they look like Rambo, the less effective they become?