GIVE US BACK 20,000 POLICE EXCLUSIVE
As Home Secretary admits more police can help stem rising violent crime, officers say...
HOME Secretary Sajid Javid faced calls last night to recruit 20,000 police officers to fight the explosion of violent crime on our streets.
The demand came after Mr Javid admitted yesterday that more police officers will be an “important part” of tackling what he described as the “disease” of knife crime.
The Home Secretary said the Government needed to take a “fresh look” at police resources after a spate of murders.
Forces across England and Wales are struggling after losing 20,000 officers in the last eight years to cut costs.
More than 250 people have been stabbed to death this year on Britain’s streets as gangs fight for lucrative drug markets and settle petty
disputes with deadly weapons. Mr Javid conceded: “I think actually police numbers have to be an important part of the solution. Let’s not pretend that it’s not.
“There has been a big increase in police funding in the last three years. There was a big increase last year.
“That said, I’m the first to admit we need to take a fresh look at that and make sure that police – not just in London, but across the country – have the resources that they need.”
Mr Javid and policing minister Nick Hurd will demand more cash from Chancellor Philip Hammond.
Senior officers have repeatedly warned they are unable to gather vital intelligence on gangs and thugs carrying deadly weapons because of reduced police numbers.
Simon Kempton, head of operational policing at the Police Federation, led calls to reverse the manpower cuts of the last eight years.
He said: “We need to get back the 20,000 officers we’ve lost. Now Mr Javid has accepted numbers are part of the solution, what is he going to do about it?
“There is a clear correlation between the instigation of the cuts to the police and the slow, irrevocable rise in crime and I think it has got to the point where you can’t ignore the evidence that is in front of you.
Scared
“If we had the numbers when I first joined in 2000, and we married that with the technical advances we have since enjoyed and the efficiencies we have had to learn through austerity, there is nothing we couldn’t achieve.
“We would be all over criminals; we would be all over the preventative side of policing; we would go back to being a caring service where we can sit with an elderly lady and hold her hand because she is scared; we would be able to be all things to all people again.”
John Apter, national chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, added: “How many more lives need to be lost for the Government to wake up and adequately invest in public safety?”
Former solicitor general Lord Garnier told the Daily Express last night: “The benefits of us having more police patrolling our streets, deterring criminals and making the public feel more confident they are safe are to be welcomed.
“The more police officers one sees, the more confident the public are that it is safe.”
And Britain’s most senior police officer, Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick, told Good Morning Britain yesterday: “I think there must be some sort of link.At the same time as officers going down, demand going up, emergency calls from the public going up – that is a very strained system.
“I think there is a good case for the police to have more resources.
“I know exactly how I would use extra resources to target violent criminals, to bring drug dealers to justice, to be more present on the street at the time when the schools and colleges are coming out.”
Labour MP Jim Cunningham said West Midlands Police, which is trying to tackle surging violent, knife and gun crime, had lost 3,000 officers in recent years. He told the House of Commons yesterday: “The only way we’re going to deal adequately with violent crime... is having an adequate number of police.”
Mr Hurd told MPs a robust response to street violence needed to be balanced with “excellent work on prevention”.
Mr Javid also said police should “put
ethnicity aside” when considering using stop-and-search powers. He told Good Morning Britain: “It doesn’t matter if someone is black, or brown, or white or whatever they are.
“If the police think that there’s good reason that they may be carrying an offensive weapon, the police should be absolutely empowered to stop them. That’s what I want to see, that’s what the public wants to see.” And Mr Javid blasted London mayor Sadiq Khan’s claim that it could take a decade to combat the knife crime epidemic.
He said: “We don’t have 10 years – we don’t have 10 months.
“There needs to be immediate action. But where the mayor is right is… some of the longer-term interventions. By definition, if you’re trying to take children away from a life of crime, trying to deal with the challenges they have in their lives, that will take time.
“That early intervention is also something that should happen.”
IT is easy to vilify Donald Trump for his failure to appear at a US military cemetery on Saturday. Those whose relatives lived and fought in appalling conditions on the Western Front deserved better than having the President give them the brush-off. Even if there were genuine reasons his helicopter couldn’t take off, alternative travel plans should have been in place.
But the real villain of the weekend’s commemoration of the Armistice was not the President of the United States – it was France’s own President, Emmanuel Macron. Why his speech was hailed by some as great piece of statesmanship I don’t understand.
Notionally, of course, Macron was making a call for peace. Few would disagree with some of the platitudes he included in his 20 minutes at the podium, calling for the world to “prioritise peace over everything”.
It was the remarks which he crafted around the platitudes which were objectionable. Central to his speech was a wrong-headed assertion that only the EU – with France and Macron himself in the driving seat – could be trusted with maintaining peace in Europe.
In Europe, he claimed, the spirit of international cooperation “is represented by the ties of friendship between Germany and France, and the desire to build a bedrock of common goals. This hope is called the European Union, a union that has freed us of our civil wars”.
THERE was no mention of Britain, nor of any of the EU’s other 25 states. It is how France has seen the EU all along, since the foundation of its predecessor organisation, the European Economic Community, in 1957: as a duopoly of French and German power, with all other member states subservient to them.
It is that attitude which has undermined British engagement in the EU for the past 45 years and led ultimately to our decision to leave. Macron couldn’t help himself, referencing Brexit in a not-too-subtle way, claiming that the hope for peace risked being ruined by a “fascination for withdrawal, violence or domination”.
Yes, in Macron’s mind, withdrawing from the EU is the moral equivalent to rattling sabres if not actually invading foreign countries. Yet as Theresa May and everyone backing Brexit has made clear all along, leaving the EU is not the same as leaving Europe. The UK government wants co-operation in all areas – just not through the antidemocratic political construct that is the EU.
Macron has a fantasy that France is the moral leader of Europe. Speaking of the Great War he said: “This vision of France as a generous nation, of France as a project, of France as the bearer of universal values was displayed during these dark hours, as the very opposite of a selfish nation that only looks after its own interest.”
Which other leader of a Western democracy, granted the honour of addressing the world on Armistice Day, would use the occasion to chirp about his own country’s virtues? It might be the sort of thing Trump could do, but Macron has shown that he is really not much different. And what utter hypocrisy it was of Macron to claim that France is somehow immune from promoting its own self-interest above all else. This is a president who has been doing all he can to frustrate a free trade deal between the UK and the EU in the hope of poaching financial business from London to Paris.
All across Europe, on both sides of the Channel, businesses have been appealing to the EU and to their own governments to get on and do a trade deal with Britain for the benefit of all. Instead, Macron has become the single biggest obstacle to a deal among national leaders. He has shown that all he is really interested in is opportunities for the French financial sector – in which he made his own money.
Macron told us that “patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism”. It is difficult to know what he meant by this other than taking a pop at Donald Trump, who described himself as a nationalist only a few weeks ago. Of course, all countries will stand up for their own national interest. The difference is that when France does this it is good “patriotism” but when America does the same it is evil “nationalism”.
If Trump looked a bit glum through Macron’s speech and declined to attend his “peace summit” which followed, it is hardly any wonder. Only last week, Macron was calling for a single European army, explaining: “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America.”
YES, the US, which sent its servicemen to die in France in both World Wars and which spent billions to defend Western Europe against Soviet aggression for 40 years during the Cold War, is now dismissed by Macron as a threat to European peace.
I am no fan of Donald Trump but if I were the US President I don’t think I would have been attending Macron’s peace summit either.
There is a reason why Macron is playing to an international gallery. He is seeking solace from his troubles at home. Domestic support for him – never that warm even at his election – is crumbling as his reforms have failed to produce a bounce in the economy. In September his approval rating fell to 29 per cent.
On Sunday he tried to pose to the world as a latter-day Gandhi. Instead, he came across as a tinpot Napoleon.
‘He is seeking solace from troubles at home’