Make our streets safe

all law-abiding people will have been filled with horror after PC andrew Harper was fatally injured while attending a reported burglary.

This appalling crime follows the recent attack on PC Gareth Phillips, who suffered life- changing injuries when he was knocked down and driven over as he tried to stop a car thief, and the sickening machete assault on PC stuart Outten.

The awful reality of the dangers our police face in protecting the public is plain to see.

Just what will it take for the Government to acknowledge that the only way to deal with anarchy on our blood-stained streets is to greatly increase custodial sentences for violent crime and re-introduce the death penalty for murder?

But I fear the Government will not have the courage to adopt these measures because of the do-gooders who seem to be on the side of criminals rather than the victims.

The shocking statistics for gun and knife attacks, vicious assaults, rapes and murders show we need drastic action to stem these sickening crimes and restore law and order to our towns and cities.

astonishingly, Richard atkins QC, chairman of the Bar Council, says criminals are ‘going about their business unchallenged’ and that ‘even if their crimes are detected and they are caught by the police, the chances of them being prosecuted or jailed are slim’.

He added that ‘ the state of the criminal justice system is far worse than the figures show’.

Why has this been allowed to happen? The answer is the politically correct, softly, softly attitude and the failure to introduce a zero tolerance policing policy.

If Home secretary Priti Patel is serious when she says she wants offenders to ‘literally feel terror’, she needs an adequate deterrent that will make our streets safe again.

SUSAN RICHARDSON, Sheffield.