Peelian policing can stop knife-crime epidemic

I cleaned up New York by going back to basics. Cracking down on petty crime is the place to start

In all my years in law enforcement, from my first shifts as a uniformed officer in my home town of Boston, through to two terms as commissioner of New York City Police and chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, no one has taught me as much as

Sir Robert Peel, who founded London’s Metropolitan Police. And to tackle Britain’s current violent crime crisis – which is putting 2018 on course to be the deadliest year for a decade – politicians and police chiefs would do well to revisit his words.

“The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.” This, the first of Sir Robert’s nine principles of policing, remains as true today as when he said it in 1829. We adopted it as a mantra when we set out to tackle crime in New York back in the Nineties, when it was considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Today, we are proud to report that New York has seen 28 straight years of overall crime decline.

The current issue with knives in Britain is undoubtedly influenced by reductions in funding and structural changes in the police force, along with cuts in areas such as social services, resulting in higher levels of poverty and homelessness. Yet although the economy, racism, poverty and even the weather can influence crime, the ultimate cause is quite simple: criminals. Unemployment and other things may influence whether or not a person breaks the law, but the police can still have an impact and stop them doing it.

Sir Robert Peel understood that the police must prevent crime, as well as respond to it. The mistake we made in the US in the Seventies and Eighties, and which Britain seems to be making now, was to move the focus away from prevention. And an important part of crime prevention is a strong visible police presence.

In New York, in the Nineties, with murder and violent crime spiralling out of control, we hired an additional 6,000 officers to patrol the streets. In 2014, during my second term as New York’s police commissioner, we developed a strategy that we called “precision policing”: using intelligence to concentrate our officers on 5,000-7,000 significant criminals in a city population of 8.5 million.

It’s also important to focus on low-level disorder as well as serious crime. It’s tempting to assume petty offences aren’t worthy of stretched police resources. But if you don’t take care of the little things that people encounter every day, which create fear – aggressive beggars, graffiti, gangs, hooliganism – this eventually emboldens criminals so they’ll start to think they can get away with much more egregious behaviour. Disorder destroys neighbourhoods as much as serious crime.

This needn’t always mean arrests. Ideally, empowered officers can deal with disorderly behaviour by saying

at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion “knock it off ” or “move along” – keeping them on the street, rather than getting bound up with paperwork. And if the police help bring low-level disorder and antisocial behaviour down to the extent that people start to feel safe, they may start to self-police.

In Britain, political pressure is building to get tough on crime, and increase “stop and search” in neighbourhoods where crime is occurring, but I urge police chiefs to practice precision – clearly identifying leaders and gang members, rather than simply stopping and frisking thousands of young black men. Not only will this be a more effective strategy in crime reduction, it will allow the police to maintain their relations and reputation with the community, particularly minority groups.

The knife-crime epidemic sweeping Britain can be reversed and its cities made safer and fairer. The 200-year-old principles of Sir Robert Peel are a good place to start.

William J Bratton was New York City police commissioner 1994-96 and 2014-16 and chief of the Los Angeles Police Department 2002-09