British policing has “lost its way” and officers should stop taking actions – including ‘taking the knee’ and wearing partisan political badges or symbols – that could be seen as ‘woke’ by a public which has lost confidence in many forces across the country, a hard-hitting report has warned. MailOnline has more.
A manifesto by the Policy Exchange think-tank has urged Britain’s next Prime Minister to implement a series of drastic reforms that would protect citizens from a mounting tide of violent crime and disorder and restore public confidence in policing.
The report, entitled “What do we want from the next Prime Minister?”, makes 11 recommendations including a “return to basics” and “focus on fighting crime”, “no more taking the knee and other acts that could be seen as ‘woke’”, tougher laws to clampdown on road-blocking eco-zealots and left-wing statue vandals, and a drive to recruit “hacker cops” to tackle a surge in fraud and online sexual abuse.
The author – David Spencer, a former Metropolitan Police officer and the head of Policy Exchange’s Crime and Justice department – also suggests abolishing the College of Policing, developing an app so local residents can report a range of offences directly to police, from violent crime to street-drinking and aggressive begging.
Critics have accused many of Britain’s police forces of “going woke” – whether by officers “taking the knee” as they did during the Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in the U.S. in 2020, “going soft” on eco-protesters from Extinction Rebellion and one of its offshoot factions, Just Stop Oil, or adopting the LGBT colours of Pride parades.
Just earlier this month, Lincolnshire Police came under fire for dancing the Macarena at a Pride event in Lincoln – and appearing to boast about this by sharing video of officers performing the routine from the force’s official Twitter account.
Mr Spencer said: “If the past few years have shown us anything, it is that British policing has lost its way. An overhaul of police leadership is needed which is capable of delivering for the public. When institutions become closed shops they cease to be effective – this cannot happen with the institution that exists to protect the public from crime and disorder.
“We need to breathe new life into British policing so that new approaches to crime can be applied, particularly to growing areas like cybercrime and online fraud, which are already costing Britons and the wider economy billions each year.”
The report warns that public confidence in the police is being eroded, partly as a result of the failure to tackle rising burglary and robbery.
Pointing out that clear-up rates for these offences are “woefully low”, it adds: “The proportion of police-recorded crimes which resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed has followed a downward trend in recent years, from 15.6% in the year to March 2015 to 7.3% in the year to March 2021.
“Similarly, out-of-court disposals (such as ‘police cautions’ and ‘cannabis warnings’) have fallen over the same period from 9.1% to 4.4%. Policing’s ability to solve more common crime types is woefully low with only 3.5% of reported residential burglaries, 6.3% of reported robberies and 4.1% of reported thefts solved during the financial year 2021/22.
“There may be a host of reasons for these trends, including victims being less likely to be willing to support pursuing a prosecution or increasingly stringent crime recording standards.
“However, there appears to be no doubt that the ability of the police to solve crime once it has happened has reduced significantly over the last decade.”
Burglaries, thefts and robberies increased by 24% between March 2017 and September 2019. There was a reduction from 2020 driven by lockdown but inspectors expect to see an increase in the post-pandemic figures.
Worth reading in full.
You can read the Policy Exchange report here.
Stop Press: Boris has defended the police from the charge of being too ‘woke’. The Telegraph has more.
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I’ve had this mispleasure to deal with the English police as victim of a crime twice, once because of a burglary and once because of violent street robbery. AFAICT, the first was ignored completely, the second was first auto-downgraded to pocket theft due to lack of attention by some (obviously) female police officer who thought the bits about slamming me into a door and thereby giving me a bruised shoulder and threatening to knife me we unimportant details best left out of the investigation. After a months long horror trip and numerous (fruitless) attempts of the same guy to get more money from me by aggressive intimidation, they finally managed to arrest him. And then let him go using a made-up pretext based on a casual, off-the-record remark I had made during the identification viewings which was not part of the protocol I had signed.
OTOH, the same police force (Thames Valley Police) has stopped, IDed and questioned me numerous times for talking legal walks over a public bridge in the night.
“lost its way” most likely started during the health panic a couple of years ago, when they became involved in the associated politics. They have lost their reputation with some of us, no doubt.
The British Police ‘Service’ is a failure: shut it down and replace it with proper local police forces.
The British Police will soon get so confused they’ll forget what they’re meant to be doing. “Are we supposed to join in or should we stay back, arms crossed and watch for crimes being committed?” will become a frequent mantra at Pride events, Festivals, Carnivals, Pop concerts and the like. I don’t blame them. Their patrol cars are so covered in rainbows and unicorns, I’d forgive them for thinking they’re meant to be serving ice creams. Soon, the uniforms will change too. Gone will be the blue serge and badge IDs and in will come multi-coloured playsuits and big red clown shoes. If you report a crime and say “Someone just stole my bike, Officer” their retort will be “Oh no they didn’t!” like a Punch and Judy Show. In all fairness, many police are OK and act like human beings – although they can’t quite shift that attitude of ‘being in charge’. This move towards wokery has really set a cat among the pigeons though as Chief Constables scramble to ‘get with it, daddy-o’ and be a modern police force patrolling the social media beat for any offences caused as their old beats are forgotten and the distancing from the actual public who are being trespassed against grows wider.
Methinks they already forgot this a while ago. At various places in Reading, there are Cycle thieves! We are watching you! signs coming from the local force. Whenever I see that, I can’t help wondering why the police is watching cycle theft. Maybe, they think it’s some sort of True Crime show on CCTV?
The Albanian SturmTroopers they are shipping in via Dover are what worry me, we are being invaded willingly on a daily basis
Yes, that’s occurred to me and concerns me greatly. I don’t know HOW that would happen but in a situation where society is in freefall and falling apart where riots become more common, I can imagine heavily masked thugs in combat gear being the elitist’s attack dogs with no feelings for the people. One thing I would like to know is where are all these people going? I guess they get processed after landing but where do they go afterwards?