Police

If you started again with a clean slate, a blank sheet of paper, you would never design a system of policing like this.  It’s a system – in England and Wales – where there are 43 ‘territorial’ forces. No matter how big or small, each force has its own leadership structure, specialist units and support functions, such as finance, vetting and human resources. For instance, there’s Warwickshire constabulary with just 1,126 officers, and neighbouring West Midlands Police, with 8,000. They work together at times, but they are led, managed and organised in separate ways.  The most glaring discrepancies are in the capital.

Police must investigate every theft. This is the message from the Home Secretary as the government heralds an agreement from all 43 police forces in England and Wales to follow up on any evidence where there is a ‘reasonable line of enquiry’. In practice, that means the police should investigate low-level crimes such as stolen bikes, phones and shoplifting when there is reasonable lead such as a GPS tracker, CCTV footage or a doorbell video. As I noted earlier this month in a cover piece for the magazine, ‘investigate every crime’ doesn’t sound like a particularly novel concept. It raises the question: Why weren’t police investigating every theft? Over the past few years, forces – including the Metropolitan Police – have largely given up on low-level crime.

The data breach at the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which has seen the personal details of all serving officers and just under 2,500 civilian staff accidentally released as part of a response to a Freedom of Information request, is the sort of grotesque, IT foul-up normally reserved for the realms of satire like The Thick of It.  There is a slim chance that any officers in the Province will be laughing. The attempted murder of DCI John Caldwell in front of his young son in Fermanagh earlier this year underlined acutely that dissident republicans hellbent on killing police officers ‘haven’t gone away you know’, to quote Gerry Adams.

In a few weeks’ time, police across the country will receive a new order: ‘Investigate every crime’. It may not sound like a novel concept, but over the past few years forces – including the Metropolitan Police – have largely given up on low-level crime. Austerity was seen as a reason to ignore burglaries, thefts and minor assaults if officers believed there was little chance of identifying a suspect. But now a new theory is about to be put into practice: that investigations will lead not just to more convictions, but to more deterrence.

What do you do when you’re in a hole? Stop digging. Apparently Emily Thornberry didn’t get the memo. The Shadow Attorney General was wheeled out on the Easter Monday media round to defend Labour’s attack advert which claims that Rishi Sunak isn’t tough enough on criminals convicted of child sexual abuse. Thornberry did her best to sound authoritative and lawyerly but came unstuck multiple times during her seven-minute grilling on Radio 4’s Today programme. After allowing Thornberry to sound off on the importance of overhauling the sentencing guidelines on child sexual abuse, host Justin Webb asked her about Sir Keir Starmer’s own role in drawing them up.

Much has been made of the decision to place the Metropolitan Police in what is often referred to as special measures, where it joins five other forces from England and Wales. The many ways in which the Met has fallen short have also been amply aired, from the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer to the botched investigation of serial killer Stephen Port, to the racist and sexist mindset laid bare at some London police stations. Many crime rates in the capital have been rising sharply, as – naturally – has public dissatisfaction. Nor should the blame game that has broken out between the Home Office and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, come as much of a surprise.