The collapse of public trust in the police
Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday
In my Mail on Sunday column on August 19th, I made some strong criticisms of the modern British police. I asked if anyone would notice if they were all abducted by aliens. (The excellent 'Policeman's Blog' responded by asking if the police would notice if all the criminals in Britain were abducted by aliens).
I said the police were neutral between victim and attacker. I said they were absent from the streets. I said they were slow to respond for pleas to help when they regarded the matter as trivial - even if the person involved thought it important. And - crucially for me - I didn't do what media critics of the police almost always do. I didn't say that 'many officers still do a good job'. I deliberately took this position because I don't think it is true . There are, for certain, thousands of officers who are good-hearted people anxious to enforce and uphold the law as they have sworn to do.
But the existing law, and the terrible leadership under which they work, makes it impossible for them to do so.
Quite reasonably, many such officers bottle up their anger at the way they are misused or frustrated. They attend the diversity seminars and speak the PC gobbledygook required of them. They turn away when they would prefer to act. They have families to support or pensions to hope for. I do not blame them for doing this. Most of us would do the same. I just think that there is a price to pay for it - and in this case, part of that price is to accept that critics like me have to say what we say, and are not attacking them personally.
I'd go further.
Criticisms like mine may possibly lead to reforms which will allow them to do what they want to do. Non-respectable commentators - like this one - can make it easier for mainstream columnists and politicians to reconsider their 'centre ground' wisdom. I can help to push the scenery a little further in the conservative direction. To begin with, the things I say will be snorted at as 'outrageous' or extreme - as they were when I first attacked exam standards or multiculturalism, or said that it was not racialist to oppose mass immigration, or when I began campaigning for the return of school selection. But, having been floated, they gradually slip into the debate. It's already happening. Five years ago, the idea that police on the beat would do any good was still being derided as a waste of resources. Now it's widely accepted as a good idea. Five years ago, the idea that police couldn't patrol on foot any more because they were short of manpower was widely believed. Now most informed people are aware that the police have never been so numerous.
I actually expected to get a large number of e-mails from police officers attacking me for this article. What surprised me was that this did not happen. I did receive a few. But alongside them were dozens of e-mails, from serving and retired officers, and from ordinary citizens sick of being abandoned, which entirely supported me.
I must confess here that I've never really known what will produce a strong reaction and what will not. I started publishing my e-mail address mainly because I thought that if you dish it out you should be able to take it. Since then I have kept it up because it the response is so interesting and so instructive and can often lead to productive arguments. Often the response it is entirely unexpected. Sometimes it's just frustrating or just totally off-beat. An item on a woman in a niqab giving a V-sign to photographers produced dozens of e-mails speculating that the person wasn't a woman at all - nothing to do with my point.
Sometimes things change if I keep plugging away. My long, sustained attack on the Tory Party originally yielded little but anguished letters from haggard Tories, hurt that I had deserted what they regarded as the one true cause. Sometimes I'd have four or five long exchanges with them , or lengthy phone calls. I just couldn't get across the truth, that the Tory Party had been taken over by elite liberals, could never win, and wouldn't be any good even if it did.
But I'd sown a seed. The arrival in the leadership of David Cameron was initially welcomed by a lot of Tories. But bit by bit it was clear that he was following a wholly liberal agenda, and the earlier arguments paid off. These days, I have little trouble explaining the point. These days, it's fast becoming accepted as an obvious fact that doesn't really need to be restated. But I still think the original groundwork was important. Politics is shifting in this country, in a way that the polls aren't properly picking up. But it is shifting, deep down.
But back to the police. Perhaps the most heartening letter I received, but typical of several others, was this one. I cannot, obviously, identify the people concerned: 'When my husband joined the police at the age of 21 he really believed in what he was doing, but has seen the deterioration accelerate and feels he is just marking his time now. Our aim is for him to retire some years from now, with a pension to which we contribute a fairly large amount every month, and move abroad to get our children out of this godforsaken country and see that there is more to life than the "lifestyle choices" with which we are presented. We don't want them to grow up believing that the world owes them a living and then find that actually it doesn't. We want them to work hard and reap the rewards
...'Part of my husband's job is to try and reason with the teenagers brought in for their first offence. Years ago they would be quaking in their boots but now they know the name of their "brief" as well as they know their local shopkeeper. They are mainly little parodies of a Catherine Tate sketch. Another part of his job involves checking the statements of PCs who bring in prisoners to ensure that the cases are watertight for the CPS. His heart sinks even further at their lack of understanding of the law they seek to represent, but he says that the occasional dedicated probationer brightens his day and gives him hope; if only the lazy and the politically correct will keep their hands off them and let them do their job. We have no faith in our local police and find no comfort in the endless stream of PCSOs and wardens that the local "service" (no longer a force!!) are churning out to placate the quivering public. Often there are 6 police officers on the street at night purporting to protect the local population of many thousands. We can't help wondering how safe folk would feel if they knew.
'So, keep up the good work. Let people know how things really are, because many have their heads in the sand. Don't think for a minute that you are offending the decent police officers of England - if they are honest with themselves, they probably agree with you.'
Among many letters ( and some phone calls) which maintained that the police were useless to them, failing to respond when called, failing to act if they responded, letters which came from the respectable suburbs of this country where the police need support and friendship. I also received this message in defence of the ordinary officer:
'I am a Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator, not only for my village, but Sector Co-ordinator covering my nearest town and about 30 villages. My rapport and support from the local police is excellent and there is a history of successes.
'Please do not "knock" the police at ground roots level (could you do your job with your hands tied behind your back?)
'Do you honestly think they want to spend hours of their shift doing paperwork in order to prevent a smart arsed lawyer getting a villain off on a technicality. Don't you think they would prefer to give the "feral teen" a clip behind the ear, but fear themselves being prosecuted with accompanying job loss.
'Don't blame the bobby, BUT keep hammering the politicians and weak SENIOR police officers looking for a knighthood!
'We have a serious problem in the UK with children of single parents who in turn are children of single parents. As long as the state continues to throw money at them in welfare, they will continue to breed like rats. Parental responsibility DOES NOT EXIST, they do not have responsible parents (if indeed parents!)
'So don't hit out at the police per se, but stick to naming and shaming the politicians, senior police officers, the politically correct people (WHO ARE THEY?), soft touch magistrates (looking for an MBE) and those immorally rich lawyers.
'Peter, what you stated in your article had to be said, but don't leave it there. Keep at it, BUT hit the right people, our uniformed police are the wrong target, don't kick someone in the b******s when their hands are tied.' To this I answer: First of all, there are no 'bobbies' as I understand the word - officers whose job is to patrol the street on foot, as originally laid down by Sir Robert Peel. They have not existed for years. There are men and women who wear the same uniform, more or less, and have the same title, but this is the one thing they never do. There are occasional 'show' patrols, usually during the day when they are needed least, and invariably in pairs, so that the officers involved tend to talk to each other and ignore the public. But no 'bobbies'. And If they really don't want to do the paperwork, and if they really want to thump the feral teens, then they are free to resign, or to protest about it. But mostly they don't. They put up with it. As I say above, I don't blame them, as human beings, for that. It is very difficult, if you find your chosen career has led you into doing things you don't like, and into not doing what you would like to do, to throw it over. But the fact is that, by not protesting, they become accomplices in the liberal takeover of the criminal justice system. And the other fact is that, when the test comes, they know that they are failing to serve the public. So their good intentions make no difference in practice. What's more, this is the face of the police that the public encounters ( or cannot get hold of). It is ridiculous to pretend that, just because they are thinking nice-old fashioned thoughts in their remote, inaccessible stations, they are not part of the problem. If more than 120,000 reasonably well-rewarded men and women have been hired to fight crime, and they are not doing it, then some blame must attach to them. And, if they really object to the rubbish they are put through, then they must recognise that, and welcome my criticisms as helpful to them. One that did was a retired officer who now feels reluctant own up to the job he once did, in case people mix him up with one of the new style of officers. He blamed a lot of the change on the wave of recruitment from among graduates, who never intended to remain as beat officers and expected rapid promotion.He also made the excellent point that when the police allow the public to commit relatively petty offences, without fear of punishment, they will go on to commit more serious offences as the chances of being caught are remote. He gave as a good example the huge number of people who use mobile phones whilst driving. The point of this letter is that he recognises that, since the police 'force' has become the police 'service' (and dozens referred to this very significant change of name with disdain) it has often recruited a different kind of person. And many of these new recruits are not specially interested in doing the job as it ought to be done. So, while there are some rank and file officers opposed to the new ways and working under duress, there are a lot of others who fit in with the new ways, and are as happy with them as their chiefs. So I feel that it is quite right to continue to criticise the police as a whole. Those who genuinely dislike the new regime will not really be offended. And it will help politicians realise that their noisy, thoughtless pledges to deal with crime through slogans or crude increases in police numbers, or numbers of PCSOs have been widely seen through, and will no longer be accepted. What is required is a complete re-examination of what the criminal justice system is for, and that cannot happen without some people being just a little bit upset and offended. I don't want to make decent coppers unhappy, but I do badly want to put this mess right. And one may just come at the price of the other. All comments are moderated by the community team. Please contact community@dailymailonline.co.uk with any queries about moderation.
