The head of London’s police and other senior officers have backed calls for a focus on real crimes rather than using resources recording “non-crime” hate incidents, offensive comments about women, and other so-called “hate crimes.”
Met Commissioner Cressida Dick says she said “absolutely” agreed with a senior officer who earlier this week said comments about women and misogyny should not be specified in law as a criminal and officers should spend less time policing people’s opinions and “hate”.
The comments, from National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Chair Sara Thornton CBE, were seen as a direct challenge to the Home Office, which launched a campaign to further drive up hate crime reporting on the same day and has asked the Law Commission to consider specifying misogyny as criminal behaviour.
“I absolutely agree with Sara,” Commissioner Dick told the London Assembly Thursday. “I think that the police are being asked to do functions that we are not as well skilled for — it’s not appropriate for us and to get back to the priority and the core we will have to stop doing that.”
Speaking on Radio 4 Friday morning, she added: “My officers are very busy, they are very stretched. We have young people in London subject to stabbings and other serious violence, getting involved in drug gangs and things, lots of priorities.
“We can’t go on increasing the scale of the mission through enforcing new laws unless we are given more resources or the public are prepared for us to just do some things not as well.”
The top cop gave the example of a group of 16-year-old girls being the subject wolf-whistled and sexual comments whilst walking past a building site.
Calling for a “common sense” approach, she said: “I would not expect my officers to record that.
“However, if one of the girls complained to a neighbourhood officer, I would expect the neighbourhood officer to go across to the site manager and say ‘You know, those girls aren’t enjoying this’.”
The Met police have boasted about having 900 “specialist” officers dedicated to policing “hate crime” at a time when the city experiencing a massive rise in violent crime, with knife offences hitting record levels.
Meanwhile, a tiny proportion of real-world and violent crime is solved by police, with 90 percent recorded crime in the UK not ending in charges, and polls showing the public think the police have lost control, at least partly due to political correctness.
Some forces have been criticized in recent years for demanding people report “non-crime hate incidents,” instructing people not to be offensive on social media, and using resources to investigate crucial comments about Islamic face veils from politicians.
John Apter, the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said that the police could not be “society’s social workers”.
He told The Times: “It is right that victims should be heard and their experiences acknowledged. But at a time when we are struggling to answer 999 calls and deal with immediate risk to the public, these matters cannot realistically be a priority for the service.
“What we need is an honest conversation with the public about the police service they want, and immediate investment from the government to ensure we can provide it.”
Dave Thompson, the chief constable of West Midlands police, added: “I think the police service takes violence against women very, very seriously, we think hate crime is important. But we’ve also got to be careful how many things we begin to add to that list.
“What’s getting squeezed is what I call the police the public recognise — the people who take the calls, who turn up when you need them.”
Meanwhile, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Dianne Abbott told police leaders yesterday that she backed making offensive comments about women criminal, “because it is the right thing to do to take the most serious action against hate crime”.
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