British police forces have been told to “police streets, not tweets” after a damning report found that “failing” forces across the country have a dismal record of solving crimes such as burglaries, robberies, and theft.
A report authored by former Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector David Spencer for the centre-right Policy Exchange think tank, laid out suggestions for the next prime minister to implement to restore the public’s trust in those who are meant to protect and serve them.
Published on Tuesday, in “Crime & Policing: What do we want from the next Prime Minister?” David Spencer called on the next Home Secretary to use their powers to reform “failing” police forces across the country, including sacking chief constables if required.
Noting that “the ability of the police to solve crime once it has happened has reduced significantly over the last decade,” Spencer said that the solve rate for common crimes was “woefully low”, with just 3.5 per cent of reported residential burglaries, 6.3 per cent of reported robberies, and 4.1 per cent of reported thefts being solved during the financial year of 2021/22.
The Policy Exchange paper went on to say that there is a lack of policing power being dedicated to protecting children from sexual predation and abuse on the internet, claiming that less than two per cent of officers in the UK are dedicated to snuffing out the growing problem.
“British policing simply does not have the capability or the capacity to tackle online-based criminality. As a result, these offences are in essence almost entirely decriminalised,” Spencer wrote.
The report said that in order to “maintain the public’s confidence”, police forces should refrain from engaging in acts that could be “interpreted by others as an expression of a partisan political view,” such as “taking the knee” like during the BLM protests or wearing advocacy badges on their uniforms, such as those worn by officers during Pride Parades.
Spencer noted that recent polling from CapX found that “the public were almost twice as likely to agree than disagree with the statement that ‘the police are more interested in being woke than solving crimes’”.
Responding to the report, the deputy leader of the anti-woke Reclaim Party, Martin Daubney said: “Police streets, not tweets. No more taking the knee. Stop the LGBTQ+ lunacy, Pride dances & two-tiered policing due to racism fears. Get back to basics!”
In July, the head of the Reclaim party, and the star of Breitbart’s upcoming feature film My Son Hunter, Laurence Fox staged a camera ambush to expose the Hampshire Constabulary, who came to the home of British Army veteran Darren Brady to arrest him for sharing a meme critical of leftist dogma on gender.
Even the local Police and Crime Commissioner, Donna Jones was forced to admit after the incident that arresting veterans for memes was not the best use of valuable man hours when the police are failing to solve the vast majority of burglaries.
Some forces have even seemingly attempted to goad the public into committing speech violations, with Essex Police warning the public that they would be “monitoring” social media for “hate crimes” after they posted officers posing with a “Progress Pride” flag in July.
UK police have not only come under fire for targeting those critical of LGBTQ+ ideology, however, with forces consistently joining in with Pride Parades and even staging their own ‘awareness‘ events. Recently, officers in Lincoln were ridiculed for using valuable policing time to do the Macarena dance with Pride goers.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose term in power will end next week, defended police in a visit to the Lewisham police station in London on Wednesday.
“I tell you what, I’ve just seen a bunch of police officers who woke quite a lot of drug dealers this morning and they woke them long before they were expecting to have their breakfast,” Johnson said.
“They woke them with warrants, and they woke them with the news that they were under arrest for causing misery in the communities of London. And that’s what I want the police to do, that’s what [Home Secretary] Priti [Patel] wants them to do,” he added.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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