Defund the thoughtpolice

The police should really try doing their job for a change. In recent weeks, the public has been continually reminded of how far crime prevention has fallen on our police chiefs’ list of priorities. In the run up to the UK government’s spending review on Wednesday, a number of senior officers seem to have put crime fighting to one side to act as full-time lobbyists.

At points, some police leaders sounded like they were holding the UK government to ransom over what they’ve described as ‘funding cuts’. Police Federation chair Tiff Lynch went as far to say that the public would ‘pay the price’ for Labour’s ‘austerity’. Her comments echoed those of Met commissioner Mark Rowley, who the week before said that Londoners could expect ‘sustained increases’ in knife crime and violence against women unless his financial demands were met. Even some serious crimes would have to be ‘deprioritised’, he argued.

A few objections spring to mind in response to these statements. The first problem is their accuracy. Despite police chiefs pleading poverty, chancellor Rachel Reeves actually increased the police budget by £2.1 billion in the spending review – that’s an increase of nearly two per cent in real terms. For once, Rachel from Accounts is not the innumerate one here.

Most Britons will have probably felt another, heartier objection forming at the base of their throat after hearing police higher-ups warning that their safety is at risk. After all, the police do not appear to have been serving or indeed protecting the public for a while now.

Most crimes have been effectively decriminalised, with officers routinely failing to follow up on reports. Just this week it was reported that Met officers refused to help a couple retrieve a stolen car in west London, even though the victims had given officers its precise location. The couple – a barrister and a mediator – instead found it in a quiet cul-de-sac in Chiswick, four miles from where it was stolen, and reclaimed it themselves. In fact, the only reason they had an air-tag locator was because their previous car had also been stolen. According to The Times, police had told the couple they were ‘too busy’ to help.

The police’s combination of arrogance and incompetence is reflected in crime statistics. Of the more than 33,000 car thefts recorded in London last year, just over 300 of those resulted in anyone being charged. Shoplifters, too, can basically steal with impunity. In 2023, of the more than 40,000 incidents reported, only five per cent ended in charges or summons.

It also can’t have escaped most people’s notice that while the police claim to lack the resources to deal with violent crimes and theft, they have no problem summoning up the manpower when it comes to fighting thoughtcrime.

Here the examples are depressingly endless. In March, six officers descended on a peaceful family home in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, where they arrested an innocent couple for the ‘crime’ of criticising their daughters’ school on WhatsApp. Later that month, 20 Met officers forced their way into a Quaker Meeting House in Westminster, where they arrested six young women for planning a climate protest. We recently learnt that Julian Foulkes, a retired police officer from Gillingham, Kent, was thrown in a police cell for eight hours for a tweet. As six officers raided his house, one of them expressed concern at the ‘very Brexity things’ on his bookshelf, including a book by conservative author Douglas Murray, a copy of the Spectator and a book on the history of the Common Market.

And then there are the armies of police officers who spend their days trawling through social-media accounts in the hope of locating a non-crime hate incident. This is the practice whereby officers record speech or incidents that, while not criminal, are perceived as hateful. The Free Speech Union estimates that up to 65 of these are secretly recorded every day, against people who have not committed any crime or harmed anybody.

It’s no surprise, then, that the police’s demands have been met with bewilderment and indifference from the long-suffering public. The left has long been suspicious of a police force it considers to be ‘institutionally racist’. And now, the police’s vigorous enforcement of wokery and their dispensation of two-tier justice mean they are now hated by the right, too. Across the political spectrum, support for the police is in short supply.

If the police chefs want to restore their reputation, instead of demanding their danegeld from a hapless chancellor, they should get back to tackling crime in the UK’s increasingly lawless cities. If they were to start serving the public, they might gain a more sympathetic hearing when they next ask for more money.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.