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Primary Objects

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According to Sir Richard Mayne The primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime: the next that of detection and punishment of offenders if crime is committed. … The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions

According to the House of Lords (Lord Hope of Craighead) It is the first responsibility of government in a democratic society to protect and safeguard the lives of its citizens. That is where the public interest lies. It is essential to the preservation of democracy

In 2010 the British government broke away from both of the above Primary Objects by drastically and recklessly slashing the number of Police Officers available within England and Wales to actually protect the public. Since 2010 we have lost approx 21,000 warranted Police Officers, approximately 7,000 Police Community Support Officers, about 12,000 Police Staff (I have seen a much higher figure quoted elsewhere), approximately 4,500 Special Constables and up to 650 Police Stations (plus ancilliary buildings) have been sold off

Crime Under The Tories
Knife crime vs Reduced Manpower

What happens to Knife-Related Murders with a (2014) government diktat to reduce the number of Stop/Searches conducted?

I have plenty more delightful charts that I won’t bother you with, but I think that the point has been made. The UK government has demonstrably abandoned its primary responsibility to protect its citizens. Why? For my money it stems back to Theresa May’s time as Home Secretary when the Police Federation showed their disaproval of her and her approach to Policing. She took it personally and seemed to set about an agenda based more on Revenge than Reform, but hey, that’s just my opinion.

The first responsibility of government in a democratic society to protect and safeguard the lives of its citizens

Has Theresa May and Government UK achieved that single ideal?

NO.

Instead Theresa May and her government have engineered a situation whereby the Police Service is unable to achieve Sir Richard Mayne’s Primary Object, and seemingly made sure that the Police Service got blamed for it. Fortunately (I hope) there are sufficient right-minded folk who can see through her Smoke and Mirrors

Her time is up now fortunately but vanity and arrogance seem to be the trademarks of her various positions within government. In my opinion she has failed at everything she has sought to achieve. EVERYTHING. Time will tell me if I am right.

Whoever her successor turns out to be, regardless of their support-seeking rhetoric, will have a huge problem on their hands in trying to undo the untold damage that has been wrought at the hands of a Home Secretary and latterly Prime Minister that does not seem to have succeeded at anything.

More Smoke And Mirrors

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Knife Crime.

Who is to blame?

Certainly anyone carrying or wielding a knife without a reasonable excuse or lawful authority is to blame.

Government silliness might make you think that Teachers or the NHS are to blame for failing to report crimes or suspicions to the Police. What a load of cobblers. You can agree or disagree with me, that is our right, but in my opinion it is quite clear.

There are TWO groups of people directly responsible for the stabbings and knife crime in general.

The first are the children, young people and adults that are carrying knives about our streets. Whether they be for offence or self-defence it is unlawful and must STOP. We do, however, have to agree a method of making it stop, the politicians just seem to want a series of meetings about it.

It is quite obvious from newsreel footage that many of the knives being carried for self-defence are quite capable of inflicting a lethal injury.

The other group of people directly responsible is Theresa May and all of the members of Parliament who voted in support of her ‘Reforms’. I hold Theresa May personally responsible, because she made it personal with her vitriolic attacks on Police.

The first thing she did was to appoint Tom Winsor to carry out ‘independent’ reviews of the Police Service. This resulted in a report with recommendations that so closely resembled a previous speech by David Camoron that the Reviews could not possibly have been truly independent in my opinion.

She then set about a series of cuts in the name of #Austerity that saw the Police Service reduced from 143,734 officers in March 2010 to 122,395 in September 2018. Not forgetting of course equally savage cuts to Police Staff and PCSOs. Even the unpaid Special Constabulary has shrunk.

Copyright Home Office

Cuts of this magnitude cannot possibly be carried out without consequences. In my opinion the consequences in relation to total crime are quite clear.

To my way of thinking it is quite obvious that once the cuts began to bite total crime levels rose. It was slowly reducing until about 2012/13 when it began to go back up again.

The second unforgivable act by Theresa May personally was her insistence that Stop and Search is in some way wicked and must be reduced. In a speech to the Federation in 2014 she said

And I am determined that the use of stop and search must come down, become more targeted and lead to more arrests.

Well it did come down. What happened to Knife Crime?

Copyright Alan Wright Copyright Alan Wright

As Stop and Search came down then both Knife-related homicides and Knife Crime in general went up. 2014 she made her speech to the Federation demanding a reduction in Stop and Search. 2014 the number of Stop/Searches began reducing drastically. 2014 Knife Crime started to go back up again.

I know Gavin doesn’t necessarily agree with me (I haven’t changed my mind Gavin) but looking at the two charts above I am compelled to believe that there is a link between the two ‘curves’. I have yet to see a set of data that suggests putting more officers on the streets or increasing Stop and Search causes the crime rate to increase.

It is an absolute requirement of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act that officers have ‘grounds’ for conducting a search under s1 of the Act. s60 Stops are very different and can currently be authorised by an officer of Superintendent rank or above. No innocent person should fear being stopped by Police. It should be carried out courteously, with dignity and the officer should have a valid reason for carrying it out. You are always entitled to receive a written copy of the official record of that Stop/Search. In my experience people who object to being stopped and searched either have something to hide or are being whipped up by one or more of the professional agitators who pop their heads up every so often.

I have heard it stated by people who really should know better that the Met has a 20% ‘hit rate’ for Stops and Searches, i.e. a Target to be achieved. To my mind this is what they ‘hope’ to achieve, to make it a hard ‘Target’ would be both unethical and unlawful, but people still claim that is the case, but I don’t actually believe it.

One ‘Target’ we should be aiming for is 100%. We should aspire to remove 100% of those illegal weapons off of our streets. Every life that has been lost (vis a vis knife crime) and every injury inflicted has been caused by a knife unlawfully carried through the streets. More Police Officers on our streets making more use of Stop and Search has the ability to detect those knives, arrest the person(s) in possession of them, possibly act as a deterrent,  and simply save lives. Compared to a life lost is it really a huge inconvenience to be erroneously Stopped and Searched? Provided that the grounds exist (or a s60 Order) of course.

The same applies to firearms although I do accept that there are other factors at play there.

To implicate the teaching profession or the NHS as somehow being at fault is totally unbelievable and inappropriate. Add into the mix cuts in Youth Services, Local Authority budgets, Teaching and Probation and it must be very close to a ‘Perfect Storm’.

There is one primary person at fault here, the person who said this:-

Any attempt to divert the blame to anybody else is just more Smoke and Mirrors, but we’ve come to expect that from her.

Scandalous Reduction in Police Officer Numbers

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I am thankful to my friend @ConstableChaos for bringing this to my attention

I don’t mean to be condescending to anybody, we can all do the maths, but this is absolutely disgusting.

Hidden within an article about Performance Related Pay within Policing is the little gem that Staffordshire Constabulary have, over a period of years, been reduced from 2,400 officers to 1,600.

Please forgive me for “stating the bleeding obvious” but that is a reduction of 800 officers, or exactly ONE THIRD of their previous establishment.

How on earth are they expected to achieve anything with a whole third of their officers culled?

Figures like these above make it abundantly clear that this is NOT about efficiency, or professionalism. This is setting the Police Service up to fail, nothing less.

There can be no possible justification for cuts of this magnitude and it is time for Theresa May, Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid to finally be honest, threat the British Public with some respect and be honest about what they have done, instead of insisting that “Crime is Down, Police Reform is Working”. This is not Reform, it is Annihilation.

Your Country Needs You (Like Never Before)

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There surely cannot be a person over the age of 14 or so who is still unaware of the seemingly uncontrollable epidemic of stabbings and Knife Crime sweeping the country. Not one person surely? In London alone there is a knife-related murder or serious stabbing almost every day. Only recently a young teenage kid was literally disembowelled on the streets of our capital.

Politicians of all hues and senior Police Officers pronounce that this is completely unacceptable (it is) but what are they actually DOING about it?

Mainly nothing.  A lot of hot air gets spouted, think tanks go into overdrive trying to come up with the next big ‘thing’, senior Police Officers will have meetings and pronounce that ‘extra’ officers are being thrown at the problem, the government will assure us that new ‘technology’ is on the way.  The main problem is that there are NO extra extra officers, there are, in fact,  21,000 fewer officers.

Meetings are a very small part of the solution, but to come up with the promise of ‘extra’ officers is an insult to both Police and Public alike.  Every one of these ‘extra’ officers is either working what should have been a Leave Day or they have been abstracted from other duties, thereby creating a shortage somewehere else.

Almost every serving or former Police Officer that I know, together with a significant number of Members of the Public have a damn good idea what is causing the problem and how to begin addressing it.

Every knife used in an attack on the streets has been carried through the streets by somebody.  Whilst it is being carried it is vulnerable to being found by Police, and the ‘carrier’ arrested, but NOT if the Police Officers have one arm tied behind their backs.

Currently there is no ‘fear’ on the streets.  The government, in the shape of Camoron and Cruella, have savagely decreased the number of Police Officers, including the Front Line that they claim to protect.  Cruella herself issued an instruction to Police to drastically reduce the number of Stop Search carried out.  Since her edict both crime in general, and stabbings in particular have increased, despite what the Whitehall Mandarins might tell us.  Home Office figures show it thus

Assaults in England and Wales

Not a pretty sight.

My proposal to turn the tide would be to bring back Stop and Search.  Lawfully, Ethically, Respectfully, but Determindly.

Once the grounds for the Stop/Search have been established (and they MUST be) it should be conducted positively and efficiently, and properly recorded.

“People will get Stop/Searched who are totally innocent” I hear the cry.  Yes they will, that is almost inevitable, but the damage can be minimised by the manner in which it is conducted.  Officers could stop me ten times a day if it prevented one more youth getting butchered.  I have nothing to hide, nor do most other folk.   Yes, it is inconvenient, and can often delay us, but which is worse?  Getting a tad miffed about being stopped and searched by a polite Police Officer who explains why you are being Stopped and Searched, or one more teenager getting disembowled within sight of home?

Last year’s IPSOS/MORI poll showed that ost of the population still have a reasonable amount of trust in the Police.  FAR, far more than politicians of any kind.

In view of which Theresa May, why not start the process of rebuilding the Police?  Allow people to feel safe on the streets once more.  Instil fear of being caught and meaningful consequences into the hearts of those carrying knives, or weapons of any kind.

How can you help?  How does your country need you?

You can help today by simply writing a letter or email to your local MP, or the Home Secretary, or the Prime Minister or your local Police and Crime Commissioner voicing your support for some Positive Action and the reinstatement of the Police Force.  Surely no politician can ignore a mailbox overflowing with letters.  Police and Crime Commissoners are up for re-election soon, and who knows when the next General Election will be, but maybe not too far away.  They will all be looking for YOUR votes.

From an operational point of view a short, sharp period of Shock and Awe will remind a certain faction that they do not rule the streets, although they currently think that they do, and they are getting away with it.

Police Pay, Pensions and Conditions – It All Makes Sense Now

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But I still don’t agree with it.

Correct me if I’m wrong but the first major changes came with Tom Winsor’s ‘Independent’ Reviews.

Instead of being able to retire on a full pension after 30 years service ‘Tom’ recommended increasing retirement age to 60 for a full pension. The Pension Scheme itself was changed from a Final Salary Scheme to a Career Average Scheme. I can’t remember the numbers but I think that the contributions level was also increased. In other words, today’s generation of Police Officers are paying more, paying for longer and receiving less than a) their predecessors and b) their reasonable expectations when they first joined their Pension Scheme.

Fast Forward to 2018 and the College of Policing have introduced the 3 new routes i to Policing. They have also introduced the concept of a ‘Healthy Churn’. They no longer expect Police Officers to hang around for 40 years, and they will actually help you to leave and be a fine ‘Ambassador’ for Policing.

I find it highly unlikely that the new breed of Graduate Entrants will hang around for 40 years unless they climb the greasy pole.

Therefore the vast majority of the workforce will serve maybe 5-10 years, burn out, then join the churn and move on.

Add in the effect of pay levels being frozen for years and the potential benefits for the Pension Pot become crystal clear.

The Police Service is in crisis, there is no doubt, but the bigger tragedy is that evil government plans (reforms) pushed so viciously by Cruella and the Sycophants, have been Aided and Abetted by ACPO/NPCC. Even now only a minority of the Chiefs are speaking out.

It all makes sense – Churn is healthy for those that pay your pensions. Other Public Services take note.

This is what it has always been about, can you spot the traitors?

Police League Tables

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Not quite the League Tables you might have been expecting though.

Since 2010 it should be no surprise to anyone that approx 21,000 Police Officers have been culled from the overall strength of the Police Forces of England and Wales.

I shall leave it to others for today to determine how that has affected performance. My personal opinion is that “all you get for less is less”. All these “Work harder, work smarter” mantras are just so much rubbish. It is never my intention to play one Force off against another either.

These League Tables concern how British Policing compares with the Police Forces of other countries viz a viz the number of Police Officers per 100,000 head of population.

The version that the government actually publish is dated 2014 and includes a relatively small number of countries, mainly European.

At just over 200 officers per 100,000 in 2014, even in the government-published figures, we are considerably below the average of 353 officers per 100k.  Figures courtesy of Government Briefing Paper entitled Police Service Strength, published 23rd March 2018.

Out of 33 nations where data was available for 2015, England & Wales was ranked 28th for the number of police officers per 100,000 head of population. Northern Ireland was ranked 11th and Scotland 17th.

What kind of government could be happy with that?

However, I did find considerably more statistics out there, but unfortunately, they do not refer to a common year. However, it does give us an idea where British Policing sits in the greater picture.

 

I apologise for it being a bit clustereed and not showing the names of all of the countries clearly but there are 140 different countries in this comparison and England and Wales proudly rank at #120.

Is it just me that thinks that this is disgusting?

It has nothing to do with wanting a Police State, or a totalitarian regime.  It has everything to do with losing our status as #1 Police Service in the world.  It is totally impossible to provide a decent quality of sevice when the numbers are not there.

Remember someone once said “It’s not about the numbers of police; people often focus on the numbers of police”?  Well I think that this chart demonstrates that it is VERY MUCH about the numbers.

For anyone who is interested you can access the full data here

Download [134.70 KB]

120th out of 140? Really?  It is absolutely shameful that Theresa May and her government have allowed this to happen.  Worse still, they have MADE IT HAPPEN.  Make no mistake, it is totally the actions of Theresa May, spurred on by her favourite right-wing Think Tanks such as Policy Exchange, that have brought us to where we are.  Police Reform.  Is this what you regard as Police Reform?

Police Forces across the country are finding it necessary to apologise for the quality of the service they provide. Police Officers everuywhere are left feeling burnt out and abandoned, ignored and neglected by ‘the party of Law and Order’ (that’s a laugh). Crime IS rising regardless of what the mandarins tell us, victims of crime are feeling let down, criminals are going unprosecuted due to the lack of officers available to arrest and charge them and put them before the courts, Knife Crime, Acid Attacks, Stabbings, Murders are going through the roof and what is the government response to that?

The Police WANT to deal with these problems that is what every single one of them joined for. Now we have a situation where only Graduates or Apprentices (leading to a degree after 3 years) will be eligible to join the Force and, even better, if they don’t like it after a couple of years the Police will help them to leave and they can be Ambassadors for the Police in a different occupation. What kind of lunacy is this?

Every law-abiding citizen in this country has the absolute right to feel let down and abandoned by the governments since 2010.  All around us their policies are unfolding and shown to be the disasters that they truly are.  NHS, Prison Servvice, Criminal Justice etc etc. Where is their admission that they got it wrong with the Police Service though? There isn’t one. And that is how we ended up at #120 out of 140 in the Police League Table. They simply refuse to listen.

Taxi For Mrs May

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Call me old-fashioned but it is clearly time for Theresa May to go. She has made a complete Horlicks (mustn’t swear apparently) of the Brexit negotiations. Her own party are turning against her in ever-increasing numbers, she has no credibility left in the eyes of many.

My own personal opinion is that she is determined to be the person who delivers Brexit, whatever the cost to the country. I suspect that she sees herself as a modern-day Maggie Thatcher, but she is anything but that.

Yesterday the Superintendents Association began their Annual Conference. The opening speech of their Chairman, Gavin Thomas, contained the following;

It comes rather late but must be seen by many as a damning indictment of ‘Police Reform’. Theresa May’s own personal crusade savaged in public by Gavin. Even the bosses have had enough and are beginning to speak out. Their voices are beginning to swell, soon we will have a choir all using the same hymn sheet.

In 2015 the National Audit Office first issued a report stating, quite clearly, that the Home Office did not understand the cuts it was making to the Police Service.

Home Office making police cuts without understanding, report says

The Home Office has been accused of making deep cuts in policing without understanding how it will affect the public in a highly critical official auditors’ report.

The National Audit Office has also concluded that civil servants as well as forces in England and Wales do not have a clear understanding of the demands placed on them or the factors that affect their costs.

The NAO’s findings come weeks after Theresa May, the home secretary, accused the Police Federation of crying wolf about the impact of austerity as she warned rank-and-file officers to brace themselves for fresh cuts.

Fast Forward to 2018 and this morning the headlines are

Home Office ignorant of strain on police after cuts, says watchdog

Whitehall’s spending watchdog has accused the Home Office of being ignorant of the strain that police officers are under after funding cuts led to 45,000 job losses.

The report from the National Audit Office comes as a debate rages over why crime is rising. Suppressed government research has suggested cuts have played a part though ministers deny this.

The NAO found there had been a 19% drop in funding for police since the Conservatives took power in 2010, and officers were struggling to maintain an effective service.

Suppressed government research? That’s an interesting phrase. Where have we found that before? Oh yes, the suppressed research into Stop and Search.

Your time is up Mrs May, you have had three years since the 2015 report to sort this shambles out but what have you actually done? Carried on with your discredited ‘Reforms’ and made things much, much worse.

Additionally Mrs May was only the second Home Secretary to possess a conviction for Contempt of Court, and, of course, now becomes the FIRST Prime Minister to be so encumbered. How does that look in the eyes of other countries?

Your time is up. Your stewardship of this country has been abysmal, a veritable balls-up, Taxi for Theresa May.

**Sorry, I forgot, we shouldn’t criticise the government**

Who Co-Ordinates The Co-Ordinators?

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Mustn’t swear, honestly, but yesterday provided me with a  true WTF moment.

Following the recent visit of that nice Mr Trump to the UK, it became obvious via news and Social Media, plus personal observations on the M40, that many Police Officers had been deployed on Mutual Aid to assist with the Policing and Security for the visit.  Nosey old me wondered just how many cops had been disrupted by Mutual Aid.  It allegedly cost Police Sotland £5 Million for Mr Trump to enjoy a round of golf.  Even my local Golf Club isn’t that expensive.

Who co-ordinates Mutual Aid in England and Wales. Answer:- The National Police Co-Ordination Centre, part of the National Police Chiefs Council.

So, I fired them off a Freedom of Information request thus;

1. How many Mutual Aid deployments have there been in England and Wales?
2. For each deployment, which force received the Mutual Aid?
3. How many officers were sent on Mutual Aid?

To be helpful I even added the foillowing rider;

“I specifically DO NOT REQUIRE any details concerning the nature of the deployment”

To be fair I never expected an actual answer, I always anticipated a Refusal.  Over the cost limit is normally a good one, or we don’t comment on operational matters for security reasons.  Either of those would have done.  However, they broke new ground.  Yesterday I got my eagerly awaited response

NPCC Response:
The NPCC does not hold information captured by your request. NPoCC coordinates national assistance only. They do not record all mutual aid, for example, if forces within a region send resources to each other.
A consideration may be to make a request with individual forces. On this occasion, I am unable to assist you.

That was it, in its entirety.  Not a single word have I omitted.

So, for the biggest Policing operation for quite a while the NPoCC knew NOTHING about the Mutual Aid.  A whoie world of stink was being kicked up about some of the sleeping accommodation.  Leaves were cancelled in many Forces.  Mutual Aid was certainly provided froom somewhere.

So I ask you, readers of mine, did your Force send Mutual Aid to the Met for Trumpy’s visit? Are you outside of the ‘Region’?  Who the hell does monitor Mutual Aid and co-ordinate it if not the National Police Co-Ordination Centre?

To the National Police Chiefs Council I say this, many, many people think that you are nothing more than servants of this government.  Certainly not enough opposition has been voiced to the stringent cuts to Policing Levels and Budgets, just “we must work harder or smarter within our new budgets”.  We all KNOW that the loss of approx 21,000 Police Officers, and many of them are from the Front Line, can only impact adversley on Law and Order.  I suspect that many areas are being Policed at dangerously low levels, particulary in Ruralshire and at night.  The first duty of the government is to protect its citizens.  They are failing in their duty if their cuts and policies are seeing rises in murders, assaults, Knife Crime etc etc.

“The primary object of an efficient police is the prevention of crime: the next that of detection and punishment of offenders if crime is committed. To these ends all the efforts of police must be directed. The protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquillity, and the absence of crime, will alone prove whether those efforts have been successful and whether the objects for which the police were appointed have been attained.”

Please, NPCC, please tell me how the Police Service of 2018 is fullfilling its Primary Objective?

I may well challenge your response to my FOI request, but far more important than that, PLEASE answer my question above.

The State of Policing 2018

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Fortuitously there has just been a release of Police Manpower (sorry, I still call it that, no offence intended) and the latest Crime Data for England and Wales.

Much has been made of these latest figures both in the Press and on Social Media.  This Crime has gone up by this percentage and all that sort of stuff.  Very useful, it really is, but if you want to look at more than just the big, bold headlines your head will soon be spinning.

Well, I still have some crayons left, none of the real academics have tried to disable my abacus or nick my pencil box, so I thought I’d try and make sense of the bigger picture and how it affects both Policing and the Populus in 2018.

Firstly, how many Police Officers are there in England and Wales since the disastrous election of 2010?

Not including the British Transport Police (for no particular reason other than they are shown separetely in the stats) it looks like this

It’s all well and good producing a pretty chart I hear you cry, what does that actually LOOK like?  It’s a tad worse after this week’s figures release but basically it looks like all the areas coloured pink having NO Police Officers whatsoever, not a single one.

It doesn’t look very good does it,  but we keep hearing that Crime is Down and Police Reform is working, so how are the much-reduced Police Officers coping with crime and stuff?

My word, it looks to me like a few years after Theresa May’s cuts started to bite, Overall Crime started to increase.

Violent Crime, we’ve heard a lot about that recently, how does that look?

The reason for the bizarre drop in the middle of the graph of that the Home OPffice keep changing exactly which crimes they want to list, and a lot of the lesser asssaults, whilst recorded by the Police, did not feature in the Home Office stats, but now they do again.  And they complain about the Police fudging stats eh?

So, we have had 8 years now of #Austerity and #PoliceReform.  What does that look like? How do the numbers stack up after 8 years?

Apologies if you find the chart above a bit ‘busy’ but basically Police Numbers down, Stop and Search down has resulted in Total Crime and Violent Crime going up.  Where will it all end?  Theresa May and her colleagues must be really proud of themselves. There you have it encapsulated in one chart, the state of (Crime and) Policing in 2018.

How Safe Are Our Streets Exactly?

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As you are all aware, I am not an Academic, and I do not possess a degree in anything.  However, spurred on by  this warm weather and an increasing foreboding of doom, I dusted down my crayons, and with a little help from my 4 year old grand-daughter, I managed to produce some nice pretty pictures, based on the premise that the first duty of any government is to protect its citizens.This doesn’t often happen, but I will shut up for a while and let the music and the pictures fill in the story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hmm, it seems as if most of the violent crimes were on their way down prior to about 2011/12 and then started to go up again. I wonder what happened to cause that? I’d better get my crayons out again and see if the whole of England and Wales looks the same.

Before I do there’s a few things about these piccies that you might think I’ve forgotten.  Despite slating the Police for the manner in which they record crime, the Home Office, amazingly, have never published data for Possession of Knives or Firearms prior to 2008, at least not publicly.  They do not publish figures for Assault on a Police Officer causing Injury.  They did not publish data for ANY Assault causing Injury prior to 2012  Why would that be?  Not just the Tories, Labour didn’t do it either.  The stats for 2017/2018 are not yet publicly available.

Anyway, back to my crayons, the pictures for the whole of England and Wales.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking at all of these pretty, colourful pictures it does indeed seem that most, if not all, of the columns start to rise 2012/2013   What on earth could be causing that?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What about England and Wales, does that look any different?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, we can see that the MEt has (to now) been sheltered from the worst of the cuts, but more are coming in the next two years.  They have still ended up with a net loss however.  England and Wales as a whole has seen quite a sharp falling off of officer numbers since 2010.  Could anything else be a factor?

 

 

 

 

 

 

For whatever reason, Stop and Search in London has fallen sharply since 2008, in 2017 the lowest for a decade by far.  How does the rest of the country fare?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One more for luck, how does Total Crime look like against Total Stop/Search?

So, there you have it ladies and gents, girls and boys.  Are the government protecting its citizens?  Are they complying with their ‘First Duty’?  More importantly, how safe are our streets.  Just a wild thought I know, but getting those 21,000 Police Officers back might help, but the only problem there is that there is no Magic Bobby Tree,  Even if the government did the most massive u-turn in their history, they cannot replace the lost skills and experience.  No wonderful Graduate Entry schemes, no Direct Entry Insp.Superintendent/Detective schemes can fix this.  The Police Service is broken.  Can we fix it?  I don’t know.  I hope so, and I will carry on writing posts such as this til  I either stop breathing or the government u-turns.  I can’t change their minds, but YOU can.  Every one of you joined together can lobby your MP.  Send him/her a copy of this post if you haven’t got time to write.  I don’t care how you do it, but the swell of public opinion and support is our best chance (in my humble opinion)

I shall now put my crayons away until at least next week, thank you for your patience.