The more I think about Betty Truss’s bonkers attack on the police, as shown on an earlier blog today, the more unhinged it really is. “I will make sure officers are actually on the beat dealing with crime,” she says. Yes, that’s just what we need, more policing like in the days of Dixon of Dock Green (one for the teenagers, there), where coppers spend all day arresting folk and prosecuting everyone. Here are some facts:
- There are now 21,000 less police officers than in 2010.
- There are now 24,000 less support staff, including PCSOs, since 2010.
- Since 2010, 600 police stations have been closed.
- Since 2010 crime has gone up.
- Since 2010, the number of successful prosecutions has fallen.
Betty wants these slacking coppers to cut serious crime by 20% which, as I argued earlier, is just about impossible but it looks good for Express readers. Unless she is completely dense, Betty probably knows that her slogan isn’t necessarily going to cut crime but as a former civil servant who knows a bit about these things, I wonder if she is going to announce A Crackdown. Ministers love crackdowns because they think it makes them sound so macho, even the women. And if you say it often enough, it can convince people. “Ooh look, Doris. They’re having a crackdown on those benefit fraudsters and immigrants – it’s all the same to me – and not before time.” But crackdowns usually mean very little.
Cynical me thinks they will do the usual thing like change the way things are counted and that old chestnut, which is to go after the easy hits, rather than the complex cases. If you can nick ten people for falsely claiming £100 each, then why bother to go after one person who’s fiddled £100,000? Ten sanctions instead of one. Bingo, says Betty, as the big time thieves get away with it again. “Look at me. I’ve cracked down,” she says. “I’m hard, I am.”
And, they hope, we’ll all be fooled. Sadly, many people will be. That’s how they get away with it.
