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I moved to London in 2007 and things have definitely changed since then, particularly since the supposed party of law and order has been in power and has confidently defunded all public services (including the police, which seems bizarre for a right wing party to do…).
The city has enough money to keep giving hikes to TfL / train staff, so much that one can get a job for £69k, but any deficiency in policing is automatically blamed on central government?
IMO, we may not need too many staff, why not invest more in camera surveillance and enforcement? Go to cities like SG or HK, there’s rarely police doing the rounds – but everything is captured on cameras and easily tracked.
Just look at the idiots destroying ULEZ cameras – you lose hope in this nation easily.Agreed, I have no confidence in the shadow home secretary for this.
This goes back to Teresa May who was deeply unpopular with the police following the Hutton and Windsor reviews. The relationship has never really recovered, and subsequent Home Secs have seemed to shy away from confronting the causes of crime in any kind of meaningful way.
It would be excellent news if a new Labour government found someone of the calibre of Jack Straw or David Blunkett to take on the role.
There is no denying that crime is more prevalent in major cities.
I had 2 incidents in the last 6 months but at the same token probably only 5 in the last 20 years living in London.However, it doesn’t mean we have to accept it just because it happens in other major cities.
Definitely do not aspire London to become Los Angeles or San Francisco.
It is the ‘accepting’ attitude that is more worrying and the lack of effective initiatives to curb the issues frustrating.There are NEW cases of knife and serious crime reported every few weeks so it is most definitely not regurgitated news.
A simple search on the internet will show plenty of statistics – make your own conclusions from those rising numbers.As mentioned above, there were also incidents that weren’t reported and I am guilty of that too.
@BBbetter – London has more CCTV cameras than most other cities in the world, to the chagrin of the human rights brigade. The detection rate for serious and violent crime is actually very high, as you can also tell through the reporting of the relevant investigations and trials in the media.
Agreed, I have no confidence in the shadow home secretary for this.
The shadow cabinet is a joke. At least the shadow chancellor is. She claims she deserves to be a chancellor as she spent some time at BOE in her twenties.
Take the removal of LTA on pensions. She has no idea about the complexity of that rule or the awkward incentives it creates, but just a knee jerk reaction that she’ll repeal it.
If the tories were stupid enough to not engage all stakeholders before such massive changes, labour leaders reveal they are no different.IMO, we may not need too many staff, why not invest more in camera surveillance and enforcement? Go to cities like SG or HK, there’s rarely police doing the rounds – but everything is captured on cameras and easily tracked.
I do not wish to live in a police state like Singapore or Hong Kong, thank you.
@NorthernLass provided an excellent explanation of the issues the police face. No TfL staff start on £69k – the Met and TfL starting salaried are comparable.I do not wish to live in a police state like Singapore or Hong Kong, thank you.
And thats why we are living in a crime state. Thank you.
And thats why we are living in a crime state. Thank you.
Nope, that’s a political and ideological decision. Well funded public services will reverse it.
Stand down bail outs and grants I thought the police was government and council tax funded while TFL was meant to be completely self funded from revenue for atleast the day to day running. Infrastructure projects are more complex.
Anyway I genuinely think the approach to policing in the U.K. is leading to a death spiral. The police need to be seen more active in responding to serious but perhaps not life threatening crimes like car jacking / robberies etc because right now the perpetrators know that it’s highly unlikely they’ll be caught in the act.
Because the police are doing the 80% I mentioned above most of the time! You say they should be dealing with non-life threatening crime but all hell breaks loose any time someone comes to harm and any chances to avert it have been missed. The first tasks given out on a police briefing will be anything welfare-related, targeting crime comes right at the bottom.
There’s a huge public perception problem as well – there are people who call the police about every little thing you can imagine (people parking outside their neighbours’ houses is a big source of complaints), who then have to spend time explaining the law to these numpties who haven’t even got the wits to google the answer on the iPhones they make the calls with.
In this thread: oblivious Londoners who seem unaware that London extends beyond zones 1 & 2.
Not me. I languished around in zones 4 and 5 for many many years, and have now hotfooted it into the countryside. Which in fairness was always the plan and not driven by crime in London. Bizarrely I often felt safer in central London than the Subs, there are so many people about in central London and shops to pop in if you see trouble coming. Maybe we adapt to our environment and develop street smarts, rather than just become desensitised, or is that the same thing.
Another one here who has no confidence in the shadow home secretary.
I feel the police are good at serious crime solving, it’s the riff-raff crime that seems to be harder to stamp out.
speaking of
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3g8ynyp2z2oThis is exactly what I was talking about! Can you imagine how many calls like this the police receive if they’ve now been reduced by 6000 per month?!
Stand down bail outs and grants I thought the police was government and council tax funded while TFL was meant to be completely self funded from revenue for atleast the day to day running. Infrastructure projects are more complex.
Anyway I genuinely think the approach to policing in the U.K. is leading to a death spiral. The police need to be seen more active in responding to serious but perhaps not life threatening crimes like car jacking / robberies etc because right now the perpetrators know that it’s highly unlikely they’ll be caught in the act.
Good point @TGLoyalty. A former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, hauled New York and its reputation and the morale of people in the city, out of a really down time for New York by exactly this strategy… paying attention to the little things like this type of crime, graffiti and rubbish that matter to people that live and work there.
British policing did take on many elements of the “zero tolerance” and “broken windows” approach before the austerity cuts, but a major problem now is that we’ve become a very permissive society where many attempts to enforce the law are greeted with outrage – just look at the farce that we’re the Covid restrictions, and recent acquittals of environmentalist vandals because they “felt” they were doing the right thing!
The next thing the government will be seriously considering legalising certain “recreational” drugs and we’ll be going the way of San Francisco, NYC, etc.
British policing did take on many elements of the “zero tolerance” and “broken windows” approach before the austerity cuts, but a major problem now is that we’ve become a very permissive society where many attempts to enforce the law are greeted with outrage – just look at the farce that we’re the Covid restrictions, and recent acquittals of environmentalist vandals because they “felt” they were doing the right thing!
The next thing the government will be seriously considering legalising certain “recreational” drugs and we’ll be going the way of Boston, NYC, etc.
@NorthernLass I hope the later doesn’t happen, as I can’t stand the smell. Friend recently came back from New York and she said it was all she could smell, it put her right off of going back.
@Can2 Great thread BTW, even if the subject matter is a bit worrying.@Misty, you can smell it in so many places these days, I agree it’s disgusting, like after we’d done a big bust in my working days!
Hopefully before making any decisions our government will have a look at countries where they’re starting to regret legalisation:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/
Well @Misty my goal was to discuss financial precautions to avoid big losses on such situations and raise some awareness.
It got escalated as always :))
I hope the later doesn’t happen, as I can’t stand the smell. Friend recently came back from New York and she said it was all she could smell, it put her right off of going back.
It’s better if you go in summer. If you’re then when it’s hot you get some variety as the smell of weed is interrupted by the smell of vagrants rotting in their own bodily wastes.
This is exactly what I was talking about! Can you imagine how many calls like this the police receive if they’ve now been reduced by 6000 per month?!
How on earth did we get to the point that the Police were spending their time as uniformed social workers? It’s quite an inditement of the those setting the priorities
British policing did take on many elements of the “zero tolerance” and “broken windows” approach before the austerity cuts, but a major problem now is that we’ve become a very permissive society where many attempts to enforce the law are greeted with outrage – just look at the farce that we’re the Covid restrictions, and recent acquittals of environmentalist vandals because they “felt” they were doing the right thing!
The next thing the government will be seriously considering legalising certain “recreational” drugs and we’ll be going the way of San Francisco, NYC, etc.
Policing in the UK always used to be on a generally accepted concept of consent. When our lawmakers pass laws that do not seem reasonable to the majority and the police decide to rigidly enforce such laws, why are you surprised?
In a nutshell, if anything bad happens to anyone, it’s the police’s fault (in the eyes of the press and many of the public, anyway), so everything is geared towards prevention. Also the fact that most services operate Mon-Fri during business hours means that the police pick up everything else the rest of the time.
It was the standing joke that social services would leave all their emergency cases until 4 pm on a Friday, then email all the details to the police safeguarding hub and disappear until Monday! My OH headed up our local team for a couple of years so I got used to never making plans for Friday evening, lol.
But as for your following post, the basic principle of democracy is that you vote for a government and they make the laws. Whether something is reasonable is pretty subjective, so the alternative is anarchy!
In a nutshell, if anything bad happens to anyone, it’s the police’s fault (in the eyes of the press and many of the public, anyway), so everything is geared towards prevention. Also the fact that most services operate Mon-Fri during business hours means that the police pick up everything else the rest of the time.
It was the standing joke that social services would leave all their emergency cases until 4 pm on a Friday, then email all the details to the police safeguarding hub and disappear until Monday! My OH headed up our local team for a couple of years so I got used to never making plans for Friday evening, lol.
But as for your following post, the basic principle of democracy is that you vote for a government and they make the laws. Whether something is reasonable is pretty subjective, so the alternative is anarchy!
Yes but the police and CPS choose how to enforce the law and whether to caution for example. Sometimes common sense seems absent. A certain vigil for Sarah Everard and the Police Scotland devoting effort encouraging 8000 hate crime reports immediately spring to mind. Yet they now turn a blind eye to possession of small quantities of cannabis. All laws obviously aren’t enforced with equal endeavour, perhaps a certain police officers indecent exposure could have been pursued with more vigour on the other hand?
The cover story of FT’s Money supplement this week:
“What I wish I’d known before my phone was snatched”This thread is interesting . .as someone who has lived in London (not just been to zone one or two) barely had any issues and I have travelled pretty much most places in it due to my role – central, south, east and west. Problem is people remember the scary stories of the few as opposed to the experience of the vast majority of Londoners. When I visited Birmingham last year I was more shocked that people in the hotel I was staying said they had most of their car taken off and the car parks there were like something in fort knox, never seen that in London. However I should imagine for most people in Birmingham is safe and have no issues.
I think some of mentioned police cuts, isn’t just that but if anyone ever read the Casey report it identifies lots of the Mets problems come from cuts to its staff in key roles such as analysts who identify where crime problems are and how to deal with them. Also not helped with cuts to pretty much every other service like housing, health and even courts. All very well saying bang people up but if it takes two years to get to court and the prisons are full!
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