The New Observer UK Section Community Policing and the tolerance of crime

Community Policing and the tolerance of crime

I was reading a story in the DM today about a small businessman, a landscape gardener, who had his tools stolen from his van. The story was how the police did very little; they came round, looked at some doorbell footage, but did precious little in the way of hunting out the thief. The comments section was full of similar stories, mostly from similarly self-employed small entrepreneurs. I can believe this. The general picture is; if the police cannot catch people “red-handed” then there is little chance of them actually doing the leg-work to solve the crime. They will issue a claim number for the insurance and a little card for victim support, but actually investigate the crime? No. This isn’t some kind of urban myth. While a generalisation, this is indeed how it is. Why?

I think the question is about the culture of the police. I don’t imagine it is laziness. Most people who join the police are probably quite happy to go banging on doors and so on. My hypothesis is this is “community policing”. Take the case above. The police, following the articulate comments of the tradesman whose tools were stolen, could have gone round to the 3 local taxi firms, (the thief apparently made his getaway by taxi), and found out who was driving at that time. They could have gone round to this person and interrogated him. Who did you give a lift to? They could also have tracked the phone number used to book the taxi, (if it was booked on the phone). If a burner phone was used, they could still have tracked it using their system which plugs into the mobile phone companies’ networks to geolocate a mobile phone by triangulation. Why were these things not done? Partly, it is a question of resources, yes. But – in reality a quick call to the department which tracks mobile phones and getting a location, would really not take very long. (As far as I know this can be done without a court order under RIPA). But, and I think this is probably the main thing; they don’t want to go round to the taxi firm and get heavy because that would harm ‘community relations’. Banging on doors and leaning on people is totally ruled out because it would be bad for ‘community relations’. They will not use pressure “against” ordinary members of the community – because there would be pushback from the ‘community’. In other words; there is a perception that vast numbers of people – “local communities” – would resent the police coming into their community and doing their work. And so, this is off limits. I am pretty sure this hypothesis is exactly how it is. In pursuance of the aim of “not upsetting community relations” the police simply allow staggering amounts of crime to take place.