The police are having an identity crisis

What are the police for? The answer used to be obvious – to solve crimes and catch criminals. But now, I’d seriously have to think about it; going on the evidence of recent years, I’d probably conclude that they’re being paid to have a laugh, signal virtue and, of course, dance. Plod’s attempts at ‘getting down’ at the Notting Hill Carnival are legendarily embarrassing; last month, Lincolnshire police proudly shared a video of them doing the Macarena at Pride on the force’s official Twitter account. When people look back for an image to sum up the disintegration of our society, one of our own ‘Nero fiddling while Rome burns’ moments will surely be ‘the police dancing the Macarena at Pride while rape becomes essentially decriminalised.’

I remarked on the sinister side of the police here a few months back, noting their startling misogyny which includes everything from using images of stalked, attacked and murdered women as their own private pornography stash to the brotherly solidarity they showed to the grooming gangs, ignoring the terrified children who summed up the courage to report their rape and torture, sometimes to the point of arresting the girls themselves for ‘disorderly behaviour’. Wayne Couzens, killer of Sarah Everard – the 15th woman killed by a policeman in 12 years – was affectionately known as ‘The Rapist’ by his colleagues. Since then, we’ve seen Welsh police remove lesbians from a Pride march because they upset the men in frocks.

With woke, the sinister and the silly go hand in hand. Before they pranced at Pride, the rozzers could be found jiving with Extinction Rebellion protesters and having a go on their skateboards as the ensuing traffic jams prevented people from getting to work and ambulances from getting to hospitals. By now addicted to the feel-good endorphins of going from being the despised filth to the chummy bros, many coppers were keen to take a knee to show their respect for BLM. But one wonders why it’s not equally important to kneel in respect for the two women a week murdered by partners and ex-partners.

As well as acting the clown, the police say funny things – though if you’re the recipient of their surreal humour, as was the Daily Mail journalist Sue Reid, you might not appreciate it. After Miss Reid was burgled while she was at home – not for the first time – she suggested to the Community Police Officer there to suggest ways of making her house more secure that metal spikes on top of the fence might help. ’You can’t do that – burglars have their rights, you know,’ he advised. Later a detective called: ‘So I ventured the spikes idea. “No, certainly not,” he said, in an even sterner tone than the community officer. He gave me the “burglars have rights” lecture. “This is England,” he added.’

No wonder many victims now feel that burglary has been decriminalised. It was often said by humourless feminists such as myself that burglary was treated with more importance than rape by the police, so it’s nice to see they’re equally trivial now. Victims Commissioner Dame Vera Baird warned in 2020 that ’In effect, what we are witnessing is the decriminalisation of rape’ as over the past four years prosecutions have fallen by 70 per cent. What next will be decriminalised, joining rape and house-breaking as crimes the police seem baffled by? Maybe pedophilia – sorry, ‘Minor Attracted People’ – as in July, the women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen was visited by two Wiltshire Police officers who she says accused her of being ‘untoward about pedophiles’ after posting a YouTube video about transgender issues. While we’re at it, why not decriminalise murder? It’s better than bottling it up! The old Private Eye spoof headline on the increasing briefness of jail sentences for homicides – KILL NOW AND WIN A FORD FIESTA! – gets less outrageous every day.

Paul Embery recently wrote in Spiked: ‘If the British police were a commercial organisation, trading standards would have been on to them a long time ago. It is simply impossible to believe that any business would get away with failing so monumentally to do what it is obliged to do in the service of its customers. Yet the disparity between the service taxpayers are entitled to expect from our police, and what we actually get, is so enormous that it might, in other spheres, lead to a charge of fraud by false representation.’ But how do we stop this ludicrous state of affairs and make the police police rather than pander?

Defunding the police is a luxury belief for those who live in gated communities while espousing the politics of social upheaval, blithely unconcerned about the harm it inflicts on the poor, as the orgy of looting and violence in US cities handed back to the ‘community’. But defending the police is increasingly untenable. It’s tempting to think we might tear it all down and make sure than the new model force is half female, as women don’t generally connive with child sex or commit rape –think of the splendid Maggie Oliver, whistleblower heroine of the Greater Manchester Police. But then, look at the ghastly Dame Dick, a vastly over-privileged woman who apparently felt ‘intimidated’ into stepping down after her disastrous reign. Diddums!

With the death of Gorbachev, I’ve been thinking lately about what a ‘police state’ is; Wikipedia defines it as ‘a state where government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties.’ Of course, being scolded by Plod about free speech isn’t the same as being shipped off to a salt mine, but the forced confessions, recanting and being driven from one’s profession bits are already in place, as is the knock on the door accusing one of wrong-speak –threatening people with prosecution for the distribution of stickers stating biological truths.

It’s a dystopia worthy of Ballard or Dick (the clever one) – where words are literally violence but actual violence is no big deal. The thought police will police our minds while our mere bodies will be left to defend themselves – as we stagger to answer the door, bleeding from a home invasion, to find policemen on the front step who want to educate us on dead-naming. Let’s hope that Liz Truss’s excellent line – ‘The police can dance the Macarena in their own time’ – is a sign that the insanity will not continue forever. After all – as the detective reminded the crime victim while scolding her not to be beastly to burglars – ‘This is England.’