As police urge us to report ‘offensive comments’ that AREN’T crime, it’s time to arrest the rise of the PC police officer
HAVE you been a victim of crime? Then dial 999.
And even if you haven’t, you should probably call the cops anyway, just in case.
That’s the message our police are sending out on social media to rustle up business. It seems they just don’t have enough to do these days.
Never mind the rising tide of violent crime, terrorist attacks, rape gangs, moped muggings, online fraud, stabbings and acid attacks. There aren’t enough of those to go around, apparently — presumably leaving our bobbies sipping tea in the canteen, playing on social media and twiddling their thumbs.
That’s the only possible explanation for the bizarre tweet sent out this week by South Yorkshire Police, begging people to get in touch to report things that AREN’T crimes.
The force appealed on Twitter for the public to report “hate crimes” and also “non-crime hate incidents”.
These, the force told its 166,000 followers, include “things like offensive or insulting comments, online, in person or in writing”.
Not surprisingly, the great British public treated this laughable call to arms with the derision it deserved.
But that didn’t stop South Yorkshire Police doubling down and defending itself by insisting non-criminal incidents can “feel” like an offence to the victim.
Which is all very well but I imagine those “victims” probably don’t feel QUITE as bad as the real victims of actual crimes such as muggings, burglaries, stabbings or rapes.
How on earth did we end up in this state of affairs?
We are constantly being told how, after years of Home Office cuts, the Thin Blue Line is getting thinner and police are struggling with fewer and fewer resources.
Just yesterday, the head of the Met Police, Cressida Dick, called the Government’s refusal to increase officers’ pay in England and Wales by three per cent a “punch on the nose”, adding that the two per cent they were awarded made her “extremely disappointed” and had impacted on both morale and staffing.
So you’d think South Yorkshire Police — which has just recorded a 30 per cent rise in real crimes and seen violent crime in the county DOUBLE since 2015 — would have better things to do with its time than worry about “non-crimes”.
This is the force responsible for failing to investigate the rape of up to 1,500 young girls by grooming gangs in Rotherham for more than a decade.
So why are they calling on the public to report imaginary non-crimes?
I put that to South Yorkshire’s Police & Crime Commissioner, Dr Alan Billings, on my talkRADIO show yesterday. But instead of doing the job he is supposed to do — representing the views of ordinary voters — he defended the police.
Why? Well, because the offending police tweet was posted in response to an incident on Saturday, when a Muslim woman wearing a hijab headscarf ran through Barnsley with a large knife, shouting, “Kill! Kill! Kill!” and stabbed a man. But it wasn’t the terrifying ordeal for people on the streets that worried our PCC.
No, it was the social media comments about Islamic terrorism AFTER the event which the police decided were racist and a threat to community cohesion.
Hurt feelings, it seems, is now the only crime the police care about.
“We’re talking about people in our communities,” Dr Billings explained, “who may be disabled, who may have issues about their gender identity, they may be people of a particular faith or of a particular race and that deeply affects people as individuals and their community.” This is nothing short of madness.
Of course, most rank-and-file coppers are as bewildered by this PC lunacy as the rest of us. It’s the posturing top brass for whom promoting diversity matters more than feeling the collars of criminals.
Police are too busy to tackle the rising tide of violent crime because they are happily tweeting about painting their fingernails in rainbow colours to “show support to the LGBT community” or dancing with revellers at the Notting Hill Carnival to showcase their commitment to multi-culturalism.
Such is the obsession with “hate incidents”, forces across the UK are wasting thousands of valuable hours dealing with cases even they admit are too trivial to be classed as crimes.
New figures reveal that 30 forces dealt with 11,236 such incidents in 2015-16 — including people offended by newspaper cartoons and a neighbour’s barking dog.
That’s one every half-hour.
Nottinghamshire Police urged women to report “misogynistic incidents” as “hate crimes”, including the heinous crime of chaps wolf-whistling in the street. Last year a Sussex Police sergeant publicly tweeted at Sainsbury’s and Tesco, demanding they change their signs for “feminine hygiene” products to a gender-neutral title such as “personal hygiene”.
Yet they don’t have time left to tackle the crimes the whole country — whatever their race, religion, gender, sexuality or disability — DO care about.
The police fail to catch four in five robbers and burglars while a quarter of murderers go free.
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Leicestershire Police operated a trial scheme of only investigating burglaries in houses with even numbers on their doors, so if you lived at No23 and your flat-screen telly was stolen, tough.
It’s time we put an end to this politically correct obsession with diversity and cultural sensitivity and free up our Boys In Blue to do the job we pay them for.
The police are supposed to be the Thin Blue Line, fighting to keep us safe _ not glorified social workers in uniform manning the Hurt Feelings Helpline.
- Julia’s talkRADIO show is on from 6.30am to 10am every weekday.