Cops blasted for building hat towers as knife crime hits record levels

Stephen Moyes

Published: 23:19, 26 Jul 2019
Updated: 1:12, 27 Jul 2019

COPS have been blasted for competing to build the biggest tower of police hats — as knife crime hits record levels.

Rival forces have been posting pictures online with officers stacking as many caps and helmets as possible on their heads.

Critics have slammed the badly timed craze of hat-stacking

But critics blasted the timing of the craze — as figures show knife offences are at their highest rate since records began.

Ex-Det Chief Insp Mick Neville said: “Forces should be concentrating on reducing crime — not building towers of hats.”

In posts online, an officer from Cambridge posed with seven helmets and was praised for the “splendid effort”.

Another cop in the South stacked up four hats, but she was outdone by a rival who used a riot helmet as a base to stack 13 hats in all.

Forces in Greater Manchester, Cumbria and Bedfordshire, rushed to use their official Twitter accounts to take part.

But one Twitter user snapped: “Busy then?” Another added: “Instead of messing around in the station, how about resolving some crime?”

The Sun says

WE despair of our police.

Yes, they are short-staffed. That is obviously partly to blame for knife crime soaring to record highs. We back the 20,000 cops the Tories aim to recruit.

But then “hard-pressed” bobbies build a huge tower of hats in a juvenile social media contest. And the Met commissions a spray-painter to daub a nick with cartoons bearing banal messages.

Some forces have given up on burglaries, blaming cuts. The Met often seems to have given up on even more serious crime. Yet the stunts and virtue-signalling keep coming.

And police chiefs seem too dim to grasp how bad it looks.

New policing minister Kit Malthouse is focused on recruitment. But he must also lay down the law about a return to basic crime-fighting and detection.

Plus a ban on social media posts that do nothing for the public but enrage it.

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The posts came as Office for National Statistics revealed a 19 per cent spike in weapon possession last year and a 20 per cent increase in violent crime.

Mick added: “It’s important to have light-hearted moments to cope with the darkness of the job, but they should be kept private.”

Insiders said the craze had sparked fury from some top brass. One cop in West Yorks said: “I know of two lads who got both barrels from senior officers who witnessed them taking part in the challenge.”