Excuse me while I take my socks off

Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott has defended her disastrous performance in a radio interview in which she attempted to explain Labour’s policing policy. Diane suggested that her party would recruit either 25,000 or 250,000 officers a year, who would be paid what she initially claimed would be £30 a year, which would have been low even for a Conservative Government proposal, before increasing her offer to what translated into a salary of £8,000 (before tax).

When challenged about her intention to recruit 250,000 officers, she accused the reporter of citing what she realised might be a rather large number, and then accepted his assertion that it had been her suggestion, on the grounds that he had written it down. Perhaps she should be warned that a reporter writing something down doesn’t always mean that it is true? In a subsequent interview she insisted she knew the figures, saying “I can repeat them now”, but chose not to do so. She went on to claim that she had done seven interviews that morning, although for all we know it might have been 308. Diane and figures are not good friends.

Her extravagant claims that large numbers of community beat officers are to be recruited are worrying. Many observers will say that this should have been implemented ten or more years ago, instead of recruiting thousands of largely ineffective and now mainly discarded police community support officers. Others will say that community beat officers are wildly unsuited to deal with emerging and increasing problems of terrorism, fraud and cybercrime. Recent tragic events have shown that sending out officers armed with batons and tablets and protected with inadequate armour to face offenders armed with guns and knives won’t work, no matter how many of them there are, no matter how much they cost. The scheme is in marked contrast to Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s pledge that “a Conservative Budget will put security first”. The question here is, whose security? Deploying community beat officers on a basis of one to each of the nation’s many political wards is in marked contrast to plans to protect politicians around the Houses of Commons with packs of killer dogs.

Meanwhile, two police officers in the West Midlands have finally been cleared of wrongdoing after putting a pillowcase over the head of a violent and abusive prisoner who spat at them as they transported him into custody in February 2013. The misconduct panel chair said that he did not condone the ‘unprecedented’ use of the pillow, but failed to say what he would have done had he been in their position. The prisoner suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung during his arrest, but these injuries seem to have paled into insignificance once the pillow came into play. Once again, police officers have ‘received management action’ for being creative; four years seems a long time in a case where the facts do not appear to have been disputed.

Finally, police in the Eastern Indian State of Bihar, which last year banned the sale and consumption of alcohol to reduce domestic violence, harassment and poverty, claim rats have consumed thousands of the 900,000 litres they confiscated. Their bosses have now ordered an inquiry, although this may prove difficult. Interviewing sober rats is a difficult enough process, and routinely checking officers for alcohol consumption may prove contentious, especially as

they face the sack and prosecution under ‘new stringent excise and prohibition laws’, which carry penalties of up to ten years’ imprisonment. This would not appear to have been thought through. Perhaps they should send for Diane Abbott, if only for her to recalculate the volume of the missing alcohol…

Yours,

Stitch

stitchley@policeprofessional.com

@SOStitchley