It has also been widely acknowledged, not least by the Prime Minister herself, that her decision to deploy troops to guard key public buildings today frees up some armed police to do policing. Of course, the optics of looking very serious by calling in the military has absolutely nothing to do with a certain date in the diary, especially after Conservative campaign strategy has collapsed. It also helps cover the fact that the numbers of coppers have slid since her "team" took power with the Liberal Democrats in 2010, at least for those folks who look at politics askance.
As campaigning starts returning to normal after Monday night's outrage, the Tories and their media friends will probably throw propriety aside and scaremonger. Threat and the threat of threat is what they do and how they won last time. They don't really need to explicitly say it, though. The mood among some is bound to be unsettled. As @IanPMcLaughlin put it, "I don't feel particularly reassured by seeing several heavily armed officers today. I feel like I'm being reminded to be fearful."
The police have repeatedly called for intelligence and counter-terrorism to be properly financed, and these were pleas that fell on Theresa May's tin ear. While there is no guarantee any amount of security can stop a suicide bomber, more resources makes the uncovering and thwarting of plots more likely. Here below then are two charts for England and Wales that show how policing numbers have fallen since 2010 in context. The first are the government's figures looking at absolute numbers. The second, by Matt Ashby from Notts Trent University looks at the numbers of police per 100,000 of the general population. On this metric the cuts are even starker. As the number of Britons grow, forces are having to do more with less.
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But isn't there less crime now?
ReplyDelete"Since the mid-1990s Britain has seen a steady and dramatic decline in lawbreaking: the number of crimes has more than halved, according to the official Crime Survey for England and Wales. Vehicle theft has fallen by 86% and burglary by 71% since 1995. Violent crime has dropped by two-thirds and robberies by more than half." The Economist
There's also more technology, CCTV and "science".
MI5 has received massive investment since 9/11.
And the "security services" have foiled half a dozen plots in the last few weeks, according to the news.
But someone will always get through. And the police will always call for more police.
As an apparent supporter of historic immigration policies, I would hesitate to correlate immigration with a rise in crime (even if there was one) or indeed terrorism.
What are really needed are effective policies not more police. An ID card (common in most developed non anglo saxon countries) would be a start, along with acknowledging there is a problem with integrating immigrants and taking steps to address it, rather than continuing to promote difference and division.
How about that instead of more boys and girls in blue?