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Middle classes losing faith in 'rude' police who go for soft targets instead of the real criminals
Last updated at 11:42am on 30.05.08
The middle classes have lost confidence in the police, a stark report has warned.
They fear they have been alienated by a service which routinely targets ordinary people rather than serious criminals, simply to fill Government crime quotas.
The attitude of some officers has also led to spiralling complaints about neglect of duty and rudeness.
The report warns that the middle classes have been alienated by a service which targets ordinary people rather than serious criminals
The report from the Civitas think-tank says incidents which would once have been ignored are now treated as crimes - including a case of children chalking a pavement.
Its author, respected journalist Harriet Sergeant, says she was also told of a student being arrested, held for five hours and cautioned for keeping a London Underground lift door open with his foot.
The report warns that a generation of young people - the police's favourite soft targets - are being criminalised, putting their future prospects at risk.
Journalist Harriet Sergeant is the report's author and she says that a generation of young people are the police's favourite targets
Some offences being prosecuted are now so minor that senior officers have even begun talks with the U.S. authorities to prevent such a 'criminal record' stopping decent citizens obtaining a visa to cross the Atlantic.
Meanwhile responses to crimes such as burglary are slow and statements given by victims of serious crime are often left lying idle for months, the report warns.
An apparent emphasis on motoring crimes is another negative factor.
Miss Sergeant warns: 'The loss of public confidence is a serious matter.
'The police cannot police without the backing of society. Without trust and consensus it is very difficult and costly to maintain law and order.'
Her report says: 'Complaints against the police have risen, with much of the increase coming from law-abiding, middle-class, middle-aged and retired people who no longer feel the police are on their side.'
In 2006-7, there were 29,637 complaints - the most since records began 17 years ago.
Miss Sergeant said this was due in part to the law-abiding middle-classes becoming upset by the 'rudeness and behaviour' of officers.
The report details how officers are expected to reach a certain number of 'sanction detections' a month by charging, cautioning or fining an 'offender'.
Arresting or fining someone for a trifling offence - such as a child stealing a Mars bar - is a good way of hitting the target and pleasing the Home Office.
Amazingly, the chocolate theft ranks as highly as catching a killer.
Miss Sergeant says performance-related bonuses of between £10,000 and £15,000 a year for police commanders depend partly on reaching such targets.
This leads them to put pressure on frontline officers to make arrests for the most minor misdemeanours.
Officers said at the end of a month, when there was pressure to hit the target for that period, they would pursue young men as the most likely 'offenders'.
'Crimes' investigated by police have been criticised by the middle classes
Offences could include scrawling a name on a bus stop in felt-tip or playing ball games in the street.
One officer was so concerned he told his teenage son to be careful at the end of each month.
The pamphlet, parts of which were serialised by the Daily Mail earlier this year, says the police themselves are angry at the way they have to 'make fools of themselves'.
There were high levels of 'bitterness and frustration' and the targets were 'bitterly resented'.
One officer told how he was pressed to charge children playing with a tree with 'harassment'.
The same offence was used against a drunken student dancing in flowerbeds, who aimed a kick at a flower.
Reader views (26)
Were are these wonders when the yobs are acting up? They know that their safe with the people that don't commit crimes.
Gutless wonders.
- Djlamb, Lakewood, CO, 30/05/2008 18:05
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Civil disobedience anyone?
- Martin, Cheltenham, 30/05/2008 17:42
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The Police will always hit soft targets in order to protect their league status and at the same time increase their income. I do not blame the Police, they are only reacting to government diktat.
- Mr M R Knight, Alton, Hants, 30/05/2008 17:20
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A good start would be to split the police into "real police" who would not involve themselves in any offence that could not result in a custodial sentence on the offender, and the, er, un-real police, who'd do the harassing and fining of members of the mostly law-abiding public for such things as allowing their children to use chalk on pavements, or putting their bins out too early, or calling a personal earth moving instrument a spade. Then we could all help the "real police" regardless of what the other lot do to antagonise us, until such time as we can elect a government that'll scrap all the silly regulations and make the unreal police redundant.
- Nigel, London, 30/05/2008 16:36
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I was sitting at a red traffic light at the weekend, that has a traffic light camera on it. A car with sirens and flashing lights shot up from behind. I was now in a real sweat. If I crossed the red light to allow the car threw, and was photographed I would get three points and a fine, as moving out of the way of an emergency vehicle is not a defence for crossing a red light. On the other hand refusing to move for a police car is a very good way of getting yourself in a lot of trouble. I said to the wife "what should I do?" Fortunately I then noticed the car had Ambulance written across the bonnet, and I felt safe to sit blocking it from getting to an emergency, until the lights changed.
What a sad state the country had reached when you have to choose between co-operating with an emergency vehicle and getting three points on your licence. I have no time what so ever for a Police force that would prosecute people for helping out an Ambulance.
Both the government and the Police should hang their heads in shame.
- Stephen, London, 30/05/2008 15:36
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Here in a country town, the police take about an hour to turn up to answer a call on vandalism then ask. "What do you expect us to do about it?"
Policing is a laugh.
- Norman, Oakham, 30/05/2008 15:11
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I live in an area of central London which the police have effectively abandoned, and despite being a high crime area, we have no CCTV on any of our streets and no community police. When I was the victim of crime, the police told me to move house. As if life is that simple. When I have attempted to report crimes they have told me to phone the council or passed the buck in some other way. However, I have a criminal record due to some extremely petty law enforcement which they were very happy to jump on and resulted in a punishment that far exceeded the crime and has limited my whole life from a work and travel perspective.
- Real, London, 30/05/2008 15:02
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The police are not helped by the fact that the punishments in this country are so stupidly lenient thanks to our useless politicians. What is needed is a really tough zero tolerance policy just like the one they have in Singapore. That's why it's so safe and clean over there because the deterrent is so strong
- Vivek, London, 30/05/2008 14:42
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Sadly, the police are on a hiding to nothing! They simply can't win.
Let's face the facts:- Britain is about "1000 jail cells" down on what we currently require. If the police make "any arrests" at all, serious criminals get let out early; moved to open prisons; and/or worse, newly convicted criminals who should be going to jail receive NO Prison sentence at all!
That isn't a working environment that our police should have to face. It is therefore not surprising that the police eventually become somewhat selective in the arrests that they eventually make?
What does annoy me intensely though, is that some police simply are NOT even "fully conversant" with the laws that they are supposed to be enforcing.
- Fraser, Telford Park, 30/05/2008 14:04
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They take the soft options, it looks good on their crime figures.
- Mick Wright, Northants UK, 30/05/2008 14:00
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It is the result of this Labour governments attempt at social engineering towards multiculturalism. Where in actual fact we are predominantly a white society; 90% of the United Kingdom is white.
The engineering attempt has been to stamp out intolerance and bring communities closer. However the net affect has been simply to create a perverse form of intolerance.
An intolerance to the degree where people are arrested for protecting their families and property. An individual was arrested and charged with manslaughter after tackling a burglar in his own home. After a struggle the scum fell out of a window and died. Another arrested for making a citizen's arrest of a youth who had committed criminal damage on his home. Another arrested for berating a group of youths pursuing antisocial behaviour. I do not entirely blame the police, but it has become the case where it is easier to arrest the victims of crime rather than the scum.
An intolerance to the degree where Avon fire brigade invite everyone to an open day except whites. Where adverts for jobs read, ‘Open to all minorities, including white Irish, white Welsh and white Scottish only’.
It goes on and on, the indigenous population of this country are being persecuted by this governments policies. Hitler was mentioned in another post, but you have to remember politics is a circle. The far left are next door neighbours to the far right, and this governments feckless attitudes to the native populace is quite disturbing.
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 30/05/2008 13:33
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I have been told by Police Officers that it is often the case that Police will "detect" a minor crime whilst on the way to a major incident because they will be tied up with paperwork for hours and that is easier than dealing with a complex or dangerous incident. They still get the "collar" for the statistics, without the risk to themselves.
I do live in fear of the Police. I do fear getting nicked for doing something minor and the Labour Government is to blame because they are weak leaders and not in control of the Police any more.
And yes, I perceive the majority of Police to be rude, obnoxious jobsworths. The Police need serious reform and the PC technocrats that add nothing, need to be weeded out and sacked so the Police can start doing their job properly again.
- Joe, London, 30/05/2008 13:15
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An artist friend of mine was taking photos of trees in a park! She was challenged by two 'community' constables for doing this because of terrorist laws!
Thank Labour for this madness.
- Mm, Hackney, 30/05/2008 13:03
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no one should be surprised by this research. whilst targets have many benefits, its well-known that it can lead to a lazy culture - especially in the public sector - so soft targets are met. this has the effect of "moving" an organisation away from those to whom they serve (in this case the public) to those that set the targets (ie government). weve seen the same problem with local government.
but the police are particularly badly managed and lack public accountability and are riddled with spanish practices that prevent change or rrogranisations that other sectors are forced to go through; why for example do londoners have to pay more for two police forces (the met and the city of london) it would be much more efficient and effective (and cheaper) to have just one. why is knife-crime out of control? because its easier for the police to be hassling (or in some cases killing) innocent members of the public in the name of anti-terrorism, for which theyve constantly used unneccesary tactics to scare the police. the police's biggest porblem is the police: but it will take a strong government to get them in order and to remind them whom they are suppose to be serving.
- josh, london, 30/05/2008 12:30
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For those trying vainly to defend the police forces position on this subject, what about the fact that at legal protests the police routinely video the participants. The result of this bought up recently, resulted in a haulage firm being raided by the police a week a recent fuel protest. I am afraid the police cannot blame the government for this type of action.
We are sleepwalking into a policed state. Think about three pieces of legislation currently going through Westminster 1) ID cards, 2) Police Stop/Search (without suspicion), 3) Being held at Her Majesty's Pleasure without charge for 42 days. We will soon be in a position where innocent citizens not suspected of a crime will be able to be stopped in the street by the police, demanded to produce ID papers and then potentially locked up for 42 days without a reason. Sounds like a 1950's cold war movie.
This government thinks they can affect social change by imposing fines and criminalizing a generation of young people. They wonder why we no longer have any respect for them.
- Tom, London, 30/05/2008 12:28
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KITTY, all the things you mention came about because of the police state that was pre-war Nazi Germany, the comparison to our own country is not only fair but accurate.
Who knows who WE will end up gassing if we continue to let things go the authoritarian way they are going right now.
- Dave, London, 30/05/2008 12:11
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Part of the problem is government targets but the other part is that this government have created numerous new crimes, many of which the majority [if asked] would not condemn as a crime!
- Keith Simpson, Wareham, Dorset, 30/05/2008 12:01
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Why are people continually blaming the police? I am a serving officer and most policemen don't like arresting for very minor crimes as listed above but government targets have led us to become more of a sales orientated force where the only thing that matters is meeting the targets at the end of the month.
There is no excuse for rudeness or provoking people to commit crime, I cannot believe that most policemen are like this.
- Martin, Witham, 30/05/2008 11:42
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Zero Tolerance is at the heart of our intolerant nation. Handing out criminal records for dropping litter is why this country now resembles Nazi Germany.
- Neil, london uk
Apart from scape-goating one or two minority sectors of society of course, vilifying them, taking their property, disallowing them to trade, tearing communities apart and then gassing them? Oh yes, I can totally see how this is like Nazi Germany!
A disgusting comparison to make glibly.
- Kitty, London, 30/05/2008 11:42
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I must be back in the 19th century with this story. The implication is that the middle classes (ie us) are inherently law abiding and the working classes (ie them) are predominantly criminalised.
Who said that the class system was dead..........
is zero tolerance to bad behaviour going to selective by income group??
- Martin, Clerkenwell, 30/05/2008 11:14
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There is no point in complaining about the police, for it is the people of the UK who have given permission to those in authority to create an Orwellian junta informed by that horrible, dread phrase - "Zero Tolerance". Zero Tolerance is at the heart of our intolerant nation. Handing out criminal records for dropping litter is why this country now resembles Nazi Germany.
- Neil, london uk, 30/05/2008 10:27
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I agree that the police are losing respect. I have only ever been on one march/demonstration and that was the pro-hunt march. I was brutally manhandled by a policeman and then nearly crushed when the police pushed the front rows back - when the marchers were still walking forward. We marchers were not revolutionaries - just ordinary decent country folk who were taking part in their first demonstration.
- Kathy Doyle, London, 30/05/2008 10:27
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The police have turned into paid bullies. They provoke people into acting in a manor so they have an excuse to arrest them. I have had experience of this and myself have lost faith in their abilities to perform their duties to an expected respectable standard.
I think more training is required for these people before they are put in a position of trust.
- Brian, London, 30/05/2008 10:15
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Well yeah: it makes it worse that most of these people they are harassing are paying for their salaries - they've forgotten that they are public servants.
- Roz, Chamonix, France, 30/05/2008 09:21
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There really should be a scale of points for these targets: murder, rape being high scoring crimes, burglary fairly high, car tax and speeding offences way down the bottom of the list, with no points for automated detection: speed cameras etc. There should also be negative points, for silly arrests, maybe even for wrongful arrests. But to go hand in hand with this the political correctness and human rights issues have to be greatly watered down. Criminals by their very actions should lose most of their rights save for a basic set. The police need that desperately.
And yes, I have long lost much of my respect for the police, and indeed the courts, and the phrases they give out...phrases? Well: so few are really sentences.
If the police had the same zeal for other crime that Blunstrom has for speeding motorists, then the UK would be a far better place to live. Blair with his "tough on crime" failed us completely.
- Naomi Sajeri, Manchester, 30/05/2008 07:19
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As a former member of the Metropolitan Police Authority (which oversees the Met), I raised this issue constantly...what is particularly useful with this report is that it highlights the police themselves angry with a culture which criminalises easy targets and makes them the enemy of the middle class. On several occasions I raised the issue of entry to the USA for those who have been charged with these absurd 'crimes'. A large number of offences for which you would obtain a criminal record (including selling a pound of bananas rather than a kilo) are not offences in the USA but you will still be barred from the US if you honestly answer on the visa waiver form about your 'record'. What is more distressing, as I pointed out in a debate on the issue at the London Assembly, is that if we have the new ID cards, this type of information will be routinely available at the swipe of the card, information incidentally which the EU has already effectively agreed to share with the USA...it means that those with these type of criminal records will be automatically refused entry, rather than the present lottery which depends upon the manner in which entrants answer on the visa waiver form, and the length of stay planned in the USA. There have to be targets. We have the wrong ones. What we have is wrong and misdirected, which this report highlights. It must be acted upon by government. The Mayor, supposedly responsible for the Met, can do nothing. 'Devolved government' eh?
- Damian Hockney, London, UK, 30/05/2008 03:14
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