The dangers we all face when police are too terrified...

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The dangers we all face when police are too terrified to think for themselves
By KEITH HELLAWELL - More by this author » Last updated at 22:59pm on 17th May 2008

This has been a difficult week for West Midlands police. It is rare for public servants to be sued for libel, and the High Court apology the force gave to Channel 4 and the Dispatches programme was both humiliating and unprecedented.

For all its unique features, however, this case is symptomatic of a broader set of failings: a loss of nerve, a warped sense of priorities and, in particular, a culture of weak-minded politicisation that should concern us all.

Undercover Mosque, the edition of Dispatches at the heart of the legal case, made disturbing viewing.

Broadcast in January last year, it showed clerics at mainstream mosques making extreme and inflammatory statements, advocating the murder of homosexuals, for example, and praising the killer of a British soldier in Afghanistan.

Yet, instead of lauding the programme makers for their careful and enterprising work, West Midlands police said Channel 4 should be prosecuted for stirring up racial hatred.

They accused Dispatches of deliberately distorting the views of the clerics through misleading editing and, when their own investigations foundered, they complained to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom.

The whole sorry episode reached its conclusion on Friday with a joint apology from the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, and a promise to pay £100,000 - out of public funds, presumably. They had no evidence to support their case.

Such an astonishing lack of judgment is difficult to comprehend, perhaps, but it is by no means unusual. Police forces around the country grow ever more bizarre in their decisions on who and what to prosecute, leaving the public angry and confused.

How can it be, for example, that prominent figures from the worlds of art and fashion seem immune from prosecution despite clear evidence of drug-taking, while unassuming office workers are dragged through the courts for dropping an apple core or placing the wrong piece of rubbish in the wrong bin?

Why do complaints from ethnic minorities appear to be given so much more attention than those from the majority?

Why do police forces take action against parents who shout at their children while refusing to act in cases where property has been damaged by fully grown adults?

As a former police officer of 36 years experience, who worked my way up through the ranks to become Chief Constable of Cleveland and then West Yorkshire, later becoming "drugs tsar" for the Government, I am disturbed by what I see around me.

I know of a 14-year-old - the daughter of a serving police officer, as it happens - who attempted to intervene in a case of playground bullying.

One month later, the local Violent Crime Squad banged on her door and she was arrested - because another girl had ended up with milkshake on her coat following the dispute.

I have rarely come across such a waste of time and money with so little public interest at stake.

Now I have left the force, I have time to write a regular column for my local paper, the Huddersfield Examiner, and I know from our readers that these puzzling inconsistencies abound.

One man told me he found his car being smashed by vandals, who turned on him when he remonstrated. Yet he was told by police it would be best not to complain because the thugs might return to exact vengeance.

I know of a vicar in near despair because his church is under siege from vandals. The police do nothing.

Yet he knows for a fact that a single concerned phone call from the local mosque will bring an immediate police response, often from senior officers.

Which brings us back to the strange behaviour of the West Midlands force. There are numerous causes of this sorry situation, but two stand out.

First is the behaviour of central government, which for more than a decade has stripped its police officers of autonomy, preferring to believe its university-educated advisers know better than themen and women paid to do the job.

This has left police forces terrified to take independent action, believing - wrongly - that judgment and discretion play no part in their job.

Second is a national culture of political correctness that elevates concerns for equality above those of ordinary policing. On both counts, the micro management and the politicisation - a poisonous mixture - New Labour has been the greatest culprit.

The first signs of danger came under a different regime when, in the mid-Nineties with Michael Howard as Home Secretary, the Conservative Government introduced centrally directed policing priorities.

There was nothing sinister in this attempt to make the national force more effective, but from that moment on central control has grown and police autonomy has dwindled.

Then we had the decision to abolish tenure for chief constables and put them on fixed-term contracts. Now no one can expect to be in post for more than five years.

There may be benefits, but it means forces are run by people fearful for their career prospects and unwilling to speak out.

But the real damage came in the years following 2001, when David Blunkett arrived at the Home Office. He seemed determined to take personal control of almost all aspects of police operations.

Chief constables were picked out and humiliated in public.

Ministers now seem to prefer politically sympathetic figureheads to those with any real experience of reducing crime.

A new financial regime has ensured that forces receive no extra cash unless they agree to implement the Government's pet projects, such as the introduction of "Community Support Officers".

Terrified to speak their minds, terrified to act without permission, some in the police force have forgotten how to think for themselves.

One result is a lack of even-handedness, which diminishes the force in the eyes of law-abiding citizens. Why, they ask, should some people be punished disproportionately while others are judged too sensitive for scrutiny?

The damage goes way beyond the principle of equity, important as that might be.

Political cowardice-now hampers the authorities in the most serious matters and has, in my view, already contributed to the appalling scenes of 7/7 and the London bombings.

Large areas in our inner cities, primarily those occupied by minority communities, are no longer policed effectively and these include those streets where home-grown terrorists have lived and conspired.

For fear of appearing racist, police forces tolerate levels of crime, including drug dealing, that should properly demand immediate action.

The victims, ironically, are overwhelmingly the very members of the ethnic minorities that the university-educated police chiefs are trying so ineffectively to appease.

The recent appalling series of black-on-black murders in London is evidence of this.

Community elders express their fears, but only in private because, with teenage gangsters operating beyond the law, they dare not speak out.

If the problems have been caused by politics, politicians must find the answers. Police forces must have their power and autonomy returned, however uncomfortable that may be for central government.

Until we return to the sort of policing I recognise and that the public demands, this dangerous state of affairs will not merely continue, it will get worse.

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