In the worst hot spots covering areas of up to 6,000 people more than 150 cases have gone unsolved in the past three years, prompting warnings by victims’ campaigners and policing experts that burglary has been effectively decriminalised in parts of the UK.
Much more fun monitoring Twitter back at the station, right?
The point about burglary is that in a “neighbourhood” area like that a bit of actual street policing, a local copper, would know who the scrotes are. Sure, catching them takes a bit of effort. But knowing who they’re gonna be is always a good start.
There is no street policing in many areas. I live in a town of over 100,000 people and there is no police presence.
Saddiq Khan closed the local police station to spite outer Londoners who don’t vote for him. The tories (and this will shock you) have done nothing about it. The nearest police are about 5 miles away around the North Circular.
Most burglaries are unsolved because there is no evidence. Tim is right to say it is the usual suspects (white junkies). However since it is very rare for courts to imprison people for drug use they remain on the streets.
Let’s get our priorities straight. Burglary isn’t such a big deal. It’s just some junkie causing damage to get into your house and take your cash and property, going through your private belongings and leaving you feeling enraged and your wife and children terrified that they could do it again. And then being pissed about by insurance companies and the police so you can try to recover a small fraction of the cost. No biggie, and people ought to be able to take it in their stride as one of life’s little vicissitudes.
Police obviously need to concentrate their efforts on the likes of Sam Melia, who was jailed for two years for committing the appalling crime of having nationalistic and arguably racist views.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/far-right-organiser-found-guilty-intent-stir-racial-hatred-through-distribution-stickers
And he actually distributed stickers to promulgate such filth as “White lives matter” and “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066”. He even had an interest in Oswald Mosley. A book, found in his house, proves it.
Until we’ve got this type of wrongthink under control, the police should forget tactics like bobbies on the beat to sort out minor nuisance crimes like burglary.
There is no street policing in many areas.
That got a chuckle. Particularly with the commenter’s monika.
About 25 years ago, when I was living in Crouch End, I saw this uniformed copper walking down the street about 9PM. So I called over to him “Are you lost?” He laughed & said “No. I’m from Muswell Hill. I’ve just come off duty & going round to see me mate.” When even Plod thinks it’s a joke….
Crouch End is where half of North London goes out for the evening. We had over 50 restaurants, take-aways, pubs, wine bars & clubs. In what is basically a couple of streets. Plus the big YMCA full of effnicks. Usually at least one stabbing there over a weekend. Only time you’d see a copper on foot was the toy police going round in bunches of four on a sunny day. When they used to publish crime figures, my short street managed 96 reported in a single month. I had three attempted muggings within 100 yards of my own front door. Tinted chappies. One of them had a decent gold chain though, so it wasn’t all bad (Don’t try & mug a Londoner or he might mug you back). Neighbour of mine bled out on her own front doorstep at 8 in the morning. Once tried calling the police over a geezer I’d spotted breaking into cars, round 11PM. Control’s at Tottenham. They had two available for the entire patch so were uninterested. ( We dealt with that one ourselves)
Note to self. Close HTML tags!
We also have to pay extra on council tax for policing, which the bastard pockets.
As someone recently said when you’re tired of hating Saddiq Khan you’re tired of life.
I was subject to an attempted telephone scam a few weeks ago. I knew it was a scam immediately because the caller claimed to be a policeman investigating a crime.
Where I live, in outstate Michigan, burglary (entering a dwelling without permission with the intest to commit a further crime, defined in MCS as various degrees of ‘home invasion’) is fantastically rare. I just checked the stats for our county (1296 square miles, 200,000 souls) and there were about 250 burglaries reported to the police for all of 2023. ‘Breaking and entering’ (as above, but not a dwelling – a business, barn or outbuilding) was somewhat more common, about 750 cases in 2023. The county helpfully provides an online map showing crime locations – there wasn’t a single burglary or B&E reported within a 2-mile radius of my home in 2023. We’re rural, but not that rural.
I leave it to smarter thinkers than I why it might be that such crimes are (relatively) so fantastically-rare where I live, as compared to (apparently) huge swathes of the UK. What could possibly be the difference?
llater,
llamas
Oh, and we never see a police officer patrolling around here, from one year to the next. Last police officer in uniform I saw on our road was at least 5 years ago, dealing with a traffic accident.
llater
llamas
@ llamas
Is it one of these (or combination)?
1) Lack of cultural enrichment.
2) Risk to perp of getting shot for home invasion.
3) Effective policing.
or some other factor?
You’re reminding me of ghastly Campbell-Newman and youth crime. He had the horrid habit of persecuting the 10% or so who commit those crimes.
Naturally he was thrown out for not accepting that people are innocent until proven guilty.
As you’ve guessed, at present one of the major fusses in Brisbane is about youth crime.
@Joe Smith. I’m stuck in a departure lounge with time on my hands, so you’re going to get the long-form answer. Sorry.
1) This county is actually more enriched than one would think at first. A surprising number of first-generation Hispanics, either in agriculture or in the current construction boom. But they’re mostly hard-working, family-oriented and socially conservative. The small but growing proportion of African-American families tend to be BUPPIES, upwardly-mobile, who are here for the same reasons lots of others are here – pleasant neighbourhoods, good schools, low crime, easy freeway access to the outer suburbs and business parks. I don’t think that’s it. And there’s certainly no shortage of poor white stoners and tweakers.
2) The number of cases of burglars being shot by homeowners is actually vanishingly-small, which is why they always make the news. But I won’t deny that there may be a significant deterrent effect, even if it rarely happens.
3) Ah, now you’re talking. The reason we have so few burglaries – is that burglars go to jail here (up to a year) and often, to prison (a year or more). The sheriff, who is elected every 4 years, answers to the voters, and he knows full-well that the voters want burglars chased and caught. The county prosecutor, who is elected every 4 years, answers to the voters, and he knows full-well that the voters want burglars prosecuted, good and hard. The district-court judges (the courts of first instance, like County Courts) are elected every 4 years, they answer to the voters, and they know full-well that the voters want burglars put away. The reason that the enterprisin’ burglar’s not a’burglin’, is that he’s banged up in the county jail (first offence) or in the State penitentiary (subsequent offences).
I’m not saying that this is a cure-all – in many places, elected law-enforcement has fallen into the pit of party and racial politics, and so has become more-or-less ineffectual. But, in the places where it hasn’t, law enforcement is something that is now completely-different from what seems to prevail in the UK. If I walked into the sheriff’s station to complain that someone had said bad things about me on Twitter, the desk sergeant would choke on his doughnut from laughing so hard. Traffic enforcement (apart from DUI) is among the very-lowest priorities – you have to do something awfully-stupid, or directly in front of an officer, to get a ticket here. The most traffic enforcement most drivers will ever see here is one of those radar trailers reminding you to slow down a bit, or maybe a patrol car outside the school on a busy road at chucking-out time. Whole slews of activities which now seem to keep the UK police more-or-less permanently overwhelmed are not even crimes of any sort here, And the complex and stifling mass of bureaucracy and red-tape that now seems to entangle UK policing, just doesn’t happen here at all.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, far from it. But at least the emphasis, at least around here, seems to be on actual, Junior Murvin-style, police’an’teeves real crime, which actually picks someone’s pocket, or breaks someone’s leg – and not on bullshit fictional ‘hate crimes’ and cruel words on the internet and mis-gendering police horses and making sure there’s enough LGBTQ345ABCDEFG officers on the force and flying the right flag, or whatever other self-indulgent, meaningless, woke crap has been dreamed up this week to avoid having to have to get up and go out and catch thieves and robbers and muggers and such.
Hey, it’s just a thought. Your mileage may very. But when the criminal justice system is not answerable in any meaningful way to the people whose lives and property it is suppsed to protect – what did you expect? When nobody’s job, or benefits, or pension, is affected in the slightest, no matter how much burglaries increase, and when nobody is meaningfully punished for burgling – what did you expect?
llater,
llamas
Thank you for the long answer llamas. Good one.
@ llamas
Another thanks for the detailed post.
It wasn’t that long ago a Labour politician said they were “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. Of course, he didn’t mean it because he was a lying sack of shite. But he knew it was what the public wanted (to hear at least).
Of course, the handwringers in the Blob won’t allow for actual deterrent punishment so we have no reason for scrots to stop their criminal activity. The judiciary (another part of the Blob) are not of the hang-em variety any longer. which is why JSO can cause criminal damage and use “feelz” as a reason not to be convicted.
It makes you sick what has happened. However, I’m not putting all the blame on TPTB, the electorate vote for more stuff for themselves so are (at least) equally to blame.