Political correctness, police, and crime

The Daily Mail published two articles today that are written in and about formerly-Great Britain, but which have all too many similarities with problems we face in the USA.

The first article is by an anonymous police officer (who also blogs under the pseudonym of "Inspector Gadget"). Here's an excerpt.

The suspect stared at me with hooded eyes, devoid of any emotion or conscience. His emaciated figure was so wrecked by heroin abuse that he could barely raise his arms.

‘Hello, inspector, it’s me again,’ he said, his voice dripping with disdain.

He had every reason to sound cynical, even contemptuous. He was a one-man crimewave, a prolific offender whose miserable life was dominated by violence, drugs and thieving, yet in all his years of delinquency he had never been properly punished by our laughably misnamed justice system.

When he was brought into the station last week, on a charge of stealing from a 94-year-old woman, I had a look at his record. It was a lengthy indictment of the incredible leniency of our courts.

Aged only 23, he had been arrested 80 times and convicted of an incredible 140 offences.

Among his crimes were assault, aggravated burglary, blackmail, theft and possession of Class A and Class B drugs.

His behaviour has long been out of control, showing respect for neither the law nor the rights of others. But despite his lengthy catalogue of offending, he has spent just 12 weeks in prison.

The only lesson he has ever learned is that he has nothing to fear from the courts. No doubt he will receive another ineffectual slap on the wrist the next time he is up before a judge.

As a long-serving police inspector, I despair of the reluctance of the state to deal vigorously with serious criminals such as this thuggish drug addict. This soft, destructive stance not only weakens public faith in the fight against crime, but also undermines the morale of the police.

What drags down our effectiveness, however, is not just the useless courts system that so often undoes all the effort we put into building cases, but also the highly politicised, target-driven, dogma-fixated culture of the police hierarchy.

Instead of allowing us to focus on the real task of tackling criminality, police chiefs and politicians have bogged us down in bureaucracy, much of it driven by fashionable obsessions with multiculturalism and meaningless performance statistics.

Official determination to manipulate crime figures has reached new heights of idiocy. Data is no longer a reflection of performance, but an exercise in deceit of the public.

In this brave new world of propaganda - conjured up by a string of directives - a vast array of crimes are reclassified by ‘crime managers’ to lessen their seriousness.

So burglaries of potting sheds become ‘badger damage’, broken windows are blamed on ‘frost’ and stolen handbags are listed as ‘lost or misplaced’.

Even vandalism to vehicles can be ascribed to ‘stones thrown up by speeding cars’.

The warped priorities of this culture are also reflected in the ridiculous amount of time we have to devote to the creed of diversity.

At times it seems as if the modern police force is seen by senior managers as a vehicle for social engineering rather than deterring crime.

. . .

Home Secretary Theresa May recently announced she had abolished a raft of performance targets.

These included the specific requirement that, as part of their annual performance appraisal, officers had to set out three objectives for raising public confidence.

This bureaucratic ‘public confidence’ order, she said, was consigned to the dustbin of history. Yet, in reality, it carries on, just under the new title of ‘public satisfaction’ objectives.

Dogmatic officialdom continues on its own sweet, expensive way - and we in the poor bloody infantry are continually hampered in the struggle to do our job, which is to actually fight crime.

There's more at the link. It makes sobering and infuriating reading from the point of view of anyone who values law and order in society - and I don't mean statists or 'big brother' types, either! If these conditions come to pervade society, everyone is threatened.

As if to drive home the inspector's point, another article reported on the theft of a two-million-dollar musical instrument - and the ludicrously light punishment meted out to the thieves.

A Gypsy who stole a £1.2 million [about US $1.96 million] Stradivarius violin from one of the world’s top musicians and tried to sell it for £100 [about US $163] has been jailed for four-and-a-half years.

John Maughan, 40, vanished with the 300-year-old instrument as Min-Jin Kym stopped for a sandwich at Euston Station, London, on November 29.

. . .

The musician said the violin was ‘her life’ but it has not been recovered, despite a nationwide Crimewatch appeal.

Police recognised career criminal Maughan from CCTV and he was arrested with his cousins.

Blackfriars Crown Court heard that Dublin-born Maughan has received ‘every sentence the courts can give’ for 123 separate convictions.

The violin was in a case with two bows - one made by Peccatte is worth £62,000 [about US $101,400] alone.

The gypsies tried to sell the instrument for £100 to a man in an internet cafe in Tottenham Court Road where they were researching ‘Stradivarius’ and ‘1698’.

Insurers have offered a £15,000 [about US $25,000] reward for information on the violin, which Miss Kym purchased for £750,000 [about US $1.23 million] a decade ago.

All three defendants admitted theft. The 16-year-old was given ten months’ detention and the younger boy, now 15, was referred to a youth court for sentencing.

Again, there's more at the link. Bold print is my emphasis.

So he and his accomplices steal a hugely valuable antique, and get a slap on the wrist? Way to go, British justice system! Trouble is, precisely the same thing is happening in all too many jurisdictions in America. The 'broken windows' theory of policing has turned it around in some centers, but this is 'politically incorrect', so it's fiercely resisted in other areas. (It would never be acceptable in formerly-Great Britain, I'm afraid!)

We'd better learn from the British experience, and our own . . . or else the good inspector's complaints about British policing may become applicable to our law enforcement services, too.

Peter