New police guidance can only work with a change in mindset

‘Police don't bother with most crime so it's not worth reporting’

- Stephen Pollard

IT'S self-evidently a good thing that Home Secretary Suella Braverman has got the police to agree to new guidance to investigate every crime and pursue every "reasonable line of enquiry". Few things are more enraging and more guaranteed to destroy public confidence in the police - than the way so many crimes are simply ignored.

In the road I used to live in a van would drive up and down searching out cars to break into. Mine was repeatedly targeted, as were those of so many in the street. We had the van's registration number. The police weren't interested.

There's an open-air car park in my current road. At night it's empty of parked cars but becomes a drive-through drugdealing marketplace. I've been here three years and called the police at least half a dozen times. Not once have they bothered to send anyone. The dealers swagger about knowing no one is going to stop them.

SUCH examples show how the real problem is far more fundamental than simply changing guidance. It requires a deep-seated change in the outlook of the police and a return to the basics of policing.

Typically, no sooner had Ms Braverman made the new guidance clear than she was being attacked for a policy that would supposedly take resources away from more serious crimes, such as rape and knife crime.