Does the Left Have a Point About Policing?

I have an axiom I commonly turn to which I have developed through years of interacting with people; “The Left is always correct, just never for the right reasons.” By this, I mean that every criticism or idea created or spread by politically Left-wing individuals, groups, or organisations will almost always be shown to be correct at some point, albeit in a way which is very unfavourable to the general integrity of Left-wing ideology as a whole. One need not look far to find proof of this; the Leftist assertion that free-market capitalism breeds inequality, the unethical hoarding of vast wealth, and nepotism, is ironically enough proven true by a brief check of loudly anti-capitalist public figures like Hasan Piker (whose success comes in no small part to his nepotistic connection to his uncle, Cenk Uygur) or organisations such as Black Lives Matter. Almost anything which can be described as being Left-wing follows this axiom, and I encourage readers to think about this more deeply in their own time.

One of the loudest and most obvious positions held by the political Left across the Western World is their opposition to policing as a concept, predominantly for ideological reasons, but undoubtedly for practical purposes, too. Calls to defund the police, relentless accusations of institutional racism, and the existence of anti-police sentiment spread broadly across the cultural landscape plague our civilisations, and have reached a fever pitch in the last few years. There are far more examples than I could reasonably include in this article, but “ACAB” is omnipresent in graffiti across Europe and America, with far more violent and colourful variations being aired in more densely-populated urban environments (“save a life, kill a cop” was something I found while visiting Athens, Greece, in 2023). If what I have said at the beginning of this article is true, then a question naturally follows: “What Left-wing critiques of the police and policing are accurate and true?”

Most of the sentiments on the Left about policing can simply be dismissed out of hand, because they are fallacious, slanderous lies, or are outright deluded. The desire to rid a functioning civilisation of policing is one such obvious example, with the experiment provided by the establishment of CHAZ/CHOP in June 2020 proving that policing is both necessary and inevitable. Seizing the area from the jurisdiction of the police and making it unsafe for police to enter did not reduce crime, and instead resulted in several shootings, two deaths, arson, criminal damage, and an alleged rape. Without any central or effective law and order, there was nothing to stop Raz Simone distributing firearms to people he favoured, and violently enforcing his own will, effectively becoming the zone’s police force. Incidentally, one of the deaths was caused when these armed “security forces” fired multiple times on a severely injured teenager, something which would be classified as excessive force and police brutality if a uniformed officer were to act in the same manner.

Nevertheless, it is apparent that there are problems in policing, from individuals such as the infamous “lesbian nana” and PC Nusheen Jan who did not suffer sanctions for her misconduct while on duty, to the widespread and deliberate failure of police to intervene to protect children from organised grooming gangs. To this end, it appears as if the Leftist criticisms of policing – that the police are corrupt and abuse the power they are given to oppress the common citizenry – hold some water. As a former constable of Wiltshire Police – a force that was placed in Special Measures for inadequate and declining performance and service during my period of employment – I feel uniquely able to examine the issue from the inside, rather than the usual haphazard scrutiny we are forced to rely upon the vast majority of the time.

A criticism shared by both the Right and the Left of the political aisle is that police forces are incompetent and fail to appropriately deal with serious and meaningful crimes. A quick search online for Wiltshire Police shows reports of worsening performance dealing with violent crimes and conducting criminal investigations, and with public trust in the police seeming to fall near to or below 50%, it appears as if society at large believe the police are simply not up to the task. This isn’t entirely the full story, however, and to understand why, it is important to explain how crimes are recorded. In the interest of fairness, police in England and Wales have adopted “Ethical Crime Recording”, a policy which states how investigations should be conducted and concluded. One of the necessary elements of Ethical Crime Recording is that all reported crimes be recorded individually and maintained, and must not be dismissed unless definitive proof is found demonstrating the crime did not happen. While a necessary aspect of fair policing, this means that in an incident where five people get into a fight on the street and a car is scratched in the process, you no longer have one incident, but five incidents of common assault and one of criminal damage. These are the statistics which are cited in reports, and falsely give the impression that an excessive amount of crime is occurring, when in reality, the public would be far less concerned if told that the six crimes they’d read about were actually one single incident.

While on-duty one early Saturday morning in Swindon, my colleague and I were called to the scene of a reported robbery. I spoke to the victim, whose arm I could see was bleeding, and asked what had happened, while my colleague spoke with the people he claimed had attacked him. During my interaction with the victim, he claimed he had been thrown to the ground and that they had taken his wallet. When he reached into his pocket, however, he pulled out his wallet, and decided he must’ve just been thrown to the ground. I asked him to show me where that was, and he took me to a section of the pavement where the railing was missing a rung, leaving one at approximately shin-height. On the ground, I found a pair of sunglasses which he said were his. At this point, I concluded that this young man, who had cuts down one side of his arm and torso, whose wallet had not been stolen as claimed, and whose sunglasses were found right next to a trip hazard, had likely been out drinking and had tripped while trying to step over a railing. Unfortunately, the CCTV on that road did not cover the area where the incident had happened, and as such, it had to be maintained as a recorded assault on the police system. The young man did not answer any follow-up calls to ask if he would like to proceed with the investigation, and after a week of no response by phone, email, or in-person visits, we were forced to close the investigation as “no further action”. That “unresolved assault” still constitutes a crime statistic for Wiltshire Police to this day.

In another incident, I was tasked with investigating a report of vandalism and harassment (again, two rather than one recorded incidents on the police system) against a woman by her ex-boyfriend. It was claimed the ex had scratched an abusive message onto the bonnet of her current boyfriend’s car, and had smashed the windows. There was no CCTV footage, no ring doorbell footage, no witnesses, and the car had been taken away to be scrapped at the boyfriend’s request because “it was old anyway”. I knew that there was no chance that this investigation would proceed to court, and requested to my sergeant that I be allowed to close it as unresolved due to a lack of leads. Unfortunately, while my sergeant agreed, he was told by his superiors that there was still the matter of an interview as a reasonable line of inquiry, and so I was compelled to seek out a very confused suspect, arrange a solicitor for him, and conduct a formal interview with no evidence to suggest that he had done anything wrong, aside from an accusation from his ex-girlfriend. The suspect’s father, who was already anti-police, was furious at this turn of events. Exactly as I predicted, following the interview, the investigation was concluded with no further action due to a lack of evidence or lines of inquiry, and now sits on the police system as two unresolved crimes.

Policing at its core is a relationship between the public and law enforcement, and as such, it is vital that the public plays their part in detecting, preventing, and punishing crime. Unfortunately, this is sometimes the biggest sticking point in attempting to conduct investigations, with community-led intelligence in Swindon reported to be down from 2022/23. The effects of a non-compliant public is obvious, with Sasha Johnson’s shooting in London greatly inhibited from the witnesses refusing to provide evidence or information to police, ultimately resulting in a collapsed case. Low trust in the police harms the effectiveness of policing, and while the police have a responsibility to make themselves trustworthy, it is not always the police at fault. In far too many instances, victims of low-level assaults will decide they do not wish to support an investigation as it is not worth their time, which are still recorded as no further action being taken for a violent crime. From personal experience, those who ought to be the most passionate about pursuing justice are oftentimes the least interested, particularly with regards to thefts from shops, with CCTV sometimes not being secured by the store until it is too late, or stores not responding to repeated attempts at communication with them.

In England and Wales, police are bound by the Victim Code of Practice (VCOP) which dictates how a victim in a crime is to be treated. In summary, constant contact at a rate and by a means decided by the victim must be maintained by the investigating officer, and their wishes are to be considered first and foremost when conducting the investigation. A significant portion of the time, most victims are not especially concerned about the exact number of times they are contacted, or whether this is done by phone or by email, but this is a necessary element of an investigation mandated by force policy. On one occasion, I was compelled to update a victim who made it very clear to me that she did not wish to be contacted by Wiltshire Police as she did not support an investigation. When I noticed the trend of a vast majority of victims being indifferent to or outright hostile towards the VCOP policies, I asked a constable who had been in the job for over a decade how it was decided, and I was told that the surveys were conducted with people who had the most contact with police, who were criminals suffering retributional criminal acts from other criminals, and that their wishes didn’t align with the vast majority of the public. VCOP, while well-intentioned, leads to frustration for victims, and drags out investigations for people who do not wish to involve themselves with the police.

I have had many experiences with people flip-flopping on what they want the police to do, and throughout this process, the police are obliged to respect the wishes of the victim and conduct the investigation accordingly. The most striking incident to me was a violent altercation between two women at a hostel, one of whom I was looking for regarding an unrelated incident. At the time the notification came over the radio, I was parked less than a hundred metres away and so made it to the scene in half a minute. I spoke to the suspect, and that suspect told me that she had grabbed the victim by the throat and thrown her to the ground. This confession was captured on my body worn video camera. There were approximately seven witnesses, including the victim herself, and everyone was willing to provide witness statements, the victim the most adamant. The CCTV footage showed the suspect chasing the victim into the hostel and kicking her. This was a clear open-and-shut case, and all I needed was for the victim to provide a statement of evidence. Every day, I phoned the victim and tried to arrange a time to take a statement, but she and her boyfriend kept refusing and delaying. At one stage, I phoned her when she was in the middle of a house party, and she mistakenly told me she couldn’t sell me drugs “at the moment”. It came to a head when she actively hung up on me, and refused to accept phone calls from my work number. This incident is still sat on the police system as an assault concluded with no further action.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are incidents reported to the police which are not worth police time but which police are still obligated to investigate. An elderly gentleman insisted that we do something about his neighbour’s fence (a civil matter, even if his claims about property boundaries were true), and was incredibly disappointed when it was explained that the police can’t simply be private enforcers and resolve boundary disputes in favour of the first person to complain. Another man complained to Wiltshire Police that his flag had been removed, which I initially believed meant someone had stolen a Union Flag from his property. As it turned out, he had hoisted a communist flag up a telegraph pole in a small village, and someone else had taken it down. The man who made the complaint had recovered his flag without incident, and it wasn’t damaged. I had to explain to him over the phone that since there was no criminal damage nor theft, there was no offence to investigate. I then had to explain to him that he was not allowed to interfere with public property in the way he had, but that he was perfectly entitled to hoist a communist flag in his garden, as private property rights gave him that option. These incidents required me to keep in contact with people who were not realistically victims of crime, and tied my hands in dealing with other incidents that were far more pressing.

Perhaps more common in the USA than in the UK, a criticism I have heard is that the police are not adequately trained to deal with mental health situations and that this ought to be left to more appropriate professionals. From a Left-wing perspective, the police exist to utilise force, and so no good can come from sending such a person to a situation which we recognise is not the same as a criminal deliberately causing trouble. Naturally, the Leftist view is that the more responsibilities and power taken away from police, the better, and that the answer is not to train police to handle these situations, but to keep them away from mental health incidents entirely. Ignoring that the reason police are sent to these situations is because there is a risk of an escalation into physical violence and a need to use force to prevent harm occurring, which is precisely what the police are trained for, and ignoring that several healthcare workers and experts have been killed during mental health episodes, this decision is not left to the police. Ultimately, the responsibility of the police to maintain public order and safeguard the life, health, and safety of the general public is the highest priority, which not only makes sense from a perspective of reason, but is agreed upon by all relevant parties. Of all the vital public services, only two are unable to refuse a task on grounds of self-interest; the British Army, and the police forces of England and Wales. When told to attend a mental health crisis, a constable cannot refuse, unlike a paramedic.

Undoubtedly to the chagrin of many who hold anti-police sentiments, it is often the paramedics who request the police to attend such a scene. When a man phoned 999 following a mental health crash and said he had a knife behind his front door and he was going to stab the next person to knock, the paramedics requested that Wiltshire Police make the scene safe (understandably). At the time, I was not trained nor equipped with a taser, and so had to rely on my colleagues in the event that a very large, very muscular, very angry man decided to stop complying. As it turned out, he did have a large knife behind his door, but after we spent forty minutes or so talking to him in handcuffs, he calmed down enough to allow the paramedics to check him over. In a less dramatic incident, paramedics insisted we attend a scene to ensure it was safe, though the subject this time was a small woman in her mid-20’s who wanted to leave assisted housing, and was only a risk to herself. The ambulance had to be pestered to turn up after it became clear she would have to be sectioned. Perhaps the most egregious example of the police being requested in lieu of paramedics was a discussion between the control room and an ambulance crew who wanted someone to section a woman in her own home. This was at the time, and remains, highly illegal, explicitly against Section 136(1A) of the Mental Health Act 1983, and despite being informed of this multiple times, the ambulance crew continued to ask for police assistance.

While the police have to come at the call of an ambulance, the obligation of the police to do work which realistically falls under the responsibility of healthcare workers is a strain on the limited resources the police have. Constables often have to remain with a member of the public who is suffering from a mental health episode while an ambulance can be found to transport them, which commonly takes upwards of an hour, and transporting a subject in a police vehicle is strongly discouraged due to assumed liability should anything occur during the transportation process. This matter was exacerbated when the NHS strikes began in 2022, resulting in the reduction of ambulance services and response. We were informed in a briefing one day that ambulances would only accept Category 1 (the most urgent) calls, and that we would need to make other arrangements for less severe medical needs. Ironically, this display of a nation without ambulances proved a great experiment, as the response time improved with a far more narrow lane of responsibilities, and police were able to more efficiently receive ambulance support when needed. Much like how the army’s assumption of border force’s duties resulted in greater efficiency, so too did the NHS strikes show how inefficient and bloated the ambulance response truly was.

This is not to say that gross inefficiency lies with every institution other than the police. Aside from the standard uniformed constables, there are a number of departments which constitute the police, some of which are necessary and important – CID, CSI, SARC – and others which seem to exist as an idea which looked good on paper, but ultimately serve less utility than they do inconvenience. Wiltshire Police’s Volume Crime Team (VCT), for instance, exists allegedly to lighten the workload of frontline officers by allowing them to pass lengthy complex investigations (typically revolving around domestic violence) to a dedicated team who focus wholly on these investigations, without the distraction of emergency calls and response. However, when this measure was implemented, there was a great deal of confusion as to what exactly constituted an investigation sufficiently complex enough to offload it onto the VCT, resulting in investigations being shuffled back and forth between the VCT and the frontline officers. Additionally, the VCT was pressured by higher-ups to accept menial investigations, also to lighten the workload of frontline officers, resulting in the VCT itself being overworked. I learned from a senior colleague that this distribution of work was a replication of the now-defunct Local Crime Team (LCT), which had been disbanded several years prior in a series of reforms. As such, the actual remit of the VCT appeared to be muddled, having been formed with two competing objectives; to dedicate time to complex investigations frontline officers didn’t have the time to do, and to handle the myriad of menial investigations frontline officers didn’t have the time to do.

Having served both frontline and on VCT, I am sympathetic to both sides. A frontline officer – at least in Wiltshire Police – is expected to complete an investigation up to its handoff to the CPS, including case file preparation, with the logic being that too many cooks spoil the broth, and this method has the least chance of a loss of information or context. The exact constitution of a charge file is complicated (look up “MG Forms”) and may be needed to be completed within twenty-four hours, amidst the other duties of that officer. There are frequently flow charts posted around the station to assist officers in this task, but as I found myself, these may be outdated or incorrect as a result of frequent policy and legal changes. Even when the chart is correct, the forms themselves must be completed in great detail and meticulously, or else must be redone entirely. It is not uncommon for an officer to have to completely redo an MG5 or an MG6 multiple times before the file is accepted. When I first joined, I was taught how to fill out an MG3, but within a year, that form was replaced by a CM01 as part of a move to an integrated system with the CPS, known as the Two-Way Interface (TWIF). After using TWIF several times, I and many others found it to be clunky, unreliable, and far more time-consuming than simply sending the electronic files over manually. To make matters worse, the CPS themselves did not have full access to TWIF, negating any benefit it was designed to have.

It would make sense to assume this issue could be resolved by having a specialised department to prepare the charge files. After all, frontline officers are typically men of action, not men of bureaucracy, and this task would be better suited to an office worker with a deep understanding of the required forms and documents. Unfortunately, such a department already exists. The Trial Preparation Unit (TPU) evaluates the readiness of a charge file after an officer has completed it, and will either send it back with amendments that must be made, or approve it and send it to CPS (who may also send it back with additional requirements). No two TPU workers are the same, and the required amendments are usually unpredictable, with some requiring far more detail than others even on very simple cases. If you can imagine having to write an English essay for a teacher plucked from your childhood at random, without any prior knowledge of which teacher you will be writing for, you will have a general understanding of the level of uncertainty an average officer faces when preparing a charge file. The mercy I faced was that the TPU staff I had to work with were usually very kind, with one going so far as to video call me and walk me through the errors I had made. This does, of course, raise the question as to why the TPU cannot prepare the entire file themselves given their experience and the unpreparedness of the majority of officers, and with the introduction of TWIF to Wiltshire Police, why the TPU need exist at all if they are merely a box-ticking middleman.

An often overlooked fact is that there are many organisations involved with the prosecution of criminals, even if they are all nominally “on the same side”. The police are separate from the CPS, despite their close working relationship, with the CPS being downstream from the police in the process and far less visible in the public perception. Unfortunately, this working structure lends itself to the police picking up the blame for the actions of the CPS, who have both their own legitimate working pressures and individual interests which put them at odds with the police. Contrary to popular belief, it is almost always the CPS who choose whether or not to prosecute, whether officially or practically, as even if a positive charging decision arises from a police sergeant, the CPS may simply refuse to take on the case on evidential grounds. A case which frustrated me significantly involved domestic abuse, in which the abundant evidence available was more than sufficient. While there were admittedly issues with the police handling of the situation – body worn footage of the arrest wasn’t saved by the arresting officer and the interview of the suspect wasn’t labelled or organised by the interviewing officer, among other issues – I managed to resolve them through tireless work and procure all of the required evidence for a prosecution, including photographs of the injuries and the 999 tape of the victim sounding distressed and giving a clear description of the incident. The CPS declined to prosecute for reasons I still don’t understand, wasting months of my time and giving the impression to the public that the police are incapable of resolving domestic violence matters.

Similarly overlooked by the public is the fact that England and Wales does not have a singular unified police force, but rather has a number of forces which collaborate when required. Each are responsible for policing a jurisdiction, with Wiltshire Police’s being the county of Wiltshire. A common problem for Wiltshire is that of “county lines”, which is the transportation of drugs and weapons across counties (a substantial amount of violent criminal activity in Swindon can be traced back to Bristol or London), with youths being the most vulnerable to being groomed into this criminal lifestyle. In such a case, collaboration across forces is vital, but this proves oftentimes to be difficult. Each force has its own problems and pressures, and no force is eager to take additional work from another jurisdiction. The earliest jobs I partook in involved my tutor and myself having to investigate fraud in Bristol because one of the victims had a Wiltshire address; my tutor was eager to pass this back to Avon and Somerset Police as soon as possible. In a later investigation, my tutor and myself had to travel to Bristol to conduct a house search of a person arrested in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, something with which Avon and Somerset Police failed to assist us despite their promises to do so. Rather than fluid co-operation between various forces, collaboration takes the form of pass-the-parcel, with no one wanting to take on more responsibility than they absolutely have to.

While this is not ideal, and certainly ought to be improved, it is not hard to see why this is the case. As previously stated, public trust in the police is incredibly low, and it is very common to see demands from the public for the police to stop interfering and generally do less, while simultaneously, there is a demand for the police to crack down ever more severely on crime. The attitude from the senior elements of the police forces of England and Wales is that officers ought to do more to safeguard society as a whole, and so more and more obligations are placed upon them. In this situation, an officer doing his utmost will be buried under workloads he cannot handle, involving more paperwork than is reasonable, without any support from colleagues who themselves do not wish to be snowed under, and will likely face harsh backlash from the public when carrying out the requisite actions. I have seen many officers use their discretion to refrain from the fullest possible investigation, and was advised that if I didn’t do the same, my workload would become unbearable. I found out for myself that this was true when several of my completed tasks were returned to me for further action due to the wording I used in writing up the final report.

This point especially hit home when I was asked to review a task relating to a parent who had called the police regarding their aggressive twelve year old child, and it was discovered that there was no appropriate paperwork for a previously reported assault. When I phoned the reporting party and mentioned it, they said that they had reported an assault, and would like it recorded. After an hour of digging through two-year old police logs, I realised that a colleague of mine whom I still consider to be an outstanding officer had dealt with that situation, and had made a final report that the incident had been “no physical contact”, but had just been a verbal argument. I understood why; because the child had pushed the parent, I now had to fill out a Public Protection Notification (PPN), which involved asking invasive questions of the parents, writing a summary of the state of their house, my thoughts on the appropriateness of their parenting, whether or not there was any risk of further harm or abuse, and whether there needed to be any further action to safeguard the child or parent. This report then needed to be sent to my sergeant for review, who then had to write his own addition to the report, before it could be sent to a board for review and assessment, all within a single busy shift. I did not blame my colleague for deciding an upset pre-teen child did not warrant this level of police involvement.

There are a myriad of issues with the police and its current status, but there is one common thread that runs throughout everything I have said so far. Ultimately, the issue is fairly simple; far too much, and far too little. From my experience, the demand on the police is excessive, both internally and externally. The officers on the ground have to respond to emergencies with an awareness of a hundred protocols and procedures, fill out an increasing mountain of paperwork at the scene, and make no mistakes in doing so, all while facing distinct hostility from the public. The more backlash the police receive, the more the think-tanks and senior staff decide that the solution is more paperwork, protocols, and policies. New measures are implemented frequently and without consultation of the officers on the ground, resulting in confusion and inefficient adoption of new practices for measures which were previously working perfectly fine. Every other organisation and institution relies on the police and expects them to come to their beck and call, and yet despises them for asserting any degree of authority or laying reasonable boundaries. Between these hectic demands, the same officers must prepare case files for the CPS, keep in contact with victims, send reports, and do so without delay.

All the while, there are not enough resources for the police, from the number of available officers to the number of available vehicles. I can recall a number of times when we ran short of evidence bags, and more than once the station in Chippenham was unable to print physical copies of documents (an expected and encouraged practice) for a week after we ran out of printer toner, and we were unable to locate any more. For the first month, my work phone and laptop were inoperable, and my colleague’s radio regularly ceased working for no apparent reason mid-conversation. Our local force database glitched several times, causing a loss of work, and at one point, shut down for two hours, preventing any desk work being done, including urgent paperwork. When I asked if there was a workaround, I was told that there wasn’t, and so we sat doing nothing until the matter was fixed.

Of all the examples at my disposal, there is one which I believe highlights everything I have mentioned throughout this article. While working on VCT, I was handed an investigation regarding harassment by a man toward his estranged daughter. The father had travelled from Wales to Wiltshire on two occasions over the course of three days, and on the second occasion, had brought along his grandson, who was physically imposing, to bang insistently on the door. The grandson was arrested at the scene, while the grandfather was not. After interviewing the grandson, I determined I would need to interview the father, too, and because he had returned home, I asked South Wales Police to conduct a voluntary interview, rather than travelling all the way to Wales or having him travel back to Wiltshire. My first contact with South Wales Police was on 01/04/2023, where I explained the situation and forwarded them an interview plan as well as a comprehensive outline of the chronology of the investigation and the relevant details. Everything seemed to be going well, and I was informed that an interview would be arranged. For the next two months, there was no progress, with the responses ranging from “this is not a South Wales Police matter” to “do you wish for us to investigate this?”, and even “how can I contact the victim?” This was an immensely frustrating exchange, as no matter how clearly I explained that the sole task I wanted from South Wales Police was for a simple interview, I would always receive a response seemingly confirming that the interview would be conducted, and subsequently I would be informed that there was an issue. I believe that the higher-ups didn’t want to take on any further responsibility for what they considered to be a matter outside of their jurisdiction, and refused to undertake one of the easiest tasks of which an officer is capable. On the effective date of my resignation on 28/06/2023, there had still been no progress, and I left the force without this easily resolved investigation being concluded. Before I did, I wrote an email to the Chief Constable of South Wales Police, Jeremy Vaughan, entitled “Co-operation between Wiltshire Police and South Wales Police”, in which I outlined my concerns and issues with this matter. I have yet to receive a response.

From my personal experience, there are many problems within policing, a lot of which are not limited to the police themselves. The demands on the police are excessive and constantly changing and growing, the resources available to the police to fulfil their duties are insufficient, and there is reluctance within and without the force to engage with certain aspects of the job for fear of becoming overwhelmed. The police are met with contradictory demands from every angle, and the lumbering machine of bureaucracy that governs its behaviours and priorities struggles to keep up with the feedback it receives, putting it at odds not only with the public, but with its own staff. Much of the time, the police forces really are fighting each other and themselves more than they are the criminals and ne’er-do-wells of our society. The administration is sloppy and unreliable (a sentiment shared by not only constables I spoke to, but Inspectors, too), the equipment and infrastructure is old and in desperate need of updating, and there is frustration within the ranks at how inefficiently everything is run. This is not limited to the police, but is prevalent in the NHS, the CPS, and the multitude of branches, organisations, and public services which are expected to provide robust and vital services to each and every member of society. When attending court on 01/02/2024, I learned that the prosecuting barrister hadn’t received bodyworn footage regarding the incident for which I was summoned as a witness, the CPS having not passed it on to her. She left me to see if it could be accessed, and I was allowed to leave without providing testimony, presumably because they had managed to procure the relevant evidence.

From everything that has been said in this article, what validates the Leftist assertions and criticisms of the police? Certainly, there can be laziness and incompetence, and I will not shy away from the fact that I have personally witnessed unacceptable basic mistakes made by my colleagues, but this is not the crux of the issue. These are individual issues, and the problems plaguing policing are much more institutional, genuinely institutional. The obligations placed on the police far exceed the duties with which they ought to be charged – protecting our rights and liberties, and maintaining public order – and their unique position of being unable to say no when called upon exacerbates this fundamental fault, something of which every other public service is all-too-happy to take advantage; dealing with bullying online and offline is passed from schools to the police, dealing with misbehaving children is passed from the parents to the police, and dealing with poor interpersonal relationships is passed from individuals to the police. The police are no more corrupt, bureaucratic, or mismanaged than any other public sector organisation, but they are far more scrutinised, and are far more susceptible to criticism, both fairly and unfairly. Wiltshire Police may be put in special measures, and the calls to defund them may be touted without social penalty, but the same cannot be said of the NHS or the CPS, of which even moderate suggestions of defunding would be met with screeching accusations of extremism, even when prior experience has shown us that this would be greatly beneficial to our society. Even such examples where the Leftist assertion is taken at face value, such as removing the requirement of the police to deal with mental health crises in favour of an ambulance crew, would be met with an overwhelming rejection both by the public and by the senior members of the emergency services.

Ultimately, the accusations levelled at the police are surface-level, and a career of even a couple of years as a constable is sufficient to learn that. The very same people who cry for police reform would never allow any actual attempt at reform, and their suggestions on how to treat such instances are not so different from the measures taken from the think-tanks who do make the decisions. The path agreed both by the bosses and the activists is for more responsibility, more red tape, more paperwork, more and more and more against a reduced budget, while the working men and women of the police simply want to get on with their jobs. Wiltshire Police has not benefited from the constant addition of duties and the shuffling and changing of protocols for a worse result, and I highly doubt any police force has. If it is to get better, to solve crimes at a higher rate, to clear the backlog and stop wasting everyone’s time and money, it needs to be streamlined, and it needs to improve its transparency so that everyone can see where the real problems lay, rather than the sensationalist lies being fed to them by activists.

Once again, the Left is correct; there is a problem with policing, and we need to strip away the redundant and excessive elements of it. Less policing, at least in areas that aren’t fundamental to the existence of a night watchman state, is the way forward. Now, if only the political Left could stop advocating for more onerous protections for wrongdoers, more aggressive laws to punish the average citizen, and more spiteful responsibilities and restrictions on officers, thereby bloating the police force and causing the very problem they claim they want to fight, they might, for once, be correct for the right reason.