Cop out: who do the police serve today?

In June, the Metropolitan Police – the largest in the UK – was put into special measures after scandals relating to conduct and security. Forces in Greater Manchester, Cleveland, Gloucestershire, Staffordshire and Wiltshire are also in special measures, with Greater Manchester’s new chief constable even bringing in rules including compulsory shaving and shoe-shining to whip officers into shape.

Why does there seem to be such failures in policing? Some say the problem lies in the ever-expanding role of the police. On the one hand, officers can seem more like community activists instead of law enforcers – dancing at Pride parades and tweeting about inclusive language. On the other, new government legislation has greatly expanded police powers, with officers expected to crack down on protests as well as fight ‘offensive speech’ online.

Concerns about heavy-handed policing were raised in the shocking case of the strip search of Child Q, leading to a report showing the Met conducted 650 strip searches of children between 2018 and 2021. Yet a separate 2022 report showed that police failed to solve a single theft in eight out of 10 neighbourhoods – effectively ‘decriminalising theft’, according to the victims’ commissioner, Vera Baird.

Some have also raised questions of bias within police priorities, contrasting the aggressive approach to lockdown breakers with the hands-off approach around anti-racism protests. The failure of police to investigate and prosecute grooming gangs for fear they would be called racist raises further questions about courage in the police force. Rape and domestic abuse convictions are abysmally low, yet knife crime keeps climbing.

Is too much time being spent policing speech, rather than tackling material crime? Has policing become politicised, or was it ever thus? Are today’s forces too concerned with enforcing a particular political view, or is intervention on such matters broadly welcomed? How distant should we keep the coppers – are we partially to blame for being too keen to shout ‘illegal’ at things we don’t like? Ultimately, who are today’s police force really serving?

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