Police are there to enforce the law

Writing in this newspaper, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, welcomed the agreement of police chiefs to instruct their officers to investigate every crime. It is a sign of the times that it is even necessary to ask them to take offences like burglary and theft seriously. As the Home Secretary said, it erodes public trust in the police if victims feel they have been ignored and the violation of their home or person deemed trivial.

It boils down to a question of priorities. Critics say focusing on so-called low-level offences risks taking officers away from investigating rape or domestic assault. But no one is suggesting that. The police should be diverted from delving into matters that are not even crimes at all. 

Why, for instance, was a Conservative councillor in Northampton arrested for sending a tweet about the way police treated a Christian street preacher? Why, for that matter, were the police confronting the preacher at all over his opposition to LBGT pride campaigning? What business is it of theirs to investigate an opinion because someone is offended by it? This cavalier approach to liberties and free speech needs to end.

The police are there to enforce the law not proselytise on behalf of campaign organisations like Stonewall. Sir Mark Rowley’s promise to stop Met officers waving rainbow flags or wearing pride badges is at least a start. Police say they have too much to do looking into hate speech and acting as glorified social workers and lack time to investigate thefts. But if they stopped intruding into areas that the great majority would not consider criminal acts, they might restore public faith in a policing service once rightly regarded as the world’s best.

The agreement with the police is that an investigation should be proportionate and that “reasonable” evidence should exist to justify the deployment of officers. Mrs Braverman should set out what it is unreasonable to investigate and for the police to concentrate on activity that most people regard as crimes.

The Home Secretary said it is “vital for victims and for wider society that perpetrators face justice”. However, there is a large backlog of cases in the courts which will grow larger still if more criminals are brought to book. Victims of crime will be pleased to see the police taking their cases seriously but will take little comfort if the culprits get away unpunished because of shortcomings elsewhere in the system.