Police

Imagine you lived in a country which last year had 3,000 allegations of police corruption. Worse, imagine that of these 3,000 allegations only half of them were properly investigated — because for police officers in this country, corruption was becoming routine. Imagine that the police increasingly used their powers to crack down not on criminals but on anyone who dared speak out against them. What sort of a country is this? Well, it’s Britain I’m afraid — where what was once the finest, most honest service in the world is in danger of becoming rotten. Some of this was revealed in a little-noticed report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, which

While researching Taking its Toll, a report written with Policy Exchange on the regressive impact of property crime, some troubling facts became clear. In the year to March 2014 there were an estimated 6.85 million victims of theft in England and Wales, representing 1 in 10 of the population. Yet a significant proportion of property crime is not reported to police: a third of burglaries and 90 per cent of shoplifting incidents go unreported. In a climate of heightened threats to our national security, the police are struggling to keep up. Last year around 19,000 bicycles were reported stolen to the Metropolitan Police yet only 666 (3.5 per cent) of

Hard as it may be to imagine, dear reader, once upon a time the police managed to fulfil their obligations to society without resorting to electrocuting children. The sky did not fall. Teenage ruffians did not run amok. Life went on, much as it had before. Changed times, of course. These days, the carrying of Tasers has become increasingly normal. And when the police are armed as a matter of course, it’s no surprise that they are increasingly likely to deploy force. Even on children. And pensioners. The youngest person Tasered by the police in England and Wales in 2013 was 14 years old; the oldest a menacing 82 years old.

There’s a danger that in what follows your columnist may seem to be recommending an attitude. Please don’t think that. It’s true that I would never shop a friend for drink-driving — but frankly I doubt I’d shop a friend for murder. This column isn’t about what we should do if we know a friend drink-drives — responses will be various and variously arguable — but about shock at my own serious misreading of my countrymen. I was tooling along in our Mini on the first Saturday of the year, with BBC Radio 2 playing. It was Graham Norton’s fizzy and engaging morning show, where a regular feature is his ‘Grill

Spectator Money is out, with ideas on how to make it, spend it and even how to be seen spending it. Freddy Gray looks at the ‘social economy’ – think tax loopholes for financiers of politically favoured endeavours; while Camilla Swift peruses credit cards such as Kanye West’s ‘African American Express’ and the Dubai First Royale, ‘studded with diamonds. Bring it on, Sheikh Sugardaddy.’ Spare a thought, though, for the inconspicuous consumers – or at least, the wannabes. This segment took a hit last week in a joint operation dubbed ‘Onymous’, in which the FBI, Europol and friends arrested 17 alleged web-administrators and vendors and shuttered dozens of sites peddling child pornography, weapons, fake Danish passports, hacking services and so on. ‘Cash, drugs, gold and silver

Settling down to watch 24 Hours in Police Custody, the new Channel 4 programme brought to us by the team behind the excellent 24 Hours in A&E, I was expecting some proper gripping telly. What I did not envisage was to be further educated about the level of plonkery that some men are capable of. And I don’t just mean the criminals. The custody sergeant this week was checking in a 60-year old man who was under arrest for an alleged assault and kidnap. The case was called ‘honour-based violence’, which usually refer to crimes against women and girls perpetrated by religious maniacs. There are countless such cases in the UK: revenge attacks on women who refuse to

The release of Harry Roberts, the man responsible for shooting dead three policemen in 1966, has sparked a vigorous debate about whether he should have stayed in prison until he died. The idea that ‘life should mean life’ for anyone who kills a policeman is a police-pleasing policy that the Home Secretary promised she would implement in a speech to the Police Federation last year. But a more interesting aspect  of the Roberts story is what it shows about the changing nature of Britain’s career criminals, and the values — if that is the right word for them — that they share. Until quite recently, criminals in this country did

Sometimes I read things that really get on my wick, and last week was one of those times. A new, ‘definitive’ 20-year study has ‘demolished the argument that the drug [cannabis] is safe’, according to the Daily Mail. Has it, though? There are various things wrong with that claim. One, no study is ‘definitive’; two, the research was not a ’20-year study’, but a review of other studies carried out over the last 20 years. There are lots other things wrong with the coverage, too, including the startlingly ridiculous claim that cannabis is ‘as addictive as heroin’. Even according to the research itself, less than one-tenth of people who try

At its peak, the Stasi employed one agent for every 165 East Germans. Spying was a labour-intensive business then — you needed to monitor telephone calls, steam open mail, plant a bug, follow suspects on shopping trips and then write reports for the KGB. The advantage was that, human nature being what it is, the Stasi would probably succeed in gathering dirt on all but the most saintly. The drawback: trying to gather files on so many millions could almost bankrupt a government. How much easier it is nowadays. By interrogating someone’s mobile phone, the police can gather more information than the Stasi could dream of compiling. The modern smartphone

At least every other time a ticket inspector boards a train or bus I’m on, I pretend I can’t find my ticket or Oyster card. I then miraculously find it at the very last second before my stop. Why? Pure revenge. I hate this nasty group of sadistic jobsworths and, having been stung by them myself, take great pleasure in distracting them for long enough to allow those who are fare dodging to get away without being spotted. The smugness of ticket inspectors becomes unbearable in the face of the chronically bad service on London transport. My blood boils when I spot a bank of uniformed inspectors, flanked by police officers, when disembarking