Former Met chief questions police time spent on non-crime incidents

In a ground-breaking report from Policy Exchange think-tank (published Nov 25)‚ the recording of non-crime hate events takes up too much police time — about 60k hours per year spent on 13k incidents

The debate heated up after Essex Policeʼs investigation of Allison Pearson‚ a well-known Telegraph writer‚ who got a home-visit from officers on Remembrance Sunday about her year-old social-media post. Even though they dropped the case later‚ it brought up questions about police priorities

Lord Hogan-Howe‚ ex-Met commissioner says the original idea came from good intentions: to track possible racist attacks after Stephen Lawrenceʼs case; however the rules implementation didnt get proper discussion. “Its up to Parliament not the College of Policing to decide on these matters‚“ he points out

Essex Police shows some eye-opening stats: they log 21‚5 non-crime incidents per 100 officers annually (thats twice the UK average and ten-times more than West Yorkshire). The current system lets officers record incidents based on perceived unfriendliness or dislike — which many think sets the bar too low

We are talking about non-crimes‚ these are non-criminal incidents

The think-tank suggests a complete re-write of rules to protect free-speech better and keep cops focused on real crime. They found that many police departments dont apply guidelines right‚ often taking a “when-in-doubt-record“ approach

Andy Cooke‚ His Majestys Chief Inspector notes that officers sometimes must take actions that “go against common-sense“. For example: they logged cases about someone refusing a handshake and even a rough haircut after Ukraine war talk

Yvette Cooper‚ Home Secretary looks into changing rules for anti-Semitism and Islamophobia cases‚ while No 10 says Sir Keir Starmer wants police to focus on public safety and street protection instead