Liberal Democrat plans will bring extra police to South Wales

Freedom Central — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:08:09 +0000

New Liberal Democrat plans for policing across the UK, will lead to an extra 63 officers for South Wales Police, as part of an expansion of 3000 extra officers across the UK, the Cardiff Central Liberal Democrat, Jenny Willott has said.

Commenting on the initiative, Jenny said

“The only proven way to tackle crime and the fear of crime is by putting more bobbies on the beat.

“But police force numbers in Wales have fallen over the last five years. Under Labour and Tory plans, they are likely to fall even further.

“With the new police officers the Liberal Democrats are pledging, South Wales Police will be able to catch 1,600 extra criminals and solve over 1,500 more crimes every year.”

“Labour and the Tories talk tough on crime, but it is only the Lib Dems who will put more police on the ground, tackling crime and the misery it causes.”

I’m almost as cool as Chris Grayling

Matt O'Grady — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:26:12 +0000

The Tories announcements on crime seem to get stranger and stranger as time goes on. First they said they wanted to hug a hoody, then they wanted to take his phone off him. Now the advice is give him a wide berth because he’ll probably put ‘a cap in yo ass’ (or something like that).

Apparently, Chris Grayling MP, the Shadow Home Secretary, thinks that parts of Britain are now like hit US TV show “The Wire”. Which leads me to one of two conclusions:

Chris Grayling has never actually watched “The Wire”.
Chris Grayling is an idiot.

Please note that these two conclusions are not mutually exclusive.

Mr Grayling believes that the police are now fighting an “urban war” against gangs and that violence in society has become “a norm and not an exception”. Scary stuff. There are indeed some trouble spots within the country, this isn’t anything new. Some urban areas have significant problems with drugs, violence and guns that this government has failed to eradicate and more does need to be done.

……but the Wire? Seriously?

The Wire is a fictional programme, but is set in the very real city of Baltimore in Maryland. So let’s do some comparisons. The Baltimore Metropolitan Area has a population of around 2.7 million people, similar to the 2.5 million people of Greater Manchester, so it’s probably a fairly good comparison.

In 2006/07 the total number of Homicides in Greater Manchester was 59.

In 2007 in Baltimore, the same figure was 282.

This means that Baltimore has a homicide rate that is around 477% higher.

The Manchester stats also show something else. That those most likely to be homicide victims were white men aged between 36-50. Yes, clearly gang members. It also shows that the majority of suspects fit the same profile. In the Wire, it tends to be young, black men that end up being shot, but is this really the case in Britain? Young black men are more likely to be the victims of crime, we know this. But thankfully we do not have the situation that exists in America where gangs really are a problem in the way Chris Grayling is claiming we do here.

All this shows just how out of touch the Tories are with modern Britain. These kind of quotes may play well with Daily Mail readers who believe that urban crime is someone smashing their ornamental flower pots, but this kind of talk is not going to help those who are really suffering in our cities.

I’m not going to claim that I know the situation first hand. I’m some kid from a small English town where it made the front page when someone was shot with a BB gun. But I know that overhyping the problems and giving TV show based sound bites for some cheap publicity isn’t going help.

There’s still one thing the Tories are quiet on though – what are they going to do to sort all these problems they’ve identified?

Maybe I’ll take Chris Grayling a bit more seriously when he answers that.

Freedom Central » crime

Liberal Democrat plans will bring extra police to South Wales

I’m almost as cool as Chris Grayling