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Policing |
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Policing in London requires a radical
overall. For most people the frontline in the "war on terror" is not
Baghdad or Kabul but outside their own front door. We must win the
battle; fear of crime, fear of reporting crime, fear of giving evidence
have no place in our city. Good policing is not rocket science, the
answers lie in getting the police back on the beat and deterring crime
in the first place.
We must learn from the past as well as embrace new technology to defeat
criminals. We will get the police out of their stations and cars on to
the street. We will reintroduce the police box, place them every few
streets and ensure that they are staffed 24 hours a day. We also want
the police to take over current local authority parking enforcement
operations and (in up-skilling the job) make this part of the visible
police presence on the streets.
Currently the Metropolitan Police screens out (does not follow up) 53%
of all crimes reported to them, and up to 90% of car crime. Often it is
impossible to get hold of a police officer at all because the phones
don't work or calls are not answered. This situation is completely
unacceptable. The £3.3bn budget of the Met, equates to about a £100,000
street! I do not believe it currently gives taxpayers value for money.
Our approach is as follows: |
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Prevention first
We believe that crime prevention rather than crime detection should be the
main focus of policing. We need to design crime out of our society by
giving all young people the prospect of successful life not a criminal
career. At the heart of this is improving education and opportunities
for the most disadvantaged, and also showing people that crime just does
not pay.
"Know a policeman"
For most people, policemen are remote figures driving around in police
cars. We believe that crime prevention starts with police officers who
know their community and whose community knows them. As a priority,
every policeman and woman will be allocated a street and will
be expected to get know the people who live there. Every resident will
be informed who their local police officer is and given his or her
direct telephone number.
Defeating crime
"Zero tolerance" of minor crime is key to preventing people from sliding
into a life of more serious crime. If laws are not enforced, if people
believe they can get away with criminality, then defeating crime becomes
vastly more difficult. We must dramatically improve the performance of
the Metropolitan Police, whose officers only average under seven arrests
a year.
Keeping criminals in prison
We must prevent crime by keeping career criminals in prison. If people
choose a criminal career, it simply makes no sense to let them out of
prison to re-offend. We believe we must end the criminal justice "merry
go round". People need to have every chance to avoid becoming a career
criminal, but those who do so must realise that they are choosing to
spend their life behind bars. Being "soft" on sentencing has a
tremendous cost to society in terms of the new crimes committed and
effort wasted in dealing with repeat offenders.
Protecting London
We believe it is vital that the people and infrastructure of London are
properly protected against terrorist attack. As a first priority, we
need to ensure that we target and deal with threats. We believe this
requires a fundamental change in defence thinking, away from armed
services geared to fight the wars of the last two hundred years to a new
smaller, integrated force that be properly resourced to destroy the
terrorist threat.
We
believe that London is highly vulnerable, and to contribute to our
defence we must also make proper
provision should we fail to stop terrorists acting. We believe that
woefully insufficient resources and effort are currently put into civil
defence preparations in London. Rather than waste money buying
equipment to fight yesterday's battles, we
believe that resources would be far better spent on ensuring that the
emergency services in London ( and the rest of United Kingdom) are fully
equipped and prepared to deal with conventional and NBC terrorist
attack.
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