GRAHAM GRANT: Public confidence in the police is dwindling. Its time to end wokery and let officers get back to the job theyre paid for

IT must be heartening for rapists to know that police chiefs want them to feel a ‘strong sense of belonging’ – though their victims won’t be so happy.

Top brass have defended the practice of allowing rapists and rape suspects to declare their own sex or gender, claiming it fosters ‘respect, integrity, fairness and human rights’.

This might appear to be a step through the looking glass, but it’s the culmination of many years of dangerously wrong-headed policy-making.

As we revealed at the weekend, Police Scotland intends to maintain its ties with LGBT Youth Scotland, the controversial gay and trans rights charity.

It has been drafted in to train call handlers despite the fact that it produced a ‘coming out’ guide for schoolchildren which was co-written by a convicted paedophile.

Police Scotland Chief Constable Jo Farrell has been accused of wasting time on right-on rhetoric

Scandals

Children in Need has cut its funding for the group, which has been mired in any number of scandals and was once led by a man who carried out a vile sex attack on a baby boy (and advised the SNP government on issues such as legalising same-sex adoption).

None of this was enough for Police Scotland to stop giving the charity cash, even though its detectives carried out the investigation which nailed its former boss, James Rennie, and his accomplices – members of one of Britain’s worst paedophile rings.

Is it any wonder that the force is now espousing radical trans ideology given that it’s in thrall to a discredited outfit which has been accused of ‘brainwashing’ pupils with pronoun badges, and encouraging them to sign LGBT rainbow flags?

The expression of concern for rapists’ feelings came in a letter from police to a Holyrood committee investigating a petition from Edinburgh policy analysis group Murray Blackburn Mackenzie (MBM).

It objected to the fact that an offender who was born male but who identifies as female would be recorded in crime statistics as female.

MBM was right to warn that allowing men to identify as women would distort those figures, though it’s remarkable that such an argument should have to be made – surely police could have worked this out for themselves?

Bizarrely, MSPs have been discussing the petition for three years – a glacial rate of progress even by Holyrood standards.

It was in the course of this snail’s pace probe that police confirmed that the ‘sex/gender identification of individuals who come into contact with the police will be based on how they present or how they self-declare’.

We’re told that this ‘practice adheres to legislative compliance, operational need and the values of respect, integrity, fairness and human rights, whilst promoting a strong sense of belonging’.

Well, that clears it all up then, but what about the victims – who would presumably take a different view, and are similarly owed a sense of ‘belonging’ and fairness?

Their rights have been downgraded over many years of liberal hand-wringing and kowtowing to a bonkers equalities agenda which long ago spiralled out of control.

Back in 2016, MSPs declared that criminals should no longer be called ‘offenders’ in the Scottish justice system to avoid upsetting them, so that murderers and rapists would be known as ‘service users’ or even ‘customers’.

The word ‘offender’ can often ‘encourage stigma, making reintegration back into the community harder’ – or so the argument ran.

The change won Scottish Government backing after it was recommended by the justice committee, though in the real world this bilge has never caught on. How many of us would talk about our house being broken into by a ‘customer’?

And there’s now a housebreaking on average once an hour – so there are clearly a lot of ‘service users’ around.

As far back as 2008, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland (HMICS), as it was then, demanded a more modern, ‘customer-focused’ police force.

HMICS called for ‘a move away from thinking about service users as victims, witnesses, suspects, or criminals (and all the other categories of people who need police help) to the idea of providing customer services’.

So, the rot set in many years ago, on the SNP’s watch and even before the launch of the single force.

Those 2008 guidelines also stipulated that when someone phones the police, the call handler should tell them what they can expect from the service.

Evidence

Now Police Scotland, which was set up in 2013, has adopted that advice, but in the case of minor crimes what the ‘customer’ can expect is not very much, or nothing at all.

That is because the force has effectively opted out of fully investigating lower-level offences where there isn’t an obvious lead – though it’s hard to find one when officers don’t turn up to look for evidence.

This is known euphemistically as a ‘proportionate response’ – but for thousands of crimes a year which are deemed to be ‘minor’ the response will be zero.

Meanwhile, Chief Constable Jo Farrell has been wasting time on right-on rhetoric, such as her apology on behalf of police to the LGBT community for enforcing laws which ‘criminalised love’. She said she was sorry for ‘recent and historical injustices’ suffered by ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and intersex’ people.

In social media posts, she said she was ‘sorry for the serious and long-lasting physical and mental pain and harm caused’ by policing which ‘contributed to… mistreatment and prejudice’.

It can’t have been a shock when former senior officers accused Ms Farrell of engaging in a publicity stunt and said her apology had ‘further alienated officers and staff’.

Laws are made by parliament and enforced by police – who don’t get a vote on whether they should be implemented.

Insult

Ms Farrell’s apology was illogical, and only added insult to injury for the much-depleted rank-and-file who had been told by Ms Farrell’s predecessor – shortly before he retired – that policing was institutionally racist, misogynist, and discriminatory.

Meanwhile, crime is rising and for some categories of crime fewer perpetrators are being brought to justice.

Figures last month showed Police Scotland recorded 8,838 housebreakings in the year to the end of June, equivalent to more than 24 homes being targeted every day – and nearly three-quarters went unsolved.

Police Scotland recorded a total of 300,070 crimes compared to 292,702 in the year to June 2023.

Officer numbers are at their lowest level since 2008 – when those daft guidelines about calling criminals ‘customers’ were first mooted – which helps to explain the absence of bobbies pounding the pavements.

Last year the SNP government’s own research showed record levels of violent crime, theft and vandalism are not being reported because the public has no confidence the police will respond.

That confidence will dwindle even further and eventually disappear completely unless woke policing is brought to a rapid end – and officers get back to the job they’re paid to do.