RUTHFULLY YOURS

In Lawless London, the total attacks involving a knife or bladed instrument recorded in the year to March 2018 rose to 40,147. Excluding the victims of terrorist attacks, there was a 12 per cent rise in murders, but you can bet that total will soar once they factor in the summer bloodbath.

It’s not just London. Barbaric incidents, which once felt reassuringly far away, creep closer to our our own hollyhock-fringed doorsteps. A mass shooting at a street party in Manchester injured 10 people, including two children. Even the most vulnerable are not immune.

The number of vicious assaults on the over-65s has leapt a sickening 258 per cent in the past decade. In 2017, 26,474 pensioners were the victims of violent crime. Iris Warner, a retired bank clerk in north-west London, was beaten in the face by a burglar wielding a blunt instrument until she was unrecognisable to her own family. Iris is 90 years old. Looking at a picture of her savagely bruised face, a study in raw anguish, you think what you would like to see done to the brute who hurt her so.

And what exactly is the Metropolitan Police doing to find Mrs Warner’s vile attacker? Well, we do know that the Met takes hate crime very seriously; unfortunately, beating a nonagenarian unconscious isn’t the right kind of hate crime.

My faith in the forces of law and order reached an all-time low recently when Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, solemnly announced that Boris Johnson would not be prosecuted for his Telegraph column opposing a ban on the burka.

“I spoke to my very experienced officers who deal with hate crime,” Ms Dick told the BBC Asian Network, “I can tell you that my preliminary view, having spoken to them, is that what Mr Johnson said would not reach the bar for a criminal offence.”

If a police officer had made such a remark, Ms Dick said, “as an organisation we would want to assess whether a crime had been committed. We have quite high standards in the police. It is not uncommon for us to deal really very seriously and for people to lose their jobs for things they have said that they thought were an idle comment on a social media post for example.”

Reassuring, isn’t it? There we have the chief of London’s police, whose city is in the grip of a stabbing epidemic, telling us that Boris will not face arrest for a couple of jokes (jolly decent of you, Cressida!). Wasting police time is a crime. Police wasting police time is encouraged in an age when politically correct box-ticking trumps a teen disembowelled in Camberwell.

We’re fed up of this, aren’t we? Grown weary of the grim nightly roll call. Dismayed and disbelieving when we hear that a third of bobbies on the beat have been axed over the past three years amid an unprecedented surge in violence. Home Office figures reveal that the number of neighbourhood police officers fell from 23,928 in March 2015 to 16,557 this year.

Meanwhile, total police numbers dropped from 143,700 in March 2010 to 122,400 today. Those officers that remain spend 22 per cent of their time on “support functions”, 47 per cent policing roads and community work, while only 31 per cent of police hours are given over to dealing with criminals.

A mere 13 per cent – pass the smelling salts, Marjorie! – is devoted to investigating crime. Some 90 per cent of all crimes committed in Britain do not result in prosecution. No wonder our lovely, peaceful village is in the middle of a 3-for-2 burglary special offer. And all this, mark you, on the watch of a Conservative government.

Given the happy accident of a criminal actually being caught, chances that they will be removed to a place where they can do no further harm are slender. According to the Civitas think tank, only a third of those convicted of violent crimes receive custodial sentences. Tender arguments about overcrowded prisons overlook the crucial fact that, at least while a violent man is behind bars, he cannot destroy the lives of others.

On Twitter two days ago, Zac Goldsmith drew attention to the case of Adele Bellis, an acid attack victim who is “terrified” because the villain who doused her in a skin-pulping liquid is about to be freed and wants to move near her. The 26-year-old beautician had her ear and half her hair burnt off in a 2014 hit ordered by her ex-boyfriend.

“Two years and 3 years for the pair who destroyed this person,” tweeted the Tory MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston, “is that the value we attach to an innocent life? Conservatives have been in charge for nearly a decade, yet this perverse sentencing continues. It is utterly shameful.”

I reckon Zac Goldsmith speaks for us all. What the hell is the criminal justice system up to if it awards such pathetic sentences, and early release, to cocksure thugs who horribly disfigured a young woman, yet are allowed to resume their normal lives while she is still receiving treatment for scars that will never fade? It’s… well, the word that comes to mind is criminal.

Far from reducing crime, this so-called “compassionate”, liberal approach has turned city streets into abbatoirs and emboldened young men to assume control of entire neighbourhoods while the police are tied up parsing Boris’s puns.

Misguided “anti-racist” policies, given the blessing of Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, saw the curbing of “stop and search”, which has led to the murder of scores of mainly black youngsters. All credit to Iain Duncan Smith and a report by the Centre for Social Justice which yesterday called on police to dramatically increase the use of stop and search to combat spiralling drug violence.

It can be done, you know. At the Notting Hill carnival over the weekend, metal detectors known as “knife arches” were placed at key points, and 7,000 officers were given special powers to search anyone they believed might be carrying a blade. Lo and behold, there were 25 arrests for possession of an offensive weapon. That’s not racist; it’s called protecting the public, regardless of creed or colour.

Once the guarantors of law and order, the Conservatives are increasingly looking like the party of laughable sentences and disorder. We have all given up on the backboneless Mrs May, butSajid Javid, our new Home Secretary, has the chance to show criminals who’s boss. Voters would cheer.

The police must be given the resources they need and a new list of priorities. Reading Telegraph columns in a fruitless search for things to be offended by should not be among them. A reallocation of half of the £14 billion foreign aid budget to keep the British people safe, instead of bribing odious dictators, would be a good start.

Prison reformers may warn against tougher jail sentences and the risk of miscarriages of justice. But we have those already. Look at the face of 90-year-old Iris Warner. There is no justice so long as the man who attacked Iris lives without fear of the law.