Question: are police not able to devote as much attention to ‘ordinary’ crime because of the London July bombings? Yes, it is claimed.
Glen Smythe, who chairs the Metropolitan Police Federation, was interviewed on the Radio 4 5pm news programme PM on August 3. There was no question, he said, that other crimes were not being dealt with as fully as before the July 7 bombs (and July 21 attempts). As always, he added, policing is a matter of prioritising. Also there is only so much mutual aid that other police forces can offer, as they did during the 1984 miners’ strike; other big city forces have their own reassurance policing to do.
Meanwhile Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Tariq Ghaffur told the BBC: "I do want to reassure Londoners that we will continue to take serious crime, organised crime very seriously; we are putting out a huge number of reassurance patrols out there."
Which raises the issue of whether private security can come more on board to take up the slack. Glenn Smythe – who represents rank and file police to chief inspector level – did not mention private security, though he did say that recently retired police officers were already being brought back on short term contracts; there are ex-police employment agencies offering such a service.
One ex-Met man now in private security – Roy Ramm, former Commander of Specialist Operations at New Scotland Yard, now a director of casino operator London Clubs International – told the BBC that the Met officers’ work since the bombings has been very stressful; and that officers are working long hours, some having to do work that they are not as familiar with.
Separately, Glenn Smythe gave more details of what the workload means in practice: he reported officers working longer than 24 hours at a stretch; officers sleeping in sleeping bags in the office; and the Met having to send out for clothes because officers have run out of clean clothing.
