Letters: Police must focus on deterring crime, not responding to it

Deterring crime

Sir: Rod Liddle is right to highlight the politicisation of the police as a source of their inadequacies, but I think he misses the crucial point (‘Defund the police’, 27 June). We simply do not have bobbies on the beat to even feel sympathy for, and this means that constructive relationships between a recognisable police officer and their community are a rarity. As Kevin Hurley describes, many black youths in our cities have nothing but hatred towards police officers, and this cannot be a surprise when the only interactions they have with them are being forced to empty their pockets after being suspected of criminal activity.

Mr Liddle may bemoan the inability of the police to solve burglaries or robberies, but by this point the police have failed in their original purpose of deterring crime. A clear tactical shift to prioritise deterring rather than responding to crime is far more important than the issue of politicisation.