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.
Luke Butterworth
Croydon, London
Sacred spaces
Sir: As someone who has been reluctant to accept the adage that ‘perception is all’, I might almost be persuaded otherwise by the exchange between four Anglican bishops (Letters, 27 June) and Douglas Murray. Of course the bishops point to the online activity offered, but they need to be careful about equating log-ons and participation. And what of the 5,000 or so parishes that have not offered ‘online worship’?
What Douglas Murray addressed in his piece is, however, something else entirely: the message conveyed by locked doors and laminated closure signs, and the silence of the church leadership on the broader stage unless it was to echo government health warnings, to berate Dominic Cummings or dilate on statuary.
One of the signatories of the bishops’ letter wrote a much-admired doctoral thesis on the theology of place.
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