The solution.

Britain has been policed since 1829 by a largely unarmed police force policing "by consent". This concept derives from the first organised forces, in London, who patrolled on foot and deterred crime by their presence, and when crime happened brought the wrongdoers to justice.

Over the years since this point the concept morphed into the "bobby", working more or less along the same lines albeit now with more equipment, and vehicles. However, the idea of policing by consent remains to this day, and should now be brought into question.

Firstly, does the concept work universally? I would argue it does not. Crime in Britain in the 21st century has risen to unacceptable levels, on the back of pathetic sentences handed down by the Courts; liberal thinking amongst the government and judiciary; unchecked immigration resulting in new people arriving in the UK with different values and cultures; the breakdown of the modern family resulting in kids growing up without boundaries; and the emergence of the chav, that subsect of the human race that has become unfortunately far too common as they breed like rabbits, who tend to gather in groups and whose behaviour is appalling when they’re sober, far worse when they’re drunk.

Policing by consent is part of our culture and traditions and in the vast majority of the UK this type of policing does work, and tends to work well. This should not be changed. However many of those living in inner city areas simply don't register this concept, have no understanding of it whatsoever or chose to ignore it. One simply has to look at areas such as Brixton, Hackney, Southwark, Croydon and Lewisham to get an idea of how bad crime can get when this concept isn't working. For policing by consent to work, it requires the consent and co-operation of the community. For areas where this is missing, a change in the policing style is needed.

Since the early 80's the liberal intelligentsia have long held that this lack of consent and co-operation is due to poor community relations. This is rubbish. The police have tried extremely hard to foment good relations with minority communities and spent millions of pounds of taxpayers money on training in "community and race relations" and "diversity training". The police are doing their bit but certain parts of the community won't do theirs. This is not to say that the majority of the people in the multiracial communities are anti-police, the vast majority are law abiding citizens. However there is a substantial minority which has a tendency to punch above its weight and is steadfast in its determination to prevent policing, helping to ensure criminals remain free to roam the streets while simultaneously criticising the police for inaction or over-action, depending on what is politically expedient for them.

Under this climate, how can policing by consent work? It simply cannot. The only solution, aside from allowing the criminals and their sympathisers to control the streets, is to police by force. This may sound inflammatory to the liberals, but it is far more preferable to allowing innocent members of the community to live their lives under siege. The poorest people in society, and the most vulnerable, are disproportionately the victims of crime.

Zero tolerance was pioneered in New York and in Cleveland. In New York the murder rate halved and the city is now far safer than London, which was long known to be one of the safest capitals in the world. On the contrary, London is now one of the most dangerous capital cities in the western world in terms of the chances of becoming a victim of crime. A lot of this is down to the fact that the criminals know that they can get away with it most of the time due to the government insisting on tying the police's hands behind their backs, with political correctness, mountains of paperwork, etc, all justified by "human rights", coupled with pathetic sentencing from the Courts.

It is time we re-thought the idea of policing in Britain in the 21st century and took into account some examples of good practice. The way New York turned itself around gives us some hope. In the early 1980s, parts of the city resembled a war zone. Except in parts of the Upper East Side, the streets were not safe after dark, and many were not safe even before it. A ruthless campaign against criminal and anti-social behaviour by the last two Mayors and the police has had a dramatic effect on crime levels. New York still has its pockets of poverty and unpleasantness, but compared with quite a lot of London, the city is a paradise.

In the early 80s the police in London were using proactive policing tactics in trouble areas. One such operation was in Brixton where the area was flooded with plainclothes officers who conducted stops and searches in response to a horrendous rate of robberies in the area. As a result, robberies declined significantly and so did the rate for many other crimes. However, a riot then occurred, which was blamed largely on the police for being too zealous. The politicians then bowed to minority pressure - the "vocal minority" in these communities - and the emphasis, over the decade, gradually moved away from aggressive proactive policing in these areas. Police powers to stop and search were curtailed and the priority shifted towards avoiding riots rather than tackling the problem.

It is as a direct result of this that street crime has rocketed and people feel more at risk today than they ever have been. Politicians talk of "fear of crime" and needing to reduce this. Essentially the reason why people are in fear of crime is a combination of the fact that crime has dramatically increased since the 1960s, even though in the last decade most crimes (statistically anyway) declined, and the fact that they feel that the police do not control the streets.

Things need to change, and fast. We need an end to this liberal thinking when it comes to crime. We should start treating criminals as the enemy and not as pseudo-victim. We need to start talking about fighting crime and about eliminating crime, rather than the liberal terminology of simply ‘lowering crime’ or ‘making cuts in the crime or the statistics’. Criminals are the enemies of decent citizens and it should be the police’s job to drive them off the streets like a bulldozer clearing jungle to make way for civilisations return. The initiative could even be sponsored by a commercial firm – for example the campaign strapline could be “Jeyes Fluid and the Police, working together to remove the scum from your community”!

Seriously though, it has been shown time and again that when the criminals know they will be caught, when they fear the police, that crime declines. An example of this was the Los Angeles Police Department, who for decades kept a lid on one of the most challenging areas to police in the western world, with only 9000 officers for a huge city; With such a lack of manpower how the LAPD kept a lid on crime successfully until the mid 1980s can be attributed to the fact, according to former Chief from 1978 until 1992, Darryl F Gates:

"I will admit we were a very aggressive police department. We went after crime before it occurred. . . . Our people went out every single night trying to stop crime before it happened, trying to take people off the street that they believed were involved in crime. That made us a very aggressive, proactive police department."

However, the LAPD was also brought into turmoil after a riot was sparked following the footage of police officers using force on Rodney King. The police officers were acquitted of assault as a result of the media distortions of the case pre-trial, but the criminals and criminal sympathisers, as well as others who were simply being misled, rioted. This again fuelled the misconception that proactive hard policing leads to riots and community uproar. In actual fact these riots, in Brixton, Tottenham, and Los Angeles, were simply blips, and once they had been crushed, had the police re-established dominance, then the policing tactics that were used could and should have continued. Instead, politicians bowed to this, and insisted on changes. If only the police had refused and grasped the nettle even after the rioting, maybe things would be better in these areas today rather than far worse. No community has a right to refuse the rule of law, no matter how many cars they burn down or police officers they assault. The police should have made a point of keeping to the programme to send out this message, the message that the police are in charge not the criminals or their sympathisers. If higher force was needed then so be it, in the long run this would have ensured crime continued to decline rather than increase.

It is clear that when the police are on the retreat then crime goes up because criminals become confident and it becomes safe to commit crime. The only answer to this is to ensure that the police are on the offensive, always, and have the resources and back-up both physical and political to fight the war on crime. Only then will the streets become safe for everyone. That is why we must adopt this tough approach in every area where the existing approaches are failing.

We need to start recruiting a new breed of police officer, tough, dedicated, aggressive and multi-skilled. Over the years the requirements and standards have been lowered in order to get more women and representation from minority communities in. Now is the time to stop this political correctness and time to increase standards and hold quality above equality.

The paperwork mess and target culture so loved by the Home Offices and their political stooges at Scotland Yard needs to be sorted out and then fewer officers will be able to do more work. Forms will be made shorter, paperwork will be done increasingly by civilians and the latest technology used to cut the burden and increase efficiency to free-up more officers.

New specialist units should be introduced specifically for the new methods of policing. They would be the ‘creme de la creme’ of the ordinary patrol shifts, close to the pulse, and be formed of the toughest and most dedicated officers that can be found. These units would undertake plainclothes and uniformed work, be armed, and highly visible, and patrol the crime ridden areas with special additional powers to stop and search without "reasonable grounds" at any time. Their funding could come from the disbanding of special units at Scotland Yard, which are currently vastly over-resourced and totally unaccountable and also the disbanding of those specialist units that are dedicated to dealing with racist or homophobic crime, for instance, which should not be treated in a different or better way than any other crime.

The Metropolitan Police TSG (Territorial Support Group) must have sufficient officers to flood any area of London with armed police and conduct anti crime operations, using a raft of new legislation that places the human rights of the law abiding citizen above those of the common criminal.

We owe it to the law abiding taxpayers of this country to ensure that we have the capabilities to deal with gun threats, gang threats, and threats from terrorism and other crime and to make our streets safe again. It’s time for change.