Why we must tire of crime (From Warrington Guardian)

Why we must tire of crime

A COUPLE of weeks ago it was health. Then it was education. Now in Westminster all the politicians are talking about crime.

Surely crime and disorder is an issue for every day of every week.

It certainly dominates my constituency surgeries.

About two thirds of the people who come to see me are there because they have been victims of crime in one shape or another.

Their problems vary. They may have been victims of a serious burglary or assault, an intolerable neighbour, or harassed as they walked through the town centre at night.

Sometimes I see people who are worried about a general problem that affects the whole community.

This week I am due to meet a local resident about the problem of binge drinking in Knutsford on a Friday and Saturday night.

In fact, based on my experiences as the local MP, I would say that crime, fear of crime, anti-social behaviour and a general sense of disorder are the issues which today concern people in this country more than any other.

Of course, the Government says that the public has got things out of proportion and that the official crime figures show that in general crime is not soaring.

But they're wrong.

Even the official figures show that violent crime has doubled. And I think that many of the smaller crimes that used be reported aren't any more, and so don't appear in the figures at all.

How many people these days report a car wing mirror that has been ripped off or the graffiti on the local bus shelter?

People don't because they have come to accept it as part of modern life and they know there's little the police, with their desperately overstretched resources, can do.

But what does it say about us as a society that we tolerate this state of affairs?

It's time we stopped 'putting up' with crime as a fact of life.

It's time we stopped taking it for granted that an elderly pensioner should avoid the pubs in Knutsford on a Friday night.

It's time we reclaimed our streets and our communities, not just from the career criminals but also the yobs and the vandals and the drunken louts.

It can be done. How do I know? Because I've seen it happen in New York, where they have transformed one of the most dangerous cities in America and turned it into one of the safest.

For years, the city and its police had ignored the graffiti, the yobs hanging around on the street corners and the casual culture of lawlessness that pervaded the city.

Then Mayor Guiliani came along and doubled the number of police, got those police out of their squad cars and police stations and on to the streets, and by adopting a zero tolerance attitude to all crime.

Of course, Knutsford is a far cry from New York.

The problems we face, thankfully, are on a wholly different scale.

But couldn't we learn some lessons?

Don't we need many, many police officers?

Don't we need to see those police officers out and about in the community?

Don't we need to send a clear message that the days of tolerating loutish behaviour, binge drinking, petty vandalism and a climate of fear are over?