Army medals out, Gay Pride badges in, and theft blamed on badgers to cut crime rates: How political correctness is crippling my police force.

The suspect stared at me with hooded eyes, devoid of any emotion or conscience. His emaciated figure was so wrecked by heroin abuse that he could barely raise his arms. ‘Hello, inspector, it’s me again,’ he said, his voice dripping with disdain.

He had every reason to sound cynical, even contemptuous. He was a one-man crimewave, a prolific offender whose miserable life was dominated by violence, drugs and thieving, yet in all his years of delinquency he had never been properly punished by our laughably misnamed justice system.

When he was brought into the station last week, on a charge of stealing from a 94-year-old woman, I had a look at his record. It was a lengthy indictment of the incredible leniency of our courts. Aged only 23, he had been arrested 80 times and convicted of an incredible 140 offences. Among his crimes were assault, aggravated burglary, blackmail, theft and possession of Class A and Class B drugs. His behaviour has long been out of control, showing respect for neither the law nor the rights of others. But despite his lengthy catalogue of offending, he has spent just 12 weeks in prison.

As a long-serving police inspector, I despair of the reluctance of the state to deal vigorously with serious criminals such as this thuggish drug addict. This soft, destructive stance not only weakens public faith in the fight against crime, but also undermines the morale of the police. What drags down our effectiveness, however, is not just the useless courts system that so often undoes all the effort we put into building cases, but also the highly politicised, target-driven, dogma-fixated culture of the police hierarchy.

Official determination to manipulate crime figures has reached new heights of idiocy. Data is no longer a reflection of performance, but an exercise in deceit of the public. In this brave new world of propaganda — conjured up by a string of directives — a vast array of crimes are reclassified by ‘crime managers’ to lessen their seriousness. Badger damage: Potting shed break-ins are blamed on the animals to keep crime figures down. So burglaries of potting sheds become ‘badger damage’, broken windows are blamed on ‘frost’ and stolen handbags are listed as ‘lost or misplaced’. Even vandalism to vehicles can be ascribed to ‘stones thrown up by speeding cars’.

At times it seems as if the modern police force is seen by senior managers as a vehicle for social engineering rather than deterring crime. My internal office phone directory lists no fewer than 32 officers with ‘diversity’ in their job title, all of them working nine-to-five in desk-bound jobs, while we slog it out on the front line. I was half-hoping that, given their irrelevance to the battle against crime, they might be made redundant in the public-sector cuts, but that was far too optimistic.

Diversity is sacrosanct, its commissars are protected and its influence is all dominant. So in our training, for instance, just one day a year is devoted to practical instruction in officer safety, dealing with procedures such as correct use of handcuffs, Tasers and batons, or how to put a violent suspect in a van or cell.

Yet the effort devoted to diversity is far greater. We have to carry out two days of diversity training a year at headquarters, another day at our divisions, go through an eight-hour ‘e-learning’ package on our computers and, in our annual performance appraisal forms, show that we have accomplished three separate objectives ‘to raise diversity awareness’.

In addition, during weekly individual meetings with our supervisor, we have to explain what we have done to promote cultural diversity. The minutiae of Hindu festivals, details of Black History month and the rituals of gypsy culture are all drummed into us. The whole pantomime is idiotic, especially in my neighbourhood where the ethnic minority is tiny. Once, as one of my personal ‘diversity objectives’, I stated I had listened to some Indian sitar music in a Manchester park.

Such absurdities can be found everywhere in the police. So we were told recently that former servicemen like me were no longer allowed routinely to wear medal ribbons on our uniforms, as had previously been customary, because such insignia might be deemed offensive to Muslims and Irish people. However, we have been encouraged to wear Gay Pride badges.

Similarly, Welsh and Scottish police forces are allowed to wear their national badges on their uniforms, but the St George’s flag appears to have been banned by English forces, as if our national identity is an embarrassment.

The neurosis about diversity is also reflected in the requirement to cater for every type of inmate, so our custody suites have a menu of no less than 16 choices, include low-carb, vegetarian, fat-free, kosher and halal.

Read the rest here. One of the most despairing articles I have ever read. We absolutely must free ourselves from the clutches of these evil leftist swine, their ruling elite and their ignorant minions.