Almost 6,000 officers join police as coronavirus enforcement steps up

On the Home Office website, a recent post highlighted the Government’s recruitment of 5,824 extra police officers across England and Wales. The target is to recruit an extra 20,000 officers. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, said that this was a priority and that: ‘As we’ve seen from the frontline response to coronavirus, the work of each and every police officer helps to save lives and I would like to extend my gratitude to them, and to the new recruits, for joining the police and being a part of this heroic national effort.’

Chief Constable Mike Cunningham, CEO of the College of Policing, said: ‘Bringing 20,000 new officers into the service presents an important opportunity for police forces to become more representative of the communities they serve. It is encouraging to see more officers joining from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, however, our work to support representation in policing doesn’t stop here.’

The post states: ‘For the first time, this publication includes data on the ethnicity and gender of officers who have joined forces since April 2020. Of the new recruits, 629 identified as Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic, representing 10.7% of recruits who stated their ethnicity. The police workforce now includes 9,842 officers from these groups, making it more diverse than ever before.’

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has recently announced that in London the target will be that 40% of new recruits will be non-White.

Of interest in the Home Office post is the Government’s focus on the pandemic and the importance of the police in enforcing Government policy. Currently, daily infection rates are fluctuating between 20,000 and 30,000 or so. Wales has just come out of a lockdown and one has just been introduced in England. Wales exited its lockdown unsure as to whether or not it had been a success due to the delayed effects on infection rates.

This is in stark contrast to both Australia and New Zealand, both of which have driven the infection rates down to negligible levels (see here and here). A recent report described Melbourne, Australia, which had to be placed in lockdown due to very high infection rates, as being: ‘From Covid-19 hotspot to no new cases for nearly 2 weeks, Melbourne, Australia has crushed the coronavirus.’ Melbourne exited lockdown when the number of infections had fallen to zero. Melbourne had reported zero new infections for several days.

Of New Zealand it was recently reporterd: ‘New Zealand, which has managed to virtually eliminate community-transmitted COVID-19 twice, reported four new cases on Friday, all in managed isolation. It has had 1,639 infections and 25 deaths.’

In contrast to the UK, Australia and New Zealand have adopted a policy of wiping the virus out, rather than trying to manage its spread. They have been prepared to secure their borders and have introduced effective measures of track and tracing those infected.

The UK Government has failed to effectively deal with the pandemic. It is the policy that is wrong, not the messaging.