Rue Britannia

Let’s see. The British government has steadily pushed for the disarming of the British citizenry, pretty much totally disarming the populace. The idea was that the police were there to protect the common folk — no need for self-defense.

Indeed, increasingly British law has frowned on the very concept of self-defense. There have been many, many cases of folks who used force against burglars, or even in cases of assault, who have in turn been prosecuted for doing so.

Now comes the capper. The Metropolitican Police are no longer looking into “petty” crimes that have no obvious clues.

A Met spokesman confirmed that “less serious crimes” would now only be investigated if they were considered to be “solvable using proportionate resources”, or were part of a current crackdown on specific offences. He said: “It might mean that people who have had their bikes stolen from outside a shop might not get any investigation into it. It is looking at the high priorities for crime in the community.”
The Met’s policy document states that when crimes are of a less serious nature and there are no “special factors”, such as a particularly vulnerable victim, they will now be logged but not solved.

Right. The answer, of course, is probably to suggest that people not leave their bicycles outside. Not that that makes your bike safe, since you have no real recourse if someone breaks in after it (except to hope that B&E is something that the Met might move itself to do something about it later on), but since petty thieves now know that they can steal bikes with impunity, they will be more likely to move along to find someone who has committed the negligent act of locking their bike up outside.

The reason for all this, of course, is budgetary pressure in the face of significant crime troubles — exacerbated, perhaps, by all that fine gun control and persecution of those who try to fight back against criminals.

Sounds like we’re visiting Britain again just in time — who knows what things will be like in another five or ten years?

(via Andrea)