Deputy Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Craig Mackey, facing criticism for locking himself in his car in response to the 2017 Westminster terror attack in which PC Keith Palmer was murdered, has been defended by his boss, Commissioner Cressida Dick. She labelled the criticism ‘ignorant’ and ‘wrong’ and said Sir Craig ‘had absolutely no opportunity to stop the killer’. This was echoed by the UK’s senior counter-terror officer Neil Basu, who said that if Sir Craig had got out of the car, he would have put himself in the police line of fire and obstructed the shot that killed terrorist Khalid Masood.
No doubt disagreement will continue over the best tactics to use in such situations, but most people have been dismayed by the impression given that the ‘safety first’ approach has been prioritised over heroism and self-sacrifice in the cause of the greater good. In fact, some of the most trenchant criticism of Sir Craig has come from fellow officers, both serving and retired, suggesting that the qualities that used to be prized in the fight against crime have been relegated to an inferior status and viewed as some kind of ‘problem’.
The police force has been transformed into a police service. Instead of catching crooks, keeping order and ensuring that justice is seen to be done, officers are expected to act as social workers looking after their ‘clients’. Under Left-wing criminology, the ‘deprived’ are more sinned against than sinning because capitalism has deprived them of the wealth they should have had, consequently when they deprive others of their property it is actually a redistribution of wealth. No wonder the police everywhere are scaling down their front-line operations and a great deal of crime is not even investigated.
Unsurprisingly both Sir Craig and Ms Dick have been showered with awards: Sir Craig was knighted for his services to policing, and in a citation was commended for slashing ‘stop and search’ operations by 70 per cent while doubling the arrest rate and presiding over a greatly increased recruitment of ethnic minority officers, such that the Met police can now boast half of the national total. He also oversaw savings of £600million from the Met’s £3.6billion budget, without cutting officer posts. Ms Dick, who studied criminology, has been made a CBE and has received the Queen’s Police Medal for distinguished service, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal and the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal, as well as Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medals. She ‘came out’ as a lesbian in 2017, so that must be considered another tick for the progressives.
It might be argued that the specific male quality that makes crime such a predominantly male occupation is testosterone, which is now routinely demonised as in ‘testosterone-fuelled violence’. Properly directed, it makes men excellent defenders, protectors and crime fighters; now, however, the supposedly female qualities of co-operation, empathy, ‘emotional intelligence’ and caution have been prioritised. Female hormones help to protect the human race by focusing on the care of children, but these have also been demonised as encouraging the exploitation of women and instrumental in their oppression. Masculinity and femininity are no longer regarded as ‘special’ and men and women are seen as interchangeable cogs in the industrial and social machines; they might just as well be replaced with identical robots.
If the only males promoted to positions of power are those who are happy not to exercise their specifically male qualities but whose instinct is to lock themselves in their cars when danger threatens, we the public will need to start locking ourselves in our homes.
