LET me tell you about a typical British high street.
Every morning outside the main supermarket, beggars gather to ply their trade, conning money and (if they’re unlucky) sandwiches from kindly shoppers.
GettyThe police are failing to do their jobs – we need zero tolerance for every crime[/caption]
Darren FletcherYouths shoplift at a market in Croydon[/caption]
You have to admire their work ethic; they never miss a day’s graft.
One regular even commutes from his council-provided flat a few train stops away, listening to music on his smartphone which, of course, he hides away as soon as he jumps the ticket barrier and starts his Oscar-winning drunken act to fool people into donating.
He’s not the only person to dodge his fare.
Dozens of people — mostly young men — walk straight through the barriers with impunity as the station staff watch on with a shrug.
The police rarely turn up. They certainly don’t when the muggers and shoplifters are at work.
Boarded up
A couple of men routinely wait and watch people using one of the few cashpoints left in the street (the banks have long shut up shop) to steal the freshly dispensed notes.
The gangs of shoplifters have taken their toll on the shops along the high street that aren’t already boarded up and empty.
Many store owners lock their doors at peak times — known as the shoplifters’ happy hour — while staff at a well-known coffee shop brand watch in despair as dozens of sandwiches and bottled drinks are swiped by men in masks.
Not that they need bother covering their faces.
Even when their identities are known, the police rarely arrest them.
The manager of the local hardware store reported a break-in in the middle of the night, after addicts smashed in the glass window to steal goods to fund their habits.
When she called the police, it is claimed they told her to enter the premises to check if the raiders were still there as there wasn’t any point in police coming otherwise. She wisely declined.
At the chemist — another familiar brand — the staff play a game of cat and mouse with the shoplifters, knowing that the moment popular make-up brands are put on to the shelves (now behind lockable Perspex doors) that the “spotter” across the road will call his fellow gang members who then raid the store.
The staff have been instructed not to try to stop them because they quickly turn violent and trash the store.
The police often don’t come when they call so the business just factors in the losses, which are ultimately paid for by law-abiding customers.
Meanwhile, at the local supermarket, shoplifters operate on an industrial scale, threatening the staff with broken bottles if they are challenged, while some target elderly customers pretending to be their carers to steal their handbags.
AlamyA sign warns of phone thieves[/caption]
The supermarket is also facing a war of attrition with a local heroin addict who set up his temporary home in a side doorway, barricaded in with shopping trolleys.
Council staff won’t remove his stuff because the addict becomes “aggressive” when they approach, but they are happy to leave young children to walk past him.
Children and their parents also have to dodge the armies of cyclists jumping red lights on the road crossings and, even worse, the frenzied e-bike and e-scooter riders speeding along the pavements, with few souls brave enough to tackle them.
At one end of the high street, at the local comp, a young boy was recently stabbed on school grounds during what police called an “altercation” with two older boys.
We cannot go on like this. We can’t continue to allow our political leaders to run this country into the ground
At the other end of the litter-strewn and graffiti-covered road, the local hotel has been turned into an asylum hostel for up to 80 Channel migrant arrivals.
Struggling for business after lockdown, the well-known brand decided to close their doors to the public and make the Home Office their only customer.
Even though the public are still the ones paying for the rooms, of course.
That was two years ago. There was no council meeting, no local residents were told and the local newspaper didn’t bother to mention it.
Does any of this sound familiar to you? Does it paint a picture of your local high street?
Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones and this creeping neglect and criminality hasn’t hit your neighbourhood yet.
But it soon will.
Because these aren’t stories I’ve made up about a fictional street, or tales I’ve heard about distant towns in some godforsaken, blighted and forgotten industrial heartland.
Alamy Live NewsSupermarkets are facing a war of attrition with local heroin addicts who set up temporary homes in side doorways[/caption]
No, this is much closer to home because this is my own local high street in an affluent part of London with tree-lined streets and many hugely expensive homes.
It wasn’t always like this. We used to congratulate ourselves that the only problem we had in our leafy neighbourhood was wheelie bins being left on the pavement for too many days.
According to official police statistics, 96 per cent of crimes in my area now go unsolved — including not just shoplifting and thefts but violent and sexual offences too
But not now. Everything has changed. And everyone has started to notice.
According to official police statistics, 96 per cent of crimes in my area now go unsolved — including not just shoplifting and thefts but violent and sexual offences too. That is a criminal state of affairs.
Politicians with a spine
We cannot go on like this. We can’t continue to allow our political leaders to run this country into the ground.
We used to live in one of the safest and most law-abiding countries in the world, where we were policed with our consent and crime didn’t pay. But now it most definitely does.
The experts will try to tell us that there is no simple solution but that’s a lie.
The answer is simple and it’s staring us in the face: Punish the criminals.
We need zero tolerance to every crime, every time.
Every shoplifter, every ticket dodger, every graffiti lout, every litterer, every e-scooter pavement rider, every red-light running cyclist, every beggar, every thief, every robber, every violent thug, every harasser, every sex attacker: Arrest them, charge them and make the guilty pay.
We haven’t got enough police? Recruit more. We don’t have enough court time? Open the courts 24/7 until the backlog is caught up.
We haven’t got enough prison spaces? Build more prisons.
Yes, it will take time. Yes, it will cost billions. And, yes, we will need politicians with a spine.
But if we want to wrestle back our streets from the criminals and return them to the law-abiding majority, isn’t that a small price to pay?
AlamyLondon pedestrians are forced to dodge frenzied e-bike and e-scooter riders speeding along the pavements[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
