Rishi Sunak is preparing to launch a pushback against so-called “woke policing,” a report said. According to the Telegraph, sources have made it clear that the newly appointed Prime Minister will make crime one of the government’s top three priorities. They will try to emulate the work of Chief Constable Stephen Watson, who managed to redirect a “failing” police force in just 18 months.
Mr Watson is the chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and has said in the past that the public was ‘tired’ of signaling virtue by officers rather than locking up burglars.
His work has resulted in answering times for 999 calls being cut by a twelfth from what they were in the summer of 2021.
The number of investigations in which a perpetrator is charged has also increased by 42 percent.
Mr Watson has promised to restore public confidence in the police by investigating every crime, no matter how “minor”, and he has banned the “screening” of weak cases.
Police officers were sent to every reported crime scene and he also reinstated the neighborhood police, otherwise known as “bobbies on the beat”.
Mr Watson has warned that public tolerance of “awake” police officers is at a “high water level”.
A report from the Policy Exchange think-tank this summer claimed that police officers who do not appear to be politically neutral could be “hugely harmful” to the police.
Policy Exchange also revealed that four in ten voters thought cops were more concerned with “waking up” than solving crime.
A government source said: “We want to get agents to the front lines to do what they need to do, which is to prevent and solve crime.
“The Greater Manchester Chief Constable has done a great job of that. We want to see what Greater Manchester has done be replicated by other forces.”
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The news comes after Lincolnshire Police were criticized in August when video footage emerged on social media of officers dancing on the Macarena during the annual Pride celebrations.
Some Twitter users commented that it was “embarrassing” or “disgraceful”, but Chief Constable Chris Haward said the officers’ actions did not “detract from their duties”.
He said police work was about “engagement, understanding and being a part of the community” as well as enforcing the law.
Mr Haward added: “Pride is one of the many wonderful community events in the county where we go to police, but also let people look behind the uniform and see who we are”.