I Proved The Police Don't Investigate Crime - Dr Lawrence Newport
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 20 minutes
Words per Minute
192.66147
Summary
In this episode of Trigonometry, I chat to the founder of Crush Crime, a campaign to highlight the problem of bike and phone theft in the UK, and how the police are doing absolutely nothing to solve the problem. I speak to Lawrence Lawrence, who has been involved with Crush Crime for a year and a half, and has been making a name for himself as the go-to person to talk about this problem.
Transcript
00:00:00.880
So, the bike was both in the view of Big Ben, Parliament, and the Met.
00:00:05.820
It was chained up, left there for two days, and by the evening of the second day, it was stolen.
00:00:12.440
I got a text from them saying, sorry, we are closing your case, we're not reviewing CCTV evidence, we're not going to do basically anything.
00:00:19.740
I gave their story to the Telegraph, and suddenly, the Met gets back and says, oh no, no, no, we are going to look at the CCTV footage.
00:00:27.220
By the way, they actually never got a hold of the CCTV footage at all.
00:00:31.600
So, they said they would look at it, but didn't?
00:00:33.800
Nothing happened. It's not just bikes, not just phones.
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I've talked to people who've had their cars stolen, and please haven't checked CCTV footage.
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Less than 1% of these cases end up with a suspect identified.
00:00:46.300
Basically, every part of our system is completely and utterly broken.
00:00:54.340
You've got lots to talk about, but you particularly crush crime, which you're part of, is something I want to talk about,
00:01:00.980
because you did a video last year, I think this was, which went super viral and proved a lot of the things that most people who live,
00:01:09.200
particularly in big cities in this country and in other countries, frankly, all instinctively feel,
00:01:14.300
which is there's a lot of low-level crime, like theft, burglary, etc., that is simply not being investigated by the police.
00:01:21.740
Yeah, so in fact, that feeling that you're describing is exactly what got me to start up crush crime as a campaign,
00:01:34.560
I was talking to friends of mine, and I just noticed that pretty much everyone I'd talked to in a few weeks
00:01:40.600
had had or knew someone who had had their phone stolen or their bike stolen,
00:01:46.400
Police were doing nothing, there was nothing happening, and then when I started digging into the stats,
00:01:51.360
it's extremely, extremely concerning, and there's not much political attention at all on this.
00:01:57.220
So one of the ways, actually, just actually the week after I'd launched Crush Crime,
00:02:01.940
I put out a video in which we had taken a bike, it was about a 150-pound bike, done up to look as nice as we possibly could make something like that look.
00:02:13.200
Actually, the bike shop that we bought it from helped us because they knew what we were doing,
00:02:16.540
and they were like, please bring some attention to this issue, do something.
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And we bought a quite cheap chain for a bike, and we locked it up outside the Met.
00:02:29.600
So between, for anyone who doesn't know, the Met's headquarters is just a few doors down from Parliament,
00:02:36.260
so the bike was both in the view of Big Ben, Parliament, and the Met.
00:02:41.400
It was chained up, left there for two days, and by the evening of the second day, it was stolen.
00:02:47.720
We had put two air-tagged GPS signals on it, one easy to find, and one less easy to find,
00:02:55.380
so that if they found it, we thought they'd think of themselves as very great.
00:03:01.300
It was taken. I called the police and reported it stolen.
00:03:06.580
I told them, look, here is where it is. There is quite a lot of CCTV in that area.
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The next morning, only about 12 hours later or something, probably 18 hours later,
00:03:19.160
I got a text from them saying, from the Metropolitan Police, saying,
00:03:25.560
We're not reviewing CCTV evidence. We're not going to do basically anything.
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We recorded the video of me outside the Met, pointing out the CCTV cameras,
00:03:35.160
and I gave the story to the Telegraph, and in the intervening period between filming that video,
00:03:41.520
giving it to the Telegraph, the Telegraph called the Met,
00:03:47.740
oh, no, no, no, we are going to look at the CCTV footage.
00:03:51.760
So we released a video with me adding a quick piece on the end,
00:03:59.920
you actually need to go and report it to the national press,
00:04:05.360
By the way, they actually never got a hold of the CCTV footage at all.
00:04:09.580
So they said they would look at it, but didn't.
00:04:12.920
Several weeks later, I got contacted by a junior officer who said,
00:04:20.680
but I've seen it's just CCTV, and we don't intend to check that.
00:04:25.000
So it was literally just reopened because it was in the Telegraph,
00:04:28.600
Yeah, and then after the story had taken its course,
00:04:34.660
So covered in CCTV, bike stolen directly outside,
00:04:38.000
with GPS signal, I could tell them exactly where it was.
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I said, well, look, it's on the move right now.
00:04:43.440
I can tell you where it is, so we don't intercept when it's on the move.
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Okay, well, it stopped earlier at this building.
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I think I'm pretty sure this guy's place is going back there later.
00:04:58.140
So we won't get it on the move, won't look at the block of flats.
00:05:00.800
Because they basically state, we're not sure which one it might be in,
00:05:03.880
so I then asked, well, could you just put an officer outside
00:05:12.940
So GPS signal, locked outside, the Mets' own headquarters,
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covered in CCTV footage, and nothing's going to happen.
00:05:19.680
A lot of people, having heard that, who are not familiar with it,
00:05:23.220
will be like, that sounds a bit, probably they've just made a mistake
00:05:27.960
But actually, when you start to speak to people who've experienced
00:05:32.120
this sort of low-level crime, or when you experience it yourself,
00:05:35.580
almost everyone that does has a complete shock as to the level
00:05:40.780
of disinterest, active disinterest the police now have
00:05:49.800
You have to contact the police, I think, by email.
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You get an email back saying, here's a crime reference number.
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Again, under a police camera, no investigation.
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Did you find it quite shocking that that happened?
00:06:01.220
Were you a bit stunned, or were you expecting this at this point?
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Well, I wasn't surprised that they didn't do much.
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I did think there would be something that would happen.
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they look at the CCTV footage, it's a bit complicated,
00:06:21.180
And multiple officers I talked to before I did this said,
00:06:26.880
Even the officers who I was speaking to were shocked
00:06:30.020
when I told them they hadn't done anything with the CCTV.
00:06:32.260
And because all of these officers I was talking to work in other areas,
00:06:36.660
they were amazed that the system has fallen apart so badly
00:06:43.520
And actually since, like you say, it's not just bikes, not just phones.
00:06:46.920
I've talked to people who've had their cars stolen,
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Like this is, it's just completely open in so many ways,
00:06:57.660
which I got into a little bit of heated discussions on this a few times
00:07:02.700
But one thing I said was that there's a whole swathe of crime in this country
00:07:08.140
If the police don't follow up with it, it is essentially legal.
00:07:11.700
We see the results of this in the stats that have just come out for this year.
00:07:17.020
Theft from the person is the highest on record,
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the highest it's ever been as far as we've recorded.
00:07:26.320
is the fact that less than 1% of these cases end up with a suspect identified,
00:07:33.560
just identifying someone they suspect might have done it.
00:07:39.340
what you end up with is a whole swathe of crime
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If you give it enough time, which is what we have,
00:07:48.380
it's just the situation will get worse and worse and worse and worse,
00:07:52.540
And Lawrence, the thing that's also interesting about this
00:07:58.500
who are responsible for the majority of these crimes, isn't it?
00:08:02.580
So this is like something which is true internationally
00:08:05.280
and it's particularly, and it's certainly true here.
00:08:08.000
Ministry of Justice figures show over the last 20 years
00:08:10.440
that about 9% of criminals are responsible for over half of all crime.
00:08:17.060
These are people that are cross-crime we call career criminals.
00:08:20.420
These are people with 15 or more offences to their name.
00:08:26.280
And that's just the offences that have been shown that they've done.
00:08:31.580
for around about every one offence someone is convicted of,
00:08:39.760
So someone who's committed 15 has committed 25 times more than that.
00:08:43.920
And I mean, some of them will be doing thousands.
00:08:46.840
I mean, for example, there's a phone thief in London
00:08:50.600
who in one morning, he was arrested after just one morning of activity
00:09:05.160
You can make quite a good living stealing phones or stealing bikes.
00:09:13.080
In fact, many of them end up just back on the streets.
00:09:15.860
We'll talk about this because the non-investigation is one thing.
00:09:30.980
or for some reason does actually get caught stealing a phone.
00:09:39.320
What then happens to somebody who is a career criminal
00:09:44.000
Well, this is why it must be incredibly frustrating
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to be a good, competent police officer who really cares.
00:09:55.200
So at Crush Crime, we actually have a case scraper now working
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that pulls cases from across the country of career criminals.
00:10:01.420
These 10% of offenders responsible for over half of all crime
00:10:05.080
are more likely to avoid prison now than they were in 2007.
00:10:09.840
Many of them are simply not getting jail sentences at all.
00:10:12.500
Some of them are not getting sentences on their 300th offence.
00:10:18.940
Well, we're not able to establish a pattern, aren't we?
00:10:24.420
I mean, one of my, you know, there was one case a few months ago
00:10:27.440
where somebody, I think it was about their 303rd theft offence
00:10:32.280
And the judge said, I'm going to give you a suspended sentence
00:10:36.060
because in the intervening period since your trial,
00:10:39.500
and now you haven't actually done anything bad,
00:10:41.360
and I think that's showing that you're breaking the pattern.
00:10:43.900
The judge wasn't aware because no one had informed them
00:10:48.400
they'd been arrested for another theft offence,
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Several of these people are still getting suspended sentences.
00:10:57.100
Some are getting two, three, four months, five months.
00:10:59.460
And, of course, with time off, they're out within a matter of weeks.
00:11:04.520
So there was even actually a really good symbol of this
00:11:07.380
was the recent operation on Westminster Bridge.
00:11:09.860
Did you see this where they dress up as Batman and Robin?
00:11:12.940
So there were scams, of course, all across Westminster Bridge,
00:11:19.660
They are scamming people all the time, scamming tourists all the time,
00:11:22.740
you know, with those rigged games, ball-in-the-cup stuff,
00:11:25.640
Officers are so well-known to these individuals
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So given these career criminals know who you are,
00:11:46.100
and a smart-thinking officer had some nice social media footage
00:12:06.580
This is obviously completely and utterly broken.
00:12:15.700
the most you're looking at is a few months away.
00:12:20.480
For them, it's just, like, part of the price of doing business.
00:12:30.720
And, Lawrence, how much of this is to do with the fact
00:12:51.640
every part of our system is completely and utterly broken.
00:12:54.160
Like, this is the worst part of looking at any aspect here.
00:12:57.180
You've got a problem, as you were just highlighting as well,
00:13:01.960
Then even if you get through that tiny point of investigations,
00:13:09.360
but taken to court, actually tried, actually convicted.
00:13:13.180
But it can take years to get through any of these hurdles.
00:13:19.320
there's like 74,000 cases in a backlog just in the Crown courts.
00:13:25.260
there's several hundred thousands of cases waiting trial.
00:13:28.980
And it's actually started before COVID even as well.
00:13:37.420
I mean, the Conservatives with 14 years in government built net 500 prison places
00:13:43.980
whilst increasing the population by several million.
00:13:46.960
I mean, it's, it's, yeah, it's beyond unbelievable.
00:13:50.820
It's just like a complete failure of government,
00:13:55.600
We're now at like, it's like 99.9% prison capacity.
00:13:59.560
Now the problem is Labour are going to build more prisons,
00:14:05.220
But on current projections, and because we're so far behind,
00:14:19.420
And what do we know about these repeat criminals?
00:14:28.860
Yeah, there's, there's some interesting studies on,
00:14:33.340
which of course is another reason why actually you do want to imprison these people for longer.
00:14:40.480
there's studies that when you put people away for longer periods
00:14:43.680
and actually rehabilitate them behind closed doors,
00:14:47.360
they're actually able to be off drugs for longer periods.
00:14:57.400
It is also the case that these are legitimately now routes,
00:15:04.140
or rather actually routes for people to earn a lot of money.
00:15:13.900
Yeah, so if you're selling 100 phones in a morning,
00:15:17.660
and you're selling these off for a few hundred pounds a pop,
00:15:25.900
It's also the case that there's very clearly established pipelines.
00:15:29.400
So only a few weeks after I started Crush Crime,
00:15:40.140
She takes her toddler around to look after them both
00:15:59.400
That's an incredibly fast supply chain, basically,
00:16:03.480
where it's obviously then stripped down for parts.
00:16:31.400
because you've got this image of it's a few kids,
00:16:36.520
And the police are simply refusing to do anything about it.
00:17:05.260
There is now a problem with recruiting officers
01:14:45.080
crush crime i also run looking for growth which
01:14:54.600
actually rescue this country from decline which
01:14:58.720
problems um the engagement we get there is like
01:15:02.640
18 to 35 year olds who actually really really care
01:15:04.980
about politics they could not care less about what
01:15:07.540
party does it they literally could not care less um
01:15:10.800
we've had politicians from all kinds of different
01:15:12.720
backgrounds at our events to talk to our audience
01:15:14.680
what they want to hear is you have a plan the plan is
01:15:19.580
this thing it's going to happen fast often means
01:15:24.340
cheaply that's going to happen fast younger people
01:15:27.540
here uh in britain and really come across the west
01:15:31.060
but a pretty bad deal over you know the last uh really
01:15:35.120
like 10 years and continue to do so and yet there's
01:15:37.600
very very little political attention very very little
01:15:39.740
national attention on things like they are far less
01:15:42.980
optimistic they are both about the personal lives and
01:15:46.240
the country their their politics is much more diverse
01:15:50.060
than it has been any other time there's much more
01:15:52.200
there's much higher support for reform amongst 18 to 25
01:15:56.000
year olds um then uh certainly for the conservatives and
01:15:59.860
otherwise um i think like second to labor amongst that
01:16:02.440
groups we're not talking about what it means for young
01:16:06.860
people in this country to one start to be actively involved
01:16:09.380
in politics and two how much of a raw deal they actually have
01:16:13.180
got here and flesh that out what's the raw deal
01:16:15.720
so they've um i mean if you imagine kind of coming of age
01:16:19.600
during a period in which you know covid they were literally
01:16:21.940
had to lock themselves inside for a long period of like
01:16:24.300
their their youth and you know we can agree disagree about
01:16:28.140
aspects of lockdown or wherever it might be but
01:16:29.980
just factually speaking they were actually locked away for
01:16:33.520
large periods of a very key social point of their life
01:16:36.060
sometimes interrupting their university you know big experiences big social
01:16:41.920
that is extremely uncertain uh to the point where you know even stuff that you
01:16:46.360
might have gotten great advice on you want to do a law degree you want to
01:16:49.620
do there aren't as many jobs in that because already artificial intelligence
01:16:57.140
that anyone now 18 about what was actually going to be a good career in five
01:17:01.840
ten years coding was the career everyone was going for that is not
01:17:04.800
not the thing you want to do now for longer term
01:17:08.700
hey focus is you know you know we'll see we'll see um but like you know the the
01:17:14.900
at the same time you have triple lock pensions you have uh a vast amount of uh
01:17:22.020
movement into this country from people outside of this country um a lot of jobs
01:17:27.540
and other countries actually attracting our own youth outside um it's very uncertain what
01:17:34.040
salaries look like it's very uncertain what the state of the country is um as a result a lot
01:17:39.340
of them are feeling like we actually ran a poll very recently asking britain has had
01:17:44.240
0.1 growth over the last year do you think this is acceptable or not every age group
01:17:48.940
basically says unacceptable apart from 18 to 25 who says acceptable right because they're used
01:17:55.380
they're just used to decline wow they're used to it we even asked someone like so we have
01:18:01.180
chapters across the country for lfg we have chapters uh in multiple cities i went to one
01:18:06.600
um or or rather um some of our co-founders went to one uh my co-founders went to one where
01:18:11.700
someone said in attendance i'm 25 years old and all i've ever known is decline what can i do
01:18:18.260
that's the feeling and they're used to it they're used to the system and as a result optimistic people
01:18:25.040
are leaving and uh we really are facing again something which takes a long time to build great
01:18:31.800
institutions great universities great places for people to live and it's very very easy to start
01:18:36.180
losing that and if you start seeing all of your talent leave the country um because what has it
01:18:42.320
got to offer them that's a question we need to really start asking very very quickly before we
01:18:47.140
lose the next generation which have been through a lot have done a lot and actually you know we're
01:18:52.480
talking about uh you know political anger and angst they've taken it all very well and now they're
01:19:01.200
leaving with their feet and those who aren't are feeling depressed dejected and otherwise completely
01:19:06.280
ignored and i think that's something which we need to start talking about well one thing people
01:19:09.780
always say when uh the old people always say when young people complain about the state well well look
01:19:15.020
at them they're spending money on lattes and they've got these iphones and now their iphones are
01:19:19.320
getting nicked as well no listen man the thing is with all of these things the hope is that by
01:19:28.040
raising awareness of them they eventually become political issues that politicians grab onto and
01:19:32.780
eventually you have you see change through that system i think growth is obviously going to be a
01:19:37.020
huge part of solving many of these problems but i also think that you know picking up some of these
01:19:41.540
issues and running with them is is the right thing to do for smart politicians yeah because it's where
01:19:46.640
the country is at yes they're not artificial issues they are where the country is at uh so we will
01:19:52.440
see how evolves over time and we'll keep out an eye out for your good work uh head on over to
01:19:56.780
sub stack where we ask lawrence your questions how do we incentivize the policing of genuine crime
01:20:02.860
rather than low-hanging fruit like meme tweets in a climate where the police have been going through
01:20:07.520
a softer rebranding and the college of policing appears to be steering in this direction