Too busy to come round if you’ve been burgled – but plenty of time to persecute Katie Hopkins and destroy Ted Heath’s reputation

Last week, Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs Council (salary: £252,000), informed us (i.e. the mugs who pay her wages) that the police “need to move from reacting to some of those traditional crimes to thinking about focusing on threat and harm and risk and really protecting the public. That might mean that if you’ve had a burglary, for example, and the burglar has fled, that we won’t get there as quickly as we would have in the past.” She has a lovely turn of phrase – "traditional crimes" makes burglary sound like morris dancing.

Today, we learn that Leicestershire Police have trialled a scheme which involved them not bothering to send crime-scene investigators to odd-numbered houses which had been burgled. They also didn’t bother telling the local Police and Crime Commissioner, Sir Clive Loader, about the three-month experiment, presumably on the grounds that he would have gone ballistic – which, of course, he now has.

Apparently, the absence of CSI had no effect on the number of incidents, or on victim “satisfaction”. But why would they have expected the number of incidents to fall within such a short period as a result of the non-attendance of forensic teams? And, as we all know from answering numerous surveys on the phone, they almost never ask the question that would actually reveal your dissatisfaction: I expect the first two questions to burglary victims were, “Was the police officer who attended in the wake of the burglary tall enough?” and “Did you approve of their uniform?”

Prior to all this, the region’s Forensic Services analysed 1,172 attempted burglaries which had been attended by a CSI team, and discovered that “only” 33 suspects were identified as a result. Well, that’s 33 more thieving scum than would have been identified if they hadn’t attended. And if that’s an argument for not sending forensics to half of all house burglaries, surely it’s an argument for not sending them to any. There may be some logic behind all this, but I can’t discern it.

The trial, by the way, is due to be rolled out in four more counties – the hard-working house burglars of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Northamptonshire are hereby warned that their chances of being apprehended are about to be halved: go ahead, lads – fill yer boots!

Meanwhile, any number of police forces around the country seem to have sufficient manpower available to pursue claims of historic paedophile offences levelled against a former Tory Prime Minister, Sir Edward Heath, on what would appear to be somewhat flimsy grounds. As someone suggested yesterday, why don’t they save the taxpayer a fortune and just ask MI5, who presumably keep tabs on leading political figures in this country? The standard response – well, we didn’t know about Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith, so why shouldn’t Ted Heath have been a rampant paedo – don’t hold water: long before I joined the BBC, a journalist told me that that Smith had a thing for teenage boys, and, as soon as I started working at the BBC in the mid-‘80s, I heard stories about what that disgusting wretch Jimmy Savile got up to in his caravan. Rumours about both these swine were doing the rounds for decades – and, of course, turned out to be true. I’m not exactly at the heart of public life, but I suspect that even I – and many thousands like me - would have been aware of similar rumours concerning Heath.

I despised Edward Heath the politician, and – despite a decent war record and his love of music – he seems to have been a distinctly unattractive human being. But that’s no reason to sully his name in this wanton fashion. Yes, the police had a wretched record when it came to prosecuting celebrity paedophiles – and the recent incarceration of revolting specimens such as Rolf Harris and Max Clifford is cause for congrqatulation - but having the cops running around shrieking “Kill the paedo!” ever time some well-known figure has charges levelled against him by members of the public amounts to hysterical witch-hunting. (It reminds me of the over-reaction of the banks who had for years seemingly leant money to anybody who asked for it, whether or not there was the remotest chance of them ever repaying it, but who, in the wake of the 2008 crash, simply pocketed the humungous quantities of taxpayers’ cash lobbed at them and refused to lend any of it to anyone.)

Finally, Katie Hopkins, who hasn’t been charged with paedophilia, but has apparently been questioned under caution by the Metropolitan Police over an allegation by Peter Herbert, Chairman of the Society of Black Lawyers of inciting racial hatred in an article in a Sun column in which she described migrants trying to enter Italy illegally as “feral”, ”spreading  like norovirus”, and of having the survival instincts of “cockroaches”. I imagine that about 25% of the population would agree to a certain extent with those remarks, and that a further 40% would at least agree that allowing “swarms” of mainly economic migrants into the EU is probably not a great idea, especially as many of them will no doubt end up in third world  shanty towns on the outskirts of Calais, trying to sneak into our crowded little island. Nevertheless, the Met apparently think that the complaint justifies an investigation by the Special Enquiry Team of the Homicide and Major Crime Command. If Mr. Herbert should be burgled any time in the near future and is outraged when the police don’t bother turning up to investigate, at least he’ll have the satisfaction of knowing who to blame.