British police admitted the impossibility of investigating every crime: there is no time and energy

British police do not have time to investigate all the crimes, the chairman of the Police Federation has said, revealing that his colleagues could not even carry out an investigation when his own car was broken into.

The chairman of the Police Federation has described Britain’s police chiefs’ recent pledge to investigate every single crime as “impossible” – and said investigating every crime “isn’t working”.

Steve Hartshorne, a Metropolitan Police officer who served in the armed response unit, said that after his own car was broken into, he received nothing more than a crime scene number from his colleagues, writes the Daily Mail.

Hartshorne, whose organization represents 145,000 police officers in England and Wales, was reacting to Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s speech at the Police Federation’s annual conference, the Times reports.

British Home Office chief Suella Braverman told delegates at a virtual conference that the public “expects more than just the number of crimes”.

Secretary Braverman said at the conference that the public “wants to see officers patrolling the streets, not following pronouns on Twitter.”

People “want to see police taking visible action in communities and thoroughly investigating crimes,” the interior minister said.

She added that police officers should investigate every crime where there is a reasonable line of inquiry – only to then hear how the leader of the Police Federation was disappointed by his own colleagues when his car was broken into.

Hartshorne said: “A month ago I was the victim of a crime in my own force, the Metropolitan Police Service, and they weren’t following reasonable lines of inquiry. There was a great chance of forensic footage being taken from inside the car – that didn’t happen. I have a crime number. Obviously I got on the phone and nothing. Disappointed in my own departments. Forgive me, Home Secretary – although it’s a great standard, it’s not being followed. Cops don’t have time for that.”

A police officer told the Police Federation’s annual conference that forensic experts missed a “great chance” to take samples, blaming a lack of resources.

At the policing conference, the Home Office chief was also asked whether officers were being paid fairly, months after the British government agreed to an independent pay review body’s findings of a 7 per cent pay rise.

Asked if this was enough, Suella Braverman said it was a “great” increase: “I think it really reflects the determination, hard work and economic climate that we operate within. It was what we have done as a government to show our gratitude and appreciation for what officers on the frontline do.”

Hartshorne claims that the monetary reward was ten percent less than desired, but admitted that it was “a step in the right direction.”

At the end of the conference, the federation said rank-and-file employees would be asked to vote on whether to push for labor rights such as the right to strike. The officers’ status as servants of the crown rather than as employees currently prevented them from undertaking strike action.

The Police Federation said: “This decision follows more than a decade of calling on the government to address poor working conditions for police officers. It simply meets the legitimate expectations and aspirations of its members.”

Earlier, Suella Braverman told officers not to be distracted by extraneous issues: “For bureaucratic reasons – and in the interests of free speech – it was right to ensure that a malicious communications crime would only be recorded if the criminal threshold was clearly reached, and not only then when someone claims to have been abused. I’m not running my campaign against political correctness in policing just for the sake of the law-abiding majority who want to see cops patrolling the streets rather than following pronouns on Twitter. I also know that most of you do too. signed up for this.”