Daily Times

In 2016, the UK counter-terrorism strategy to steer young Muslims away from radicalisation and extremism was not welcomed in communities due to its weak national security approach. Voices from different quarters could be heard demanding changes in the dynamic of Prevent Strategy that deeply affected the social relationship. Some conservative quarters defended it, however, and said that extremism caused fatalities and social clefts, hate crime and honour-related violence. A majority of the lawmakers were of the opinion that there must be some amendments to the strategy to address the complaints of communities. The year 2016 elapsed with pain and tears, but left heartbreaking stories of terrorism, torture, killings, and failed counterterrorism measures across Europe. Britain and the EU member states were engaged in an intense debate over the fate of EU immigration as the graph of crime culminated, and an increasing number of incidents of terrorism, serious organised crime, and hate crime challenged the efforts of law enforcement agencies to tackle the deteriorating security situation in the country. Britain had voted to leave the EU because the project’s performance has been very poor in the last few years. Its intelligence sharing mechanism was unprofessional, and the attitude of the member states towards Britain was underwhelming. The EU had experienced numerous incidents of violence and terrorism, in which civilian and government installations were targeted. Their weak security approach and complicated intelligence infrastructure had also left a negative impact across the continent that viewed the national security through murky glasses, which cannot improve the deteriorating law and order management.

Terrorists targeted France, Germany and Brussels. In Britain, the deteriorating law and order, the failure of our police forces to fight criminal gangs, target killing, and to restore the confidence of communities prompted many controversies. On 17 January 2017, newspapers reported the failure of the police department to properly investigate the rising crime level. Former detective and chief inspector, Mick Neville, spotlighted an important weakness of the police CCTV camera in showing a clear picture of criminals, notwithstanding the allocation of funds worth billion pounds to their operations. In 2016, more than 515,193 crimes were recorded in eight months alone while the CCTV images were visible only in 9,745 cases. In the same period, criminals robbed more than 84, 035 houses and shops, however, police were helplessly seeking the cooperation of communities to arrest them. The failure of the Metropolitan police to address the social pain of communities and control crime has resulted in mistrust between the police and communities. It was widely debated in print and electronic media in the country. The civil society was of the view that million CCTV cameras, mass surveillance, and watchdog organisations from skies to the underground failed to deliver positively and show that they were operating in the right direction.

A Home Office spokesperson once said that the current terror threat level was severe, which meant that the attacks were highly likely because the exponentially growing terror networks, extremism, jihadism and foreign espionage were spreading across the country, complicating the task of the policing authorities. The UK police were in a deep crisis and faced a daunting set of challenges — the shortage of staff, lack of a professional approach to tackling the science of law and order management, and a low literacy rate — that also added to the pain of Home Office, National Crime Agency and policing Improvement stakeholders. The irony being that the criminal justice system also faced a set of challenges. Therefore, the crime rate was rising by the day. The police department mostly depended upon drone surveillance and other electronic means in response to the prevailing criminal culture in the country, but the results were underwhelming. Cyber terror networks were looting important data from industry, banking sectors, and state institutions, while we never heard in print and electronic media that a foreign cyber terrorist was arrested. In 2015, we were told that a reform package was being introduced to improve the performance of the force and make it accountable to communities, but it generated many stories. On many occasions, unfortunately, every reformer tried to paint a positive image of the police force in society but failed due to unknown hindrances. In 2012, former Home Secretary (Prime Minister) Teresa May told us that she had commissioned Tom Winsor to carry out a full independent review of police miseries as the existing pay system was designed 30 years ago, in which police officers were unable to pay either their mortgages or spend on family members wholeheartedly.

After a deep study of the police department, Winsor presented a comprehensive outline, but a response to his first report was not satisfactory as the police arbitration tribunal explicitly made no decision. She said that the Home Office was leaving no stone unturned to change the fate of the police, but policing experts noted that organised crime cost Britain 40 billion a year, in which more than 40,000 criminals of 7,000 gangs were involved. Drug trafficking, human trafficking, foreign espionage, terror-related networks, modern slavery, sexual exploitation, irregular migration, corruption, racism, discrimination, poverty, illiteracy, and international terrorism made the lives of British citizens underwhelming and melancholy. In all these cases, the police response was very poor. On 19 January 2017, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe warned that the latest rise in violent crime across England and Wales was a matter of great concern. Target killing and murder rose to 22 percent. However, children as young as 12, the police said, were running drugs trade from London to their own countries. Councillors from 19 boroughs had called on the Home Secretary to undermine this business, in which big gangs exploit children. In a letter to Home Office, they warned that the crisis is going to worsen. Recent crime figure showed 12 million crimes committed in England and Wales in 2016.

The letter stated, “We believe that county Lines has the potential to be the next grooming scandal, following the child sexual exploitation scandals we have seen in Rotherham, Oxfordshire and elsewhere in recent years”.

In 2016, we also experienced the largest conglomeration of extremists in Europe, where they carried out attacks against civilian and government installations that killed hundreds of innocent citizens. These elements belonging to more than 100 countries gathered in major cities and were adorned with bombs and guns. The interesting news in 2016 was that the UK intelligence and counterterrorism authorities foiled more than 10 fatalistic terrorist attacks. It means terrorists have encircled us from all sides. Recently, a military bomb squad teams were called out to hundreds of schools in the UK in the space of two months to remove potentially dangerous chemical stored in chemistry classrooms. These harrowing stories spread panic and harassment in communities who now feel the greater risk of terrorist attack. Moreover, Brussels and London perceptualized the issue of EU migration differently, and the EU also started looking at reforming some free movement rules. We hope the Home Office will improve its image in bringing about professional reforms in the police department because the present way of policing communities is complicated and irksome.

The writer is the author of “Fixing the EU Intelligence Crisis” and can be reached at zai.musakhan222@gmail.com