TL;DR
The police don’t get to chose which laws they enforce, that’s the job of our elected representatives in parliament.
Some senior police officials have recently been complaining about having to enforce the law when it comes to “hate crime” or “sexual harassment” because they’re worried that they can’t enforce the law on other “more serious crimes”.
This is a totally unhelpful distraction from the real issue: that the police don’t have the resources to do what we have asked of them.
The police don’t get to choose which laws they enforce. Parliaments job is to create the law. The police must enforce that law.
Longer
We still live in a structurally racist and sexist society. While it might be uncomfortable to hear- the truth is that if you are a woman in this country, you will find it harder in life. Not due to decisions that you have made, but because of disadvantages you will experience only because you’re a woman. And similarly, if you are a person of colour, you will experience challenges in life, not due to the fault of your actions, but because of disadvantages solely related to your ethnicity.
I know that can be challenging to understand for people who don’t have to deal with sexism or racism. Anticipating that, 1) don’t just take my word for it, look at the statistics and academic research on racial and sexual biases. 2) Remember- just because you haven’t experienced it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Just because you’re not a racist/sexist, it doesn’t mean that racism and sexism aren’t real.
The point is, our police are part of our society and therefore part of our social structure that includes repression and discrimination. And while most individuals are good- it is the case that the behaviours of individual police officers force will be defined by the context of the society we live in.
So it’s probably good that the police DON’T get to decide which laws to enforce- because whether conscious or not, the police will mirror attitudes in society. Which is precisely how you end up with police officers pulling over black men driving fancy cars “because it didn’t look right”.
It is our parliament- the representatives of us, the people- that has decided that we, as a society want to do something about racism and sexism. So our parliament made laws to combat it.
Now whether the police like those laws or not, it is their job to enforce the law. So if our parliament says that threatening a woman with sexual violence, while she’s simply walking down the street trying to live her life, is a crime- then the police should take it seriously and enforce the law.
And you know that the kind of people who commit hate crimes are typically the kind of people who are emboldened by getting away with said hate crime and go on to commit what these senior police officers deem to be “more serious crimes”.
Or another way of putting it, the guy who threatens to punch black people on the nose for being black, at some point is likely to punch a black person on the nose for being black. Similarly, the guy who threatens sexual violence at strangers on the street is more likely to go on to commit sexual violence.
Solution 1: Society needs to be less racist and sexist
This sounds somewhat daunting taken as a whole, so don’t take it as a whole; take it as an individual. What we can do as individuals is connect with each other. Have a conversation with someone who is different to you. Lean into the good in humanity. Empathise. Be open to the experience of others and you will enrich your own experience.
The things that we have in common are far greater than the things that make us different. And when we connect with people who are different, we break down our preconceptions that are so often based on negative stereotypes. It is irrational, but very normal, to fear people you don’t know or understand. Our rational selves can easily overcome this, by simply having a conversation.
Solution 2: More resources for the police
The other solution is that our police need more resources. More money alone isn’t a solution: lack of money certainly is a problem.
our politicians have done well to introduce progressive laws. Our politicians need to do even better and fund the police to be able to enforce those laws.
And I’m pretty sure that we have enough politicians. The police, should not try to do the job of our parliament petitioning to reduce and redefine their duties. The police can be transparent about the adequate resources they need to deliver all of their duties. Other than that police should do policing and should leave it to politicians to do politics.