I find these sorts of threads really disheartening, but the fact remains that these are beliefs held by many. Some will have their own less-than-genuine agenda for posting negative comments but sadly many are posting from personal experience. I think the police ignore that at our own peril. We police by consent in this country and that means transparency and accountability.
I don't speak for all officers or all forces but I hope I can answer a few recurring themes that have popped up - from my own perspective - in a way that might help people understand why the police behave in certain ways. It might reassure some of you even if you still disagree with the approach.
Money. Policing has suffered huge funding cuts. Now there's no denying money was wasted and working practices could have been improved, but truth is that we're now in a situation where there is only so much you can do when you have 15 frontline officers (on a good day) covering a population of 40-50,000 people and on average 40 calls to police to answer at any given time. So the police prioritised. Most forces prioritised by threat/harm/risk, and by this they mean of physical harm to life or limb. So any shop theft, fraud, car broken into etc immediately goes to the bottom of the list compared to an assault. 'Property second to people' is the reasoning. It means that by the time those 'less dangerous' crimes are picked up (often by secondary, desk-based staff - if at all) lines of enquiry are lost so they get closed without any satisfactory outcome. We think it's crap for victims too.
Plugging the gap for other services. Quite often mental health accounts for 40% of what my team do. Chronic underfunding in the NHS means MH services are skinned to the bone and then some. Faced with 18-month waiting lists, inaccessible staff and an emergency crisis team that is so understaffed you might be told to ring back later, desperate and vulnerable people ring police threatening to kill themselves. Often social workers call us saying they're worried about someone too, but didn't have the resources to check on them and are now going off duty so can we fit it in please. Then hospitals themselves call us because the mentally unwell patient (who needs less urgent care than the bloke with a badly broken arm) has got so fed up of waiting to see a MH nurse he's left and they think he might kill himself. We also get missing people calls from mental health wards whose staff/patient ratio is such that one of their suicide risks has escaped and they need our help to find them. Under T/H/R these are prioritised over someone's car being broken into. When we attend these jobs it will likely tie us up all shift, as we have to make sure these people are safe.
Evidence - sadly, being told 'so-and-so down the road said it was x who did it' cannot be used as evidence unless that person is willing to provide a statement which can be used in a court of law. The burden of proof and evidential threshold is incredibly high (particularly when it comes to the ID of people) and while there are good solid reasons for it, yes it definitely works in the criminals' favour. We find it frustrating too.
Charging decisions. Police can only charge basic crimes (or mid-level crimes where the offender admits it or we have overwhelming evidence). The rest are decided by the CPS. Incidentally, the CPS make the final decision for all domestics and hate crimes, unless there is such a fundamental lack of evidence then an Inspector might make the decision not to proceed to the CPS. This has to be fully recorded for audit purposes.
Rapes. Shocking and disappointing conviction rates. The rules on disclosure has a huge amount to do with this. Individual police officers far less so. While it's my own personal opinion, I think some thought as to whether an adversarial court approach is the best approach for a crime in which there are rarely witnesses or independent evidence and which often comes down to consent is in order.
Domestics. I joined to tackle these. Like a great many officers I see my role as having a duty to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. I have a like-minded Inspector. We've had many successes, including with victims who have previously declined to engage with police. Perhaps because of our team ethic we're not representative, but my force - like most - has a positive action policy (ie you cannot attend and just walk away without doing anything, you must do something) and it's generally robustly enforced. There are individual failings of course, mostly because officers are human and get it wrong. I am proud to say that the only cases I've ever known of offficers abusing their positions have resulted in those officers being forced out of the organisation.
All that said, as an organisation I think the police have a lot to learn about domestics. Officers are generally independent, practical people who can struggle to comprehend the complex dynamics in abusive relationships. Too many of us genuinely don't understand why victims stay. We need to have far more training around victim psychology to break down the barriers preventing victims from trusting us. But likewise, society needs to step up. I can't promise a victim that if she leaves her abuser she'll get a house in a nice area with good schools and decent benefits while she finds her feet and I'll make her abuser go to prison. I can't even promise her a space in a refuge these days. She may have to wait weeks for UC. And even if she supports a prosecution and provides a statement (which will totally upend her life), the CPS might well choose no further action if there are no visible injuries or other supporting evidence. We can now use Domestic Violence Protection Orders, but they still have to meet a court threshold and if the perpetrator breaches them, chances are he's looking at a £50 fine only. I understand why many victims have little faith in the criminal justice system or society in general and so choose to stay. I, and my colleagues, will still do our best, as I believe will most officers, but many of these factors are outside our control.
And while doing all the above, most of my team will have about 8 crimes to investigate as well as answering 999 calls. This is why we're so slow.
At the moment public order crimes have dropped massively. There are no night-time-economy crimes to deal with. My force are screening out all but the most serious crimes (ie THR) from frontline officers to ensure they can undertake patrols to support lockdown. (A 999 domestic will still take precedence over these.) That's why there suddenly seem to be more officers available. My firce is gery, very clear that we are doing thus through engagement, working with people rather than against them wherever possible. This comes at a price though, particularly for vulnerable victims of crimes taking place behind closed doors who won't call us themselves and who won't see anyone else now who might report on their behalf.
Meanwhile, my team is just trying to the best we can in unprecedented times. We don't know who us infected and who isn't. Some of our more 'difficult customers' deliberately cough over us. Other people call us 'useless pigs' yet at the same time want us to arrest their neighbours for havung a BBQ (we wouldn't do this).
No one joins the police to be popular and anyone who can't take the criticism is in the wrong job. But we are still people (some good, a few bad, the majority ordinary) in the same society as the rest of you. We want to get this right just as much as everyone else.