{"id":114390,"date":"2026-08-31T12:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T12:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/114390\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T12:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T12:34:11","slug":"middlesbrough-is-a-symptom-of-britains-broken-policing-system-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/114390\/","title":{"rendered":"Middlesbrough is a symptom of Britain\u2019s broken policing system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Should Cleveland, the police force struggling to contain Middlesbrough\u2019s latest crime spree, be disbanded? The deaths of seven men, including two police officers killed during a police pursuit, exposed a local gang feud. More deaths occurred in a house fire, along with disorder as local youths \u201ccommemorated\u201d their dead. As a result, 200 extra officers<\/a> were sent to assist, including personnel from the National Crime Agency.<\/p>\n

Cleveland\u2019s failings have led to some questioning the force\u2019s future. Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor for Teesside, certainly has. The man due to take responsibility for the force in 2028 told The Times<\/a>: \u201cCulturally it [the force] is not fit for purpose.\u201d Houchen also mentioned the central government\u2019s role in the force\u2019s performance, citing cuts to funding and personnel. As the Home Office ponders a near-collapse of law and order in the area, it seems easy to blame a small, beleaguered police force. But is this fair?<\/p>\n

First, Middlesbrough\u2019s circumstances are hardly unique. Yes, Cleveland Police is a small force of only 1,500 officers \u2014 220 fewer than it had in 2010. It serves a population of 590,000, including a troubled, deindustrialized urban area. The force itself is no stranger to controversy either, as the Ray Mallon<\/a> affair demonstrated. Mallon, a senior police officer known as \u201cRobocop\u201d, was implicated in a police misconduct scandal before serving as mayor until 2015. An unashamed advocate of zero tolerance policing tactics, Mallon\u2019s tenure saw a significant decrease in crime. Since then, however, police reforms and austerity have both taken their toll.<\/p>\n

But this hardly makes Cleveland unique; numerous other, similarly modestly-sized forces police \u201cchallenging areas\u201d too. The similarly pocket-sized Bedfordshire Police, for example, has Luton<\/a>. This, I would argue, isn\u2019t a Cleveland problem: it\u2019s a UK policing problem, with smaller forces sitting on any number of potential powder kegs.<\/p>\n

What struck me as especially significant about the Cleveland affair, which resulted in masked police armed with rifles patrolling housing estates, is the relatively modest nature of the gangs involved. These are what the police call \u201cLevel 2<\/a>\u201d crime networks, often involved in county-lines<\/a> drug gangs. Consequently, cash-strapped police forces are no longer capable of running proactive operations against such criminals. Nor do they have the neighborhood policing or local intelligence capabilities to identify emerging threats.<\/p>\n

Instead, officers provide largely reactive policing from remote patrol bases, surrendering the streets to the gangs who thrive in Middlesbrough\u2019s troubled housing estates. Again, though, the same could be said of many British police forces, now reliant on regional units to manage such modest manifestations of \u201corganized\u201d crime. These units are also hard-pressed, leaving what one might politely call \u201ccapability gaps\u201d, which in plain English means \u201cdoing very little\u201d.<\/p>\n

Therefore, calling for Cleveland Police\u2019s disbandment strikes me as unfair. Imagine halving a football club\u2019s team, sacking its coach, relocating it to a smaller stadium then scrapping it for failing to win the League Cup? This is what, in effect, Ben Houchen is advocating. As debates continue<\/a> around a \u201cmega-force\u201d model bolstered by a national police service, local constabularies are collapsing. Meanwhile, Britain\u2019s criminal justice elites continue to indulge their delusions in non-custodial<\/a> sentencing. Prisons are as poorly managed as the police force, as are the courts and probation services. This is full-spectrum failure, from nose to tail. Merging a failing force with two other similarly struggling forces isn\u2019t a solution. Arguably, it\u2019s a kind of displacement activity of the sort civil servants excel at.<\/p>\n

This year has seen law and order firmly back on the political radar, although the Prime Minister \u2014 and an increasingly AWOL Shabana Mahmood \u2014 seem strangely quiet on the issue. Until the Government grasps the nettle of a police strategy led by reality rather than dogma, expect to see more Middlesbrough-style dramas play out across the UK. There are no \u201cextra\u201d police officers to help, either, with forces robbing Peter to pay Paul as they shuttle existing resources around the country. What happens when they, finally, run out of cops?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Should Cleveland, the police force struggling to contain Middlesbrough\u2019s latest crime spree, be disbanded? The deaths of seven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[37190,13,3002,46838,1514,46839,46840,474],"class_list":["post-114390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-ben-houchen","tag-britain","tag-cleveland-police","tag-county-lines","tag-middlesbrough","tag-ray-mallon","tag-uk-police","tag-uncategorized"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117190149118579572","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}