The message from the Met’s planned closure of half its police stations is clear: do not try and see the police in the one place where you might think they’d be available, in an actual police station. Just call them instead. And if you are rash enough to be mugged or assaulted and want to make your way to the safety of a police station, do make sure you do it in the right place at the right time. And the bad news is, finding the right place and the right time is getting harder and harder.
Incidentally, when I say, “police stations”, I mean the kind familiar to most of us, where you can actually go in and report a crime. The Met has told me that just because a station loses its front desk, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t police inside. Well, news to them: it’s not frightfully helpful if these busy bees are hard at work backstage; what we want from a police station are actual police to talk to when we’ve been mugged or want a confidential chat about the drug dealers next door.
