Police need thousands more real-life Happy Valley heroes, Yvette Cooper says
Police forces need to channel the energy and dedication of Happy Valley community officer Catherine Cawood, Yvette Cooper said as she outlined plans for thousands more officers.
The Shadow Home Secretary accused the Tories of being "missing in action in the fight against crime" and harked back to Tony Blair as she vowed a Labour government would be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
Ms Cooper said her party has fully costed £360 million plans to bulk up neighbourhood teams across the country by recruiting 13,000 officers and PCSOs to help forces recover from the "double whammy" of Tory austerity.
She also said under her leadership, vetting of police recruits would be much stricter.
Referencing the famous BBC detective, played by Sarah Lancaster, Ms Cooper said: "Catherine Cawood may be fiction. But the stories of police officers like Catherine who know their communities, who pick up the things that everyone else misses, who solve crimes and keep people safe, are very real.
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Yvette Cooper said Labour would recruit 13,000 neighbourhood officers and PCSOs (Getty Images)"And we need more of them."
Under the Tories, Ms Cooper said, policing had become a "reactive, crisis response service" instead of being "proactive and problem-solving".
She said that by drawing on the traditional "bobby on the beat", Labour would give forces better resources to pick up "vital intelligence that helps them catch dangerous criminals".
Addressing the Institute for Government she said that just one in 20 recorded crimes now result in a charge - and this is even worse for offences such as rape.
"Today across the country 300 women are likely to be raped," she said. "200 of those rapes will be reported. But barely three of those rapists will be convicted.
"Let that shameful, disgraceful fact sink in. Shamefully little is being done."
Ms Cooper said Tony Blair was right 30 years ago on the need to be 'tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime' (Mirrorpix)She claimed that by making police forces to work together on technology and purchasing, £360 million can be set aside to pay for the additional officers.
Ms Cooper accused the government of a "dereliction of duty" and said: "The Conservatives are missing in action in the fight against crime."
She said: "Thirty years ago this year Labour Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair said our party would be 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime'.
"It was right then, it’s right now. It’s what we did then, it’s what we’ll do again."
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Lashing out at vetting and disciplinary failures which allowed killer Wayne Couzens and rapist David Carrick join and remain the Met Police, she said: "At the moment it's possible for police officers to get through whole stages of recruitment without ever being interviewed in person and without having employment references checked or character references checked.
"It's not good enough - this is policing."
She continued: "There are cases where forces have found there there are some quite troubling things being said by a potential officer, by a candidate, on their social media, but instead of taking that as an indication of something that might be a concern... that is not taken seriously enough."
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