Hug a hoodie? We should all be arresting them according

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On current form, the Tory party, which nobody thought had any starsbar its leader, appears to be pretty good at coming up withinteresting new players. Just as David Davis, the former SASreservist brought up by a single mother on a housing estate, exits(temporarily) stage left, in bounds his replacement Dominic Grieve,a character who in some ways is no less startling.
It turns out that the new shadow home secretary is not merely a52-year-old French-speaking QC, but a wordsmith who has usedthree-word alliterative phrases 715 times in debates in the House.(This is far higher than average, apparently, and must surelyindicate that Grieve has a fearsome intellect.)
Readers of last week’s Sunday Times will also know that hehas a habit of solving burglaries by himself, defending vulnerablebus stops while in black tie and chucking yobs off trains.
Indeed he seems quite the modern man of action – although helooks uncannily like the lanky writer Julian Barnes. Unlike JacquiSmith, his Labour counterpart, who doesn’t enjoy walkingabout the capital after dark, he is so keen to negotiate the meanstreets that he frequently runs around them in the evenings. He hascampaigned in illicit Brixton drinking dens, he tells me, and inhousing estates where he was “occasionally threatened”.He doesn’t seem remotely perturbed about any of this.
I ask him first about his compulsion to be a have-a-go hero.Doesn’t he have faith in our police? “I have faith intheir dedication,” he says, which seems a pretty wishy-washyanswer.
Maybe they don’t deserve any better: after all, theydidn’t exactly knock themselves out to nail the burglar whobroke into Grieve’s west London home. Instead it was the MPwho discovered spots of blood by the broken bathroom window, tracedthem up the street and thus stumbled into the robber’s den.The Met, by contrast, sent a car round and, er, that was that.
“The police were not useless,” he protests. “Ican’t blame them for not picking up bloodstains in the dark.The following morning, once I had persuaded them that I hadprobably, well actually, hit the bonanza point, they came back andacted promptly.”
In any case, he tells me, it’s worth remembering that“the police are citizens in uniform”. And thus, withperfect barrister’s logic, he would like me to know that thereverse can also be true. If they are us in uniform, then we can bethem out of uniform. What a great way of dealing with the increasein crime on the streets.
“We have powers of arrest,” Grieve says. “We canarrest people, as citizens. If you think someone is committing acrime, you can detain them until the police get on thescene.”
So can we all be have-a-go heroes? That sounds dangerouslyanarchic, as well as likely to lead to a knife in the ribs.
“We need to encourage people to be proactive,” theshadow home secretary says, skating around the question. “Weare in a society where people are reluctant to be proactive becausethey think they will be misunderstood or not supported by thepolice.”
He cites the recent case of a man in Crawley, West Sussex, whodetained a child for behaving badly and was then arrested forkidnap. “As long as we get examples like this, we are sendingout a terrible message to the public about the extent to which theyare supported. [But] I’m not advocating vigilantism.”What is he advocating, then?
“People being proactive in dealing with crime. And some of[these issues] can be resolved by giving citizens some educationand training.”
Training? If the Tories get in, can we expect to be put on eveningcourses that will teach us how best to tackle delinquents, gangs offeral youths or drunks at bus stops? Night classes in headlocks,that sort of thing?
“Well, there is not scope for a policeman behind everylamp-post,” Grieve says. “And a lot of low-levelcriminal behaviour could be stopped if adults wereproactive.”
Does he think we should all start going to the gym, then, to limberup for our new role as low-key policemen? After all, chuckingsomeone off the Tube might seem like child’s play for him,but it might not be for the 23% of British adults who areclinically obese.
“People have to be responsible for themselves,” Grievesays hurriedly. “And I didn’t actually throw [that man]off the Tube. His behaviour was outrageous: he was slappingpassengers on the head. He was causing a nuisance so I told him toget off the Tube, and he got off the Tube. It didn’tcriminalise him but it stopped the behaviour.”
It takes quite a lot of confidence, though, to stand up and ordersomeone off a Tube train. Having been educated at Westminster andOxford, and then spent his entire working life in either acourtroom or the House of Commons, Grieve is undoubtedly one ofthose people who expects others to listen when he barks – andthey probably do. However, most people are not top barristers, andmaking a scene in public is probably still the nation’snumber-one dread.
Grieve nods. “We have to change people’s behaviour.Sometimes we are sending out signals to people not to get involved,but lots of people have confidence. My experience is that it has todo with motivation, not education. There are a lot of people outthere, law-abiding citizens, who have not had a privilegededucation, or a privileged background at all.” Indeed.
Are we really Charlie’s Angels in waiting or, at the veryleast, members of the cast of The Bill in mufti? It seems we mightbe. In support of his idea, Grieve quotes from the report EngagingCommunities in Fighting Crime, published by Louise Casey,Labour’s former “co-ordinator for respect”, thismonth.
“Seventy-five per cent of respondents said they wanted to domore to help the police and fight crime personally. That suggeststo me that the population is not full of shy and retiring peoplewho couldn’t care less. They do care and, on top of that,they are motivated. Not by the desire to be Rambos, but by thedesire to be sensible and proactive.”
He also echoes Casey’s recommendation for“crime-mapping” – or linking statistics onspecific crimes to where they occur, and making them public.“There are some things that you would not crime-map,”Grieve says. “Domestic violence in individual houses, forexample. But crime-mapping for individual street areas is perfectlyfeasible. It would allow you to identify more locally where theproblems are, and then get the police working with localcommunities.”
Would it go down well with the public? Imagine, say, trying to sellyour house if potential buyers can see that 10 people have beenmugged in your street in the past three months.
“If I may say so,” Grieve says, a trifle haughtily,“I have never come across an individual who has told me thatcrime-mapping will be a problem for their property values.”
As he sees it, such maps would facilitate easy identification ofcrime trends. “They would enable people to put two and twotogether. Quite a lot of crime goes unreported. I’m not goingto bother reporting that my car window has been smashed in, forexample. But if someone goes to the map and finds it is not anisolated incident, then the information might enable the police tosolve a major offence.”
Putting two and two together, changing people’s behaviour,getting everyone to be proactive: Grieve seems rather anxious toget people as buzzily engaged in social affairs as he is. Maybeit’s because his own world has suddenly become a lot moreexciting. Or maybe it’s because he senses, with slightlysweaty palms, that his political luck is in.
Get ready for local courses in how to handcuff a hooligan.