Police Officers Told “Stop Virtue-Signalling & Get On With The Job!”

The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester has told his officers to stop virtue-signalling on social media and get on with actual policing. Stephen Watson said that police officers should be catching criminals, not engaging in online “fluff and nonsense.”

According to The Times:

Watson has overhauled his force, one of England’s biggest, and brought it out of special measures in less than two years. The time taken to answer 999 calls has fallen sharply over the past year, and the number of suspects charged has risen significantly.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has described Watson as a superb leader. This month she urged other chiefs to “pay close attention” to his methods, including how he “rejects woke policing and [has] embraced a back-to-basics approach”.

In an interview, Watson has told The Times that police officers should be professional, impartial and never political.

They should not be involved in “public discourse on Twitter, where people are knocking lumps out of each other”, he said, adding: “People can do that in a democracy, that’s just not for the police.”

There have been several recent incidents in which police have been criticised for their conduct online. Sussex police was condemned by Braverman in September for warning social media users not to misgender a paedophile who identified as a woman.

Several chief constables have defended their officers’ right to “take the knee”, and officers have been criticised for dancing in social media clips, painting their nails or altering their uniforms to promote causes.

Watson, who attributes his success to a “back-to-basics approach” and a return to traditional policing, said: “Using social media, in these very contested times, requires a particular skill. And it’s a skill that we do not have.

So for the most part, regardless of our intentions, we tend to use social media badly. And actually, reaching out to communities is all too often perceived as virtue signalling. And, candidly, in some cases it is virtue signalling.”

He said that he had looked at officers’ social media and thought they should “get on with being the police because that’s what you are paid for”. He added: “The public genuinely don’t care what I have for breakfast, or what my opinions are on contemporary social issues.”

This month Matt Jukes, the assistant commissioner and anti-terrorism chief, was criticised for having worn a “menopause vest” to try to understand hot flushes.

Watson said he would not wear such a vest because, although it was a “good faith gesture”, it had not landed well with the public who wanted police to get the basics right.

“I think that we are better served by dishing up to the public the things that they have every right to expect of us. And to just do that constantly, consistently, and to the exclusion of pretty much everything else.”

 

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