Chief Constable Sara Thornton, speaking to a conference of police chiefs and police and crime commissioners, said forces are too stretched to deal with “deserving” issues, such as logging gender-based hate incidents:

“Neither investigating gender-based hate crime or investigating allegations against those who have died are necessarily bad things – I just argue that they cannot be priorities for a service that is over-stretched.”

Thornton said what a male police officer would be howled down for saying “treating misogyny as a hate crime is a concern for some well-organised campaigning organisations” however, forces “do not have the resources to do everything. I want us to solve more burglaries and bear down on violence before we make more records of incidents that are not crimes”, adding she hoped the forthcoming Law Commission’s review into hate crime laws “takes account of the pressure on forces before suggesting the law is changed”. Privately police fear the Law Commission review will result in a snowflake’s charter.

It has come to something when a copper has to step up to call a halt to politically correct policing driven by single-issue fanatics. Thornton is in tune with the public’s priorities “I want us to solve more burglaries and bear down on violence before we make more records of incidents that are not crimes … the basics – responding to emergencies, investigating and solving crime and neighbourhood policing”. Take note Sajid Javid, get the police on the streets and off Twitter…