Another report on immigration is out today – 5 years on from the signing of the treaty of accession in Athens – ACPO are claiming that stories of a migrant ‘crime wave’ are a myth. In fact, they say, crime in areas with lots of new EU immigrants seems to only have risen in proportion to the general rise in population.

The Telegraph covers it like this:

The report for the Association of Chief Police Officers appears to contradict claims made by several senior officers that forces require extra money to cope with an immigrant crimewave.

Which is an example of the selective amnesia of the UK’s media. Most senior officers who have asked for more money to cope with immigration into their area have pointed to the increase in translation costs etc. that these new migrants bring with them. Mike Fuller (continually and pointedly described as “Britain’s highest ranking black police officer”), whose leaked letter to Jacqui Smith back in January provoked some of these “crime wave” stories, wrote what actually sounds like a relatively sober piece trying to make this point (according to the Mail):

“I feel it is essential that I set out the impact population growth is having in Kent and the pressure it is placing on finite resources.”

He says the total extra cost to the force is £34million over the past three years and accuses the Home Office of not increasing his budget by enough to cope. “There is a danger that if the future funding regime fails to respond to dynamic changes in migration the extra demand this generates will impact negatively on performance.”

As Alasdair Murray explained in a recent CentreForum pamphlet, the problems immigration causes local authorities are entirely down to the incredible inefficiency with which our over centralised state allocates local budgets (relying, incredibly, on 2001 census figures). If local authorities had power to raise and spend budgets from local populations, then they might actually be able to benefit from a large influx of foreign workers – or at least break even. And this is essentially the point Mike Fuller seems to have been making.

But the media isn’t interested in any of that wonkish stuff. Having reported Fuller’s words – which were never intended to be made public – as the shrieking of a new Powell (and a black Powell no less – doesn’t he know where he came from?), it then forgets how it spun the first story, and turns on him with the second – revealing that there was no crimewave after all – this black man must be a racist! Politicians, knowing how toxic the whole issue is, will make a few banal statements and then try and move on to something else. Fuller will probably keep his mouth shut. And the media will ignore the defining role it plays in the whole story.

The actual point – that local authorities clearly need extra money to provide services to more people (especially in multiple languages) – and that the money isn’t getting there because of our shoddy system of government, is lost completely – buried in paragraph five of each article under a banner headline about criminality.

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