Send the police out alone on the beat

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Faced with yesterday's report of street crime soaring in all London boroughs, the police - as always - moan and groan about a shortage of "resources". So many police had to be diverted to the "fight against terrorism", they maintain. But the public, meanwhile, complain - and rightly - that they never see enough officers on their local streets.

There's one very simple way of doubling the numbers visibly doing this essential job. It's so simple that it seems to have passed everyone by.

The clue is this. Just think: when did you last see a policeman or policewoman on their own? Coming back from the shops yesterday, along a tranquil street of 1920s semidetached houses, I saw a police panda car swing around the corner ahead of me. To my astonishment, it had two policemen in it. One, perhaps, to drive and the other to hold the A-Z. We're not talking high-tech here.

This is bizarre enough in a panda car. But the phenomenon is even more prevalent when you see that ultra-rare thing: the police out and about on foot. I live in what must be one of the quietest neighbourhoods in north central London. And yet, when I do glimpse police walking the street, I always see two of them. Do they fear that some villain will leap out, in broad daylight, from behind a clipped privet hedge? Or what?

It's a habit that just seems to have grown up, like that nasty Japanese knotweed in your garden. And if it were just stopped - by the administrative equivalent of a shot of weedkiller - it's obvious that the numbers of police patrols could instantly double.

Like many Londoners, I'm deeply suspicious about police working habits. When I leap off a zebra crossing because a police car, with all lights flashing and sirens blaring, is zooming straight towards me, I don't think: "Ah, that's another major crime about to be solved." I think: "Ah, they're late for the end of their shift." Or perhaps it's time for a quiet cup of tea.

In such cars, there seem usually to be about four young policemen, all crammed into their seats, and grinning happily at the alarmed pedestrians. Too many episodes of television cops-and-robbers shows, you suspect.

One research study found that British police officers' favourite author was Joseph Wambaugh, best-known for The Onion Field, in which two policemen - note the pairing - are shot at by a maniacal killer. Wambaugh's semi-factual fiction about the Los Angeles police department - made into a movie in 1979 - is, God help us, how the ordinary British copper would like to see himself.

The brute truth is that permanently paired police officers - a dinky two-step - are yet another glaring instance where we're right to be suspicious of police working habits.

Now we all know that a police officer on the beat will

seldom catch anyone perpetrating a major crime. That's not the point. The prime police duty is to keep the peace. The offences that worry people and make them think their neighbourhood is turning sour are the rash of petty crimes: the snatching of bags or mobile phones, the drunken rowdyism, the graffiti smeared on walls, the aggressive begging. This is where the roving police officer can have a civilising influence. By comparison with cop fiction, it's a dull job: walking through dreary estates, peering into nighttime shop windows, looking down alleyways, noticing anything that seems amiss. But this is the job we're paying the police - very handsomely - to do. And surely, except in the most special, threatening circumstances, a police officer should be tough enough to do it solo. If not, he or she is in the wrong business.

Yet here the police are, clinging together, like fridge magnets or little children at a toddlers' club. The waste of - forgive the word - "resources" is staggering. What's it all about?

Talking to Glen Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan branch of the Police Federation, begins to give me an answer.

There is, he tells me, no specific policy about going around in ones and twos. Nor has there been any openly announced policy change. Supposedly, "risk assessments" are undertaken each day, to see whether the mean streets of a London neighbourhood are safe enough to patrol alone.

But as I talk to Mr Smyth, it becomes clear what has gradually made things worse. It's our public services' paramount (and paranoid) safety culture. Recent changes in safety legislation have undercut thorough policework. If a police officer is hurt, what will the Health and Safety Executive have to say? (Currently it's prosecuting the Metropolitan Commissioner because two policemen fell through roofs while chasing suspects.) Or might the police officer sue? Perhaps citing the dreaded "post-traumatic syndrome", as in the scandalous lawsuits which won the police compensation after the Hillsborough stadium disaster.

Like Inspector Morse's feeble boss, the man in charge of a London police station is forever looking over his shoulder. The NHS is riddled with the disease known as defensive medicine, whereby consultants throw every possible test at a patient to cover themselves legally. The police, in their pathetic pairings, are going in for " defensive policing".

This does not mean that the people they are defending are you and me. They are defending themselves.

The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, and the head of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Lord (Toby) Harris, constantly pronounce grandly about this or that initiative. But here is something extremely simple. It requires no costly consultants and no special political advisers. It only requires common sense. Get the police out on the streets on their own. We shall then be twice as likely to see one of them in action. The police will be doing the job they ought to be doing. And in one way at least, London will become a better place.