Police 'waste £66,000 on woke LGBT products
Police ‘waste £66,000 on woke LGBT products’: Fury as forces in England and Wales spent taxpayers’ cash on ‘inclusive’ rainbow flags, badges and lip balm in bid to prevent hate crime
- Selfie frames, pens, key rings and shoe laces also purchased across 27 forces
- In total, £66,689 was spent on LGBT merchandise between 2019 and 2022
- South Wales Police alone spent £24,000 on items including badges and whistles
- Kent Police also purchased rainbow key rings and grip pens totalling £8,000
Police forces have reportedly spent more than £66,000 of taxpayers’ money on ‘inclusive’ rainbow flags, badges and lip balms in a bid to halt hate crime.
Selfie frames, pens, key rings and shoe laces have also been purchased across 27 forces in England and Wales over the last three years.
In total, £66,689 was spent on LGBT merchandise between 2019 and 2022, according to data obtained by The Telegraph.
South Wales Police alone spent £24,000 on items including badges, whistles, trolley keyrings, wristbands and water bottles.
Police forces have reportedly spent more than £66,000 of taxpayers’ money on ‘inclusive’ rainbow items. Pictured: A rainbow British Transport Police flag at Brighton Pride
A police car in rainbow colours for the Pride parade in London. Police chiefs say they act as ‘hate crime cars’ for members of the public to report incidents
Kent Police also purchased rainbow key rings, grip pens, erasers, coasters and lanyards totalling £8,000 over the same period.
Police in Lancashire also spent £1,500 on rainbow flags, stickers and lip balm, while handheld fans were included within the £4,900 Avon and Somerset Police paid for inclusive items.
It comes after Home Secretary Suella Braverman told police chiefs in September to spend less time on ‘diversity’ and concentrate on fighting crime.
In a letter to chief constables, she reprimanded forces for failing to tackle offences such as burglary, car theft, graffiti and drugs.
Her intervention amounted to a call for a ‘back to basics’ approach to policing. It comes after incidents which have seen police criticised for taking up ‘woke’ causes.
Mrs Braverman wrote: ‘Unfortunately, there is a perception that the police have had to spend too much time on symbolic gestures [rather] than actually fighting criminals.
‘This must change. Initiatives on diversity and inclusion should not take precedence over common sense policing.’
She said the letter was intended to ‘set out my key priorities for the police and our crime-cutting agenda’.
Police forces are said to have also spent hundreds of pounds decorating police cars in rainbow colours.
Meanwhile, it was revealed last month that more than a million cases of theft and burglary were dropped over a year – more than 3,000 a day – because police couldn’t find a suspect.
Police staff wave rainbow flags and sport face paint during Pride Cymru in Cardiff in August 2019
Analysis of crime data found 1.1million thefts, including domestic burglaries, went unsolved in the year to June.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council says police forces’ rainbow vehicles encourage members of the public to report incidents such as remarks made on social media by acting as ‘hate crime cars’.
Chief Superintendent Amanda Tillotson, from Kent Police’s diversity and inclusion academy, said the force’s ‘LGBT+ crime-prevention merchandise’ helps to ‘regularly remind the wider public of the importance of communities working together to support and protect each other’.
She added police in Kent ‘take our responsibilities to all communities as laid out by the Equality Act 2010 extremely seriously’ and its aim is to ‘deliver a first-class service to victims and witnesses of all crime’.
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