The terror conundrum

Politicians are saying that the police and MI5 need more resources to cope with the unpredictable and growing terror threat. Theresa May has even been blamed for the current terrorist attacks because of her decision to cut the police force by 20,000 when she was Home Secretary. Well, obviously the more police officers actually on the streets and in the communities the better for all of us. But adding resources and increasing the number of people working for the police and MI5 will not guarantee our safety. Even if MI5 manning levels were tripled or quadrupled, they would still be up against Islamic fanatics who could carry out an attack with the minimum of planning, thus escaping the notice of surveillance teams. You can't have MI5 surveillance experts standing on every street corner in the UK. The answer to the increased terror threat has to come from within the communities themselves. A terror hotline was set up so that members of the public could alert MI5 and the police to potentially radicalised neighbours/friends/relatives/acquaintances. But are these tip-offs being taken seriously enough or are the hotline operators suffering from crying wolf syndrome? "Oh God, another demented person complaining about his/her neighbour." I hope this is not the case. But it is clear that tip-offs from neighbours in this latest terror incident were either ignored or not believed to be important. Here we have a known radical extremist who had appeared for heaven's sake in a Channel Four documentary about radical extremism who showed all the signs of being a person with hatred in his heart, and yet two days before going off to kill seven people and injuring 48 he can hire a van, drive it up and down his street as if to test its acceleration, and no one, NO ONE, puts two and two together. The warning to the hotline should have been enough to alert the police and MI5 that Khuram Butt was no longer a "person of interest" but someone who needed to be watched like a hawk. Instead of being on the "also ran" list, he should have shot up the target list. This is hindsight judgment, I know, but the way the terror scene is developing - vans, knives, cars, as well as explosives - EVERY hotline tip about a neighbour acting in an excessively radicalised manner HAS to be investigated. Making an assessment in an office in front of a computer that there's no "evidence" of a terror plot in the making is just not good enough anymore. Alarm bells should be ringing every time the hotline phone buzzes. In communities where there are patently radical Islamists walking the streets, mouthing obscenities against non-believers and talking glowingly of their brothers in Syria, individuals who feel concerned and tip off the police are the best hope we all have of avoiding the next terrorist attack. Of course the technical stuff - listening devices etc - will catch some plotters, and MI5 surveillance teams working round-the-clock to watch certain priority plotting suspects will and do foil attacks. They are doing this on a regular basis. But on the whole they will catch the hardened fanatics who are plotting to blow up London Transport or airliners, although as we know from 7/7 that's not always the case. But neither the police nor MI5 are going to know every time a radicalised Muslim and a couple of his mates decide to hire a van and drive it at people walking across a London bridge. This is where the local communities are so important. There's no point having a terror hotline if crucial evidence on the phone is not acted upon!