London, January 30: In a move seen as risking to factionalize British officers, the Home Office has offered thousands of pounds to a Christian policing group that is using prayers to fight crime, reported.
“We have given the Christian Police Association a one-off grant of £10,000 to support its ongoing work to improve community safety, tackle antisocial behaviour and reduce violence,” a Home Office spokesman said.
The money would be used to fund a CPA initiative to strengthen links between local church groups and police officers to fight crime.
The initiative, called “CoAct”, aims to encourage church congregations to act as “peacemakers” in area rampant with gang violence.
It would be a “great way of giving police officers the support, care and encouragement that they need and value,” said Matt Baggott, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and president of the Christian Police Association.
The CPA boasts itself for using prayers to fight crimes and anti-social behaviour by encouraging congregations to pray for “helping officers make on-the-spot decisions” and “resist corruption”.
“We want people to pray for the police, for example in solving crimes or protecting officers,” CPA head Don Axcell, a retired Metropolitan Police sergeant, said.
“We want to see the Christian community fully interacting with the service. I think it will break down barriers,” he said, citing two incidents which propped him to adopt prayers to fight crime.
“One officer was investigating an incident but had not been able to apprehend a suspect. He encouraged a church to pray for him and within days a suspect had been charged,” he said.
“Another officer encouraged churches to pray about domestic burglary and over the year it came down by 30 per cent. We do not discount good police work, which is why we call it circumstantial evidence.”
Britain has the highest violent crime rates in Europe.
Factionalizing Police
The government funding to religious-oriented police groups has drawn mixed reaction in the European country.
“The approach has to be both pragmatic and spiritual,” said Les Isaacs, the founder of the influential Street Pastors movement, which is working to diffuse gang tensions and help drunken revellers.
“Prayer makes a tangible difference, we see it every day.
“If you pray for the well-being of the community around you will see people physically become less aggressive.”
But the National Secular Society criticized the move for risking to factionalize police officers.
“I have no objection to a local congregation praying for their community but the Government should not be funding these sorts of sectarian police groups,” Terry Sanderson, the Society president, said.
“If there’s one institution that should be avowedly secular, it is the police force. Yet we have Christian, Muslim and Jewish police associations all battling for greater recognition and government funding.”
-Agencies