Poverty causes crime, says cop A police chief has stated that tackling poverty and inequality is the best way to reduce crime. In an interview to mark his retirement as chief constable of Merseyside police, Andy Cooke said that if he was given £5bn to cut crime, he would put £1bn into law enforcement and £4bn into tackling poverty. “The best crime prevention is increased opportunity and reduced poverty,” he said. “That’s the best way to reduce crime.” 3 Patel knocks Facebook encryption Priti Patel says Facebook is “blinding” itself to the issue of child abuse by adopting new security measures that will make it more difficult to catch paedophiles. Demanding that tech giants “take the safety of children as seriously as they do the business of selling advertising, phones and online games”, the home secretary will call for Facebook to rethink plans for all messaging on its platforms to be “end-to-end” encrypted.