Turning a blind eye

Rod Liddle asks a dramatic rhetorical question of Charles Moore on fox-hunting:

In The Spectator, meanwhile, one of Britain’s most celebrated fox-stranglers, the former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore, worries that the police might soon “turn nasty” with regard to the hundreds of braying pink-jacketed aristowannabes who continue to flout the ban. By “turn nasty” he means uphold the law of the land. Charles and his ilk are at other times fervent admirers of law and order. I wonder how he would feel if he were to be burgled or mugged and the police resisted the temptation to “turn nasty” by pursuing the perpetrator, but turned a blind eye instead?

I have to say, when I was burgled two years ago, and had a bag snatched this year, that the police did indeed turn a blind eye. In fact, I'd be rather surprised if anyone in London who got mugged or burgled and reported it to the police ever got anything more than a crime number and an offer of victim counselling.