London’s senior police officers will be satisfied with the Met’s response to yesterday’s fatal stabbing of a 49-year-old man in Uxbridge, West London. Officers responded quickly, tasering and arresting a 22-year-old Afghan asylum seeker. What’s more, by announcing the suspect’s nationality and immigration status so soon after the attack, the Met avoided the mistakes made by Merseyside Police following last year’s Southport stabbings. It was those very mistakes which then contributed to serious public disorder across the country that summer.

However, there will also be significant discomfort around the response to events in Uxbridge. A policy of transparency is lifting the lid on a truth most police officers — and communities living in areas with high concentrations of “irregular” asylum-seekers — already know.  That is: too many new arrivals present a worrying crime vector, and a seemingly intractable public protection challenge. The Home Office has dispersed — or dumped — thousands of unvetted young men, from some of the most violent corners of the earth, onto British communities with little or no risk assessment. Vague assurances to the contrary ignore the realities of meaningful intelligence-gathering. The murder of Rhiannon Whyte in Walsall last year by an asylum seeker is just one horrible example of Britain’s failed risk-management mechanisms.

This tragic confluence of uncontrolled illegal immigration and underinvestment in our creaking criminal justice systems speaks to systemic failure. The almost comical case of Hadush Kebatu reveals, for instance, how Britain’s prison service has more or less collapsed. For the police, this is particularly acute around information concerning potential offenders and the risk they pose.

Over the past decade, London’s police intelligence units have been decimated. Well-staffed Borough Intelligence Units (BIUs) were whittled down to three or four officers, feeding into a central intelligence bureau which itself faced substantial cuts. As police areas of responsibility grew larger, this meant smaller intelligence units covered up to three London boroughs — which could total 900,000 people.

These units supposedly service all demands for intelligence — from thefts, burglaries and robberies to “MAPPA” (Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements). MAPPA, originally aimed at sex offenders, should assess the risk of concerning individuals to the wider community. This is clearly impossible when the risk is so abundant and so unknown, which is what has happened in the UK over the past three decades. The idea that a small team of intelligence staff is able to meaningfully track asylum seekers is risible. I remember when “aliens” had to present themselves to police stations to “sign in”. Now, the Met has only two 24/7 police counters for 10 million people.

Traditionally, such risks were partly mitigated by neighbourhood policing teams generating “community intelligence”. Now, despite repeated promises by politicians, community policing remains woefully understaffed and underfunded. The officers performing the role are increasingly inexperienced and badly led. They’re also hindered by a growing public perception of police impotence — one which prompt arrests, like that of the Uxbridge suspect, will do little to stem.

All this is to say that when it comes to dangerous asylum seekers, the Home Office has set the police up to fail. Stymied by cuts and reams of pointless but reassuring Potemkin policy, politicians expect forces to protect the public in an increasingly fraught and chaotic operating environment. Chief constables will no doubt hope moving asylum seekers to remote barracks in leafy East Sussex and urban Inverness will help. Instead, they’re likely to simply relocate the problem, to communities hitherto untouched by the realities of Britain’s broken system. And, of course, to police forces even less equipped to manage risk than the embattled Metropolitan Police.