> They're unable to do their jobs and are being blamed for the rise in crime.

The vast majority of crime is very dumb. Like the three guys who broke into my garage and tried to take my bicycle. The police however is not interested in that: not interested in CCTV recordings, not interested the license plate of the van they were driving.

If the police isn't doing even the simplest things, there's no way in hell they would bother decrypting their whatsapp messages. That's reserved for people targeted by the government, not to fight street crime.

Some of this is being marketed to law enforcement, though. There is a world being sold to law enforcement agencies by some tech companies that one day they'll just be able to click the face in the CCTV, or the plate on the van, and immediately be able to cross reference it with the decrypted messages and other records. Imagine how much more "efficient" that kind of law enforcement could be.