A visit to London today to the Association of Police Authorities' offices in Grey Coat Place for our regular Citizen Focus Partnership Police Network meeting. I represent the four authorities in our region (West Midlands, West Mercia, Warwickshire and Staffordshire) and meet with approximately 10 other regional reps to discuss issues relating to the Citizen Focus agenda.
The agenda covered many topics with presentations from the Home Office and the soon-to-be-abolished NPIA but one topic in particular received most attention: Directly Elected Police Commissioners.
The coalition Government is determined to replace Police Authorities with Directly Elected Police Commissioners and is moving incredibly quickly to this end. The APA has been working to collate the views of all Police Authorities nationally and has now completed this work and the collective response was discussed and debated at length today.
In a nutshell, the proposal is opposed. Strongly. Superficially, such a move might seem like a good idea. A single individual is easier for the public to relate to (and would be more "visible" to the public); it sounds like it ought to be cheaper than having 17 people working to do a similar task; and voting for someone to be the police commissioner is surely democracy in action.
However, you only have to ask one or two questions to demonstrate the fundamental flaws in the plan. What happens if the person elected has extreme views, either politically (eg BNP) or in police terms (eg elected on a mandate to ignore all drug crime)? How is a single person going to cover large geographic areas (eg West Mercia - Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire)? Who would bother to vote in an election and who would bother to stand? How much would elections cost and would the overall cost be lower or higher than the status quo? Who says that the current system is actually broken when virtually all crime indicators are going in the right direction?
The APA has commissioned two reports to investigate these issues. The first is from ipsos MORI and seeks to determine whether there actually is public support for the change in police governance. The answer is that there is when the single question "Would you like directly elected police commissioners" is asked... but there isn't when the detail is discussed and the prospect of a extreme individual is raised or the practical problems associated with the post are discussed.
The second report examines the costs of the elections and they are huge. In fact, the elections alone would cost more than the total cost of all of the Police Authorities put together. A colossal waste of money in the current financial climate. In fact, the extra costs of the new governance model would pay for hundreds if not thousands of extra uniformed officers.
I don't doubt that many will view the APA opposition as simply "turkeys don't vote for Christmas" but that really isn't fair. There isn't a single police professional body that supports the proposal. I equally don't doubt that this is such a flagship proposal for the Government that they will not back down, but I do hope that they perhaps implement only in a few pilot areas and then when they see the practical difficulties they quietly drop the proposal.
Another aspect of the Government's white paper is the proposal to scrap the Independent Custody Visiting (ICV) scheme whereby specially trained members of the public visit police stations unannounced to check the well-being of detainees and that all is in order in the cells. I was an ICV volunteer myself for 4 years and it is genuine scrutiny and community engagement in action in a scheme that costs virtually nothing. I am flabbergasted that this scheme is under threat and will find out more - this isn't something I was aware of until today's meeting.
PCSO funding is also under threat as the Goverment are proposing to remove the "ring fencing" which has protected the money (and therefore the posts) next year. With the financial pressure that the forces face, if and when the PCSO money is rolled into the main grants, Chief Constables will find it difficult if not impossible to keep PCSO numbers as high as they are - and neighbourhood policing (and community confidence) is sure to suffer. The APA is going to make its submissions in this area next month.
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