The Problem with the Public

It's often perceived there's an Us and Them attitude by the police towards the public.  It's partly true: in the sense that any close-knit group defines itself by those who are not in it, whether it be accountants, scientists, soldiers, or the police.  This is exacerbated by the fact that the police's job is very often to meddle in other people's lives, and accommodate two views that will never coincide.

Labour came up with the idea of Neighbourhood Policing, whereby the community could set priorities for their local police teams.  Now the Home Office is backing elected police chiefs, and attacking those who criticise the plan as "elitist" - a title members of this Government can fully appreciate.  The idea is to promote the view that the public will have "a say" in what their police force does.

There are two problems with this concept:

1. There is no sign that the Government plans to withdraw the vast array of measures and statistics used to grade police forces, nor provide legislative backing for forces to bin lengthy and expensive risk management systems.
2. The public do not have the time or inclination to comprehend a vast amount of what the police actually does, but if they stopped doing it, there would be an outcry.

Here are some examples of things the police chief or local community is unlikely to ask their force to prioritise, either because they don't want us to do it or because they don't know that we are doing it:

• Searching for 14-yr-olds whose parents can't be bothered to look for them.
• Ensuring paralytically drunk teenagers who've spent their taxi money on booze get home safely.
• Picking up vulnerable old or ill people from the street, spending hours ensuring they receive medical treatment, taxiing them between different institutes who can't or won't take care of them, and then searching for them again when whichever institute finally accepts them phones to say they've walked out the door.
• Bringing to justice armed hitmen who target drug dealers who have reneged on debts.
• Counselling and intervening in broken relationships.
• Setting up teams to monitor high risk dangerous offenders, gathering intelligence, visiting them regularly and gaining court orders or filing reports to probation when their behaviour becomes worrying.
• Allocating dozens of detectives to visit thousands of addresses until every last person in each house is spoken to, to investigate serious crime.
• Keeping custody suites secure and safe, ensuring prisoners are treated correctly and dealt with expeditiously.
• Compiling rock-solid evidence files for court.
• Transporting prisoners to and from hospital, court and other forces, as well as back home again, using caged vehicles, a mass of diesel, and at least two officers a time.
• Training officers about discrimination and Health and Safety.

We do the above either because it has to be done and no one else will do it, or because we are liable to prosecution or civil suit if we don't.  No police officer ever got prosecuted because he didn't prioritise dog-fouling or speeding in his local street, and yet from next year elected officials will be able to fire Chief Constables if they don't do exactly that - if that's what the public request.

Without a massive overhaul of Health and Safety, civil litigation, the European Court, and a number of other public services, the accountability of police forces will be wholly unaffected by the election of police chiefs.  All that will happen is that uniformed officers and hard-working detectives will be trying to do the same work with less time, money and resources.

It's a bit like plugging a hole in a boat when the whole thing is underwater anyway.

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