Policing – Why is it in such a mess & what can fix it?

As I retire from elected public office, after 38 years as a local councillor, I return to the first public policy area I became interested in, Policing.

I’ve often wondered about whether those who want to be police officers should, in the main, not be allowed to be them. My theory is that people with authoritarian/controlling instincts are attracted to militaristic/uniformed jobs where ordering people about is the norm. Whereas in modern-day policing, officers need to be diplomatic and caring whilst at other times hard-nose and yes, at times, authoritarian. The two personality traits rarely coincide in real life so how can we expect our police officers to fulfil both roles?

The Met is, of course, a complete and utter disgraceful mess and we’ve known that for many years, yet promised significant change seems never to actually take place. But is it just the Met which needs turning inside out? Is it safe to assume that the smaller forces across the country aren’t having some common ‘difficulties’? I’d rather be safe than sorry.

John Alderson's Community Policing

My first political involvement back in the early 1980s was coming across the work of the then Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, John Alderson, and thinking why aren’t all senior police officers like him? He was responsible for the rebirth of ‘community policing’ or at least the modern-day form of it and what a great initiative it was too. Alderson was often seen, at least by the media at the time, to be the opposite of the then Chief Constable of Manchester, James Anderton, who was said to be quite the authoritarian.

Maybe we do expect too much of our police forces but whatever the case they don’t seem able to deliver what we expect of them. Our roads are like the wild-west with far too many dangerous drivers not being brought to book, burglaries often don’t get an in person police response with insurance companies seemingly being regarded as the main responders, women are in fear on our streets and sometimes, in London particularly, that fear is of male police officers! I could go on but you get my drift I’m sure.

But there have to be solutions and in many areas of policing it’s to reinvent community policing once again after years of austerity have all but killed it off. We need police officers whom we all know in our neighbourhoods; they in turn will know those who are on the wrong side of the law. Remote policing with virtually no one being seen day to day in any community has been a disaster. 

PCSOs are a good thing but there's too few of them

Personally, I’d like to see more PCSOs as despite the criticism of them; particularly from within police forces when they were first launched, I think they do a great job, but there are just not enough of them these days. My experience as a local councillor was that PCSOs were very good at dealing with low level crime/anti-social behaviour.

Fundamentally, policing needs reinventing as let’s face it women in particular will probably find it hard to trust male officers these days due to the high-profile Met cases of inappropriate/illegal behaviour towards them. If more vulnerable people in our society don’t trust/have faith in the police, we have a very serious problem.

Oh and I’d get rid of Police and Crime Commissioners, they were a silly idea when all that was really required was to make Police Authorities in every policing area more influential over Chief Constables and police accountability. My view is that P&CCs have not improved control and accountability and they were just a political gimmick which needs reversing.

So let’s have greater police accountability together with far more stringent recruitment, more effective ways to remove inappropriate officers, significantly improved roads policing and a serious plan to bring back community policing for every neighbourhood/community. 

John Alderson was right in the 1970s and he’s still right now!