MAY the FORCE BE WITH YOU

I had thought that, depending on the hurdles thrown into the path of independents, I might put myself forward as a candidate for the elected office of county police commissioner next May. These functionaries have been dreamed up to replace local police authorities and supposedly to make the police more accountable.

I am not the only observer to suspect that what will happen in practice is that these roles will largely fall to party apparatchiks, thereby bringing police more directly under the control of government policy. This eventuality needs to be countered. However, the House of Lords last week put a spoke in the government’s plans by throwing out the clause of the justice bill that establishes the principle of elected commissioners. There will ensue a power struggle between the Lords and the Commons (which the latter will certainly win) but, if the government’s timetable is to be preserved, it shortens the time for preparation.

Below is a first draft of a stump speech I have been considering in case the elections do indeed go ahead and my circumstances do not prevent me from standing. I would welcome feedback.

A custodian helmet of the Metropolitan police force

Ladies and gentlemen,

When did you last set eyes on a police officer? I don’t mean on television. Of course there are myriad cops on the box every night, some of them even British. The fictional ones, unbeatable detectives all, are apt to be so-called mavericks who bend the regulations but not in a way that practical people would disapprove because they get results. The real officers on the streets, most often seen on the news, usually look like paramilitaries and appear to be carrying out some brutal regime crackdown in some god-forsaken country, until you realise that they’re actually in London.

No, I mean a police officer in the flesh, traversing your community with a watchful, friendly eye, either on foot or in a squad car temporarily perched at some prominent vantage point. I mean a visible local law enforcement presence.

When I was a child in the 1950s, the “bobby on the beat” was a familiar neighbourhood figure, like the postman and the milkman, the newspaper boy and the rag-and-bone man. He –- there were some women but the vast majority were men – was reassuring but at the same time slightly menacing, gruff but indulgent, all-seeing and all-knowing. There was a saying back then: “if you want to know the time, ask a policeman”. It perfectly caught all the qualities that the public imagination invested in the police: approachability, reliability, flexibility, trustworthiness, public service.

The foot patrol policeman was an unmistakeable figure. He was so conspicuous in his elongated, dark blue pith helmet that was properly called a custodian helmet. Do they still wear those? Are you absolutely sure that you know the answer to that question?

Dixon, an idealised uniformed copper

Of course, nobody advocates a return to the “Evenin’ all” world of long ago. Although, don’t forget that Dixon of Dick Green’s first manifestation was in a feature film of 1950 called The Blue Lamp in which he was shot at point-blank range by a rather unconvincing desperado played by Dirk Bogarde. PC George Dixon was brought back from the dead for the reassuring and cosy television series.

Community policing is not a service that most communities are presently aware of. The only time I have seen any officers in the small town near which we live was occasioned by a local councillor, puzzlingly elected under the banner of the BNP, coming to claim his seat at the town hall. There was a demonstration that drew the local television news cameras and a small but suitably angry crowd.

Another day, I went to the local police station to report a dangerously parked vehicle. The station was locked and I spoke inconclusively to someone through an intercom at the door. I have never passed by and seen any evidence that the building is occupied.

Morse, an idealised television detective

Many factors have changed the culture of Britain’s streets but the absence of police officers is certainly one of those factors. I don’t think we ever used the word “mugging” in the 1950s. Crimes committed in broad daylight were outrageous enough to provoke comment. But the whole of society has altered profoundly since then. We routinely have about us items that are pretty expensive and desirable: gadgets and gizmos and jewellery worn routinely, not just on high days and holidays. Even sneakers get stolen while being worn on the pavement, a crime that peaked in the 1990s. You just couldn’t have credited footwear theft in the 1950s.

Back then, people thought nothing of walking to their destination. Shopping was done at a series of high street retailers, not at one huge hypermarket that can only be reached by car. But, apart from shopping, women were much less likely to be seen alone on the street, especially at night. In the 1950s, a woman entering a pub or a restaurant alone was liable to raise eyebrows. Now, women expect to be able to walk at any hour and in sometimes surprisingly provocative clothes without putting themselves at risk, yet the risk has greatly increased along with the provocation.

Contemporary community policing

And the greatest difference, as everyone knows, is that children no longer go out to play. The possibility of a copper heaving into sight served a double psychological purpose – it kept the kids feeling safe and it made them think twice about getting into trouble.

It’s impossible to draw these kinds of comparison and not mention government cuts. This is not the place to argue a general case for cutting more slowly or for making cuts in different areas from the ones the government has chosen. Even so, I cannot resist remarking that if as much were spent on domestic policing as on attempting to police internal strife in other countries around the world, the crime and detection figures here would be greatly improved.

But any police commissioner worth his salt is bound to make funding a major concern and to use his position to put pressure on the Home Office and the Treasury to do everything possible to sustain front line policing. And not only front line either. It’s too tempting for politicians to make cheap points about back office waste but the police have many functions, duties and services that the public do not readily see but which make a difference in subtle, subtextual and far-reaching ways. Moreover, it behoves a useful commissioner to campaign for a reduction in red tape and bureaucratic regulation. Successive governments’ preoccupation with statistics and targets has done the police no favours.

Younger every day

Most important of all, it seems to me, is that a police commissioner be free of party interest. Policing should not be a political football. No party has a monopoly on constructive policies concerning law enforcement. Indeed, I rather suggest that many thoughtful police officers believe that no party has any very practical and progressive policies on policing. That at any rate is my own view and I am proud to offer myself as someone who has never been compromised by membership of a political party. In this election, there are candidates who will be taking for granted the votes of those who support the party that has put them up for election. I suggest that their bias is of little benefit either to the force itself or to the public. An independent representative, able to draw his own independent conclusions from the evidence before him, is best able to wield the daunting but undoubted power that comes with this post.

But if the election of a candidate such as me might in some ways represent the worst nightmare of party politicians, it might also fill the chief constable with trepidation. It happens too often that reported and video-recorded behaviour by police officers falls well short of the standards the force publicly sets for itself, let alone the standards that the public have a right to expect. Let’s consider the case of the Melksham station sergeant who dragged a woman to a cell and then threw her to the ground, opening a wound on her face. It ought not to have taken a court case before that sergeant was dismissed the service. Indeed, it ought not to have taken the leaking of CCTV footage of the assault to the media for any enquiry to be conducted into the sergeant’s behaviour. The police have a duty of care for anyone in their custody, however abusive, awkward, uncooperative or unpredictable such people might be. “We will always treat you fairly with dignity and respect” says the national policing pledge and that must include everyone, even the guilty.

Contemporary riot gear

On this as on many other disciplinary matters, the fact that the force – like the military and parliament – act as judge and jury only reinforces the public perception that they do everything possible to look after their own and to neutralise embarrassment. This is plainly unacceptable and a police commissioner ought to involve himself with all such cases, taking as a given that each will be considered on its merits and that no attempt will be made to protect the good name of the police at the expense of the truth.

Some of the instinct to close ranks when civilians allege ill treatment or other sorts of wrongdoing clearly derives from a culture that has difficulty adapting to social change. Few can doubt that the police – like the military, the judiciary, the financial sector, professional sport and, certainly, parliament itself – have been slow to re-educate themselves out of an instinctive misogyny, racism, homophobia, ageism and cultural exclusivity that keep the predominant blokes feeling strong and safe. Sensitivity to difference has to be inculcated into recruits from the outset; eradicating age-old habits of attitude and behaviour in more senior officers may be even more challenging. But chief constables need to require such sensitivity and to crack down hard on all evidence of its lack.

Kettling

It seems to me that one of the most fraught areas of policing is the relationship between uniformed officers and young members of the public. Adolescents and those in their early twenties require particular patience because they are not yet skilled in calibrating the impact of their behaviour. I do not suppose it is a pressing issue for this county, unless reinforcements are ever required in Bristol, but the conduct of police at demonstrations and in handling outbursts of rowdy and destructive behaviour is especially ticklish. Chief constables feel that they have found a useful tool in the new techniques of containment – what the media have dubbed kettling – but the indiscriminate nature of this method of control is deeply resented by those caught up by it. Operations that alienate the public may be useful in the short term but can have consequences for the way that the authorities are perceived by a whole generation. I acknowledge that, in crowd control situations, the police are usually on a hiding to nothing. But more strategic planning is required, along with a greater readiness to be self-critical.

Something that does drive a wedge between the police and young people in this county is the long-standing policy of picking up and charging people in possession of small quantities of recreational drugs, plainly acquired for personal use. I don’t know if this is a policy dictated by a desire to swell the numbers of convictions. I do know that it sows discontent that in small ways and – who knows? – perhaps in large ways may come to be a matter of regret.

The responses to drunkenness in town centres is also a matter that requires thoughtful anticipation. For my part, I would argue that the police (and paramedics too) should be permitted to charge fixed fees when they are obliged to tend to people rendered incapable by their own stupidity, especially if such people are accommodated in cells overnight. Charging a fee would help to ensure that the duty of care be carried out properly – after all, someone who has paid a fee is entitled to complain if he has not received the due service.

There are, as you can see, many aspects of policing that deserve renewed consideration and in which a police commissioner ought to be intimately involved. I undertake to you that, if elected, I shall make my presence felt without fear or favour towards anyone save you, the electorate, in face of whom all public servants, elected, uniformed or appointed, should quake.

And, by the by, the question of custodian helmets is not simple. Some forces do seem to be phasing them out. The requirement that they be worn has generally declined. I call that a pity. There’s much to be said for distinctiveness.