Commissioner Boris

Wily Trout

Is this Boris being set up for a fall?

In2minds

I too am looking forward to the resignation of Sir Huge Ego!

Frank P

Who else would have been allowed to fly this kite in the Standard, other than two hacks bearing the names Nicholas Cecil and Justin Davenport?

The final stage of the complete destruction of HM Constabulary has now been mooted; God Save The Queen.

Dennis Sewell

no reform we introduce will allow any elected politician to interfere in operational policing

Damn. Boris is at his best out on the streets being zero-tolerant, as Franny Armstrong can attest.

Seriously though, there's no point electing someone unless he can kick ass. The point is to change policing, not just to manage it.

Bruce, UK

Surely it is better to have a secretive organzation funded by public money. We could call it ACPO. If Mr Ordure will open the books then I am sure that those of us polced by his already politicised goons will clearly see the light.

Nicholas

No, no. They've got this wrong. The elected police chiefs have to be policemen (or women) not politicians and strictly apolitical. And service at senior level should be conditional on a proven record of operational policing in the front line. No career criminologists, fast tracked Hendon yes-men, brown-nosers or back-stabbers, honorary social services beardies in uniform or PR oiks. The police chiefs would have to campaign to the people on their crime-fighting credentials and proposed policies and would be tested on their success (or otherwise) in office. This also takes top jobs out of the hands of politicians and local government. There should be nothing to stop a good policeman with an effective operational record in one force campaigning to be elected as the police chief of another. This would have the consequent benefit of driving a wedge into ACPO's power base. It would also raise the stakes in competition between forces to be seen as effective rather than being able to hide behind centralised directives from the Home Office and ACPO. Also the police chiefs would remain independent but accountable which is the whole idea.

As it stands this proposal means that the elected Mayor's political ideology will oversee policing priorities and the Mayor's policing policies will be a diminutive of a broader policies package and won't come under the degree of scrutiny warranted. How is that different from the political interference we have seen under Labour - other than as a Tory counterweight to Common Purpose socialist placemen within the ranks?

Don't shift the ballast in the boat to stop it sinking so fast, mend the bloody leaks!

Draft Crunt

"Bruce
Surely it is better to have a secretive organzation funded by public money. We could call it ACPO."

You're surely not suggesting that some organisation should usurp the traditional position of the Freemasons, are you?

Peter From Maidstone

Is it possible to find out how far the membership of ACPO is also made up of members of the Masons?

Verity

Writes Nicholas: "The police chiefs would have to campaign to the people on their crime-fighting credentials and proposed policies and would be tested on their success (or otherwise) in office." Quite.

The rest of his post is also well worth the read.

What are they doing futzing round the edges when the perfect template THAT WORKS is available to copy from cities in the US. Go to Houston - a large city of around 4m - or any other big city that has elected chiefs and listen and learn. All the heavy lifting's been done. All the British have to do is have the humility to copy.

Instead, in London, they're going to reinvent the wheel and they will inevitably invent square wheels ... "But we tried it and it didn't work!" they will cry in despair!

And frankly, I wouldn't try anything out in London with an eye to making it into a template for the rest of the country. London is increasingly irrelevant to the rest of the country. Try out an elected chief in Manchester or Brum and see how it works.

Verity

Peter from Maidstone writes: "Is it possible to find out how far the membership of ACPO is also made up of members of the Masons?"

To which I would add the question, "Is it possible to find out how far the membership of ACPO are also members of Common Purpose?"

strapworld

Peter from Maidstone.

Perhaps you may wish to write to ACPO under the Freedom of Information Act and ask them OR write to each individual Police Authority asking them the same question! That might prove rewarding.

In relation to an elected Mayor being a Commissioner. May I remind you all why Watch Committee's and Borough Police Forces were replaced!

Corruption. The Watch Committee's (Not all obviously) considered themselves above the law.

There is a real danger of the Conservatives, under Cameron, going back in time and regretting it.

The police must have the confidence of all the people. When Maggie was in power the left wing detested the police and now the Conservatives, understandably, consider them left wing!

There has to be a Royal Commission to enquite what the people, you and me, want from our police. Which structure etc.

Just remember that it was the Conservatives that brought in the Crown Prosecution Service -which has now placed itself above the police and appears at every (successful)trial giving the appearance they did all the investigation!

Also the Labour Government have not improved matters at all, BUT it was the Conservative Government which lumbered the police with filling in long forms when stopping people. It was the Conservatives which endorsed the Report following the Brixton Riots which created the mob policing that people have complained about for years. Vehicles roaming around ready for riots!all over the country!! and all ten or twelve of them getting out around individuals out of boredom. A total waste of manpower and resources.

The Conservative record on policing, believe you me, is abysmal.

This idea is, frankly, nonsensical.

Elected police chiefs in the USA are, in effect, Police Officers who are qualified for those positions and offer themselves up for election.

This is, it appears, another perch for politicians!

denis cooper

"However, I'm absolutely clear that no reform we introduce will allow any elected politician to interfere in operational policing" -

- as some would obviously prefer, notwithstanding the fatuously dismissive reference to "the fearsome spectre of a Toff Gestapo" -

and we will make absolutely certain that the independence of operational policing is protected in law."

How? What exactly would that law say, and who would make sure that law was constantly observed?

The police, headed by a Chief Constable - a senior sworn police officer, but nonetheless a career officer - who was appointed by a single politician, and who was then directed by him, and was accountable to him, and could be dismissed by him?

That would be far too much unaccountable power to place in the hands of a single person, and a politician to boot, and even worse almost certainly a main party politician.

There are huge risks inherent in allowing so much unbridled power to any individual, let alone somebody who is by definition a professional liar.

And those risks are not mitigated by the fact that on one day some time previously that professional liar managed to collect more votes than other professional liars, possibly on his real personal merits, but more likely because his party happened to be enjoying a period of comparative popularity for entirely unconnected reasons.

Checks and balances - where are they in this scheme?

Please stop the weak attempts to heap ridicule on those who express genuine and well-founded concerns about this plan, and answer that important question.

Tom Pride

Will someone please explain:

1. What is “operational policing” ?
2. What is it supposed to be “independent” of?

Think about it. Is it possible for “operational policing” to be “independent” of politics or even desirable for it to be so? And if it is independent how do you control the efficiency, priorities, effectiveness and behaviour of the police?

What are we supposed to do when police officers decide not to enter a house where a suspect might have a gun, but sit and wait it out while a woman bleeds to death? Or, arriving at an incident and believing the lies of children over the word of an adult and arresting the adult?

Operation independence - Just repeating this mantra is to fall headlong into Sir Hugh’s trap and will allow him to maintain his cosy cartel.

No – on Day One disband ACPO, demote all Chief Constables to Assistant Chief Constables and as an immediate temporary measure install senior ex-army officers (preferably with clipped accents, double-barrelled names and Mandelson chinlessness) as Chief Constables while Strapworld gets on with his Royal Commission and a sensible and practical long term solution.

Also let’s have a law re-communitising crime, ending ACPO’s claimed monopoly on crime prevention, and encouraging The Queen’s Subjects to take an active role in the maintenance of her peace and making it the duty of the police to support them in their efforts.

Show the basta*ds (New Labour Establishment) who’s in charge now.

denis cooper

I believe that when the police were first established many of the Chief Constables were retired military men, as in the case of Charles Rowan who apparently co-authored what are usually known as "Peel's Nine Principles of Policing".

Forget about showing New Labour who's in charge, and think about how to set up a system which ensures that these principles will be reinstated and maintained.

I wonder whether Chris Grayling has ever read them?

http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/policeNine.php

Principles of Good Policing

The following set of principles, which lay out in the clearest and most succinct terms the philosophy of policing by consent, appeared as an appendix to A New Study of Police History by Charles Reith (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1956). Reith was a lifelong historian of the police force in Britain, and this book covers the early years of Metropolitan Police following the passage of Sir Robert Peel's 'Bill for Improving the Police in and near the Metropolis' on 19 June 1829. Reith notes that there are particular problems involved in writing police history, owing to the loss or destruction of much early archive material, and, probably for this reason, the principles appear without details of author or date.

However, it seems most likely that they were composed by Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, as the first and joint Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police. Rowan was a military man and Mayne, fourteen years his junior, a barrister. Rowan retired in 1850 leaving Mayne as sole Commissioner until his death in 1868. The sentiments expressed in the 'Nine Principles' reflect those contained in the 'General Instructions', first published in 1829, which were issued to every member of the Metropolitan Police, especially the emphasis on prevention of crime as the most important duty of the police.

Reith notes that Rowan and Mayne's conception of a police force was 'unique in history and throughout the world because it derived not from fear but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police, induced by them designedly by behaviour which secures and maintains for them the approval, respect and affection of the public' (p. 140).

The Nine Principles of Policing

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

Snowman

Nicholas & Verity:

More often than not I side with you 101%. One aspect of what you are proposing here doesn’t cut it with me, however. The policy on policing ought to be in the hands of the politicians, I reckon. They are the ones who should set the broad framework, objectives, aims. You cannot cut them out of it. After all, ultimately they pass the laws or by-laws that govern, amongst other things, policing, and policing forms but a part of a community’s universe. What the hoping-to-get-elected police chiefs should campaign on is how they are to tackle the job within such policies, the ways of deploying the policing resources at the community’s disposal.

So it’s not that the ‘police chiefs would have to campaign to the people on… the proposed policies’, but on their vision how the policies furnished by the political masters, however broad or specific, will be translated into day to day operations. You cannot have a mayor attempting to house immigrants, and a police chief shifting them out on the basis that they commit more crime than the locals. This would be anarchy.

You disagree?

Nicholas

Interesting to reflect how each of these 9 principles have been altered, abandoned or abused under New Labour's police regime.

TGF UKIP

Very interesting post from Denis Cooper.

The Bojo nonsense is the sort of thing which could only come from two London Village politicos.

The whole senior ranks of the police have been so comprehensively subsumed by Common Purpose that it would be sensible to look to the military and especially, but not exclusively, to the senior ranks of the Military Police of all three services.

What I very much suspect, though, given their devotion to political correctness, is that the main players of The Clique are fully committed adherents of and evangelists for Common Purpose. Certainly, I see no evidence to the contrary.

strapworld

Tom Pride....how kind, thank you!

denis cooper. When I joined the met we had to learn The principles of good policing parrot fashion! They are the basis of policing by consent.

I am afraid that years of political interference, years of Home Office 'experts', years of criminologists, years of The Guardian 'experts' and years of carbon copy, home office moulded police chiefs have brought the police to the state they are today.

Hence my plea for a Royal Commission.

You may have confidence in Cameron. I certainly do not and I have had years of experience of Conservative Home Secretaries!

Verity

Yes, Snowman, I disagree because if the politicians should not be passing one more law. We are going to have a Grand Repeal Act, to get rid of all the new controlling laws that Labour imposed.

We do not need any new criminal laws.

Nicholas

Snowman: "They are the ones who should set the broad framework, objectives, aims."

No, I disagree (or should that be Yes, I disagree?). Local policing objectives and tactics should be set by professional and experienced police officers in response to the crime concerns of the local community. In practice these should be obvious to any police officer worth his or her salt as they should know exactly the crime and disorder profiles of the areas they are responsible for.

Anything more centralised or anything dictated by political ideology is wrong. That is precisely what has been going wrong under 12 years of New Labour. It is ridiculous wasting police manpower and time chasing ideological targets which may bear no relevance whatsoever to crime and disorder in a particular community. The police should simply uphold the existing law, they should have no need of politicians to tell/show them how to do that and in fact that would be very unhealthy - as we have seen under New Labour. And they uphold the law (with discretion and common sense) according to the needs and concerns of the community they are there to protect - that is the imperative for deciding their priorities. If low level disorder and vandalism is the primary problem in an area then that is what they should tackle. Anything else is just so much bollocks.

But there is a deeper issue and that is that police forces have abandoned traditional beat and watch and ward duties (the deterrence in the 9 principles) for reactionary policing. In other words they merely respond to events or respond to centralised directives. Coupled with the famous form filling and the fact that more and more police officers want to be civil servant jobsworths in cushy jobs rather than pounding pavements in a relentless and passionate desire to protect their communities and we get where we are now.

ACPO have been constantly clamouring for new laws having shown themselves plainly incapable of upholding the existing laws. That is stupid. In terms of resources, capability and coverage, ACPO should have been fiercely resisting any attempt to increase the scope of policing into areas of little or no real impact on communities imposed by the constant flow of New Labour's ideological laws. Instead they have done the exact opposite - become a lobbying body for more law, completely at odds with the 9 principles.

What has happened is that since criminology and policing became part of the university syllabus a lot of theoretical eejits who have never walked a dangerous beat in their lives have meddled in the way police do their job. Experienced, hands-on officers have been scorned as dinosaurs and instead we have seen the social workers in uniform like Blair and Orde rise to command.

And there should not be a imposition of management between the police and their community which the Tory idea would create. The police should be liaising directly with community representatives and leaders, cutting out the interference of local government and civilian vested interest meddlers with socialist agendas.

Nicholas

Tom Pride: Operational policing is simply the deployment and methods used by the police to deter and combat crime in a particular area. Either as a generic approach proven by its effectiveness or as a specific approach to a specific problem.

The issue you highlight with examples arises because the police constable no longer has discretion. He or she must bow to centralised demands and directives, to political interference, and thus is constrained in response to the incidents you mention. Can you imagine the furore if a police officer these days failed to take any action in response to a complaint from a child (a child!) because he simply did not believe them? No, I'm afraid the common sense and discretion has been destroyed by a combination of tabloid hysteria and political interference (including the role of the CPS). Instead of responding appropriately and with common sense to the specific circumstances of each incident the police have become bureaucratic jobsworths, frightened to show discretion or initiative in case they are held to account by their political masters.