Page 4 - WMPF Federation Dec2018-flip_Neat

Chair’s introduction

Funding, priorities

and bureaucracy all

need to be tackled

doing their best to help people in crisis. value of having officers on the streets,
But, in addition to raising concerns fighting and preventing crime, providing
about the way in which police officers were reassurance, gathering intelligence, getting
being expected to step in where other to know people and building those
agencies were failing, the report also invaluable links with the public. The public
served as another reminder of the need for are the police and the police are the public.
us to have an honest conversation with the While funding and priorities are two
public about what they want from their areas that clearly need addressing, we also
police service. need to do more to tackle the bureaucracy
In a recent article published in The and red tape that literally ties our officers’
Telegraph, I argued that policing, due to the hands.
cuts programme, has become reactive with In order to make the most of what we
only our specialist teams being able to be have, we need to trust officers to use their
proactive. Sadly, over specialisation leads to common sense and skills to identify where
the de-skilling of officers and, in turn, risk lies instead of tying their hands with
inflexibility within the police service. over-bureaucratic measures like mandatory
So, this means we may have officers on domestic abuse risk assessments, non-crime
duty but if they have only one skillset they recording.
are unable or ineffective if required in other The drive to target hate crime can mean
areas when needed. Is this what the public officers are spending time investigating bad
want from their local force or would they manners and impolite comments at the
By Rich Cooke, chair of West Midlands Police prefer more multi-skilled officers with the expense of investigating crimes such as
Federation time to carry out proactive as well as burglary and violence. This means our
reactive work? over-stretched officers are being drawn into
n the last few months, we have seen I think we can get a clue to the public’s tackling social rather than criminal issues.
report after report highlighting the frustration with how things are currently While we all want to end genuine crimes
I effects of the cuts to police budgets. through the establishment of the ‘We motivated or aggravated by intolerance and
The National Audit Office, the Home stand determined’ Facebook group in prejudice. They should be investigated, and
Affairs Select Committee and its fellow Birmingham. This has more than 2,000 those who commit them – or incite them
Parliamentary body, the Public Accounts members who are talking about patrolling – should face the full weight of the law, but
Committee, have all confirmed what the the streets. These appear well-intentioned let’s not encourage people to think we can
Police Federation has been saying for some people who want to protect their also solve deep social problems such as
time – cuts have consequences. communities. misogyny, ageism and give impolite people
Just a week before I sat down to write Ordinary, good and decent people are manners.
this article, the latest report from Her seeing their police stations – the visible Sara Thornton, chair of National Police
Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and sign of a policing presence in their Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), attracted much
Fire & Rescue Services, this time looking at communities – closing; they are seeing that media attention at her organisation’s
mental health and policing, also provided we are not able to patrol the streets and annual conference this autumn when she
evidence for something we all know is true they want step in and protect the streets, said that extending existing categories of
– police officers are being asked to fill the their neighbours, their friends, the old, the hate crime risks distracting police from their
gaps left in mental health support services. vulnerable and local businesses. core role.
In short, the report, aptly called ‘Picking Of course, police officers are gutted we “We do not have the resources to do
up the pieces’, said police officers shouldn’t can’t provide the visible patrol members of everything that is desirable and deserving,”
be expected to be mental health experts – the public crave, after all we all joined up to she concluded.
though it did acknowledge that they were serve our communities and we all know the Ms Thornton’s comments were

04 federation December 2018/January 2019 www.polfed.org/westmids