Paul McKeever Dies

Paul McKeever

 

It has just been announced that the Chairman of the Police Federation, Paul McKeever, has died unexpectedly. He was taken into hospital and it is believed he died of an embolism.

I knew Paul and he was a real gentleman and probably the best Chair the Federation has had. The Federation can be seen by some as ineffective but within the constraints of having no industrial rights Paul worked extremely hard to fight for the police service and was a great politician. Here he is in action at the 2011 Conference.




Paul was due to retire in two weeks time. His retirement was unexpected. His wife is ill and needed his attention at home. This is a tragedy. RIP Paul and thank you for everything you did for policing in this country.

Jobs For The Boys

Northampton PCC - Adam Simmonds

Our new Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) have been settling into their roles. Their first tasks are to produce a Policing  and Crime Plan and sort out the budget for the next financial year. Chief Constables are looking forward to the plans and reminding the PCC's that they will only be able to achieve as much as allowed by the budget the PCC's provide.

Most PCC's have woken up to the fact that their role is not part time and they have their hands full. They have inherited the staff previously employed by the Police Authorities but for many this is not enough. Obviously, they all need Deputies. The legislation allows PCC's to appoint a deputy (The Police Reform & Social Responsibility Act 2011 provides, under Section 18(1), that a Police & Crime Commissioner may appoint a person to be Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner. The Act also states that the Deputy will be a member of the Commissioner’s staff but, unlike other members of staff, he or she need not be appointed on merit and will not be politically restricted.)

So almost anyone can be appointed Deputy PCC. In most counties this means that the PCC's have appointed one of their mates as Deputy without any form of advertising or selection process. In what other role can you simply appoint someone to a £50K plus job without going through such a process?

 

Some PCC's have taken their role to new levels. Rather than just take responsibility for the governance  of policing services in their area they want to take on the whole justice system and micro manage every area of it.  For example, Northamptonshire PCC, Adam Simmonds standing for the Conservatives, is proposing to increase his staff by 17 posts. He started out by appointing four Assistant Commissioners, one of whom was his election agent and the other three Conservative activists. All above board and compliant with discrimination law, I am sure.  At the same time, (you couldn't make it up) he also wrote to every member of the police force advising them that there was no money and jobs may be lost. Others are at it too.

The actions of the PCC are monitored by a Police and Crime Panel. In Northamptonshire, Conservative Councillors were elected as Chair and Deputy Chair of the Panel. So much for keeping politics out of the police. The whole thing is a farce.

Meanwhile, in my old force they had a class of recruits lined up to start training in March. They decided to write to all these recruits and inform them that their start date was now put back to April and they would now start on the newly reduced, Winsor, salary of £19,000 per annum. Half of them declined the offer and so the course has been cancelled.

Police/Probation Privatisation

I wrote some time ago now about the Governments agenda to privatise many policing functions in this country. We have just seen the announcement of the plans to privatise the majority of the functions of the Probation Service. The management of all but serious offenders will be handed to private companies, charities and volunteers. If you have any doubts regarding the Government plans for the future of policing just look at the similarities.We should all be very concerned about the privatisation of Probation and Policing services. Here are some thoughts from a former Chief Probation Officer regarding the Probation proposals.

There is an obsession in some quarters that privatisation offers better or the same service for less. There is an assumption that the public sector is fat, lazy and inefficient. The reality is very different. Over the last 30 years the police have adopted private enterprise management practises, targets and measures. There has been a huge increase in police staff performing back office functions. All of this has led to a police service that has lost its raison d'etre. The focus on targets and performance has simply meant cutting the resources where the public want them and putting them into achieving those targets, which are largely irrelevant to the public.

We have already seen the results of the privatisation of a number of functions. Parking, for example, used to be enforced by the police. Now it is in the hands of Local Authorities and private companies. It has simply become a cash cow. Private companies monitor offenders who are tagged and serving their sentences in the community rather than in prison. The tags are supposed to ensure that the offenders are at home during their curfew period. The monitoring is so inefficient and ineffective that tagged offenders can breach their curfews almost with impunity. We are giving huge amounts of public money to private companies for nothing. We have seen the private sector committing fraud on the 'welfare to work' program. Dare I mention G4S and the Olympics?

The Government has been tinkering with the Probation Service for almost 20 years. As most offenders continue to re offend the Probation Service was seen as ineffective. It has been forgotten that the Probation Service started out as an alternative to prison. The idea was that (mainly) first time offenders who were going off the rails needed some mentoring and support to get them back on track. We then stopped sending people to prison and sentenced persistent offenders to Probation expecting them to turn around hardened criminals with nothing more than a carrot.

In 2003 the Probation Service was subject of the Carter Review. (For the Police substitute the Winsor Review.) The ground was laid to reduce staff numbers. The publicity machine went into action to discredit the service. Changes were made to the organisation. In particular it effectively merged with the prison service and its management became impotent. The staff associations were ridiculed and the Association of Chief Officers of Probation was disbanded. Coincidentally, the Government has made it clear that their funding of the Association of Chief Police Officers is about to cease and that will see the end of that organisation too.

There will be no public sympathy for the police. The Governments publicity machine has ensured that the retail riots and even the Olympics has been forgotten. Your average Daily Mail reader will swallow hook line and sinker that the police are overpaid, lazy, thugs who need their speed guns taken away and need to get back to the days of doffing their helmet to MP's and decent members of the public rather than arresting them. Police inefficiency is blamed for the failing justice system that no longer punishes offenders

Tom Winsor's review of policing has led to the reduction of salaries for new constables by around £4000 plus an increase in pension contributions and a further reduced pension. This is supposed to increase the quality of police officers! It sets everything up for a reduction of police officer numbers and the employment of low paid security officers to replace them. PCC's have been introduced to ensure this process is implemented.

When are the press and public going to wake up and see the writing on the wall? In a few years time G4S security officers on minimum wage will be patrolling your streets. Private investigation companies will be investigating your crime. G4S will be responding to all but the most high risk emergency calls. Like the Probation Service, there will just be a small number of real police officers to deal with the most violent offenders.

When private companies working for profit are employing patrolling officers how much more likely is it that you will get a ticket or summons? How likely do you think it is that your crime will get investigated or detected when the cost of such might reduce company profit? When the few police officers that are trained to deal with violent offenders are all busy then no one will come when you being beaten and robbed.

If the media and voters don't wake up soon you will have this largely privatised police service. The criminals and fanatics will be very happy. Decent people will lament the real police force they once had.
 

Justice Secretary Tells Truth - Shock!!

I fear that the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling won't last long in politics. His predecessor, Ken Clarke told us that prison was not the answer for criminals and he introduced half sentences for early guilty pleas and made it almost impossible to imprison anyone.

When Chris Grayling was appointed Justice Secretary it was assumed that there would be a swing to the right and a tougher stance on law and order. That hasn't really transpired and Chris Grayling's focus has been on rehabilitation. His grand plan is to have a mentor for every prisoner released from gaol. A bit of rehabilitation for our persistent offenders would be a good start. It is almost non existent in our ineffective justice system.

Now Mr Grayling has stated that he would like to see persistent offenders serve their full term in prison and not have automatic early release as they do now. Furthermore, he admits that the only barrier to this is cost.

I wrote a long article about the ineffectiveness of our justice system and how it is failing to protect the innocent and rewarding criminal behaviour. Mr Grayling is the first politician, that I am aware of, who admits that the Government is failing to protect us because it believes it cannot afford to do so. It is time people stood up and told the Government that they cannot afford not to protect us if they want to remain in Government.

PCC's - Innovation At Its Best

One of the suggestions the current Government put forward when they came up with the daft notion of Police and Crime Commissioners was that PCC's would bring innovation to improve and change policing in this country.

The great British public voted in their hundreds to show their support for these wonderful new beasts, who are irrelevant to most people but wield considerable power when it comes to hiring and firing Chief Officers. PCC's are now drawing up their Police and Crime Plans following consultation with the public. God help us!

David Lloyd, Conservative PCC for Hertfordshire has come up with the grand idea that offenders should pay when they do something wrong. One of his big ideas is that offenders should pay for the time they spend in police custody. I have some sympathy with the idea. After all, we used to rely on the Courts to punish offenders but that no longer happens.

The reality though is that, as we feared, this is just another unworkable, daft idea that will never work but might just catch a few more votes at the next election. It won't work because many people arrested are not charged. (Some of them are even innocent.) Many of those charged are on benefits and can't pay £300 a night for a room in the cells. There are more than a million court fine defaulters, how will we enforce payment of police cell accommodation? This will be an administrative nightmare which will cost more to administer than it raises.

I look forward to some more innovation from our PCC's when they are dreaming up their Police and Crime plans.