Elected Crime Commissioners

OffTheBackAdam

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/pol ... issioners/
Who's bothered?

AchillesLeftKnee

Complete waste of time, effort, and money.

plowmar

Apart from the 'scare' advert I've not heard much about them. I'll need a lot more information before making a decision.
Bearing in mind this is not America I'll need a lot of convincing that this is not just a ruse for Govt. to blame someone else for not providing funds to have a properly functioning police force.

centimani

Complete load of bollix, it'll become a popularity contest, the very worst where people vote for someone based on completel irrrelevent factors...you'll have to become an armchair expert in the Police to even begin to understand what you're voting for.
90 % of people won't vote because even if they wanted to, they wont know what they're voting for, apart from soundbytes spouted by potential candidates.

AFF40N

The country is almost bankrupt, there are budget cuts here there and everywhere and now the government are pouring millions of pounds into this.
Politicising the police, creating local scapegoats so the government don't take the blame. What a terrible waste of money.

Bobbinogs

heh heh, I am firmly in the "don't give a flying fark" camp but after voting noticed that the advert in the middle of the thread was for the Police Commisioners on Youtube!! Blimey, sorry I voted the wrong way but watching the ad won't change my opinion

Agree with the complete waste of money, government (of all persuasions) seem to think that Joe Public actually cares about the tosh they come up with and we fund.

awallace

Police officers are not allowed to be part of political parties or be involved in politics, yet the new PCC can come from a political party. So much for independance. "ensuring the police force budget is spent where it matters most" or reducing it to balance the books and appease the government.

BelgianBeerGeek

Hmm...I've got mixed feelings about this. The old Police Authorities were hardly accountable. In most cases, it was yet another cosy committee for a councillor to sit on and claim another allowance, so opening them up is a good idea. But...the amount of money they will get seems too high to me, even if they will be "running" a massive budget and Police Force.
The whole thing lacks information and informed debate IMO. I quite like a bit of local politics, but how can you find out more about the candidates (apart from going to the party website)? If they are useless, can we sack them? Why don't we simply directly elect a Chief Constable?

tiredofwhiners

Why wouldn't anyone want an elected controller or a local police force ? Sure, you can quote the occasional nut-job lunatic in the USA but the majority of elected police officials go about their job quietly and without fuss (otherwise they would find themselves in the press).

Not having a job for life, and being directly accountable to the people who pay your salary and ongoing pension is a good way of ensuring that an official does their job as their paymasters see fit. If your local area has a burglary problem, then the police would be told to prioritise that, rather than an unelected official deciding that anything that gets his police out of their cars and walking the streets isn't going to happen.

The downside of course is that good advice from the police might be ignored with negative consequences but given the police are largely unaccountable t the public at large and deeply mistrusted, it couldn't get much worse. At the ery least getting ACPO which is entirely independent of any control, out of the policy loop, would be good thing. Is there any other public role where the employees determine policy for the job rather than the public ?

Forcing bobbies out of cars and onto the street on bikes or foot would go a long way to restoring public confidence and the only way to do that is for direct control of the plod rather than feeling they are jailers and we are the prisoners.

Pross

Politicising the police, which this risks directly doing, can't be a good idea but there has been so little publicity about it I may be missing the point and voted 'couldn't give a fark'.

tiredofwhiners

Pross wrote:

Politicising the police,

In what way ? The local community determining priorities isn't being political is it ? The police deciding to do whatever they damn well please and setting their own priorities over the objections of those who pay their wages isn't sensible is it ?

BelgianBeerGeek

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Pross wrote:

Politicising the police,

In what way ? The local community determining priorities isn't being political is it ? The police deciding to do whatever they damn well please and setting their own priorities over the objections of those who pay their wages isn't sensible is it ?

But is it? How do the "local community" hold the commissioner to account? By having the option of not voting for them again? As anyone who lives in an area with a mainly Tory or Labour or whatever council will tell you, local democracy is often something of a joke.

sheffsimon

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Why wouldn't anyone want an elected controller or a local police force ? Sure, you can quote the occasional nut-job lunatic in the USA but the majority of elected police officials go about their job quietly and without fuss (otherwise they would find themselves in the press).

Not having a job for life, and being directly accountable to the people who pay your salary and ongoing pension is a good way of ensuring that an official does their job as their paymasters see fit. If your local area has a burglary problem, then the police would be told to prioritise that, rather than an unelected official deciding that anything that gets his police out of their cars and walking the streets isn't going to happen.

The downside of course is that good advice from the police might be ignored with negative consequences but given the police are largely unaccountable t the public at large and deeply mistrusted, it couldn't get much worse. At the ery least getting ACPO which is entirely independent of any control, out of the policy loop, would be good thing. Is there any other public role where the employees determine policy for the job rather than the public ?

Forcing bobbies out of cars and onto the street on bikes or foot would go a long way to restoring public confidence and the only way to do that is for direct control of the plod rather than feeling they are jailers and we are the prisoners.

Does "forcing bobbies out of cars" help to reduce crime? Personally, I doubt it, but its such a vote winner that every candidate will propose it. Candidates with very little knowledge of policing in some cases, candidates who have very little time between election and budget and policy decisions.

tiredofwhiners

BelgianBeerGeek wrote:

But is it? How do the "local community" hold the commissioner to account? By having the option of not voting for them again?

They can be sacked and replaced. You don't have to wait for another election as they don't ever have 'tenure'. Its not like voting for a councillor with a three or four year term who says one thing and then does another once elected.

BelgianBeerGeek wrote:

As anyone who lives in an area with a mainly Tory or Labour or whatever council will tell you, local democracy is often something of a joke.

Possibly, but the sort of people who say that can never come up with a better solution other than putting themselves in charge What you mean by 'local democracy' invariably means a minority of voters being upset that the majority want something different.

The system we have is the least worse possible to have - there is no better way allowing for the humans involved.

Pross

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Pross wrote:

Politicising the police,

In what way ? The local community determining priorities isn't being political is it ? The police deciding to do whatever they damn well please and setting their own priorities over the objections of those who pay their wages isn't sensible is it ?

Having your options being representatives of a political party will likely lead that way, at least with the old style boards there was a spread.

AchillesLeftKnee

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Why wouldn't anyone want an elected controller or a local police force?

Because there's a massive difference between actual crime and the perception of crime, especially in relatively low crime areas. The same goes for the differences between perceived and actual policing.

I haven't got the first idea as to what constitutes effecting policing methods, or what it is in the local area that needs particular attention. In short, were I to vote for a candidate, I would be making what would amount to a random choice, the results of which I would almost certainly never actually perceive.

Chuck into the mix the inevitable stupid "I was burgled under the Labour\LibDem\Tory\Indy police chief, I wasn't burgled before, so it must be their fault" rubbish we're going to have to put up with across various flavours of the media, and the whole thing really does look like a pointless waste of time designed for the edification of politicians and little else.

tiredofwhiners

SheffSimon wrote:

Does "forcing bobbies out of cars" help to reduce crime? Personally, I doubt it, but its such a vote winner that every candidate will propose it.

I think it can do no worse than the situation we have at the moment where the police spend half their time in the office. I suspect that even if the paperwork was reduced hey would all want to stay indoors and read the paper than go patrol a neighbourhood on foot. I think it was last year that a CC in Bristol had a huge drop in burglaries because he locked all the police out of the stations at night. They could do paperwork in the day but at night had to be out all the time.

SheffSimon wrote:

Candidates with very little knowledge of policing in some cases, candidates who have very little time between election and budget and policy decisions.

Thats a risk but we should have system where the electorate decide what needs to be done and the experts decide how the best way to do it would be. At the moment, the police do both irrespective of what the electorate want and that is not a good state to be in as it erodes any remaining trust in the police as they are seen as they behave - unanswerable to the electorate and only interested in doing the things they find easy or legally have to do.

Nobody ever suggest that having elected police commissioners is flawless, but it it least more democratic than it is now.

steve6690

They will still have to spend 'x' amount of time in the office because everything they do = a certain amount of paperwork, which usually has to be submitted by a certain time. The patrol/response officer with no paperwork to do, is an officer that doesn't do any work.

MisterMuncher

I don't understand why having this as a democratic decision is a good thing in and of itself. Operating a service should be a meritocratic system. It requires technical knowledge and experience.

BelgianBeerGeek

tiredofwhiners wrote:

BelgianBeerGeek wrote:

But is it? How do the "local community" hold the commissioner to account? By having the option of not voting for them again?

They can be sacked and replaced. You don't have to wait for another election as they don't ever have 'tenure'. Its not like voting for a councillor with a three or four year term who says one thing and then does another once elected.

BelgianBeerGeek wrote:

As anyone who lives in an area with a mainly Tory or Labour or whatever council will tell you, local democracy is often something of a joke.

Possibly, but the sort of people who say that can never come up with a better solution other than putting themselves in charge What you mean by 'local democracy' invariably means a minority of voters being upset that the majority want something different.

The system we have is the least worse possible to have - there is no better way allowing for the humans involved.

Ah, I didn't know we could give them the heave-ho. I know I sounded bitter above, but i'm not anti-council just because of its colour. It's just that IME "consultation" is a very elastic term in local government, and quite often they simply do as they please. I'm going to our council's meeting tomorrow as an independant has put forward a motion that as we're all in it together the councillors should take a cut in their expenses. I'm not holding my breath...
BTW, how do we give the commissioner the push?

sheffsimon

tiredofwhiners wrote:

SheffSimon wrote:

Does "forcing bobbies out of cars" help to reduce crime? Personally, I doubt it, but its such a vote winner that every candidate will propose it.

I think it can do no worse than the situation we have at the moment where the police spend half their time in the office. I suspect that even if the paperwork was reduced hey would all want to stay indoors and read the paper than go patrol a neighbourhood on foot. I think it was last year that a CC in Bristol had a huge drop in burglaries because he locked all the police out of the stations at night. They could do paperwork in the day but at night had to be out all the time.

SheffSimon wrote:

Candidates with very little knowledge of policing in some cases, candidates who have very little time between election and budget and policy decisions.

Thats a risk but we should have system where the electorate decide what needs to be done and the experts decide how the best way to do it would be. At the moment, the police do both irrespective of what the electorate want and that is not a good state to be in as it erodes any remaining trust in the police as they are seen as they behave - unanswerable to the electorate and only interested in doing the things they find easy or legally have to do.

Nobody ever suggest that having elected police commissioners is flawless, but it it least more democratic than it is now.

Why is a democratic system better in this instance? I want somebody who knows about policing and finance, not some ex-councillor who thinks they know best or, here in Sheff we have a retailer as Lib-Dem candidate.....potentially to be responsible for a budget exceeding £200m a year. Does that knowledge of policing and finance reside in the candidates in my area, I doubt it very much.

Does any incoming crime commissioner have the power to reduce "paperwork", or this paperwork a central requirement?