Monthly column: local policing matters
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When I meet residents, community leaders and councillors in rural and urban areas across Bedfordshire one of the questions I am asked most often is along the lines of “when will have more community police officers.”
Reinvigorating local policing is one of my core missions in my new Police and Crime Plan – ‘A Safer and Fairer Bedfordshire’ – which will be published on 3 October.
I set out my commitment to this mission during the election campaign earlier this year. I have continuously been developing the case for more investment in this vital aspect of policing.
However, I have consistently acknowledged and stated that more community or neighbourhood officers and more Police Community Support Officers (PCSO’s), is the most important and urgent requirement. We must tackle serious crime, violent crime and ever pervading drug related crime.
We also must introduce measures to prevent crime and to promote the interests of victims. There are and will always be competing demands on limited resources.
Local policing is about more than additional officers on the beat important as they are.
It is about ensuring that wherever you live in Bedfordshire you are benefiting from the range of police services ranging from response teams to cyber crime teams to tackling serious crime, and crime against women and children, and so much more.
The reality is that wherever you are there will be some current police activity even if you are not seeing police officers on your streets.
My approach is to expand the number of local police officers as and when resources are available, and to more than meet the Labour government’s commitments to bolster local policing. However, it is more than that. Numbers alone even increased numbers of officers will not be enough.
I want to see local policing based in, working with and responsive to local communities. Such policing is not a soft option it must be hard edged. It must be about making our communities safer and contributing to tackling the most serious crime not only anti-social behaviour vital as this.
Local policing must be proactive, problem solving, and intelligence gathering. Local police teams should work in partnership with local authorities, community safety teams and community organisations.
We need cultural, structural, and behavioural change not just more police and PCSOs.
Over the next six months I plan to develop a long-term strategy for local policing, based on smaller areas currently, working from more local hubs.
This does not necessarily mean premises unique to the police nor new buildings, and public access points for the public to meet the police.
I want communities to know their local police and the police to know them.
There is a need to provide a career route for police officers through local policing. We need less turnover of officers in community teams and longer tenure of service within these teams. This should be a career choice for the brightest and the most ambitious.
As part of the commitments in the Police and Crime Plan, I will be establishing local advisory groups to collaborate with the police to set programmes and approaches to local policing. These groups will not have any operational policing responsibilities, but they will be a voice for the community. I will wish to listen to and draw on the experience of these groups to shape county level strategy.
Strengthening local policing can offer so much. It can contribute to building public trust in policing. It can help to make our villages and towns safer, but I won’t pursue this objective at the expense of the overall safety of our county.