Policing Britain

The New Model Police Force

Surrey Police is one of the only two in the country that employs more civilian staff than police officers, otherwise known as policing on the cheap.

Police figures reveal that Surrey has fewer police officers than support staff, 1,785 to 1,938. The trend across the nation appears to be heading towards a 50:50 split.

The situation in Surrey presents a new model whereby a professional policeman has a team 'purpose built' to support his crime busting activities. The latter appears to be central to the core business of the Surrey Force.

According to the recently published three year development plan for the County Force, "catching criminals is central to the forces purpose" - takes your breath away.

Quite how you catch more villians with less policeman remains a mystery that only Chief Constable Mark Rowley understands. Strange man Rowley, he says that the work of Surrey Police is not 'target driven'. The mystery deepens, how does a plan that has no targets achieve its aims, sorry, apart from catching criminals?

Cuts

As of 2010 there are 144,353 police officers in England and Wales, 28,000 could disappear over the next few years.

In response to cuts the force is seeking improved efficiencies, mainly through greater cooperation between police forces.

Other trends

In the 1840s the ideal Metropolitan Policeman was described:

‘Perfect command of temper is indispensable.’ Police training should transform a ‘wild young fellow’ into ‘a machine, moving, thinking and speaking only as his instruction book directs… Stiff, calm and inexorable, an institution rather than a man’ (see Policing Victorian London, by Phillip Thurmond Smith).

Charging Powers

The Labour government removed charging powers from the police in 2003.

Ms May told the Police Federation's annual conference that she will take away the right of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to decide on whether to proceed in every criminal case.

The CPS will retain rights on charging on more serious offences which are automatically heard in the crown court.

An FBI type agency to be set up.

The government has plans to set up an FBI type agency? They argue that the 43 regional forces have no answer to serious organised crime.

The new National Crime Agency would replace the Serious Organised Crime Agency and incorporate the National Policing Improvement Agency and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.

Crime Commissioners

They also have plans to replace "invisible police authorities with directly elected police and crime commissioners". Call Me Dave.

Moral order of the crown and the state

So a policeman is supposed to be more institution than man. Where do PCSOs fit into this framework? They are not policeman, so they can’t be an institution; they have uniforms and any authority resides in the uniform – designed to mask their lack of power.

CSOs are nearly-police and now we have 16,000 wandering the town centres of the nation, in their hi-viz masks. Their training is basic, their aptitude questionable – watching a small boy drown because they hadn’t received training for such an emergency. And their integrity is also questionable, responsible for half of all cases of gross misconduct across the police workforce. In 2009, 359 PCSOs were disciplined and 10 were charged with criminal offences.

Beyond nearly-police to not police at all

Beyond CSOs there are between 8000 and 9000 Street Wardens issuing on-the-spot fines for anti-social behaviour offences. In addition, a 2009 audit found that there are 1,667 ‘accredited individuals’, including private security guards, railway employees and park rangers. Chief constables do the ‘accrediting’, and now it’s common to see private security firms ‘policing’ shopping malls. Interestingly, these private police are not under the control of the police but rather their bosses, the owners of shopping malls or the council.

There are an estimated 150,000 private security guards in the UK, some security companies are patrolling neighbourhoods for as little as 39p a day.

The latest nutty scheme from the ConDem government is to beef up its crime fighting efforts by encouraging ‘community crime fighters’, who will go on patrol with the police.

And even nuttier, a primary school swore in pupils as their own ‘Junior Police Community Support Officers’, to deal with the issue of ‘irresponsible parking’ around the school.

The demise of the Special

Special Constables, the volunteer reserve force has fallen from 67,000 in the 1950s, to 60,000 in the 1960s to some 15,000 today. The key word here is ‘volunteer’, people who give of their time freely; it seems there’s a decline in citizens’ willingness to work for nothing.

The ConDem government are set to reverse this decline and have big plans to encourage a citizens police force. These plans are set out in their consultation document, Policing in the 21st Century. At least they've got the right century.

Policing minister Nick Herbert said the government aimed to see levels of volunteers return to those of the 1950s and 1960s. "We want to see the police family extended," he explained.

New forms of social control

And Thus Spake Brown...

Mr Brown said: "Every community now has a visible, contactable, and accountable policing team, working with local people to keep their neighbourhood safe.

"I'm determined that every person has access to the same level of support and service when it comes to policing.

CSOs and their assorted patrollers represent a shift of the police into a new role: a shift from traditional policing (protection of property, person, and public order), to behaviour policing (those violations of public order that include dropped chewing gum, drinking in the park, dogs without collars etc, etc.)

CSOs are not police but behaviour police. They cannot arrest somebody or investigate a crime: they wander around telling people off for doing whatever it is they are doing, and deliver state-issued tellings off in the form of on the spot fines.

The police have become embarrassingly inept at dealing with public order situations – witness impotent officers standing by while a handful of students took their time to smash Millbank Tower. They have also apparently lost the ability to perform armed sieges, either shooting the gunman outright (Mark Saunders) or sitting by and letting him get on with it (the Hackney siege, which was resolved after the gunman set fire to himself and the hostage escaped).

Yet officers become surprisingly agitated when they encounter situations such as one 10-year-old kid calling another child ‘paki’ in the playground, a man clipping his neighbour’s honeysuckle, a Christian handing out leaflets criticising homosexuality, a drunk student asking an officer if his horse was gay…or any other of the myriad trivial everyday incidents that have been sternly brought to justice by our brave boys in blue.

New ways of thinking about and dealing with crime

Bright yellow police signs appealing for witnesses to serious offences are no longer such a feature of grim city streets - in London at least.

In an attempt to reduce 'fear of crime', the Metropolitan Police has effectively banned the use of the distinctive signs in all but exceptional circumstances.

So London police have given up on fighting crime, preferring instead to combat the fear of crime. We feel safer already.

March 2009 - a story of interesting police behaviour

A Lib Dem report, 'Policing of the Kingsnorth Climate Camp: Preventing Disorder or Preventing Protest?', heavily criticised Kent police for its use of strong-arm tactics.

Observers accused Kent Constabulary of false massing of police and vans, preventing legal rights advisors near protestors during police body searches, and playing loud music such as the Clash track "I Fought The Law and The Law Won" early in the morning.

Defending Kent police's handling of the Kingsnorth protest, Home Office minister Vernon Croaker argued 70 of its officers had sustained injuries inclashes with protestors.

But, following an FOI request by the Lib Dems, it was disclosed no officers had been injured during the Climate Camp event.

Lib Dem MP David Taylor told the Commons: "When people expressed concerns about the vigour shown, and resources devoted, by the police in relation to the Kingsnorth climate camp, we were told that it was justified because dozens of injuries were incurred."

"We have now found that those injuries were of a more prosaic origin-they were due to things such as insect stings and sunstroke.

"Unless the protesters are to be held responsible for wasps and the weather, are we not to conclude that the justification used at the time was wholly bogus and vacuous?"

Bogus and vacuous policing - never.

Conclusion

By the 1820s it became clear that the locally maintained system of volunteer constables and "watchmen" was ineffective, both in detecting and preventing crime. Hence, the introduction of the Peelers and the beginnings of a modern police force for London.

And yet here we are going back to a reliance on volunteers and private security watchman. What next, Bow Street Runners and thief takers?

Meanwhile, senior officers welcomed the latest roll-out of tasers and called for them to be available to ALL frontline officers.

Common Purpose

In criminal law, the doctrine of common purpose or joint enterprise refers to the situation where two or more people embark on a project that results in the commission of a crime. In what follows the jury is still out as to whether a crime has been committed.

From odd to suspicious to conspiracy theory

Introduction: September 2010, police officers from four forces took part in earthquake training. This training cost £1 million. The last major earthquake in Britain took place in the 10th Century, 11 people died. In recent times, a sizeable quake occured in 1931, a women died of heart attack. There is no evidence that a major earthquake is imminant.

Such behaviour, leaving the cost to one side, does appear a trifle odd. This has led some people to question its real purpose. The suggestion is that it is a part of some kind of contingency planning to deal with civil unrest. Afterall, training to deal with large scale rioting is hardly likely to billed as such.

Add in some curious information relating to the Ministry of Defence buying up large quantities of tear gas, riot shields and other riot equipment. Factor in other rumours that personnel transfers to home regiments are being selected on the basis of a willingness to open fire on UK citizens.

Now, to a fertile mind, (which disqualifies everyone here) all of this isn't just fishy, its right-wing sinister.

Could it be, at a time of impending disaster, i.e. the massive proposed cuts in public services for 2010 and beyond, that the common purpose is to add the final preparasions for dealing with civil unrest.

Be in no doubt the laws for dealing are already in place, in the shape of Civil Contingencies Act, a set of laws to allow the State to do whatever it likes without a court of appeal. The earthquake training and a whole series of other 'training' has taken place over the past two years.

The conspiracy theorist believe that central to this contingency planning is a training organisation called Common Purpose.

What is Common Purpose?

Common Purpose is a registered charity and limited company, whose purpose is to deliver/provide leadership training courses. Key customers of Common Purpose are government departments and local authorities. The Common Purpose website says it was set up in 1989, the conspiracy theorists say it was initiated by Ted Heath in 1970.

Now, the interesting thing about Common Purpose is that it just appeared, fully formed and ready to deliver expensive training courses. And even more intriguing, Common Purpose has received a fair degree of special treatment, like rent free office space at the Department for Children, Schools and Families in Sheffield in 1997 and has enjoyed its use ever since. New Labour's David Blunkett took over as Education Secretary in 1997 and claims not to know who sanctioned rent free office space for Common Purpose.

The Department for Work and Pensions spent £238,000 between 2002/03 and 2006/07 on leadership courses run by Common Purpose. A string of local authorities have also used the organisation at the rate payers' expense. They have also run courses at No. 10 and for some of the nation's largest PLCs. Common Purpose has a very privileged position in the world of training.

Freedom of Information Requests

One thing is clear, Common Purpose do not like people asking questions. The organisation compiled a list of names of 90 people who applied for information on the organisations activities under the Freedom of Information Act. They then sent this list to local authorities by way of a warning not to supply these individuals with information.

This was of course a breach of data protection rules but the Commissioner just ticked off Common Purpose and they said they wouldn't do it again.

Make up your own mind

"CP is identifying leaders in all levels of our government to assume power when our nation is replaced by the European Union, in what they call “the post democratic era.” They are learning to rule without democracy, and will bring the EU police state home to every one of us."

"Common Purpose is a change agent being used to recruit and train the commissars and apparatchiks needed to implement the British government's hidden EU communitarian agenda."

"In reality, Common Purpose is a corrupt, subversive, secretive and deeply sinister organisation with a hidden agenda (Communitarian social control, corporate and EU state control) and hidden backers (Tavistock Institute, Fabian Society, Brussels)."