People don’t want mega-constabularies. They want Dixon of Dock Green back
The commission was set up because there had been a perceived breakdown in relations between chief officers and the bodies that scrutinised them. At that time there were more than 160 borough police forces, each overseen by a separate watch committee.
These were powerful bodies, which met weekly and had the power to hire and fire chief constables. Other than in London they enjoyed total autonomy and were subject to a high degree of local democratic control, even over “operational” decisions.
But the Home Office never liked this arrangement, and a succession of corruption scandals in the late 1950s gave it the opening it had sought to end it with the assistance of the Royal Commission.
From the outset, the ambition was clear – to reduce local influence over policing. The commission was encouraged by the Home Office to follow its centralising agenda and recommend subsuming city forces into counties, thereby replicating the weak systems of local accountability found in the county police forces.
The subsequent Police Act of 1964 reduced the number of constabularies in England and Wales to 43, and ever since, it seems, the aim among chief officers and in Whitehall has been to cut them further.
The latest iteration of this campaign was outlined at the weekend by Sir Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He said the system had not “been fit for purpose for at least two decades” and that a “once in a generation” overhaul was long overdue. He called for the creation of 12 to 15 “mega-forces” better able to utilise modern technology that would reduce “expensive” governance and support functions.
A review being conducted in the Home Office, due to report later this year, is likely to follow this suggestion, just as Labour did some 20 years ago when a similar proposal was mooted but shot down.
Why anyone would think that the answer to the remoteness of the police is to establish even bigger forces is hard to understand. It is true that the attempt to inject more local input into policing through elected police and crime commissioners has not been a runaway success, to put it charitably, but at least the traditional connection to the county remains in most areas.
That would disappear entirely under regional policing. A West Country force based in Bristol might as well be on another planet for towns in Cornwall, where police stations have been steadily closed over the years.
Sir Mark already heads a super-sized police force, and yet there is no sign that it is responsive to the wishes of Londoners. Coming out of a play in the West End recently on a Friday night, there was not a single officer to be seen on Shaftesbury Avenue, while motorbikes roared up and down the crowded streets.
0 Comments