Smoke & Mirrors?

Today, 22nd November, the 41 Police & Crime Commissioners take office for the first time. Before lunchtime, we had seen the first casualty. The Chief Constable of Avon & Somerset Police announced his "retirement" as Sue Mountstevens settled in for her first day in the job.

Nearly all of the candidates up and down the country campaigned on the promise of making police "more visible" on our streets. This sounds great, but there was usually little substance behind these claims. Some promised to achieve this through the use of Special Constables, and I've discussed this before - here and here.

The new PCC for Staffordshire, Matthew Ellis says in this article:

“There are simple solutions to some of the problems we have. Why are such a large proportion of vehicles unmarked? If we mark them up you could instantly double the visibility of police on the streets.

“I haven’t been able to find an answer as to why so many are unmarked, but we will do so.”
 

 I'll cut Mr Ellis a bit of slack as it's his first day in the job, but if he'd asked a few of his new colleagues he might have found out these reasons, for starters;

• The vehicle isn't marked because it doesn't contain a police officer. Scenes of Crime and Crime Prevention are just two roles that used to be filled by police officers and are now done by civilian employees of the Police or, increasingly, private companies under contract.
• The vehicle isn't marked because it's used for covert operations. D'OH! CID, Traffic, even neighbourhood and proactive teams all use unmarked cars for a very good reason. Sorry Mr Ellis, but if you don't understand that you're not fit for the role of PCC. But then, you probably think all the police are there for is to cut crime.
• Times when discretion is called for even if it's not actually for covert reasons. I would imagine that Family Liaison Officers might well use unmarked cars.

The biggest problem with this that I have is that if we mark up ALL police vehicles, regardless of whether or not an operational officer is inside it, then this is little more than an attempt to fool the public into thinking that there are more operational officers around than there actually are. We really might as well put cardboard cutouts around our neighbourhoods. (I know, some forces have actually done this already)

I've been taken to task via my blog, correctly, for having a go at PCSOs. Not PCSOs themselves, just the role. It's a role I disagreed with when it was introduced. PCSOs do a valuable job as part of the policing family. That's all well and good, but they are not sworn police officers - which is what the public actually wants. More than that - it's what the public thinks they are seeing when a PCSO is walking a beat.

I had a similar argument with West Yorkshire Police a couple of years ago. I witnessed some appalling driving by two cars from West Yorkshire Police, out of force area and without blue lights, and I phoned them to complain. To cut a long story short, the two cars were from the Driving School. The occupants were learning advanced response driving. I was told that the training cars used to be unmarked precisely because they could or had caused this sort of embarrassment to the force in the past, but that the Home Office had insisted that all training cars be marked to "increase visibility". What is the point of making them more visible if they are to all intents & purposes, not on operational duty? If my house is burgled, will those training cars respond? Of course not. So it's basically a confidence trick perpetrated on the public. I might as well paint "POLICE" on the side of my own car for all the good it would do.

So is this what being a PCC is about, in reality? Finding more ways to fool the public into thinking that they have more police officers than they actually have? If this is the case, then we can see why PCCs were introduced. It's a way to "democratically buffer" the blame for this from central Government, the ones who started this "smoke and mirrors" campaign.