'The Leicester case is a disappointing result of a mis-managed police service – a service ruined by political interference and a preoccupation with ‘bean-counting’. Unfortunately, the emphasis seems to be on ‘ticking all the boxes’. This to me means covering one’s backside: apparently doing the minimum to cover a particular aspect or outcome with little regard for the true outcome. The true outcome to me is something that cannot be measured through counting beans. How a person feels, how they are affected by a particular event or chain of events, and how they are days, weeks, or months after the event has (apparently) been dealt with cannot be measured in terms of sliding beans along an abacus or working out averages, etc., using a spreadsheet. The human cost is incalculable and therefore is not of interest to the bean-counters: those who publish statistics. Every Force in the land will be able to tell you how many calls it has received over a given period, how many of those were 999 calls, and probably the average response times to those calls. How distraught, stressed, depressed or suicidal a person feels as result of the events that have caused them to call the police cannot be calculated. Therefore, it can be ignored; unmeasured; disregarded. When the human side of the effects of public disorder or (in the political correct words) ‘anti-social behaviour’ are examined by the media or otherwise put under a spotlight, then it is the victim or witness ‘over-reacting’ to the events, or their perceptions are skewed in some way. Skewed perceptions or not, if a person perceives something to be a certain way, then that is how it appears to them and no amount of placating will help. Action needs to be taken. But by whom? For years we have heard about the police ‘working in partnership’ with other organisations. Yet in the current inquest in Leicester, a senior officer tells HM Coroner and the jury that it is the council’s responsibility. Surely, it is the responsibility of all those working in partnership. Or maybe it isn’t… The law is a strange animal. It changes. Yet the first Public Order Act (1936) and the Act that the Police should be using today (the Public Order Act 1986) use common terms in order to identify when people are committing offences. The terms are, ‘threatening, insulting or abusive, words or behaviour’. So, if someone uses any of those there would appear to be grounds for looking further because that person may be committing an offence. If we look further at the lower levels of offence against the 1986 Act (sections 4a and 5), then we find that such words or behaviour must cause someone harassment, alarm or distress (or may be likely to cause someone such, is someone is present). That seems quite a broad piece of legislation to me. So, why isn’t being enforced? CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] have to ‘authorise’ charges. There must be a high chance of a successful prosecution, otherwise they won’t run it. The section 5 offence – well, a person can be issued with a Penalty Notice for Disorder for that offence. How convenient – the police and government can then count how many PNDs are issued and reassure us by publishing the numbers (back to counting beans). Section 5 is a recordable offence. Too many of those and it would give the distorted picture that there is a lot of violence taking place in this country; or would it merely give a true indication of how violent our society is? What about when dealing with children and young persons? Well, in 1998 the Crime and Disorder Act arrived and introduced Reprimands and Final Warnings. The idea with these is that a person over the age of 10 who has committed an offence and who would ‘normally’ go to court for that offence can be saved the trouble of going to court if they admit the offence and accept a Reprimand. If they re-offend within 2 years of receiving a Reprimand, they then receive a Final Warning. (It is possible for them to receive a second Final Warning. Quite how that works I have no idea. Final means final to me! After that, when they re-offend again, they go to court – or that’s the theory. CPS will sometimes refer cases back to the police to have the case reassessed and either a Reprimand or Final Warning used – again! Whether a Reprimand or Final Warning can be used depends on the ‘Gravity Score’. Each case is scored against negative and positive accompanying circumstances for any particular type of criminal offence. If the score is over a certain number, the child/young person will head straight to court. CPS might disagree and ask for the score to be re-calculated! By now, you’re probably reaching for the paracetamol. You may have to -- we haven’t finished yet! Let’s go back to ‘harassment’, ‘alarm’ and ‘distress’. Those same words appear in the anti-social behaviour legislation – when it comes to ASBOs and ABCs, etc. These are alternatives to prosecuting people for specific offences, to try to turn them away from a route into crime (same purpose as the Reprimands and Final Warnings I suppose). These can be sought by the Police – working with local authorities. The local authority is the agency that implements the procedures for them. From a police point of view, it seems an easier route to hand anti-social behaviour to the council (and count how many they have handed over), rather than go down the tricky route of recording a violent offence (section 5 Public Order Act), and then calculating a gravity score, which might mean it has to be referred to CPS, who will want an almost absolute watertight case before they will try to lose the case at court. I wonder if HM Coroner has had this sort of evidence about how the system works presented before her. The bottom line is that none of this explanation or the inquest will bring back the loving mother and her daughter. Perhaps one day, someone will allow the police of this country to take back the streets.' 
The British police: a cry from the heart
My article in the Mail yesterday about the failure of the Leicestershire police to stop the decade of criminal harassment of Fiona Pilkington and her family which led her to set fire to herself and her daughter has provoked a large mailbag – a significant part of it from anguished present and former police officers, aghast at what has happened to their calling. One such former officer has written the following to me, which I reproduce here with his permission and without further comment.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
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