The unhealthy obsession with front-line policing

One of the set piece themes of London politics is the obsession with police numbers. The constant wrangling over stats, with its repetitive “I’m best, you’re rubbish” refrain is sterile and unhelpful in so many ways. For one thing voters have no reliable access to the statistics themselves so for most of them it just comes down to who you trust most to give the correct self-serving figure.

However, more importantly, who decided that a simple focus on counting the number of uniforms was the best way to measure effective policing?

At an annual report on Camden’s policing, three weeks ago residents were told that due to a central directive five Safer Neighbourhood Team sergeants had been moved onto the custody suite. After some investigation it’s clear that this is a pattern that is being repeated across the capital.

So why is there suddenly a massive gap at London’s stations that needs to be filled with highly experienced and (reasonably) well paid Sergeants who were doing face to face work with the communities they serve?

Austerity

The fact is that  because the overall policing budget is under severe pressure there have been cuts and job losses (with more redundancies scheduled in this year’s budget). However, because uniformed officers are at a political premium these cuts have fallen disproportionately on backroom, civilian staff – including in the custody suites.

This means that dedicated civilian staff that were doing administrative work (at less cost than uniformed officers) have lost their jobs but the work they were doing still needs to be done. Suddenly you need to get police officers doing jobs they didn’t join up for at a greater cost than the people they’ve replaced and, quite possibly, less efficiently. All  in the name of cutting costs, a complete false economy.

This obsession with counting the number of police officers has led directly to less police officers working in the communities. While “front line” policing sounds the most essential, the front line is only as strong as the overall organisation that supports it. Paper work might not sound that sexy but if there isn’t an admin assistant doing it then it’s down to a demoralised beat copper typing with two fingers.

Quality trumps quantity

While I’m not saying that calling for less police on our streets is a massive vote winner (although it would be a refreshing slogan that would catch attention in some parts of the city) the most effective police force is a rounded force  that uses its resources effectively. That means you can’t afford to get dogmatic about what sort of hat people wear when they are staffing our essential services.

This obsession is certainly part of the paucity of the debate on policing that looks at numbers and powers and never at what the police are actually doing. To his credit Brian Paddick is highlighting police behaviour as part of his campaign, but at a time of unprecedented corruption and racism scandals in the Met simply talking about how big the truncheons are simply isn’t good enough.

Instead of asking how to police communities it would be nice if, occasionally, we asked how do we create good communities that barely need policing. The social and economic problems that many of us face in London can’t be solved with this one dimensional approach to policing that boils down to a numbers game where our communities has somehow become the problem.