ON THE BEAT OR NOT?

You would have to try hard to come across a more desperate tragic tale than that of the mother driven by bullies to kill herself and her daughter in a burning car? A tragic situation made far worse by what may well appear to be an absolute abject failure on the part of the police to protect a vulnerable family despite repeated regular pleas for help. The local constabulary were allegedly contacted more than 20 times over a seven-year period but allegedly failed to respond because due to a there being "not enough resources".

What has emerged is that little or nothing was done to protect the victim or her family from persistent bullying and persistent abuse. Local Police have said that the mother was concerned about reprisals and so did not want to pursue any prosecutions. At the ongoing inquest (in Loughborough), an officer allegedly said it was impossible to bring charges if the victim did not wish to proceed. Yet as the coroner noted, there are supposed to be a dozen laws to deal with this sort of behaviour.

So if the mother herself did not wish to give evidence, were the police capable of basic observation? Obviously not, as little allegedly seems to have been done save to ignore or dismiss the victims concerns? And there we are mistakenly thinking that it was one of the duties of the Police to protect the vulnerable – obviously not? At least, for all the good it did in this case, they actually allegedly turned up (some of the time) in too many of our communities I have heard people say that when they call them (The Police that is) they don’t even come?

How did we end up in this mess?

The biggest transformation is a relatively recent one; that of increased centralisation and a breakdown of the basic relationship between the local community and the Police Service. Since 1979, the Police have become a far more visible enforcement arm of the state (perhaps as a direct consequence of the Miner’s strike and Poll Tax Protests), with centrally set and centrally driven targets.

Additionally part of the fact that many of the police are no longer from the communities they allegedly serve. Not that long ago a percentage, but not all, of our Police lived within our communities, some in Police Houses (which were quietly sold off under Mrs. Thatcher) it’s more as likely now that our Police live somewhere else and commute to work, just like many of us.

Now, while the police have always clung to their operational autonomy and used to claim a nominal resistance to direct political interference, they have become ‘indirectly’ political in ways that people could never have conceived twenty five years ago, before John Major and Tony Blair made increasingly centrally driven ‘politically’ inspired crime campaigns and quick fix initiatives an everyday occurrence.

So much for an independent Police service - the police may periodically bleat on about having ‘operational autonomy’ but in truth those days are long gone. One thing is true; we all pay for our Policing (one way or another) and if the Police fail us then there are usually consequences, particularly tragic ones in this case.

At a very basic level our police need to reconnect with their local communities - the lack of actual open Police stations across Wales, does not help matters much. Gwent Constabulary does pursue a very successful programme of visible community based Policing in many parts of the former county, yet there is a real danger that as our Police Service becomes increasingly specialist it becomes more distant from our communities.

Factor in the not so faint whiff of ongoing Police reorganisation, especially a reorganisation that is potentially cost savings driven after the next Westminster election; and with some senior police officers favouring the creation of larger and larger more strategic Police forces, one question we should ask is what will happen to the Police Service in Wales?

And what will be the direct and indirect consequences on the streets of our communities?

Is it possible to reverse the trend of the of the past 30 years which has seen the development of a style of policing that suits not the public but the Police?