A missed opportunity for reform, Sean O'Neill - Police Federation

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civilian employee a few days later and eventually return to uniform. How many blind eyes were turned to allow this to happen? • Further, it is shameful that PC Harwood’s disciplinary tribunal is only the second police misconduct case to be held in public and quite unfair that he should be paraded in the public arena while chief constables like Grahame Maxwell and Sean Price are allowed private hearings. Policing is perhaps the most sensitive public service and it is essential for public confidence that there should be more transparency around the disciplinary process. • The kneejerk condemnation of all private sector involvement in policing is shortsighted. The West Midlands Police business partnering project was not a G4S outsourcing deal, but an ambitious attempt to look at how innovative ideas from private industry might help detect crime and serve victims. Why does the friendly voice at First Direct know so much more about their customer than the police call handler does about the repeat victim of domestic violence or anti-social abuse? But the outsiders who hint at change or question the accepted way of doing things are regarded as enemies, not constructive critics or even critical friends. Early in my term in this job I was bluntly told by an ACPO figure that if I kept writing stories about the fat-cat deals of some retiring top brass I would be “jeopardising contact and cooperation with senior officers”. Frankly, I have seen far too much of this ugly, defensive face of the police. My instinct – as observer rather than policymaker or academic expert – is that a failure to embrace some beneficial and progressive change has left the police service unable to credibly challenge Upholding the Queen’s Peace 93
potentially more damaging ones. The change or reform that threatens the British way of policing more than any other is the one that will be implemented in November when the public will be asked to vote for the first Police and Crime Commissioners. On paper this appears an intelligent, modernising reform. Police authorities have been almost invisible and ineffective. Making the police answerable to a body that is itself accountable to the public makes good sense in principle. But in practice, the first elections seem to be steaming towards disaster. The inbuilt bias against independent candidates, who are denied the chance to compete on an equal footing with the Labour and Tory party machines, limits the ability of nonpartisan candidates to succeed. The botched legislation, which means that a candidate like the Falklands veteran Simon Weston cannot contest the election because of a minor juvenile conviction some 40 years ago, has further narrowed the field. The public are to be offered a choice between a variety of second-rate party hacks, many of whom show little understanding of policing and the current problems facing the service. Needless to say, the electorate has not been enlivened by the quality of the candidates and the contest so far. A pitifully low turnout seems likely and that surely increases the possibility that an extremist candidate with a small but motivated support base could win power over policing. The constitutional position of policing is about to change significantly. Chief Constables will be forced to bend to parochial political whims. But the service looks to have squandered its chance of fighting that change. 94 Upholding the Queen’s Peace
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A missed opportunity for reform, Sean O'Neill - Police Federation

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