Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

THE ROLE OF POLICE
“Proactive policing has been the norm,
whether in preparation for a large-scale
public demonstration, or in relation to
petty crime and anti-social behaviour.”
the patrol officer, the practice has only
recently waned.
It was affected in recent decades by the
Unit Beat system (the era of the Panda
car) which allegedly removed the police
from daily contact with the public. Firebrigade
policing was originally coined in
the 1970s as a critical term, regretting that
the transformation through technology
of the police response to calls for service
had supposedly distanced them from the
public.
Such critics neglected to recognise the
ubiquity of a different form of interaction
– the telephone and later email. A variety
of devices have attempted to make the
beat more efficient – horse and bicycle
patrols and so on.
There are many problems with the
beat system as generally recognised. It
is immensely wasteful in resources –
prospective burglars do not wait for a
police patrol to appear before ‘breaking
and entering’. A more subtle criticism on
enhanced beat practice is that while it
might make some residents feel safer, its
may also encourage a degree of insecurity
(‘why are there so many police officers
around There must be trouble’).
In the current day, such beat patrolling
has largely been reduced to the new
Community Support Officer (judging by
sickness rates, one of the most tedious
occupations that one could imagine).
Beat patrolling carries little status among
officers and is increasingly (despite official
hype) regarded by local forces as a largely
pointless and wasteful task.
The second and most common form
of proactive policing in the present day is
that of neighbourhood policing, essentially
an offshoot of the more philosophical
Community-Oriented-Policing (COP).
One rationale for that interaction
was based on the myth that only such
communities could provide information
relevant to the commission of crime.
From this critic’s perspective, proactive
neighbourhood policing has few virtues.
It is again immensely wasteful of police
resources. ‘Everything’ in the locality can
become ‘police business’ – from issues of
neglected housing (the broken windows’
theme) to babysitting witnesses and
victims (Family Support Officers).
Many of these practices usurp the
function of other state and voluntary
agencies and are conducted by officers
with little training for such specialist
roles. Functionaries endowed with the
enabling Office of Constable role simply
do not know when to curtail their pursuit
of often ephemeral factors that may (or
may not) be relevant to criminogenic
agency. Not merely is it wasteful in the
will-o-the-wisp chase to find the source
of crime, it is immeasurable in terms of
effectiveness – whatever its goals are!
‘Fire-brigade policing’ as the
default option
In the division between fire brigade
practices and those of the health service,
the police have been nearest to that of
the latter. Proactive policing has been the
norm, whether in preparation for a largescale
public demonstration, or in relation
to petty crime and anti-social behaviour,
through the now token beat system and
the current neighbourhood policing.
But that practice is collapsing under
the weight of cost and of futility (as in
predicting the Tottenham riots). The fire
brigade system, primarily characterised
by reaction, is emerging as the model for
police practice.
That system has both flaws and
attraction for policing. It has its own
history in the Victorian period when local
Watch Committees regarded policing
and fire fighting as largely synonymous
(early firemen were often called ‘Fire
Police’) sharing the same premises. Its
central strategy is to ensure a reservoir
of trained staff to react to public calls for
assistance.
First the drawbacks. It involves keeping
a reserve of officers in the station waiting
for public calls (call collators have a key
function in determining priorities of
response). Secondly, speed of response to
an incident such as a burglary is irrelevant.
Burglars don’t hang around.
Thirdly, by definition, it can only
prevent crime hopefully by symbolic
successes, thus warning off future
predators. Most importantly (especially
to politicians), by lack of presence, it
cannot meet public demands for visibility.
It is no worse than proactive policing in
the abysmal rate of success with regard
to petty (and sometimes, more serious)
crime.
But on the plus side, fire brigade
policing is much less labour intensive,
given the right mode of response. It
is potentially much cheaper. It is less
profligate with scarce resources. It is more
realistic about what the police can achieve.
It avoids developing supernumerary (and
superfluous) skills.
If integrated effectively with more
proactive specialist state agencies in the
community (concerned with causation to
complement police reaction to symptoms),
it can be more effective. eactive fire
officers are not involved in a popularity
contest with the public. The police should
adopt a similar profile.
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