The public image of Scotland Yard (once 'New' Scotland Yard but now only too much the 'old' Scotland Yard) seems irredemiably compromised. It has the whiff of a Private Eye (how appropriate) mocking reference of Ealing comedies.
Yet as senior ex-commissioners slip away, each out from under (usually) his own gathering little cloud, to write columns for corrupt newspapers, or shore up the columns of corrupt and dictatorial middle eastern states, we need to recognise that it is public confidence in the police as a whole, and that historic Robert Peel aim of a police with civil assent, that is being eroded.
Whether it be persistent racism, falsification of evidence, an apparent impununity to any real consequences for misconduct (sometimes combined in one unholy brew), mistreatment of people in custody, or an underlying acceptance of the use of force as the ultimate answer to civil unrest, there are reappearing, like a fruiting fungus pushing its way through the tarmac, the old corrupting strands that we have periodically been assured are things of the past, only newly reappearing in our newspapers because of the law's delay (that is 'the law' in every sense).
Meanwhile the response of South Yorkshire Police, those people who brought you the Hillsborough disaster and the Battle of Orgreave, is to propose that uniformed police be withdrwan from all publicly visible duties and replaced with 'Community Support Officers'. (You can tell just by the language that creation was a bad idea.) With their sights forever set on the wrong target, this, they explain, will enable them to deliver (I did not check but I expect they used that much abused word) a better service to the public.
So, instead of fostering trusting and respectful encounters between the law-abiding public and those who are recognised as genuine policemen (many of whom in some communities still retain popular confidence), the powers that be think they should foist upon us individuals who are often perceived as ill-groomed hybrids of traffic wardens and private security guards more likely to stop you photographing the Houses of Parliament than be able to direct you to the nearest public convenience.
The other approach, favoured by the West Midlands and Surrey police forces, is to outsource to private security firms a very substantial section of their public duties including investigating crimes, managing intelligence, patrolling neighbourhoods and collecting CCTV footage. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is frustrated that the Government fails to empower them to investigate the conduct of private staff carrying out police duties. Deborah Glass, deputy chair of the IPCC, has said: 'We believe it is vital for public confidence that all those who perform police-like functions and powers are subject to independent oversight...It cannot be right for someone doing the same job as a police officer not to fall within the IPCC's remit simply because the police have contracted the job to a private company. But any change in this area requires a change in the IPCC's powers.'
The problem is to large extent appears to be a failure of government policy and also of police leadership. What is it about the police service (how long before that becomes the police agency?) that prevents it from generating within itself sufficient emlightened leadership at all levels?
Never mind: we'll soon have elected police commissioners. That will sort it all out, won't it?
