It's back to bobbies on the beat
A huge shake-up in policing which is being hailed as a return to the days of bobbies on the beat was being launched today by the Government.
A huge shake-up in policing which is being hailed as a return to the days of bobbies on the beat was being launched today by the Government. The new policing pledge will see communities telling officers which crime hotspots to target.
Constables will then have to publish their priorities, what their targets are and how they plan to reach them. The results will be printed on the internet which will also give out the mobile phone numbers of individual officers. The launch was taking place in the West Midlands today.
And to to coincide with the launch, the Association of Police Authorities have taken out full page adverts in the national press.
Today former police chief John Mellor, of Wolverhampton, welcomed the new era but said the public relations stunt was a "complete waste of money".
"I think this is a good idea, basically turning the clock back to how policing used to work," he said.
"But advertising it must have cost a fortune. It would have been better if that money had been spent on getting 10 police officers or PCSOs."
The initiative was being announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who were kicking off Labour's local election campaign in Coventry today.
They say there are now more than 3,600 neighbourhood policing teams in place, featuring 13,500 police officers and 16,000 community support officers.
The community policing drive was being promoted today by national adverts and a website – www.neigh bourhoodpolicing.co.uk – where people can find the telephone number and email address of their local team.
Mrs Smith said: "Today marks the start of a fundamentally different approach to policing - with the citizen at its heart."
But Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: "Under Labour the only people the police are accountable to are ministers and their diktats in Whitehall - this is the real problem and this gimmick will not solve that. The answer is to slash police red tape and make the police genuinely accountable to local communities."
