Voice of 140,000 police officers
Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation, tells the Home Secretary what the police and public want and need
Home Secretary, congratulations
on your appointment and the success
of your government. We are
very much looking forward to
working with you and assisting
you in one of the most prestigious,
yet difficult, jobs anyone
could undertake.
Your job is going to be made
so much more difficult by the
economic tsunami that you
have inherited from the previous
administration.
We will do whatever we can to
help and support you at this most
difficult time. What we do ask for
is fairness and recognition of the
dangerous, difficult and complex
job that police officers do.
Home Secretary, you will be
surrounded by advisors, many of
whom have little knowledge of policing
and whose errors have got
past home secretaries into trouble. The best advice that we can
give you is – don’t always believe
what you’re told by your advisors.
Over the coming weeks I know
you will be further familiarising
yourself with the complexities of
policing. Home Secretary, we are
here for you. We are the voice of
140,000 police officers across
43 forces and we are ready and
willing to assist you with information,
advice and guidance.
We know public safety is a priority
for you; it is for us too. We
know you want to put victims at
the heart of the criminal justice
system; we do too.
And we know that you appreciate
the difficult and often dangerous
circumstances in which we conduct
our duty. Regrettably, some
pay the ultimate price tackling
this danger, but many police officers
are also injured in the line
of duty.
Home Secretary, during the
past few years we have been
subject to a constantly changing
landscape of police ministers and
home secretaries that we have
had to deal with.
As home secretaries we have
had Jack Straw, David Blunkett,
Charles Clarke, John Reid, Jacqui
Smith and Alan Johnson – he was
a postman and even he couldn’t
deliver.
For the last 20 years we have
had nothing but change; we have
reached initiative fatigue.
We want to be left as professionals
to get on with the job that
we do.
We want to see preservation in
the number of police officers in
the service rather than seeing an
increase in the numbers of those
that produce little but earn a living
by criticising, double-checking and
analysing what our members do.
We are in the ridiculous situation
where we have people checking
people, checking people. What
I want to know Home Secretary
is – who are the people checking
the people checking the people,
checking the people?
As the ex-Essex chief and now
HMI Roger Baker said: ‘We’re becoming
an army that increasingly
has no soldiers’.
We are now at the stage with
some forces where there are
more civilians than police officers. What are they doing? Are
they the people checking people,
checking… Don’t get me started
on that one again!
What we have to remember is
that we are an emergency service. There are times when we need all
hands on deck. We need flexibility
and resilience and we are fast
losing it. With the Olympic Games
coming up, this is a very dangerous
path to go down.
Home Secretary, give the public
the police service that they
want and deserve. The previous
government, aided and abetted
by some in ACPO and the police
authorities, are creating an ethos
that appears to value and prioritise
support-staff roles above
what the public want – which is
warranted police officers.
In some forces for every police
officer recruited, up to eight support
staff have been employed. We are not against civilisation but
it should not be at the expense of
warranted police officers.
If we continue like this, we risk
the Police Service becoming as
surreal an environment as the
Alice in Wonderland world. You
can stop these Mad Hatters who
seek to turn the service upside
down Home Secretary. Further
civilianisation must be in addition
to warranted officers – not
instead of.
We are pleased you understand
the value and benefit of fully warranted
officers and that you will
maintain their numbers centrally
rather than allowing them to float
ever downwards, and by as much
as 28,000 if certain members
of ACPO and the NPIA have their
way.
I know from many of the comments
that you have made already
that you actually care about us –
police officers, policing and the
public we serve. The 140,000
men and women of the Police
Service of England and Wales are
some of the finest people in the
country.
I am extremely proud to represent
them and you should be
extremely proud to be their Home
Secretary.
Other topics Paul McKeever
spoke about included the criminal
justice system, sentencing and
public order.
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