Policing policy on the hoof?

The announcement recently by the Leader of Staffordshire County Council, John Taylor, that he is to spend £3million on extra Police Community Support Officers (PCSO) for the county seems, on the face of it, pretty sensible to tackle rising anti social behaviour.

But how effective will it be when you look at the detail, or rather lack of it, in Labour’s approach? The principle of the County funding more policing is something I’ve been pushing to be included in Conservative policy development in Staffordshire for some time. The principle of extra policing, but with the detail purposely missed out, was floated publicly, unwisely in hindsight, by us during the debate on the County Budget in March.

County Labour used the idea in its simplest form on a headline grabbing basis. If it does make a difference for Staffordshire people by combatting anti social and yobbish behaviour I’m not bothered who thought of it as long as it works. But Labour’s opportunist approach to this is flawed and the money may be spent without it making the difference it should have done.

Now, I’m not going to make the same mistake again by writing now about the details of our original thinking on this but I will raise some thoughts I have. Fully warranted police officers or the limited powers of PCSOs? Early results of a survey I’m doing to the 6000 homes throughout my County area suggest over 70% of people would rather have one additional full police officer rather than two additional PCSOs in their local area. Don’t misunderstand me, I believe PCSOs are doing an excellent job. But they are limited in powers and also limited to working until 10pm in the evening. In my experience, which again is backed by my survey, the time people want more policing is late evening during and after the pubs are open. So where’s the maximum benefit in having more policing which stops at 10 just when it’s needed?

So would providing fewer full police officers who can be targeted to be supporting communities at whatever times they are needed be better than double the number of PCSOs who can’t be there at the crucial times? And this whole programme that Labour have put together is for only 18 months. What happens then? Not exactly long term thinking.

Half of the money allocated is going to additional youth workers to work in tandem with the new PCSOs. That’s something I think may have an impact. The trouble is it is being done in isolation to the rest of the youth service reorganisation and if I wanted to make cheap political points I’d simply remind you that the Staffordshire Youth Service has lost more youth workers over the past 3 years than they are bringing back with this initiative.

So we’ll see what we get in reality for the extra money. One thing I will say is that the approach being taken by Labour, and the police on this, is very different and, in my view, less robust and short term, than the original idea on this we had and are now developing.

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