Bag's Rants

I must be stupid. The police amalgamation does not make sense.

I read the article about amalgamating police forces down to 24 from 43. It actually sounds like they have thought about the savings and efficiency benefits and see it as a valid way forward.

However, when you think about the phrase "My vision for the police service in the 21st century is that it should be close, responsive and accountable to the communities it serves.". Of course it came from our wonderful Home Secretary who still goes on about ID cards helping terrorism when it has been fully debunked so there you go.

We've already hit problems with our local police force being 'made more efficient' and centralised about 30 parsecs¹ away. Read more here. Increasing the distance will clearly make things better.

How exactly will having your police headquarters covering larger areas and being millions of miles¹ away make them close, (increasing distance makes them close. Only a liar like Clarke could say that), responsive (Well, they probably won't get worse. They don't turn up anyway) and accountable (Mmm, exactly how are they accountable. Never mind to the community it serves).

He also said 'larger forces with the "capacity and specialist expertise to protect the public from wider threats such as serious and organised crime."'

Larger forces, well that's a given when you merge two forces. Even if you get rid of a lot of resources then the force is still larger than the one it replaced. A true statement. I'll have to check to make sure that they don't sack 60% from each force.

Wider threats such as serious and organised crime. Well there we have it. They want to clamp down on DVD piracy, drugs and prostitution. Nothing there about burglars or muggers. All the things we worry about on a daily basis such as DVD Piracy, drugs and prostitution will be stamped on with our more efficient force.

So any other benefits of this amalgamation? Well there will be less Chief Constables and their command structures. Less HQs and HQ support staff.

So all in all a cost cutting exercise and with no real benefit to the public bar the tax savings which will of course just be used to fund the clamping down on organised crime.

I feel better about it already. Only why don't they go the whole hog and amalgamate them into one big force. Surely that would make them closer, responsive and accountable and enable them to have the capacity and expertise to tackle organised crime. Even more savings.

Read about the proposed plans and the bribes given to encourage the process here. No peerages from what I can understand but you never know.

1) Exaggerated ever so slightly to emphasis the point.

posted by Bag @ 10:00 am