..we need to re-establish operational policing independence from political control, starting with the abolition of Police and Crime Commissioners.I'd guess John was off sick the day they did 'The history of the police force' at copper school. Policing has never, ever, in any remote way been free from democratic control - and rightly so. Before the 1964 Police Act local forces were governed by Watch Committees, made up of both local elected burgesses and local magistrates. The fight between SW1 and local communities for control of the police has been a long one; the 1964 Act was a victory for the Home Office, and centralised control of much of the authority previously exercised by the Watch Committees. The Watch Committees were abolished. Crime Commissioners are nothing but an ineffective sop to Localism by a Home Office under pressure for their power-hoarding.
John of course is not alone in his anti-democratic and extremist opinions. They are held by most senior police officers, who want nothing more than a national police force controlled by no-one but themselves. To this end they have created numerous bodies - funded by our own taxes - to promote this outcome, and lobby for anti-democratic powers at every opportunity. They are part of the anti-democratic nexus that in the words of Betz and Smith has captured the democratic State -
What we appear to be witnessing is the corrupt mutation of the notion of the representation of the people in parliament, into the substitution of the will of the people by the interests of the political class. We are entering the realms, no less, of state capture. What happens when sectional interests capture the political institutions of the state? This is a question we will get to, but first it is worth reiterating that in many senses this has been a long time coming, and to emphasise, in the British case has little or nothing intrinsically to do with Brexit.In our fight against extremism - of the Left, Right and Islamist - we must never forget that those who seek to destroy democratic control over the institutions of the State are also extremists. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Someone also needs to tell John that it's not the job of the police to dispense justice - we have courts for that. I can't help feeling that we've been recruiting the wrong sort of people to the police.
It's time we had a fundamental review of the role and structure of the police, similar to the Royal Commission that reported in 1962, but this time not rigged by the Home Office. Remember - 98% of police work is call-outs to disturbances and policing non-indictable offences. I can see no reason why such work cannot be undertaken by local, accountable forces of coppers skilled in the basics. Organised crime, terrorism, specialist investigations and serious indictable offences can be undertaken by regional or national squads or bodies under democratic oversight. Why not?
