Change In Policing Needed Now More Than Ever
The horrifying attack in Southport was an alarming uptick in the ongoing rise in violence across the country. The government clearly don't intend to stop it, but we can put pressure on police to improve.
Protests are a valid way of demonstrating our frustration but they're being whipped up into violence and we need other options right now. We need to be asking the police to tell us what changes they're going to make to stop it from happening again.
I contacted, separately, Essex Police and our Police Fire and Crime Commissioner.
The PFCC has responded to my questions as follows:
The PFCC "has responsibility for ensuring that [Essex Police] provide an efficient and effective service", according to the website. How does the Commissioner intend to ensure that the "efficient and effective service" includes preventing a similar attack from occurring in Essex?
The PFCC holds boards on a monthly basis where he scrutinises the performance of Essex Police. The board papers including performance outcomes are all publicly available and can be accessed here: https://www.essex.pfcc.police.
The first of your 12 plan priorities is "further investment in crime prevention", so can you provide more detail on what sort of investment will prevent knife attacks like Southport?
Knife crime is an appalling blight on our communities and we are committed to taking weapons off our streets. In 2018 we were the first PFCC in the country to fund a Violence and Vulnerability Unit (VVU) in the county, which aims to prevent knife crime and by working closely with Essex Police Serious Violence Unit and partners we have implemented a raft of enforcement operations as well as interventions, campaigns, commissioned services, including funding community groups to help divert young people away from crime and school education teams that work with the education sector around prevention work. You can find out more about the work of the VVU here: Home - Essex Violence and Vulnerability Unit Essex Violence and Vulnerability Unit (VVU) (essexvvu.co.uk). It is worth noting that since the implementation of the VUU, knife crime has reduced in the county by 70 per cent.
Follow up - How does that align with the fact that knife crime offences among under 18s have risen from 22 suspects in 2018 to 118 suspects in 2023? That's over 5 times as many.
(No response given)
Another of the 12 plan priorities is "reducing violence against women and girls", so will this plan priority be updated at all?
This will continue to be a priority in the PFCC’s new police and crime plan for 2024/28 as reducing violence against women and girls is an area that requires continued focus and Essex is utilising a range of initiatives to help women and girls feel safer in their communities. Through the government’s Safer Street Fund and our own locally funded scheme we have invested several million to help create safer public spaces. Working together with our Community Safety Partnerships we are making a difference by creating spaces where people, especially women and girls, feel and are safer. Partnership engagement has been essential in tackling VAWG, with collaborative working leading to the development of several projects such as the Essex County Council VAWG Charter, Project Minerva and the Essex County Council VAWG Mapping Programme.
The PFCC was keen to tell me about what he's already doing, but didn't show any inclination to consider improvements or take the Southport stabbing into account at all.
Essex Police are the ones with the power to make operational changes, as opposed to policy changes, so I submitted a different request to them. We need as many people as possible to submit requests to police forces across the country saying "how are you going to change?". Doing this is going to show them that we're holding them accountable, and increase the pressure to start policing properly.
Read below for information about how to submit enquiries to the police, and the wording I used.
Essex Police:
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| Go straight to "contact us" from Google. It's hard to find on the main website. |
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| Select "something else" |
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| Keep clicking "something else" |
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| Open the form. |
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| Fill in the form, try to include more questions than statements so they have more reason to respond |
Contact me for a script or example of the wording I used.
I think one problem the police face is that when they arrest someone for something less than murder, the courts deal with them very leniently. Our problem is not the police, but the whole criminal justice system. We need to learn from El Salvador, which was in the process of being taken over by violent gangs, until they got a President who did what was necessary.
ReplyDeleteSo how can we do that? We all need to join the new party, ReformUK, and push for it to adopt a new, no-nonsense policy against criminals.