If a stereotypical police officer from central casting were to ask me "What were you doing on the morning of Wednesday 21st March 2012?" I would be able to give them a surprisingly full answer for something nearly 9 months ago, but they might be inclined to believe me because I would also be able to produce something they would recognise, namely a contemporaneous note.
Last week's joint effort on Deputy PCC appointments between TopOfTheCops and the Mail on Sunday seems to have struck a chord, being followed by a number of articles such as those in the Guardian and the Times and an item on yesterday's Today programme on BBC Radio 4 (1 hour and 10 minutes in), where Northamptonshire Commissioner Adam Simmonds (who isn't appointing a Deputy but has 4 interim Assistants) and the Police Foundation's Jon Collins both acquitted themselves very well.
OK – I may not have got the most votes in Blackpool, but it doesn’t mean I’ve lost interest in the campaign in Lancashire. So I thought you’d like to hear the news about how Ibby Master, Independent member of the Police Authority and former rival of Clive Grunshaw’s for the Lancashire Labour Police and Crime Commissioner nomination, has agreed with Mr Grunshaw to become one of his Deputy PCCs if Labour are successful in the November election. The announcement of running mates in this election raises a number of issues which I have already covered here and here.
There is the small matter of the fact that Ibby’s name won’t be on the ballot paper, so he won’t be elected to the position, and that Clive’s decision to say he will appoint him rather deftly ignores the fact that any proposed appointee needs to face a hearing of Lancashire’s Police and Crime Panel, who then recommend to the Police and Crime Commissioner as to whether the appointment should be made or not. Now, fair enough, the Commissioner can ignore them, but is it really a good idea to set out as if you mean to ignore them 4 months before the election by giving the appointment as a foregone conclusion?
I know and have worked with Ibby, both in Preston and in Blackburn with Darwen. I’m glad his contribution and extensive support within the Labour party has been recognised, and I think Clive has done well to get him on board. Ibby’s website has had a makeover with the word ‘Deputy’, and Clive has issued his own announcement featuring glowing words about Ibby. I’ve already asked him on Twitter to remind us of what he said about Ibby during the selection campaign which led to him being forced by the Labour Party to apologise to him (and to fellow Labour candidate Mark Atkinson). We’ll wait to see if that is added, but I broke the news to the world about that here on TopOfTheCops.com, and for convenience you can read below the Labour Party’s email about the affair to its members:-
“I am emailing following a recent leaflet from Clive Grunshaw sent to Lancashire members. The leaflet was the cause of a number of complaints. As it contains disparaging remarks about the other two candidates both candidates have been given the opportunity to email members with a statement on the matter. These statements are below. Clive has apologised to the other two candidates and his apology has been accepted.
Anna Hutchinson Regional Director
Mark Atkinson
“Negative campaigning should play no part in an internal Labour Party selection. To do so is inconsistent with the values of the Labour Party and frankly it’s not the Lancashire way.
Lancashire is where I was born and bred. It’s where I went to Primary and Secondary School. It’s where my family have lived for generations and it’s the county in which I was married. I am proud to call Lancashire my home and reject any suggestion that I am not local.
I would urge members to judge candidates on their merits rather than on the negative and inaccurate assertions that have been made.”
Ibrahim Master
“I have been an active member of the Labour Party for the past 20 years and, in that time, have campaigned for many candidates in both local and national elections. I’m proud of the support that I have received in this campaign from major national Labour Party figures such as Jack Straw and Keith Vaz and this is both a clear endorsement of my contribution to the Labour Party over the years and an indication that they believe that I can win the forthcoming Lancashire Police Crime and Commissioner elections for Labour. Recently, confusing remarks have been made about my Labour Party record. This kind of behaviour is not in the spirit of an internal election. It is not fair to either the candidates or to Labour Party members who need the correct information to help them make an informed choice that will benefit the whole Labour Party by ensuring that the best candidate is chosen as its representative at the future election. I would simply ask that you judge me on my record”.
It has been fun, but I must report that today in Blackpool Lancashire Conservatives chose Fylde Councillor and County Councillor Tim Ashton as the Conservative Candidate for Lancashire Police and Crime Commissioner. Congratulations to Tim on his victory.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who trekked across the county on a Saturday morning in order to hear what the candidates had to say and make a decision. It may not have had the end result I hoped for, but thank you for all the positive feedback, for the expressions of goodwill and especially to those good enough to reassure me by looking disappointed.
I will now, as failed US presidential candidates are in the habit of saying, 'suspend my campaign', though it will stay here as a “look what you could have won” record for posterity. Rest assured that I will continue blogging at TopOfTheCops.com for I still believe that the Police and Crime Commissioner is a far-sighted reform and presents a hugely important opportunity to put the public in touch with the police and to restore confidence in the criminal justice system.
Yesterday I covered how the reported cuts in police officers on Lancashire's streets had been exaggerated as part of a suggestion that they were fuelling rises in crime. Today, let's look at those “rises in crime” they are allegedly fuelling.
The first thing to note is that the suggestion that crime was going up failed a FactCheck by Channel 4 News, who suggested that a comparison of 12 months generally falling crime figures with one month where there were rises meant that the officer in question should go back to his casenotes. This was however a little harsh on him as, at the meeting where the controversial comments were made, he had been careful to give figures for the full 12 months as well as for the single month. It's not his fault how they were reported.
The second thing is to track how crime performs against the reduction in police establishment. (For anoraks – this includes all officers, not just the frontline, and is establishment, not actual levels -compared against the total of 'all crime' for the previous 12 months- this is what Lancashire Police Authority were willing to provide).
1st April 09 – 3659 officers – 117,544 offences
1st April 10 – 3611 officers – Reduction of 8.7% in offences
1st April 11 – 3445 officers – Reduction of 4.5% in offences
1st April 12 – 3156 officers – Reduction of 3.1% in offences
Yes, you read that right. As police numbers came down, total crime came down, and kept coming down. This wasn't just a case of waiting for the effect to hit, because it happened consistently over 3 years. So the data since April 2009 actually supports the reverse of what was alleged. Far from police reductions pushing crime up, crime has been coming down.
Now let's be clear, crime figures are like share prices and interest rates. They can go up as well as down, and no doubt at some point they will. I don't think that losing police officers pushed crime down! However, the police do much more than deal with crime, and crime is impacted by much more than policing, so I suspect the relationship is not very strong, and these figures are in line with that. However, at some point crime in Lancashire may go up, and someone, whether in a uniform or wearing a red rosette, is going to start jumping up and down and saying “See, I told you the Coalition cuts would put crime up”. That person will be deliberately ignoring the last 3 years of data which points in exactly the opposite direction.
If someone wishes to make such a biased and partisan point in the future they should also consider that they would need to have increases in 'All Crime' by nearly 20% for it to be at the level before the reductions.
Finally if, like me and the FactCheck team, you treat the single month of data as wanting, then the only increase of note is the increase in recorded offences of Violence with Injury between April 2011 and March 2012, which was 5.8%. Violent crime generally fell, so it is the rise in this particular category that is of interest – an increase of 605 offences across Lancashire.
Those who work in this field will be aware that not all crime is equal. There are certain crimes, which in the Police Authority meeting the Acting Chief called 'iceberg crimes', where it is generally recognised that the reported level of crime is only a small proportion of the real level, and the goal of most agencies is to increase the reporting of these offences, so that they can be dealt with. Sadly an increase could be better reporting or more crime, or both – it's hard to tell – but trying to push down the number of reports is exactly the wrong thing to do. This applies to domestic violence, racial harassment, child sexual exploitation and a range of other offences. It is already a point slightly lost on Clive Grunshaw, the Labour Candidate for Lancashire PCC, who has said the increase in reported domestic violence is “not acceptable, and will be tackled“. His 'number one priority' is fatally flawed.
I asked the Constabulary how much of the increase in Violence with Injury was made up of just one of these 'iceberg crimes', domestic violence. Again, I had to go back and forth with the Police Authority a few times before I got the answer, which was that domestic violence offences of this type had gone up by 431. This revelation was accompanied by a note that “It's not necessarily as straight forward as suggesting that it was the increase in the domestic violence offences that accounted for 71% of the increase.” Oh really? Why not? The maths looked exactly that straightforward, which I pointed out, a couple of times, and as the explanation I received as to why merely repeated the figures, it looks safe to conclude that over two thirds of the increase in the one significant category of crime to rise last year was actually down to an increase in reported domestic violence.
I haven't asked about the other iceberg crimes. I don't think we can wait that long, and the point is already made. The bulk of the very limited rise in crime was for the sort of offences that we want people to report more often. Not only is the reduction in police numbers on the streets exaggerated, but the 'rise in crime' is not what it first appears.
The facts in this case do not support the notion that spending reductions are putting crime up. In fact, it might be difficult to think of a set of facts less able to support that conclusion.
Just before the Jubilee celebrations I was a spectator at a meeting of Lancashire Police Authority where the Acting Chief Constable made a report on crime levels, and what appeared to be some ill-advised comments, so later that day I sent him a set of questions and since then I have been in correspondence with first the Constabulary and then the Police Authority trying to determine the answers.
I have written about this meeting before but, in brief, the Acting Chief Constable stated that while crime in Lancashire generally had gone down, there had been a rise in violent crime with injuries over the 12 months from last April to this March, and that this had also risen in the one month of April as well, along with burglary and vehicle crime. In accounting for the rises he said that the force had 'taken 513 officers off the streets' and it was bound to have an effect. He also gave some anecdotal information about shoplifting of foodstuffs and drew an inference about 'social pressures'.
This led to an unhurried and phased release by the Lancashire Evening Post beginning a week later, which was quickly picked up by the Associated Press, transformed into national news, and seized on by the Labour party as proof that coalition cuts to policing were causing crime to rise. This was bigger news than you might expect. Academic research has provided little support for the link that people expect to see between police numbers and crime levels, and senior police officers normally shy away from comments that could be intepreted as supportive of the agenda of a particular political party.
Then, just as the story exploded nationally, the officer responsible was making clear that he was disappointed his comments had been seen as political, and was suddenly qualifying them. Those qualifications however, have not been as widely reported. So, what's the truth?
How many police have been taken off Lancashire's streets?
Not as many as you have been told. The officer said 513, but that has never been true. He seems to have mixed the term 'off the streets' with the total number of reductions in police officer posts made by the Police Authority (503), including officers whose jobs were in back and middle-office roles and very much not 'on the streets'. So how many were actually taken 'off the streets'?
The Police Authority told me the HMIC 'frontline' reduction was 405.
So I asked why they had previously estimated the frontline reduction at the considerably lower 160 officers. The Police Authority had discussed this over the last three years, I was told. I could find the explanation somewhere in the minutes online.
Oddly enough, I found that answer unsatisfactory, so I persisted. At a briefing last week I asked an Assistant Chief Constable how many frontline posts had been lost, and he said that when you added officers and staff together it was 190, but he didn't have to hand the information as to how many were in each group.
With further persistance I have this week obtained an explanation from the Police Authority. Apparently 160 was derived from Lancashire's own definition of 'frontline'. They no longer use that definition, preferring now the more recent and broader HMIC definition of 'frontline', which produces a figure of 405. Curiously though the HMIC themselves, in their report 'Policing Austerity – One Year On', used the figure of 190, allowing them to say that the reduction in the size of the frontline workforce in the five years to 2015 was less than 5%. Turns out that the HMIC also has a category of 'visible frontline', but nobody's saying what that number is in Lancashire.
So is it really 160 'off the streets'? Who knows? The figures are complicated by the decision to civilianise 95 officer posts, including 'frontline' officers answering the phones in contact management centres, who have been replaced by police staff. This decreases the statistical count of officers, but there is no visible difference on the streets, and indeed there is still someone on the other end of the phone. That someone doesn't have powers of arrest, but it is difficult to use those over a phone anyway.
So reductions to police numbers are not a simple business, but it looks as if the initial comments gave the impression of swingeing cuts to frontline police numbers that greatly exaggerate the actual reduction on the streets. Given the budgetary situation, losing less than 1 in 20 frontline officers by 2015 may not be the impression that was conveyed to ordinary people.
However, I'm conscious that ordinary people live in the real world and not just the world of the press and politicians. What they actually see of the police may form their view much more than hard-to-judge statistics in a newspaper.
Last month's Policy Exchange YouGov poll found that only a third of the public had some form of contact with the police in the last 12 months. So two thirds of the population don't have any contact with the police from one year to the next and can't directly notice any reduction in interaction with the police, because they didn't have any in the first place. One third might notice a change but even over five years the visible frontline may be only less than 5% smaller, so they might need to be quite observant to notice.
That missed interaction will include, how can I put it, both contact they wanted and contact they didn't want, but however you look at it, it is difficult for people to miss officers they never saw in the first place. That's why one of my priorities is to increase the level of personal engagement between the police and ordinary law-abiding citizens, not just the usual suspects – to give the police back to the public.
Oh, I'm not done with this yet. There will be more tomorrow.
Today I went to Lancashire County Council's annual Scrutiny session for Crime and Disorder. For the past two years I've had the chance to fire questions at the assembled partners, but I'm no longer on the committee, so had to make do with a view from the sidelines. One Borough Councillor had made the effort to attend from Wyre, but none of the other PCC candidates for Lancashire were there.
