News that Police and Crime Commissioners are to be abolished will have led to the popping of a great many champagne corks in the offices of Chief Constables and their senior colleagues.
This week those same Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners congregated in London’s QE2 Centre for their annual conference. For police chiefs it was a celebration of the demise of their political overseers; for the Police and Crime Commissioners themselves, a wake.
Having been to many of these events over the years, I can say that this year’s agenda – despite the stimulation of last week’s announcement on Police and Crime Commissioners — followed a well-worn path.
The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, emphasised the importance of Labour’s commitments to neighbourhood policing. The Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, urged chiefs to increase the use of stop and search and live facial recognition technology. Each of these policies have been recommended over recent years by Policy Exchange for their contribution to the fight against crime.
Amidst the speeches and chin-stroking panel discussions, the gathered Chief Constables will have enjoyed a private reception where they almost certainly concluded over wine that policing’s varied crises are actually all the fault of those nasty politicians — one layer of which at least, are now to be dispensed with.
They are wrong.
In October this year the College of Policing, with the support of the Home Office, announced their latest plan to solve policing’s present-day failings — a “Leadership Commission”. Co-chaired by former Labour Home Secretary, Lord Blunkett, and former Conservative Policing Minister, Lord Herbert, this group intends to: “assess current leadership capabilities at all levels, consider progress achieved to date, and identify future gaps and challenges”.
The Commission includes Sir Stephen Watson, one of the most successful Chief Constables of modern times, and the legendary former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. The presence of these two impressive crime-fighting police leaders gives some hope. But if the Commission is genuinely to contribute to dealing with some of policing’s problems it must resolve two core issues.
First, over the last decade policing has chosen to promote a cadre of leaders who, rather than being laser focused on the fight against crime, have involved themselves in other issues — too often linked to politically-contested and “progressivist” identity politics.
These middle and senior ranking officers appear to believe that something other than the fight against crime should be the number one focus. At times, it is the feelings of their own staff that are prioritised — a version of “producer interest” at work.
On other occasions it is supporting the advocacy of “stakeholder” activists and their narrow sectional interests. But, only one thing can come first – and when it comes to policing, so often we have seen it is not fighting the crime that most matters to the law-abiding public.
Second, previous reviews into police leadership — the last being in 2015 — have led to the creation of a generation of senior and middle-ranking officers who are seemingly ambivalent about delivering a high-level of performance in their forces.
Spotting these “leaders” is easy. They fail to hold their teams to account for effective crime-fighting, they are conflict averse — refusing to have difficult conversations with their own staff, and they believe it is somehow possible to satisfy, or at least pacify, everyone from their own colleagues to victims of crime with weasel words of reassurance. They lack the grit and will to do what is required to keep the public safe from the criminals that immiserate our country.
Central to these issues are that those at the top of the tree merely replicate themselves from within a system that operates like a vacuum. Around fifty chief officers retire every year, and as a result fifty individuals must be found to replace them from amongst the ranks immediately below. Even if few are truly up to the job, a lucky fifty will still be promoted every year. This pattern is replicated in ever-greater numbers all the way down policing’s hierarchy.
The most substantial efforts to change police leadership in recent years have focused principally on increasing policing’s “diversity” — fixated mainly on the ethnicity and sex of those in question. In reality this has been an anti-meritocratic trend which, despite the fervent denials by policing’s Human Resources panjandrums, has led to a lowering of standards and ultimately a worse service being provided to the public.
Unlike other frontline public services, including medicine, the armed forces and education, police chiefs have failed to make it the norm for high performing officers to gain useful experiences elsewhere and then return to the frontline. Previous efforts to bring in outsiders at senior levels have mostly failed. There is almost no ecosystem where the best officers can develop their thinking and insulate themselves from the lure of group-think.
That this is the current state of things is not due to any fundamental flaw in such ideas but rather is reflective of police chiefs deciding such steps should fail because they are fearful of anything or anyone who doesn’t wholly conform to their level of mediocrity.
The reality is … that most of policing’s problems today are the creation of their own leaders
The binning of Police and Crime Commissioners risks giving succour to those in police forces who believe policing’s problems are the fault of the elected politicians that — in any functioning democracy — should hold them to account.
The reality is, however, that most of policing’s problems today are the creation of their own leaders. It is only when Chief Constables honestly grapple with that fact that we will see on our streets any sign of the revival in policing’s core mission of fighting crime that is so desperately needed.
