PCC speaks on sickness, integrity and Essex ethics

WHY is the Police and Crime Commissioner not promoting the positive work of police officers? How will the PCC help improve sickness levels? Are the public currently getting the service they deserve from Essex Police?

EssexFedFocus quizzed PCC Nick Alston (pictured) about these issues and more in a wide ranging interview, a little more than 12 months on from taking on the role.

Read part 2 of our exclusive interview here.

Have you gone out and spent a shift, a night shift, a whole shift on the front line with police officers?

Yes I have done some of it, but I’d always love to do more…

What do you see out on the front line there?

I see lots of professional cops doing really rather a good job and some pretty bad behaviour from the public. Actually to be fair it’s not all bad. In Colchester [went out there in December] there was a lot of people having quite a good time. It’s interesting isn’t it, because overwhelmingly you see most people having a really good time and improving interactions, actually between police in the public, and then you see what soaks up the police resource. So Colchester was not as lively as I feared it might be, but then you get one very drunk person with a bit of history, doesn’t like the police, who then makes it their business to cause such trouble, giving lip, doing all the opposite, eventually gets himself nicked.

So in summarising, a lot of what you’ve seen out on the street in professional and fantastic police work, but you’ve had a big push on ethics and professional standards. We will start with ethics, why have you felt the need to drive the message about ethics in Essex?

I think because for me it’s part of confidence. What struck me and it came as a shock at a public meeting in Colchester as it happens, a member of the public said at the end of this meeting, a very articulate member of the public said “But you haven’t spoken at all about integrity.” He said “What are you doing about police integrity?” I said I wasn’t doing anything specifically about police integrity but part of my role is scrutiny and to hold police to account so it is embedded in it.  It really caught me short and I didn’t have an answer.  He said “You haven’t really thought about this.”  And I said “I haven’t really.”  And he said “But don’t you realise the public don’t trust the police anymore.”  He cited all these things like Hillsborough and Rochdale [sex abuse cases] and I really didn’t have the answer at that meeting and he emailed me subsequently…

So is this not just one man’s view about incidents that are nothing to do with Essex?

It was nothing to do with Essex. But I sat back as a result of that and thought “What do I think of that?” and I started to think around all of this, it did seem to me that there was a risk that at senior levels and those police commanders… I really wasn’t sure where that moral compass was. It made me think about ethics and I started to think for myself you know who says what, and the words we use just trip off the tongue, you know “what’s reasonable force?  What’s reasonable to me?  What’s proportionate in these cases?” Another, completely different case, a woman at a public meeting in Clacton, with very deep concerns about use of Tasers and I’d never thought hard about the use of Tasers – so where is the group that thinks about those things?  Now for me, I now recognise that I am responsible for holding the Chief Constable to account on behalf of the people of Essex, so where’s our sounding board? What’s the framework [where] we make that operate and it was back in Spring, I’d started to develop the thinking that we needed to set up somehow, some way of creating an intelligent, reflective group who could help me and the Chief think about what the ethics of policing should be.

You’ve also gone public about professional standards and discipline matters in the force?  A lot of officers have seen that and they feel particularly with the ethnics push as well that they are all being tarnished with the brush of a few and asking “Why are you not coming out more publically and backing them.” Where’s the vocal support for the good majority?

I think I could probably point to quite a lot of support for the majority, maybe I’m not as good as I think I am, I put my hand up to that.  I probably should do more direct communication, I should do more messages straight to Essex Police. I’m very happy to do that. But they are getting to know me and my work, I’ve put all the “well dones” on the website, perhaps I should do more but I do pay tribute all the time to the good work that they do.  I do a lot of local radio work and I’m very careful to put, I think almost every comment I make in the context of the overwhelming amount of work that goes on day by day.  I think we are quite good at that, but of course people only ever read and hear the negative bits. So I understand why they say that, but I think in fairness, I think I am very careful to say lots of good stuff is going on as well and of course the point is about trying to do this with openness and transparency. For me I find it pretty distressing to read about some of the serious cases, on the other hand they are a tiny number. Overwhelming we have 1.25 million calls to Essex Police, a hundred thousand things are crimed every year, so we have hundreds of thousands of incidents, we’ve got five thousand employees, it’s not surprising to me that there’s a very small number of things that go wrong and we’ve got a very small number of officers who get on the wrong side of the line, whether it’s in terms of conduct or even crime. So it’s my job to hold them to account, I’m going to do it publically [but] I am going to praise them because overwhelmingly they do a really good job.

Sickness levels have hit the headlines in Essex Police. What can you do to help improve that situation?

For me it’s about professionalism of management and it’s about have we got the most professional staff, have we got the best HR advise that we could possibly have, is everybody supporting our frontline officers as good as they can be? I’m not sure. This s is a difficult point to make because I’m not suggesting that our police and staff are unprofessional, but can they be more professional?  Yes I think they can with better training, with better management, with more thoughtfulness on all of our parts, just or try and make Essex Police as good as it can be.  Getting everything optimised at the same time, getting our police officers in the right place at the right time with good managers, with good police support, with IT that works when it’s supposed to work, just trying to make all of those things as good as they can be, I think will make a difference and speaking up for them, I do speak up for them.

Do you have regular contact with Ministers? Do you speak to the Police Minister Damian Green on a regular basis?

Yes.

How often?

Every two weeks. We have a conference call every two weeks – he quite often joins that. Conservative PCCs have a conference call every other Wednesday. Damian quite often dials into that. I see him quite regularly.

What are you telling him at these meetings?

The meetings will usually be structured around a raft of different things. But I tell him exactly how I see it – the good, the bad and the ugly. The financial challenges… but they are not of this Government’s making. And of course it is true. The savings have got to be made. I would certainly like the freedom to go above what was originally given, again the 2% [council tax] cap and I went up as much as I could.  I would like to close the gap between us and the average again this year.  If the gap between us widens, that’s not a really good place to be for us in Essex.

Would you pressure more council tax precept to maintain officer numbers?

Well I did last year.  We’re still right at the bottom more or less at the bottom of the level of preceptors, there’s still a gap, there are four hundred and fifty officers between us on the average.  If we pay the average council tax in Essex, it would pay for another four hundred and fifty cops, that’s a lot of police officers.  So I wish we were paying a bit more, I don’t know what cap the Government… even current plans are still a two and half percent increase which is above the two percent.  I don’t know what the Government will do; I’ve got no insights on that.

Officers are telling me that with shrinking numbers, they’re driving potentially travelling long distances to work shifts in places around the county and are you aware of the potential dangers of officers having to travel long distances, physically and financially. Is that something that you have been made aware of?

Yes I’m very aware of the issues to do with that and we talk about it quite a bit. Most of them are broadly happy with the freedoms they’ve got now to live where they want to live. In the old days you didn’t have those freedoms and there are choices to be made. But the chopping and changing is really… I regret it as much as in there has been a lot over the last year, there has been a lot of chopping and changing.

Changing officer roles and responsibilities?

Yes, where they are all based. I think having a strong local focus; it makes a lot of sense. I completely understand why they tried the Blueprint model – I think it was the right thing to try. It’s clear that it hasn’t worked that well so they are having to change again, but that’s been going on for a very considerable amount of time, I’m not sure it’s stopped yet.  I worry about the officers, either at the end of a very long shift driving home or driving fast when they are out on patrol having to respond, but I know the police are being very smart, it seems to me they’ve responded really well in terms of trying to be flexible about where officers are based. I don’t see that’s going to be solved as a problem any time soon but I am aware of the challenges.

Are the public currently getting the service it deserves from Essex Police?

I think it get a terrific service from Essex Police. Crime has come down, recorded crime has come down, reported crime has come down. The service levels have gone up and 999 calls… we have got to really well. The police are doing more.. we’ve done quite a lot of [tackling] drugs and knife crime, [using] stop and search… police have been quite proactive. Solve rates have gone up significantly this year…so solve rates up, crime rates down, responses are up… that’s pretty good and well done Essex Police for delivering.