Prevent crime and the rates will improve.

It's difficult to say 'things were better in my day' without sounding like some old reactionary, but sorry, they were!

The PM's right about it not being acceptable to meet targets, but in my day it simply wasn't done, not to be out on the street. And we're not even talking about Victorian policing, but the 70s and 80s. We had 5 beats within Wrexham town centre and a PC was allocated to each one for the shift. If anything untoward happened while you were away from that beat you had some explaining to do. Similarly, if a supervisor was on that beat and called for you and you weren't around you could expect some grief. We were kicked out the police station on mornings by 6.10 to check town centre properties, before a tea break at 7. The system worked fine, it had done for years and years. Then along came bloody Thatcher. Amazing what a few QPMs dished out amongst ACPO will achieve, well she did plan on us to oversee the heart of mining communities getting torn out! We were told by senior management that 'the public aren't getting value for money when you're walking the beat doing nothing', so we had to start upping the bookings and Fixed penalty tickets were introduced to get those tills ringing even faster.

Ann so when I took Sarah to the railway station at 6.20 this morning and saw absolutely zero Police presence throughout the town, is that value for money? While I acknowledge things are different today, I don't accept that either a better service is provided or that the service is better value for money. Switching the responsibility for the protection of life and property over to CCTV cameras and operators may have been a cute move by Chief Constables, but long term the public has suffered. Maybe if the prevention of crime was actually measured as a positive outcome we could all sleep a little more soundly in our beds.


nick