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Fred Broughton: There is much to learn from New York's police

From a speech delivered at the Royal Overseas League, London, by the chairman of the Police Federation

Wednesday 19 December 2001 01:00 GMT
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The last few years have been difficult ones for the police service. Britain is under-policed. Pure and simple. Policemen and women have felt bereft of political support. It has taken its toll. Morale in the service has reached rock bottom. Little wonder, when the last Home Secretary branded the service as institutionally racist.

Mr Blunkett came to office promising a different approach. He said the service could expect "a dialogue not a diatribe". Yet the Home Secretary and his advisors have spent the last few months going out of their way to undermine the police as a mixture of anachronisms and obsolescence, a lumbering, inefficient service.

Rather than attacking the police, a lesson or two could be learned from Rudolph Guiliani as to how you go about creating a police force that can tackle crime more effectively. Yes, he tackled management inefficiencies. Yes, he rooted out outdated practices. Yes, he demanded more . But in return he gave them his full political backing. He invested in the police. More officers were recruited to tackle criminals on the street. New equipment and technology were swiftly introduced. Changes were made to the criminal justice system to support the work of the NYPD.

That's the sort of approach we hoped to see from our new Home Secretary when he came to office. To date, we have been disappointed.

The police service's record, given the demands placed upon it, is certainly not out of line with comparable professions in the public sector. Sickness absence in the service is 4.8 per cent. Among firefighters it is 6 per cent; qualified nurses and midwifery staff 5.2 per cent; unqualified nursing staff 7 per cent.

Take the case of PC Ivor Hughes, a Metropolitan Police officer based in Harrow. A constable with 30 years distinguished service and numerous commendations for restraining a man with a knife, chasing a gunman, resuscitating a heart-attack victim, saving a drowning woman – the list goes on. While waiting for a hip replacement operation on the NHS, his arthritic hip was giving him so much trouble he felt he would soon be unable to work. What did he do? Go for ill-health retirement? Put his feet up and enjoy the long-term sick leave?

No, he didn't. He paid for a private operation himself so he could get back to the job where he knows his experience counts, working on the emergency response vehicles. He then spent a frustrating period on inside duties trying to convince occupational health that he was fit to return to active duty.

It makes me angry that dedicated officers around the country like PC Hughes are being branded as malingerers in Home Office briefings by people who don't know or understand the people working in the service.

I certainly don't think the public is yet ready to agree that private security policing for profit is a good idea or that traffic wardens with batons are the answer to creating a more visible law-and-order presence on the streets.

The relationship between law enforcement agencies and some communities in Britain is already fragile. Are we really suggesting that less trained and qualified personnel on the streets is the recipe for improving such relationships?

At a dinner last week, I met a sergeant from the NYPD who was at ground zero on 11 September. He told me that he had recently been to a memorial service for one officer who died that day. At the wake, the widow asked him what on earth drove 21 fanatics to lay down their lives for their cause. The reply was that more than 400 firefighters and policemen had been willing to lay down their lives for their cause. He explained it by saying that "Policing wasn't just a job, it was a calling."

It's worth remembering in all the fancy talk about modernisation that the values we treasure in our police officers are timeless and not new.

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