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Difficulties with policing should be addressed – but this must not become a witch-hunt, says Robert Hill. The media circus has moved on. Alleged bully-boy tactics by the police are old news. Swine fever, MPs' expenses – and who knows what else, by the time you read this – are now the order of the day. But, before we finally consign all the newspaper reports on policing the G20 summit to the recycling bin, it's worth reflecting on current attitudes towards policing – particularly among the political class. However, in the spirit of transparency which is the order of the age we live in, let me first declare I have a son who is police officer working for the Metropolitan Police (Met) – although he was not involved in the recent G20 operation. The last 10 years has seen a revolution in policing in this country. The 1998 Crime and Disorder Act changed the way the police interacted with local communities and public agencies. Local superintendents and their colleagues became much more proactive in developing strategies to reduce and prevent offending. And data mapping has enabled the police to generate and share rapidly, information on patterns of crime. More recently, the introduction of neighbourhood policing has been effective and popular in many areas in helping address local crime and anti-social behaviour. The introduction of community support officers has increased a uniformed presence on streets and estates and, in urban areas, made the public face of the police service more representative of the communities it serves. Crucially, investigations of alleged police malpractice have, since 2004, been dealt with by an independent body. Overall public satisfaction with the police has been pretty stable over the past few years, with just above half agreeing the police are doing a good or excellent job. The trend is, if anything, slightly up, rather than down. Improving public confidence and satisfaction is now the main target and measure by which police forces are assessed. Of course, problems remain. Force mergers have been abandoned, but the question of whether the current number of forces is viable in the long term is still there. There are legitimate calls to strengthen democratic oversight of the police – although the behaviour of London mayor, Boris Johnson, in the recent Damien Green affair [when the Met arrested the shadow immigration spokesman, and held him for nine hours] and the resignation of Britain's most senior anti-terrorist policeman, Bob Quick, did nothing to enhance the cause. And police systems need improving. Quite why the Home Office abandoned rolling out 101 – the single non-emergency telephone number – is beyond me, since frustration with being able to contact the police on more minor issues is probably the public's biggest gripe. Amazingly, apart from in Cardiff, Hampshire and Sheffield, each force has a separate and different number the public can call. But none of the shortcomings justify the scale of attack and vitriol which has come recently, not just from the libertarian left but also the political right. There may have been unacceptable acts committed by a few officers during policing of the G20, and they must be dealt with. But what happened does not justify this diatribe from Conservative commentator, Matthew Parris, who claimed British policing was in systemic crisis, and that lines of responsibility were tangled, structures opaque, divisions illogical, management appalling, leadership low-calibre, accountability confused, corporate ethics defective, cost-control shoddy, results uneven, and the service's public reputation low – and sinking. To write off the leadership of the police service in that way is cavalier, wrong and irresponsible. While the formal Conservative Party line is not quite so anti-police as that, the party has demonstrated a suspicion and hostility to the police service which in former times would have been associated in many people's minds with the Labour Party. I would have more respect for police critics if they had been as vocal in condemning the violence that the police and public had to suffer during the demonstrations over the May Day bank holiday in Brighton. But because it was in Brighton and not London, it largely got ignored. The police service is not perfect. We should debate how we police demonstrations – particularly now that just about every demonstrator has a phone camera. But let's not turn events into a witch-hunt. That will just end up making police officers more defensive rather than, as we want them to be, more open and engaged in society. Robert Hill is as an independent analyst

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WHITEHALL

Policing the police force

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