The policing the public wants (Fylde Liberal Democrats)

Fylde Liberal Democrats <info@fyldelibdems.org.uk>

The policing the public wants

April 20, 2009 10:00 AM

The front page story in the Lytham St. Annes Express of 16th April had the headline " Police under fire over yobs in park". At the national level the papers are full of the disgraceful actions of individual police at the G20 meeting. There about 160000 police and PCSOs in England & Wales. It is unreasonable to expect there to be no bad apples in such a large group.

A major element of comprehensive Liberal Democrat policies to give citizens the police service they want is decentralising the force by scrapping counter productive central targets, introducing the local setting of priorities and budgets and the direct election of the majority of police authority members.

If we want the police to serve us, the public, we have to recognise that the major problem is with the political leadership of the police and with some of their most senior officers. The Home Office exaggerated the seriousness of the leaks that engulfed MP Damian Green & the police should never have been involved. The IPCC issued inaccurate statements in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson. The accusation that 70 police were injured during the Climate Camp protest at Kingsnorth turns out to be a lie. The injuries were stings & heat stroke - not one was due to contact with a protester , and so one could go on for page after page. Sir Ian Blair had to be pushed out & Jaqui Smith still stays in her job. With leaders like these the conduct of individual police, though very wrong, should come as no surprise.

Liberal Democrats, at their conference last September passed a motion which regretted the climate of fear fostered by the approach of both Labour & Conservatives in the face of threats to security and re-affirmed that liberty, justice & the separation of powers are essential to lasting security & abandoning them will serve to make Britain less, not more, free and secure.