This blog is mainly about the governance and future of policing and crime services. (Police & Crime Commissioners feature quite a lot.) But there are also posts about the wider justice system. And because I am town councillor and political activist, local & national issues are covered a little, as well.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

My Christmas Message: the Secret PCC wishes his girls and boys in blue an innovative 2015

It's that time of year again: when we notch up another annual episode in our lives. I have been working exceptionally hard all this year on behalf of the people of North Ford West Shire, making sure they all feel safe and secure in their homes. I expect most of you have been working pretty darn hard too: delivering the kind of police service we all want to see.

It is just a pity that the Government wants to see a different kind of police service that none of the rest of us want to see! 

We often talk about particular policies acting like 'recruitment sergeants' to dangerous causes. It seems to me that the scale of cuts arriving at the shores of our budgets are going to turn a lot of apolitical police officers and staff into becoming quite radical. The Home Secretary appears to be doing her damnedest at recruiting people to vote for anyone other than Cameron in May 2015 (or maybe that is the point!)

But of course we have to get on with getting on and protecting the public from crime and harm. So in the spirit of Christmas giving, I am telling you first about a bunch of whizzy ideas that my crack team of PCC elves & boffins have been cooking up over the last few months. All these will mean we can deliver policing where it matters with a lower cost! This is innovation in action!

I have heard that many officers are losing battery power in their mobile phones and tablet computers as a result of being out and about so much, communing with the community. (This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that we only have virtual police stations now.) So to address this problem, we will be introducing new police batons that will have a recharging battery built in. There will be a cleverly hidden USB port in which to plug various items of communication.

Internet crime is rising. We all know that. So we have managed to buy some new technology from the CIA (which they tested recently on a whole country) whereby the internet can be switched off in an area. I have no idea how this works but if we spot a rise in internet crime in a certain part of our patch, we will just turn the internet off for a while and make the criminals go somewhere else. Brilliant, eh!

There have been some concerns raised about our police station closure programme. Especially as this has meant fewer custody places being available. I will admit that the partnership strategy with the Royal Navy was not one of our best ideas: it seems people can get off boats a bit more easily than we expected. But we now have a new plan: virtual custody. People will now be held by a combination of specially adapted Google glasses and a Minecraft facsimile of Guantanamo which they will be put into. Their real life bodies will be sitting in a disused local warehouse, chained to a couple of fork lift trucks. I am assured that they won't be able to tunnel out of their virtual reality.

One of our biggest costs (aside from people) is producing plans & strategies. We commissioned a thorough independent piece of research into whether any of these documents make one jot of difference to levels of crime and fear of crime. The conclusion was stark: they are waste of everyone's time. So from the beginning of 2015 we are instituting a 'no plans' policy which in itself won't even be written down. So all those meetings where plans have been discussed in the past will no longer need to happen. This will save us many resources and mean that more people can be out on the front line delivering services to our local people.

All that it remains for me to do is to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I am not sending out cards. Some chap called Jon Harvey has produced a video Christmas message on you tube which just about sums my sentiments too. You can watch it here.

See you in 2015!!

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The Secret PCC Diary until now:

Legal disclaimer: just in case you thought this series of secret PCC blogs is based upon a real person or persons: it isn't. It really isn't. Any similarity to a living PCC is entirely coincidental.
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