Examination of Witness (Questions 428-439)
27 JANUARY 2004
MR MATTHEW
BAGGOTT
Q428 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the
Committee, to the second session this morning. Can I ask you to
introduce yourself, for the record, please?
Mr Baggott: Thank you very much,
Chairman. I am Matthew Baggott. I am the Chief Constable of Leicestershire
Constabulary and I chair the Association of Chief Police Officers'
Race and Diversity committee.
Q429 Chairman: We give witnesses the
chance to make a statement, if they want to, at the beginning,
or to go straight to questions. Which would you prefer?
Mr Baggott: I wish to say thank
you very much for the invitation, Sir. It is a great opportunity
to outline some of the progress that has been made, and I thank
you for that. I will let you ask the questions, I think, at this
point. Thank you.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q430 Mr O'Brien: The paper which you
submitted to the Committee stipulates a wide range of proposals
for enhancing the ability of the police to perform their role
in the overall social cohesion and public confidence agenda. Could
you identify to the Committee the crucial areas which can and
should be tackled first?
Mr Baggott: I think, for me, probably
there are two key areas. The first would be under the summary
of mainstreaming, what I consider to be a really critical role
for policing, in supporting building relationships and capacity-building
within communities. I think that role is utterly critical to long-term
crime reduction, it is utterly critical to long-term peace and
tranquillity and I think it needs to be mainstreamed. The mainstreaming
runs from the role of policing right through to the way we do
business, and I think that is absolutely critical. The second
area for me would be the development of what I think are much
more comprehensive partnership arrangements, but also really getting
into prioritising social cohesion and community approaches. We
may talk about that later, but at the moment I think partnerships
are very much localised within what I call crime type approaches,
tackling robbery, burglary, drugs, as discreet entities. If you
look at, for example, their priorities, very few actually choose
social cohesion or priority neighbourhoods as critical to their
agenda, because they are very localised. I think the development
of much more comprehensive partnerships, structures and approaches
which deliver real change in some of our most deprived neighbourhoods
is utterly critical.
Q431 Mr O'Brien: When it comes to crime
prevention and security of communities, the police play a major
part. How do the police identify that major part, or how do they
occupy the high ground in the communities?
Mr Baggott: I think there are
two ways of doing that. The first is to be much more flexible
in terms of how we police. Current models of policing tend to
be either very reactive, in other words, we answer the 999 calls
and are very crisis-driven, or they tend to be based on community
theory, where we have separate police officers who do investigations,
separate cadres who do reactive work, or a separate cadre of community
police officers who are the community bobbies, as people call
them. I think they need to be much more flexible. Demand has grown
so much that those traditional divides no longer apply. We have
the means to do it. We have the means with the National Intelligence
model, which is the way in which we discern our priorities and
our operational imperatives, where actually there could be a way
of positioning the need to look at and identify critical neighbourhoods,
critical areas, as mainstream policing. That is the first one.
The second one is the role of policing. I think there is a very
interesting debate at the moment about what actually the Police
Service is for. Is it what I call simply about social control,
in other words, reacting to crisis, keeping the lid on, doing
those things, or is there a role for the police officer, named,
local, known to his, or her, community, in the right numbers,
with actually much more of a critical role there in terms of confidence-building,
capacity-building and understanding what is really going on? My
personal belief is that the second issue is the big agenda which
needs to be explored.
Q432 Mr O'Brien: In your paper you argue
also that the mechanisms for measuring police performance, together
with conflicting structures, could distract police activity away
from its role in social cohesion. How has this affected your force
and the social cohesion in Leicester?
Mr Baggott: I take a very strong,
personal view that I am prepared to wait and explain long-term
measures, which will benefit communities, rather than take short-term
performance steps. There is no doubt that some of the targets
which have been set, which stretch back four or five years, are
very much about delivering against crime types rather than community
need. I do not argue against an accountability regime, neither
do I argue against having measurement against those crime types,
but underneath the reasons why crime rises or falls are often
very deep-seated reasons around where communities are, their needs
and their particular concerns. I am concerned that perhaps there
has been an overemphasis on specific crimes rather than on community
needs. My second concern is that I think some of the measurement
which has been put in place relies upon short-term success. For
example, when I was in the West Midlands, I spent four years putting
about 800 police officers into the 80 most deprived neighbourhoods.
When you do that it is a huge strategic risk, but I believed that
was the right thing to do for capacity-building. However, I know,
because when suddenly you introduce police officers into communities
you become more accessible, confidence grows, suddenly you will
get a rise in crime-recording, so for 18 months your crime levels
rise, particularly burglary, anti-social behaviour, racist crime,
all those crime categories will rise. If you are being measured,
however, in terms of three to six months, it does not show "good"
on your radar. Therefore, you have to have much more of a diagnostic
approach which says, "Why is this? What are you doing? Can
you explain it? What will be the eventual outcome?" I saw
success in the West Midlands coming after three to four years,
in terms of community confidence, an absence of disorder, and
a rise in many crime types once the plateau of recording had been
reached. I think there are some issues about the balance between
the episodes of individual crime types, as if they are committed
by separate people and separate communities, followed by the short-term
versus long-term diagnostic approach.
Q433 Chairman: If we take the West Midlands,
it has got a reputation now for things having improved very considerably,
but it is almost impossible to measure that, is it not? It may
be that you, and officers who succeeded you, were just good at
the PR?
Mr Baggott: I think people see
through PR, Chairman, very quickly. You can look at success, if
that is the word to use, across a range of measures. I think you
can look at success in terms of where crime is reducing and you
can look at success in terms of the absence of disorder, or fragmentation.
You can look at success in terms of the way in which officers
are received and spoken to and how much information they are given.
You can look at success in terms of general survey work. If you
take a round view of performance, I do believe that the social
cohesion agenda becomes much more mainstreamed.
Q434 Chairman: So you think it can be
measured?
Mr Baggott: It can be measured
in a number of areas. It can be measured certainly locally, in
term of incidents, disorder, public perception, a whole range
of both hard data and what I would call probably qualitative,
softer feedback from communities, absolutely right. I get feedback
frequently from individuals advising the community, from formal
bodies of advisers and from council advice. I get personal feedback
from a range of people, including Nick Carter, who gave evidence
before me. The Mercury gives me feedback too. I do believe that
sense of well-being and that sense of community, a good feeling,
is critical, as well as the hard data.
Q435 Chairman: Do you think it is easy
to convince the Home Office about your hard data and your soft
data?
Mr Baggott: I think this is a
very exciting and encouraging year coming ahead. I think the National
Policing Plan, which is set by the Home Office for policing, actually
gives us the remit to get into social cohesion in a way we have
not been able to before. I have argued long and strong for Neighbourhood
Renewal to be linked to the policing agenda. To do that and make
policing part of that, the agenda for policing is set with the
National Policing Plan, if the National Policing Plan is out of
sync with the Neighbourhood Renewal agenda then you will get conflicting
priorities. What we are seeing this year, and I have taken one
line out of the National Policing Plan, part of my mandate from
the Home Secretary is to ensure the level of security and order
in neighbourhoods, enabling them to have the confidence and capacity
to be part of the solution. Basically, that means I have got to
look at vulnerability as a criterion for where I put my colleagues
and my officers. I think there is a lot of sign-up taking place
now between the Home Office agenda and the Neighbourhood Renewal
agenda, and that is very encouraging for me.
Q436 Christine Russell: Can I just follow
on from that, because what you are saying is quite interesting.
How confident are you that the Home Office really is working with
ODPM now, they are working from the same hymn-sheet, if you like?
Mr Baggott: I think there is much
more collaboration. I see much more collaboration between those
departments, so let me say that. I think actually formalising
that may well need the formation of something like a National
Community Safety Plan, because certainly individual chief officers
have taken cognisance of the new commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal,
it is absolutely right to do that, but our drivers and our measurements
do fit slightly aside from that. I think what I am seeing now
is a coming together of the two agendas, but, clearly, the National
Policing Plan has to be positioned right at the heart of new commitment
and Neighbourhood Renewal.
Q437 Christine Russell: Do you feel that
ODPM is clearly involved in developing that National Policing
Plan?
Mr Baggott: I think the chief
officers themselves have to create their own agendas. It is not
just about saying "Do this" to us, actually I think
we have a responsibility to do this ourselves, and there is some
encouraging work taking place now. The gap, for me, is about the
drivers of what makes change happen. I think probably there has
been an historical lack of understanding within ODPM about, if
you want the Police Service to do something, do not target just
within the context of Neighbourhood Renewal, because that does
not drive police activity. What drives police activity is the
National Policing Plan, the Policing Performance Assessment Framework,
local police authority plans and the range of incentives and funding
schemes that we follow. If the Neighbourhood Renewal agenda is
to be progressed in full, it has to be positioned in there. There
was even a target, I think, a couple of years ago, that no area
was to have a burglary rate more than three times the national
average. It did not feature in terms of the National Policing
Plan. Therefore, it was an interesting one, but in terms of driving
main activity there was a slight separation there.
Q438 Christine Russell: Can you give
us some actual examples of your own Policing Plan which relate
quite clearly to addressing the social cohesion agenda, from your
own force?
Mr Baggott: Absolutely. Our whole
policing strategy and what we are doing is based upon the philosophy
of being able to problem-solve from street corner right to force
level. Every one of my police officers owns their own micro-beat.
That means that every one has their own geographic area for which
they are personally accountable, and should they seek promotion
or a specialist department, or should they seek a bonus payment
under the new payment schemes, they will have to give account
of their own personal influence on that geographic area. The size
and density of those areas is determined by the problems and vulnerability
of the neighbourhood, so we have 20 micro-beats in one street,
we may have one covering six villages, it depends on the vulnerability
of the area. On top of that, we have very clearly mapped out our
deprived neighbourhoods, and those neighbourhoods which are more
vulnerable, more exposed to fragmentation, are receiving much
more intensive policing support by dedicated teams of officers
who are ring-fenced, they police only those neighbourhoods and
nowhere else, as I did in the West Midlands. I do believe that
long-term capacity-building and their role is about community
cohesion.
Q439 Christine Russell: How do you convince
those living in the leafy suburbs or the rural areas that the
policy which you are pursuing is the right one?
Mr Baggott: Three things, really.
Honesty. I think I have done 11 District and City Council evening
sessions in the last two months. Honesty, in terms of the "Why?"
Secondly, I do not take anything away from those communities,
they still have beat officers, they have their own community beat
officer, they have minimum standards of response to 999 and crisis,
the same investigative effort applies across the piece. What they
do not need necessarily, because, the numbers of offenders living
there, the crime they are suffering, I have to put resource where
it is going to have maximum benefit, and although, and this is
a slightly controversial subject, putting those officers in intensive
neighbourhoods does produce real value for the communities, when
you look at where crime comes from, often it is exported from
those neighbourhoods. I think we have got a little bit hung up
on mistaken notions of fairness. If I spread out my officers equally
across the whole of Leicestershire, I will not reduce crime and
I will not make communities cohesive, I will end up doing nothing
very well. Concentrating resource in key neighbourhoods by mapping
out where the problems are brings benefit to everybody and not
simply those communities themselves.
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