Select Committee on Home Affairs Written Evidence


19.  First supplementary memorandum from the Association of Police Authorities

MODERNISING POLICE POWERS—APA INITIAL VIEWS

  1.  The Committee requested our initial views on the Home Office consultation paper "Policing: Modernising Police Powers to suit Community Needs".

  2.  As the Committee will appreciate, we are currently studying the proposals in detail and consulting police authorities to inform our response within the Home Office's deadline of 8 October. Given the holiday season, authorities have, as yet had little time to consider the proposals locally, and feedback has therefore been limited. This note therefore represents very much an initial reaction to the proposals and does not yet fully reflect the views of all authorities.

ARRESTS AND SEARCH WARRANTS

  3.  Our initial view of the proposals is that we are likely to be able to welcome the bulk of the proposals. The measures are designed to help the police service fight crime and to increase the range of tools available to operational officers and police staff.

  4.  Police authorities will, however, want to examine closely any changes to police powers from the perspective of their communities and how they might be affected. It is important that powers exercised by the police or indeed any other enforcement agency are clear and easily understood by communities and have their support and consent. Anything which helps therefore to clarify and simplify the current confusing array of powers of arrest is to be welcomed provided that appropriate safeguards to protect the law abiding citizen from unwarranted interference.

  5.  The proposals to clarify the citizen's power of arrest are likely to be welcome in principle.

WORKFORCE MODERNISATION

  6.  The Committee will be aware from our previous written evidence of the very positive reception to the introduction of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) and their popularity with communities. As that submission indicated, we are wary of giving PCSOs additional powers at this stage, pending the outcomes of the national evaluation of PCSOs led by the Home Office. In our view, PCSOs popularity stems partly from the fact that they have a very distinct role from that of police officers. They are seen as visible, available and a resource for communities to draw on. They are relatively inexpensive compared to police officers partly because they take less time to train and need less equipment. The more powers they are given the more potential there is for that distinction to be blurred. It may also require an extension to the training which PCSOs receive and possibly even equipment, in turn reducing the cost differential with police officers. Additional powers may also have the impact of reducing the time available to PCSOs to work directly with communities, for example because they are completing paper-work at the station. This is likely to lead to further disillusionment on the part of communities who will have got used to having a reassuring presence on the streets.

  7.  On the face of it the power to enforce byelaws, for example, may be uncontroversial. But the power to search a detained person who may present a danger to himself or others could put PCSOs in potentially dangerous situations and would be a significant step which would need to be considered carefully.

PROSECUTION OF CHIEF OFFICERS

  8.  We support the move to take away chief constables' personal liability for organisational health and safety failures, but we need to look carefully at the chosen route ie creating the chief officer as a corporation sole. It needs to be clear that this entity would exist only in relation to health and safety issues.

CONCLUSION

  9.  The police service needs to be properly equipped to carry out its duties efficiently and effectively. Efforts to rationalise and simplify the plethora of different powers are therefore welcome in principle and should benefit both the police and public alike. However, it is important to ensure that any extensions to police powers have the support of communities and do not alienate those who would normally support the police. In particular, the additional powers to take identification evidence and to widen powers to implement search warrants clearly have civil liberties implications. These proposals would need to be carefully thought through and proper safeguards would need to be put in place to ensure they could not be used disproportionately or unfairly.

2 September 2004





 
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