Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
27 OCTOBER 2004
Chief Constable Barbara Wilding, and Mr Paul Wade
Q120 Mr Evans: You are happy that that
is the right place for that person then?
Chief Constable Wilding: Yes;
I do not have any problem. I perhaps disagree with some of my
colleagues, but I do not have any problem at all with someone
appearing before a civil tribunal, being made subject to an order
and then failing that order and going to prison. It has happened
for yonks—people who are debtors and all sorts—from
a civil action, absolutely: because if they have got to that point
with our process, I am absolutely confident that, had we been
able to intervene and deflect them into a better way of life,
it gives them absolutely every opportunity. In my service of 33
years I have met very bad people and I have met mad people, and
I am afraid I like to think that we have come down to a core.
In Neath and Port Talbot they have got three in prison at the
moment who have breached their orders.
Q121 Mr Evans: So your message to other
police forces around the United Kingdom is, "Look at what
we are doing. If you are giving a high level of anti-social behaviour
orders, there is something wrong with the way you are policing
that anti-social behaviour"?
Chief Constable Wilding: And maybe
your partners. You need to look at the partners. As I say, we
have been quoted as being National Best Practice, and I firmly
believe it is because I have seen it work.
Q122 Mr Caton: Chief Constable, we may
have a difficulty with the definition of "anti-social behaviour",
but we do know what crime is, and thinking of little Johnny in
Swansea, is it not the case that you and your partners have reduced
youth crime by 30% using the strategy that you have?
Chief Constable Wilding: Yes,
indeed we have.
Q123 Mr Williams: On a slightly different
issue: I became a aware yesterday that there is another sort of
order, a risk of sexual harm order, under the Sexual Offences
Act 2003, and it just seemed to me—it is on the same lines
as an anti-social behaviour order—has your force ever used
those?
Chief Constable Wilding: I will
just ask. No, I am not aware of it, but we do have what I believe
to be a robust system for dealing with public protection which
looks at children right the way through dangerous offenders, etcetera,
etcetera, and I am convinced that if they needed to use it they
would use it, but I will check when I go back and it is information
I will be able to pass to you and to the Committee on Monday.
Q124 Mr Edwards: I want to ask you about
serious and organised crime and the problems we face in South
Wales. Can you tell us about the impact of Operation Tarian in
combating serious and organised crime in your force area?
Chief Constable Wilding: Operation
Tarian started in embryo form in 2002 and then became fully operational
on 1st January this year, which has the components now of a taskforce
with an intelligence cell; it also now has the regional intelligence
cell for Special Branch; it also now has the asset and confiscation
team, the IRAT team, in there; and so it is now a very sophisticated
team altogether, in fact one of the most sophisticated in the
country. It originally was set up to look at the higher level
of drug activity with class A drugs, as that was seen to be where
the analysis showed we tended to face a problem, and it was evaluated,
in fact, by Professor Levi's team, in the first year and has been
found to have achieved every one of its—outstripped each
of its targets both for seizures and for asset recovery, and the
proof, if you like, is that we have had 17 less deaths from drug
overdose in my force area—17 less, which is 17 less miseries
to families, etcetera, etcetera, and that is very important. So
their asset confiscation has increased. Between April this year
and September this year the arrests have gone up by 14%; the heroin
seizures over the same period have gone up by 31% against the
same period last year; and I think it is extremely significant
because one of my team was asking for more resources for it. They
may imagine I go in to challenge as to why do they need it, do
we know it is working, and am able to cite very clearly that operation
Tarian has been highly successful in stopping the spread of gun
crime coming into the cities of Wales as a whole, particularly
in South Wales. We have not seen the drive-by shootings, we have
not seen the activities that Nottingham has seen, Bristol has
seen, Birmingham has seen, I can go on, Manchester has seen, yet
we have dealers coming from each of those areas into our area.
My expectation, having operated in this area for a very long time,
is to say I would not expect them to be wholly effective for probably
about another year or so because they are building up the intelligence
base, but the financial side of it is proving extremely interesting.
That gives us a lot of intelligence and will mean that we are
more effective. I Chair the Strategic Oversight Group of Tarian.
On the last Strategic assessment there was some suggestion that
we should move away from drugs into other sorts of crime areas,
to which we agree. At the moment we are scoping fraud and at the
moment we are scoping immigration as well, with our partners,
not just ourselves. We are scoping that. So we are starting to
look around because the intelligence is taking us into different
areas, and it is, quite frankly, my experience that people who
deal in drugs at a higher level will deal in any commodity where
there is a quick buck, but people who deal in fraud and forgery
tend to stay within that area; they tend not to move out of it.
What we need to be acutely aware of is that not just the up-front
drug use, all the activities that go on behind how they fund it,
what they do with the proceeds, etcetera, etcetera, and we need
to be cuter. Operation Tarian will shortly be extended to include
a witness protection team and a prison intelligence team as well
across Wales to give it the best of all the intelligence that
we have. We are very fortunate now that the National Criminal
Intelligence Service has moved their office in with Tarian so
we are now tied into the national perspective as well.
Q125 Mr Edwards: Can you say something
about the collaboration between forces on Tarian?
Chief Constable Wilding: Indeed.
This is not just South Wales at all. The set up in terms . . .
You may expect, because of our size, we have more people who are
seconded to operation Tarian than the other forces. North Wales
does not second anyone in terms of the tactical side because their
crime and their criminals tend to come more from Merseyside and
GMP, the mountain range in the middle is very good, keeps them
one side, although it is a very good break, and so that in Merseyside
and Manchester, it tends to be there focused. So they are in the
intelligence part mainly, gaining the intelligence. The three
Welsh forces second people across the piece and, in fact, the
Regional Intelligence Unit is overseen by an officer from Dyfed
and Tarian is overseen by an officer from Gwent, as supervisory
officers. We work together, we fund together and we have some
Welsh Assembly government funding as well. That is the degree
of collaboration that goes on, but we have more collaboration
outside of Tarian as well. We have at the moment a programme that
my Deputy Chief Constable is the programme manager for, looking
at how we will—looking at the back-room services, seeing
if we can collaborate on back-room services to make us more efficient
and effective, and, equally, looking at that higher level of criminality
which we call Level 2, which is not the local criminality but
it is those that organise local criminality and profit from it
and operate and then move into the national level. So we are looking
at those areas. It is a fact that I have the largest number, as
you would expect, of officers who are deployed to look at that
Level 2 activity in my force, but it is also a fact that the skills
that you normally—the technical devices, the skilled areas,
the covert areas that one would normally authorise to go to the
higher level of criminality now—because of the methods of
working at a local level, we have to authorise for a local level.
There was a recent drugs operation in Merthyr Tydfil where they
arrested 19 people, the covert buyers there. They had 32 buys
and every one was heroin; so we have had to use covert technical
devices even working on a housing estate in order to be able to
arrest these 19 people who were making that housing estate miserable
and controlling the drugs there. I am glad to say that between
them they got 92 years. I was absolutely delighted. The evidence
was good. The evidence gathering was excellent. So we are collaborating
on the higher specialist areas, and I have seconded people from
Dyfed Powys into my area because they, frankly, do not get the
experience in Dyfed Powys to be able to deal with these sorts
of crimes, and I have young, and some young flyers as well, who
need extra experience whom they second to us, we keep them for
a while. We have one in Swansea at the moment. We have people
who come to us, and, indeed, the Chief Constable of Dyfed Powys
recently explored with me the fact that we might service provide
his investigations into serious crime because his senior investigators
do not get the opportunity to practice their skills very often.
Q126 Mr Williams: Perhaps you could tell
us what method you use to find out what the public in South Wales
think about their police force and the service it provides for
them?
Chief Constable Wilding: There
are two areas. One side is the Police Authority, who statutorily
are required to consult members of the public, and, as I referred
to earlier, they hold meetings and they are starting to hold their
meetings at the moment in each of my seven areas, the unitary
authority areas, to see what the public want. They are also at
the moment standing outside areas where the public gather in great
numbers, so shopping malls, areas of entertainment, and they are
stopping and asking people what they want from their police service
and what they think about the police service and, if they had
£120 to spend each, what more would they want to buy with
policing, which is quite a novel approach and I look forward to
seeing the results of that. So there is no lack of willingness
on their part, I assure you, to consult the public. Last year,
as I say, we sent out 25,000 forms to the public (questionnaires)
to ask them what they thought about us, were we concentrating
on the right things. We also consult victims of crime, follow-up
telephone calls to victims of crime. What was the service? How
did they feel about it? The interesting thing: we are going to
move into a new area now. We recognise that is what we have done,
it has been tried and tested, but have we really got to the issues?
That is the big question. So we are now going to try something
new. Perhaps David would like to come in. We agreed last week
this is what we are going to do. We are going to put resources
into this.
Assistant Chief Constable Francis:
What we want to do, and we are well down the road, is to get ahead
of police reform agenda that is developing, as we have seen through
the recent results of building safe communities together and anticipating
the White Paper, if one can anticipate its contents. We are looking
to put greater emphasis on the sector inspector through whom teams
of police locally will operate, and we will be looking to put
the mechanisms in place where there is more meaningful consultation
with the local community in the sense that there will be a clear
structure that all 34 sector inspectors will be held to and we
can actually check the local discussion and the outcomes from
those discussions. Also we are going invest energy in trying to
build that base in terms of the extended police family. Given
the limit resource that we do have, I expect—well, we are
going to increase the Special Constabulary numbers by a hundred
in the next two years, we are going to invest in volunteer schemes—hopefully
we can encourage 200-300 volunteers to join us on that clustering
around the sector inspector and the community based officer. We
are waiting for the result of the bid on PCSOs. That is currently
with the Home Office. Whatever we get there we will actually be
fairly into trying to expand our Communities First teams and our
community base. All of that will slowly but surely build into
a much clearer structure and framework that we are getting a much
better sense of what the public want from us and we can hold our
local resources to account as well.
Q127 Mrs Williams: On the point that
you, Chief Constable, have mentioned, you talked about consulting
victims of crime. How close do you work with Victim Support Schemes
in South Wales?
Chief Constable Wilding: Very
closely, and they are present. In fact Victim Support coordinators
are present with our community teams in quite a number of our
police stations. They work from those police stations, and it
works very well indeed. I have gone out and I have talked to Victim
Support teams as well. They have my whole-hearted support, and
I always check to make sure that (a) we are referring the right
people to them and the fact that they have the resources to do
what they need to do.
Q128 Mrs Williams: You operate an automatic
referral system?
Chief Constable Wilding: We do.
Q129 Julie Morgan: Assistant Chief Constable
Francis mentioned the use of volunteers. I wonder if you could
expand on exactly what volunteers would do and do you have any
already?
Chief Constable Wilding: I wonder
if I might leap in and answer that, because I was at a community
meeting not very long ago where they were talking about the time
that the police station was open and all the rest of it, and they
were saying, "We would be happy to go in there", and
I said "Why not then?" There are lots of people out
there who are very willing, very community focused, really care
about their communities, who are very happy to go in and do things
in their police station. One of the things that we envisage from
our volunteers is that they will be doing some of the routine
things, like phoning people back who have perhaps phoned us and
said what that they have seen and we do not go back to them and
tell them what happened, what was the consequence. They are not
actually victims, but they are people who have contacted us. So
it is police contact. I want them to be there so when people have
contacted us they actually get another response: "Are you
happy with the service? Is there anything more we can do?"
That is real customer focus, but we are honest as well and we
say when we cannot do more than we can and where we have passed
things on and another partner agency has not picked something
up, but we are honest. Obviously there is a confidentiality factor.
If we can structure this correctly, with a short training programme,
with the right support, I think that this could be the thing that
we have all been looking for for many years, because it has always
been a factor, "Oh, the police do not get back to us. They
do not tell us what has happened." This is where I want to
focus those volunteers, in that contact getting back to the people
who have been in touch with us to see if there is any more we
can do for them. In fact, they are doing that now, not with volunteers
though, with police officers, on two of my BCUs, and it is causing
little problems because they are being measured, the team is being
measured, the officers are being measured. Have they gone back
to people? It is proving quite interesting, and I am hoping to
have the results of that quite shortly of how the customer felt.
Do you want to add anything, David?
Assistant Chief Constable Francis:
If I could just add, we are very conscious of the contribution
that the existing volunteers make. Neighbourhood Watch, Victim
Support, general members of the public who are volunteering their
time, and the Special Constabulary. The Chief has identified there
is another element there in terms of attracting members of the
public. What we would like to do is bring in those existing groups,
recognising that they are volunteers, and ask if we can sit down—a
bit like using the national intelligence model—"Can
we better coordinate all our activity to fill those gaps that
currently exist"? We could see, with a fair wind, in three
years, perhaps 600, 1,000 additional people being brought to in
work with us, many of those being members of the communities that
are saying that they are not getting the right service from us
that they want at the moment.
Q130 Mr Williams: Getting back to Consulting
the public what do the public think you are doing well? If you
are having trouble with that, what they think you are doing badly?
Chief Constable Wilding: Before
I answer that, I wanted to make sure that it has not reduced,
that it has improved. The overall level is in the top 70s to early
80s, I think, 86%, 86% of people think we do a good job.
Q131 Mr Williams: Any specific aspects
of your service that they think you are doing well?
Chief Constable Wilding: I will
check. They are victims of crime who think that we have done a
good job. Of course, in many ways, one has to say that is more
about the feel-good factor rather than have they by our standards
done a professional job.
Q132 Mr Williams: I think we were told
by the Chief Constable of Dyfed Powys last week that where you
have little crime people are more shocked by a crime than when
you have high levels of crime. Would you like to comment on that?
Chief Constable Wilding: The impact
of crime is on anybody. Whether you are used to crime being committed
in your street or not, it still has a devastating effect, depending
on the sort of crime, but, yes, I could see that in an area where
you perhaps do not have any crime whatsoever and then you have
one, it is very worrying, it is very worrying indeed, and the
impact therefore probably is pretty great. Could I just talk about
our Community First teams? I mentioned earlier that we had 44
of the Community First areas in my police force, and my predecessor
was very fore-sighted and put policing teams into seven of those
areas. We have now expanded that to fifteen, and I am hoping,
if we get the PCSOs that we bid for, we will be able to expand
that to 25 next year. I would eventually like each of the 44 areas
to have a Communities First team, and it is doo'able but I would
like to do it quicker than later. We have evaluated those Communities
First teams, and it has been a fairly superficial one to start
with, but now we have got to a more in depth one, but, nevertheless,
the communities are telling us in those areas they think those
teams are great; even down to the fact in one area, where there
was a murder, they asked the Communities First officers to be
the pall-bearers for the deceased's body at the funeral. They
really are disproportionately worth their money in gold.
Q133 Mr Williams: You state in paragraphs
4.2 that the dilemma facing many BCU commanders has been how best
to allocate resources to meet a fairly narrow range of national
targets against which success or failure is judged in the face
of growing evidence that public confidence is not directly linked
to quantitative results. How can this best be addressed in a world
where resources are finite?
Chief Constable Wilding: That
is right. (a) It is our responsibility as chief officers is to
make sure that the BCU have the resources that they need to be
able to do the jobs; it is also our responsibility to make sure
that the command teams in those BCUs can do the jobs, that they
have ability to do the jobs as well. Put those two together. As
I mentioned earlier, the national framework was very restrictive.
They were judged by it. Each of them are in a set by which they
are judged within other BCUs up and down the country. I am very
pleased to say that most of my BCUs are either number one, two
or three in just about every data-set you can think of within
their BCU families, and so that has not always been at the exclusion
of the local people. They have done their very best; and what
I noticed about going to South Wales is that the partnership working
does work well. In some areas it works better than in others obviously,
but it does work well. They have worked well with their partners
to make sure that they can deliver what the local people want,
and I think you are seeing those results now. If crime was falling
tremendously but my complaints and you good folk were writing
letters to me consistently about poor performance, behaviour,
etcetera, etcetera, and the press were berating us, I would know
we have got the balance completely wrong, but that is not the
case; and as I do go out into the communities. On my first week
I got a handwritten letter from a lady saying, "Please do
not take our Communities First teams away from us; I would like
to tell you what a marvellous job they are doing." So I went
to see her. She brought the neighbours in, got the best china
out and invited all the officers from the Communities First team
to tell me what a marvellous job they were doing and how they
had turned round that estate, and it was tremendous, absolutely
tremendous. I hope you may have an opportunity to meet her, a
very forthright lady, but she has done a tremendous amount for
her community. We will all have known people like this, but she
wrote. So I do not get a sense that we have got the balance wrong
in the past, but all I want is to do more of it, which is why
we are going to move some significant resources. Believe you me,
out there at the moment there are some very worried heads of department
and BCU commanders who will have received a letter from me this
morning saying I want a review from them to look at not less than
5% of police staff, not less than 5% of police officers, that
we are not cutting but we might be able to reconfigure more into
the community focused part of the animal. It is not about cutting
serious crime either.
Q134 Mr Evans: Keeping public support,
securing it is important for you to do an effective job. Do you
glean at all that you are having difficulty doing that with the
perception that the public think that the police are too focused
on a vigorous campaign on the speeding motorists, which are easy
prey, and not so much on other crimes that they think you ought
to be concentrating on?
Chief Constable Wilding: Wherever
I go this question arises, as you may imagine, and the answer
I give is, and it is in relation to the money in many ways that
causes a lot of anxiety that they believe that we are persecuting
the motorist because we are going to get more money from the process.
The reality is we do not get any money whatsoever. The money goes
to the partnerships, hypothecated to the partnership. The partnership
which covers the South Wales forces hypothecated that to run the
cameras, to take the films out, to process the films, to do the
follow up of the tickets, et cetera, et cetera. We do sit on the
steering committee and we do influence it. I would say I turned
to look at last year you saw your papers full of criticism of
the South Wales police and the way in which we had used the traffic
cameras for the Welsh rally and a number of rally drivers having
been disqualified. I came into this by—I do not know quite
how politely to put it really—this anxiety, which was very
genuine because a lot of people work with the rally and could
lose their jobs and the prestige of Wales and internationally
and all the rest of it. I sat down with the partnership and we
went through it and I sat down with the QC representing the international
body for rallying, which I knew absolutely nothing about, I know
a tremendous more about it now, and came up with a process which
is sensible which tells the drivers when they are coming into
an area which is restricted, when they are leaving the trails,
all these sorts of things, and showing them the speed that they
are doing as they hit the trails. The rally team organisers came
up with a process where they would fine people who were—and
they did so very successfully in one case—somebody over
£1,000 who abused the position. We came up with a very good
process. That is about then informing people there are speed restrictions,
informing them why. I see on a lot of the roads there have been
X numbers of accidents on these roads, as long as people know
why they are legitimately there. I have personally reviewed every
camera in my Force area to make sure it complies with the guidelines
set down for it being placed there. There was only one that I
raised a query about and was convinced when I received the answer
back that it was correct. It is one that we will review. The Chamber
of Commerce based in Cardiff came forward to speak to me a few
weeks ago. They were concerned about one in the Gwent area and
we picked that up with the partnership as well and with my colleagues
in Gwent. They were concerned about it and there is an explanation
for it so now they will get the explanation. That is what people
need. I do rue the day that the money was seen to come to policing
because I think that was when we lost a lot of public support,
but in terms of keeping the confidence: that is my role too as
being out there and being not internally being a leader but externally
being a leader and giving these explanations and being honest.
Q135 Mr Caton: Going on to community
safety or going back to community safety partnerships, what level
of influence do the local partnerships have on police priorities
in their basic command unit areas and indeed in the wider South
Wales police area?
Chief Constable Wilding: Very
much so on the BCU command, in the BCU command areas because that
is local because the partnerships are all about what are the issues
for each of the partners, what is happening out there in the public
and how do we all tackle it together, so very much so. It is central
to most of what they do in terms of local delivery and how they
deliver it, which is extremely important. In terms of the consultation
with the public that comes up to the centre through our BCUs they
feed it all up through to us, clearly that involves us: on 16th
November we have a management day, a day with the Police Authority
and senior managers of the Force where we will have all the information
aggregated in and that helps towards the planning process. What
do we focus on and importantly how do we do it. It is extremely
important. The key I think of the process that David was explaining
earlier about the sector inspector being responsible for the sector,
delivering in there is, and we will monitor the contact they have
with the local community, and is it just the same people who put
themselves up as being the spokes people or are we getting in
touch with the harder to reach groups? Are we hearing what the
elderly have to say? Today unfortunately I cannot be at a seminar
arranged by Youth Council, a partnership safety partnership has
a youth county. They invited me to speak and they chose the subject
of domestic violence, its impact on young people. That should
inform our thinking too, very much so. I am looking at having
a youth council for the Force. Equally, I am looking to establish
a business council for the Force so that we can hear what are
the concerns that affect business because if we do not create
the security and stability for businesses, the investment, the
inward investment will not happen, neither will the people travel
to work to go to the companies when they invest. I have to say
so far the people that I have spoken to they have all been very
willing to get on board and join with us. Indeed, even the questions
that I ask about particularly, say, the large supermarkets who
have a large number of staff, "Would you be willing to support
members of your staff being specials in your time". The example
I asked Asda and Tesco was: "If you would give ten of your
people each week four hours of your time to be specials, perhaps
they might do another two hours, that is another 60 hours of policing
I can give in this locality". Where that has been piloted
in London with one particular firm they found that their retail
crime went down by 40% because people knew specials were employed
by those stores and internally their crime went down because the
staff knew there were specials in the staff. I think it is not
just about—it is different parts of the locality we need
to tap into. We are not all there yet, but we will get there.
Call them what you will, community advocates, local advocates,
whatever, but we need to listen to all of those groups.
Q136 Mr Caton: You have already indicated
that all seven of the community safety partnerships in your patch
are not performing equally well. Can you give us an idea of what
factors you think make a partnership work well or less well?
Chief Constable Wilding: Yes.
Clear objectives, joint objectives, joint resourcing, joint expectations
and deliverables; it is not undeliverable, it is doable, so very
clearly working together. That is what I would say would be the
key. Establishing what are the issues. You have your joint issues
and you have the same priorities. At the moment it is a fact,
say, and I am not being pejorative in this, but health may not
be the most active partner at the table because their priorities
are slightly different. I would say: in some sense what we have
failed to do is to show if they come on board and work with us
in relation to anti-social behaviour at the beginning very often
the people will not appear in the health service. An example I
can quote some work done by the community safety partnership in
Cardiff by Professor Shepherd there, work done with glasses in
licensed premises and the injuries that they were seeing in the
A and E and then subsequently in on his specialist surgery table
as a result of an injury from glasses then was able to influence
the fact that glasses were no longer used and another substance
was used. In fact, the substance they turned to we found to be
even worse than glass and so they changed to a different substance
again. We have not been good enough I think of painting the picture—I
do say "we" as I think we own this—we have not
been good enough at perhaps painting the picture to some of our
partners to say these are real savings if you come on board with
us. Last year in Swansea New Year's Eve they opened a Triage Centre
in Swansea in a shop. The health board did not want to come on
board, but the ambulance service did. 25 people were treated there,
did not go to the hospital. The ambulances were not used. Thereafter,
when they saw the results the local health board gave us a cheque
to cover what would have been their proportion of investment to
make up for it. We need to do more of this we really do.
Q137 Mr Caton: Does health tend to be
the weakest partner in each one of the services?
Chief Constable Wilding: Yes.
I say this in no pejorative way. They have different priorities.
One of the things I do hope that the Home Secretary can pull off
is making his new customer focus cross ministries. The same priorities
appear across ministries then we all have the same targets. When
that happens, people will naturally work together and not feel
that by spending time here they are going to be failing here.
It is a truism: what gets measured gets done, so that is where
I would like there to be a wider perspective.
Q138 Mr Caton: Are there any other things
that you would like to be getting from the partnerships that at
the moment you are not getting?
Chief Constable Wilding: I think
it is wrong to say that some are not working well; if I did not
articulate it clearly that is not what I meant. What I meant was
that some are working at a different level to others. All are
working well.
Q139 Mr Caton: That is what you said.
Chief Constable Wilding: All are
working well and have very clear focus of where they want to go.
Because we have seven unitary authorities, we have what is fairly
unique in South Wales, for the Force area for those seven unitary
we have an overarching leadership group which meets once a quarter.
Each of the Chief Executives are on that group. The head of the
probation service is on that group for the whole of South Wales.
We have a representative from health, we have a representative
from education and I go there as well and we discuss policies.
We are going to have the same policies across each of those unitary
authorities, which as you know have their own health boards, their
own education, et cetera. We discussed that and we are getting
better, it was fairly unstructured when I came along. We are now
employing a coordinator, we are getting intelligence; it is getting
better, so we are seeing a concerted effort at that level which
then moves down into the local safety partnerships as well, so
the direction is coming. We all agree things and then we take
it down into our individual areas.
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