Interview ANDREW TROTTER
about the seemingly intractable problem of cable theft; but there has been a big shift - delay minutes have come down by more than half according to latest figures. It’s pickpocketing that’s on Trotter’s mind. ‘It’s not a new offence of course, we see it come and go but at the moment it’s on the rise, particularly on the underground and the mainline termini in London. It’s an anxiety that I have at the moment about how we’re going to get that down. We do all the things we’ve always done with undercover squads and so on, but we’re going to have a whole new approach as we move into the spring, because we’re seeing a lot of people come into this country to steal. I think the other day there were 25 offences on the underground and that’s a lot. A small proportion of those are fraudulent insurance claims and some lose their phone after a few drinks but without doubt it’s a particular problem.’
Social media helping with arrests Trotter is very aware that social media has aided detection and prosecution especially in the area of anti-social behaviour, but it could also have represented a bit of a runaway train for the BTP, so to speak.
‘Because we are pretty adventurous on social media, we get reports back on Twitter. We didn’t set our account up to receive reports, but we do, and in real time people are tweeting us, ‘help now’, so we’ve had to change our working practices from being media driven to an operational response. And while social media has opened up new ways of contacting us, I approach it with some caution thinking ‘what are we going to open up?’ But I’m absolutely passionate about the fact we need to get to people who need help.’ Trotter told a story about an event on the tube that featured on the Sun’s website, ‘not that I read it, I wouldn’t dream of it’ he added quickly, ‘but I saw it online and thought, ‘what’s that?’ And the Sun was asking people to come forward. Nobody had reported it to us but we dived in there and solved it. By tweeting an appeal for information we got the offender, so social media has helped us hugely on that score, opening up new avenues to talk to the public and get new information.’
The realities of business Working within such a complex and politicised industry can’t be easy, and I wondered how Trotter interacts with the organisations that fund the BTP. ‘I meet with Toc MD’s regularly and talk to them primarily about the service we provide. I listen to their concerns about the setting of priorities and national and local targets, and I deliberately do that so they don’t feel we are imposing anything – that we are flexible enough to do what they want locally and adapt our procedures and priorities to that.’ And does that work well? Surely there are clashes? ‘No! Not at all. They’re business people and they will always want things
better and cheaper and I absolutely respect and understand that. I have a very good relationship with Toc’s that has improved considerably over the years, primarily because of the service we provide. I’m never complacent, but I can walk out of the offices of some very strong characters with quite a few notes of praise about the BTP. We are assiduous in our attention to providing that good service and we’re not defensive about any area we think we could improve on. At the same time however we are a police force, with all the independence of a police force, we’re not a private security company.’
That good relationship didn’t always exist though, and
Trotter is open about that, as well as clear about why things have improved. ‘I don’t get a hard time these days in the way that perhaps would have happened in the past, and that’s partly because I demonstrate to the industry that we’re handling its money carefully. That we’re not only effective but efficient and that costs have been taken out of the business.’ And that has certainly been the case, via a 20 per cent reduction of senior BTP officers through voluntary redundancy, removing back office costs, and another current major restructuring to squeeze out costs even further. ‘We’re doing it because I want more police officers on the front line,’ explained Trotter, ‘as there are bits of the country where I feel we’re not providing a good enough service. Local forces are experiencing considerable cuts to their budgets and we need to make sure we can look after the rail industry.’
Driving out costs has been a ‘hardy perennial’ for Trotter who mentioned the recommendations of the McNulty report. ‘But even in the best of times, the rail industry will want it cheaper, as any private sector organisation would and public sector ought to do. I have absolutely no problem with that. I think that pressure will always be there and I don’t mind – but whether it’s a £50 million or £500 million service, what we’ve got now provides by all the measures in crime detection and reduction, satisfaction and so on.’
Rising fares = rising frustration?
I wondered if the BTP ever notices a change in passenger attitudes and behaviour when big fare rises take effect for example. ‘Yeah…you know it’s interesting that,’ pondered Trotter. ‘I obviously use the trains both as a police officer and a member of the public, and listening to some of the interactions, I notice every time there’s another hike you get some clever people coming up with various comments to the ticket collector that can be a bit sharp, which is unfair. I think it’s not so much the rises, because all of us with families who travel on the train face them, as well as rising car park charges and all those sorts of things: it’s more that we get pushback from people who say, ‘I pay a lot, not only to travel but to park my car or bike here so there is an obligation on you to look after it,’ and rightly so’.
May 2013 Page 27
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