Too many police chiefs? - A review of police strength and costs in England & Wales 2010
SUMMARY OBSERVATIONS - ACPO - The Association of Police Officers
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Scrutinising the continuing value of 349 ACPO officers & 3,408 SMT Ranks, demanding that forces prove beyond doubt, the need for so many Chiefs drawing such a disproportionate percentage of the total staffing cost, both in numbers engaged and the bonus payments that are shrouded in secrecy.
Its growth has taken place without any parliamentary debate and without being subject to public scrutiny, and its decisions are largely taken in secret.
ACPO has also been involved in blatant party politics, has enforced excessive “multi-cultural and diversity” programmes amongst police forces across the country - all funded of course by the British taxpayer. The time has come for this unelected, unsupervised and powerful body to be brought to heel and replaced with a legislatively-controlled organisation which can be called to account for its activities.
And there’s more . . .
In another instance, the City of London Police was receiving £3.7million for a so-called ‘ring of steel’ that no longer exists. And Kent Police has also lost a huge sum allocated for anti-terror work that it was using to pay for community support officers. The ‘ring of steel’ was introduced to protect key financial institutions in the wake of an IRA bombing campaign in the Nineties. It consisted of manned sentry boxes, road blocks, concrete barriers and chicanes on roads into the Square Mile. But the barriers have been largely dismantled during the past ten years and replaced with 190 CCTV and number-plate recognition cameras. This largely automated system was used to assist the Metropolitan Police investigation into the Islamic terrorist attacks on July 7, 2005.
But the audit of the City of London Police’s terror funding suggested that this system was now a general policing tool rather than a counter-terrorism measure. The review, by the Association of Chief Police Officers’ (Acpo) Terrorism Committee, which distributes £33million of counter-terrorism cash on behalf of the Home Office, has now cut £3.7million – or six per cent – from the City of London force’s budget.
When first asked about the cut, City of London Police said: ‘The City has received DSP funding since the 1990s due to its history as a terrorist target. We have been advised we will lose some funding because of a change in funding criteria, but protecting the City from terrorism remains a top priority for the force.’
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Chapter 5
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