The Case Against ACPO - A Critical Look At The Association Of Chief Police Officers


good of the public and the service. The signs suggest he's getting a little nervous that any police reforms may have an adverse effect on his empire building.


When Sir Hugh said that police chiefs would resign if the Conservatives pushed on with their proposal for elected police commissioners, we couldn't help wondering if he was speaking for all his colleagues on this, or whether he was expressing a strong personal view?


Sir Hugh argued that, “We should not be influenced by anyone who has any potential or suggestion for a political basis.”


Curious then that he has recently become so heavily involved in politics himself. One of the reasons for electing local police commissioners is to free the police from the “political influence” that they are currently labouring under: the culture of upward-looking accountability to central government, rather than to the local people they are there to serve.


Ah, the tenacity with which the unelected defend their privileges. Under a labour administration the Police chiefs were digging in every bit as stubbornly as Eurocrats, and for the same reason: they hate the idea of having to answer to the rest of us.


Sir Hugh has said he wants the police to have operational independence. So does everyone else. We want democratic control over police budgets and priorities. Should coppers spend their money on speed cameras or find resources for more foot patrols? Should they turn a blind eye to the possession of small amounts of cannabis? Should they let shoplifters off with a warning? These are questions in which local people have a legitimate interest. No one, as we suspect Sir Hugh knows perfectly well, is suggesting that elected representatives should be empowered to intervene in specific cases.


Sir Hugh, In an unbelievably patronising statement, said that voters couldn’t be trusted. He claimed that there are “no votes in protecting people from terrorism, from organised crime and from serial rapists that cross the country”. We wonder whether he really believes this, or whether his true concern is that voters might want the police to spend more time on protecting property and less on encouraging diversity.


Either way, our hunch is that, while Sir Hugh might have some support among the top brass – those ambitious rozzers who, during 13 years of Labour, were promoted because they seemed to believe that the primary purpose of the police was to promote equality – he is not especially representative of the broad mass of police officers, who joined up in order to be crime-fighters, not social workers or Labour activists.


As we have reported previously, Sir Hugh and ACPO have courted more than their fair share of contraversy, with Westminster apartments paid for out of anti terrorism budgets, profligate spending, and the looming spectre of Chief Officers' bonus payments to name a few.


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