The Case Against ACPO - A Critical Look At The Association Of Chief Police Officers the staff side.


Interesting that he should direct the writer to Paul West, a Chief Constable for clarification. Perhaps it is hoped that this will discourage the majority from asking the awkward questions that need to be asked.


John Randall is the Independent Chair of the PNB. The Chairman is appointed by the Prime Minister. The role of the Chair is to "supply a neutral, independent voice in the negotiations and to assist in bringing the parties to agreement, through support, informal mediation and conciliation". As best as we can make out from the site, he has been Chair for 6 years (2004). He is a member of the Labour party. Our guess is that he might obfuscate when confronted with the conflict of interest question.


We hope we're wrong, but let's think this one through. He was appointed by Tony Blair whilst labour were in power. Randall is a member (not merely a voter) of the labour party. This is the labour party who are under such attack for the manner in which they have let policing deteriorate and elitism (ACPO) proliferate. We would be surprised if he could ever be classed as politically independent and would expect him to be defensive about having allowed CPOSA to remain on the PNB under his watch. Perhaps the question we should be asking is how a paid up political member can ever be viewed as independent? We know that ACPO have been party politically biased toward Labour (I have written about their allegiances previously) mainly because their self serving interests were best served under Labour, whereas they were treated with an indifferent political attitude by prior administrations.


An independent status that is suspect is hardly in the public interest as Blases' second paragraph suggests.


Yes "Any representative body needs to have legal personality to operate effectively. The structure of a company limited by guarantee is used by many charitable and other organisations for this purpose".


Quite right. So shouldn't CPOSA have a visible legal personality to back this up? Otherwise, we must question their integrity and motives for having a presence on the PNB. With regard to the reference to a company being limited by guarantee (ACPO), this is nothing more than a smokescreen to disguise activities. Otherwise, they would be open to freedom of information requests, which up until recently, they have resisted. Indeed, Heather Brooke, the journalist who broke the MP scandal and Sean O'Neill (Times Crime Editor) had their FOI requests about Chief Officer bonuses blocked by ACPO. My guess is that they felt the hierarchy of the police was too powerful an animal to take on. However, the Telegraph were more successful, but only when it became clear that labour were on their way out. Again, we have written about this on this site and in our reports.


All in all, this is a very sordid and clandestine arrangement.


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