24th June 2008
Police officers must re-learn to use their common sense and discretion in fighting crime after years of ' rigid ' guidelines and targets, a chief constable warned yesterday.
Julia Hodson, the new chief of Nottinghamshire Police, said her officers must be 're-skilled' before they are fit to play a greater role in decision-making over which offenders are charged with crimes.
Rank-and-file police leaders seized on her comments as evidence that years of target-setting by Government had seriously eroded 'common sense policing' in the UK, leaving officers chasing short-term performance targets and engulfed in red-tape.
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Julia Hodson, who starts work today as the new Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police
And Home Secretary Jacqui Smith used a speech to the Association of Chief Police Officers to promise a move away from Whitehall targets to allow police officers to use their own judgment.
Taking up her new post as Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire yesterday, Miss Hodson, 51, said she would consider joining a pilot scheme allowing frontline officers more discretion in whether to bring charges for minor offences, instead of chasing controversial Home Office targets to deal with as many crimes as possible.
But she warned that her officers would need retraining after years of operating within strict rules.
She said: 'The most important power a police officer has is the power of arrest - to decide what is a crime and what is not and then what actions must follow.
'Some young people may have been criminalised inappropriately. Officers need to be properly trained because they have been working under a rigid regime of limitations so they need to be reskilled to use their discretion so it doesn't swing too far the other way.'
Simon Reed, vice chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: 'This supports what the Police Federation has been saying for years - that there has been a gradual erosion of common sense policing, where police officers previously used their experience and discretion when deciding how best to deal with a situation.'
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'After ten years of top-down control under Labour it is unsurprising that officers are in this position.
'Central diktats have taken away discretion from our police and distorted their priorities.
'Conservatives will free up our police by scrapping unnecessary targets as well as restoring local accountability through directly elected police commissioners.'
A major review of policing in England and Wales by policing watchdog Sir Ronnie Flanagan warned that police were becoming increasingly 'risk-averse', and claimed 'excess bureaucracy' was encouraging them to 'over-record and under-deliver' for fear of being criticised.
Addressing police chiefs in Liverpool yesterday the Home Secretary signalled her sympathy for such complaints, and stressed the importance of 'finding ways to free up the police - allowing you and your officers to trust your judgment on what the public wants and expects.'
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