Metropolitan Police Federation

Help blighted neighbourhoods? Nah, let's have state surveillance

The cost to the taxpayer of the Government's scheme to keep records of every electronic communication of every person in the country every second of every day will, according to recent press reports, amount to £200 million a year.

This will be of scant cheer to people whose communities are blighted by the predations of feral youths, under-age drinkers, graffiti ‘artists’, vandals and all the other characters who make up the cast in the nightly performance of anti-social behaviour.

For these people will benefit not one jot as the Government freely spends their money amassing a stratospheric mountain of irrelevant and useless information.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has recently made much of his commitment to tackling anti-social behaviour.

He may be interested to learn that if the £200 million apparently being spent on state surveillance of everyone in the country from school children to old age pensioners was instead spent on neighbourhood policing, an extra 6,700 police officers could be provided.

These would not be trainee police officers. Nor would they be probationary police officers who are still learning their craft. And they certainly would not civilian support officers.

They would be full-blown, experienced, street-wise warrant-holding police constables.

There are, according to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), 3,600 Safer Neighbourhoods Teams in England and Wales, so practically all of them would benefit from having an extra two officers on their strength - as would the communities they serve.

If the additional officer-power were concentrated in those places where it is needed most, the increase would be even greater, as would its impact on anti-social behaviour.

If, for example, the additional officers were to be deployed in the worst 300 wards in the country, each of the wards policing teams would grow by 22 experienced officers.

But, sadly, the money is not being spent on dealing with the policing issues which really concern ordinary citizens as they try to go about their daily lives (as Chief Constable Julie Spence, who is lead on citizen focus for ACPO said: "Most, if not all [neighbourhood policing teams] will have anti-social behaviour as a top or high priority)."

Indeed, the Government wants police forces to cut their budgets in the coming financial year by a reported £480 million. Four out of 10 forces have already reduced police officer numbers.

This, you may think, demonstrates the true extent of the Government's commitment to tackling anti-social behaviour.