From the police via their e-cops system:
"Have the police got their priorities right? In an ideal world, what would you like to see happen in your neighbourhood from next year? The Police Authority is responsible for maintaining an efficient and effective policing service in Cambridgeshire. We set the police budget for the year ahead and are responsible for holding the chief constable to account for the delivery of policing in Cambridgeshire. To share your views with us about policing in Cambridge and hear more about the kind of work we are involved in locally and nationally, including our priorities for the year ahead and the resources available to us, come along to Wesley Methodist Church, Christ's Pieces, on Wednesday, February 4 at 7.30pm. We can't promise the earth, but we do want to hear your views. They will help us shape policing in your area and across the county over the coming year."Which is great, I encourage residents to turn up if they have any concerns about policing priorities. 'Community engagement' is the latest central government inspired buzzword to be sweeping public services, and if the City Council's area committees are any indicator, this will doubtless be at great cost to tax payers. I have to confess that personally I am suffering a little from consultation fatigue here. As part of the East Area committee I help agree local policing priorities for East Area. As part of the City Council Strategy and Resources committee, I comment on the prorities set by the Community Safety Partnership, yet another body with its own meetings schedule including the police and local authorities that sets policing priorities. I worry about how much effort is being spent collecting opinion about setting police priorities, and doubtless deciding between different conflicting priorities, so that ultimately less resource is available for actually tackling problems like the little toerags who keep spraying 'DSC' all round Coleridge.
And then there is the extent to which setting a small number of priorities actually sets huge numbers of areas that will then be deprioritised. Like some of my priorities - cycle theft, that the community safety partnership rejected as a priority, or actual police enforcement of speed limits on residential roads (which the Labour led East Area committee recently rejected in favour of 'supporting resident's Speedwatch' as a priority, so it is now hard to see how the police could do less to tackle the problem if speeding wasn't set as a priority at all.)
I fear "community engagement" initiatives more generally are eroding the power of democratically elected people, transferring their powers to the self-selecting few who actively engage in the new community engagement initiatives, and further disenfranchising people who don't want to continually interact with the state, but just want the authorities to get on with efficiently providing core services.
Ideally we would have properly empowered democratically elected representatives (including for bodies such as police forces and local healthcare trusts), then residents can elect the people they think will best represent their interests, can contact them if they have a problem, and if they don't like the results, they can throw them out of office and elect someone else.
