Britain’s Police and Crime Commissioners prepare for a nice day out.
The idea of having police and crime commissioners to add an element of public accountability may be a good one, but these offices are not attracting people with the probity, integrity or ability to fill them.
So far we’ve had: the episode where Surrey PCC, has bullied people on Twitter, South Yorkshire’s PCC was revealed to have said nothing about 1,400 British girls being raped by Muslims, and the Kent PCC was caught out employing a loudmouthed drunken chav as ‘youth commissioner’. Now there are alleged problems with the deputy PCC for Lancashire and the Deputy PCC for Berkshire and the PCC for Kent are being investigated for misconduct in public office.
The Daily Mail is running a story on the problems with this particular part of Britain’s policing system.
The Daily Mail said:
“A crime tsar’s deputy has been questioned by police over claims that he tried to halt a domestic violence investigation against a relative.
Muslim leader Ibrahim Master is also facing allegations that he attempted to put pressure on the victim when she made a witness statement, to protect the family member accused of attacking her.
Astonishingly, it is the third case in as many weeks exposed by The Mail on Sunday in which Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) or their deputies have been probed by the forces they were elected to hold to account.
Bedfordshire’s deputy PCC Tafheen Sharif was forced to quit after she intervened in a murder plot trial to keep a cousin’s love life secret.
And Kent PCC Ann Barnes was allegedly driving without business insurance when she crashed her car on her way to a meeting.
Mr Master, the Deputy PCC for Lancashire, was quizzed at a police station and the Independent Police Complaints Commission is now looking into claims of harassment and perverting the course of justice.
A former chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques and a Labour Party activist, Mr Master, 56, is credited with persuading local Muslims to help re-elect Jack Straw as the MP for Blackburn despite their opposition to the Iraq War.
He hit the headlines as a community spokesman when it emerged that failed shoe-bomber Saajid Badat had attended an Islamic college in the former mill town.“
Read the rest of this Mail article at:
Although elected PCC’s could have been a great success low turnout in PCC elections has meant that the posts have been filled with those who are bullies or corrupt or downright stupid. It is to be hoped that the problems with the PCC system become more widely known so that when there are elections for PCC’s then more people get out and vote. Not voting in PCC elections leaves the field clear for hobby-horse riders like that of Surrey or the downright malevolent like the South Yorkshire PCC to claim public office.
It is morally impossible for the voter to complain about the abovementioned holders of public office when they take no part in voting for either the winning candidate or their opponents.
It is vital to vote in PCC elections or British citizens will get PCC’s of the same calibre as above, or worse.
Could the low turnout in PCC elections indicate that the majority of electors don’t want a PCC?
That could be the case but the problem is if people don’t turn out then PCC’s are elected by either bent postal votes or by other organised vote gathering campaigns. People then find that a small number of people, who may not have the best interests of the majority at heart, are having a major influence on their policing system. People need to vote even if they are unsure about whether the elected position itself should exist in order to dilute the bent postal votes or the organised electoral vote banks.