The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC – pronounced Mopsy by its friends) is fifteen days old.  It was launched with great fanfare – or at least a press release from City Hall – on 16th January.

There have repeatedly been assurances given that the new arrangements would be at least as transparent as those that existed with the now-abolished Metropolitan Police Authority.  Performance data and financial information would be placed on the web-site and everything we were assured would be open and visible to the people of London.

So what happens when you seek to go to www.mopc.police.uk?  You get redirected to the home page of the Greater London Authority web-site – not even its page on policing.

And where is the financial information and the performance data that was promised?

If it is there, I couldn’t find it.

Still it is early days and I am sure that Kit Malthouse AM will sort it out now that he has been formally appointed as the Deputy MOPC (a role specifically envisaged in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act).

But wait, is Kit Malthouse really in charge?

The press release says he has been appointed.

But, if you go to the Mayoral Decisions part of the Greater London Authority web-site, there is no Mayoral Decision appointing him.

If there is no formally recorded Mayoral Decision, any actions taken by Kit Malthouse as Deputy MOPC are invalid and ultra vires, because there has been no formal decision to give him the legal powers.

And if he has been properly appointed, the failure to post the relevant Mayoral Decision on the Greater London Authority web-site doesn’t bode well for the new era of transparency about policing that we were promised.

Or am I being pedantic?

Today’s Home Office Statistical Bulletin, certified by the Office for National Statistics, gives definitive figures for police numbers throughout the country.  And the figures for London are particularly striking:

• Police officer numbers in the Metropolitan Police were 32,900 in September 2010, fell to 32,441 by March 2011, with a further fall to 31,657 in September 2011 – a loss of 1,243 officers over the year.
• Police staff numbers were 14,047 in September 2010, falling to 13,688 by March 2011, and then to 13,126 in September 2011.
• The number of Police Community Support Officers also fell over the same period: from 4,387 to 4,009 and then to 3,903.

Now I don’t believe that police numbers should be the only goal of policing policy.  Many duties are performed by warranted police officers that could be performed by police staff or by PCSOs, but these figures show big falls in all three categories – so, if anything, more police officers will be carrying out roles that could have been performed by people other than warranted police officers, as police staff jobs are back-filled by police officers.  The reduction in PCSOs will also impact directly on the uniformed presence on the streets.

These figures are not going to be good news for the Conservative Party who have been trying to pretend in their campaign to re-elect Boris Johnson as Mayor that police numbers are really improving and, of course, that there is no problem on London’s streets with violent crime and gang crime.

The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime has, of course, its own acronym: MOPC (which I keep reminding everyone is pronounced Mopsy).

But the acronym has, of course, a number of other (longer-established) uses, such as the Mount Olive Pickle Company and Mouse Plasmacytoma Cells.

However, the acronym MOPC is also used widely to denote mobile body armour in the form of Condor’s Modular Operator Plate Carrier, pictured here:

Not to be confused with the standard issue anti-stab MetVest:

I just thought you’d like to know …..

It is well known that there has been a major drop in crime in New York.  What is more that drop in crime was twice the rate of fall in crime across the United States and has been sustained over a twenty year period.

So what was the secret of success?  And could it be translated to the UK and to London in particular?

Professor Franklin Zimring of the School of Law at Berkeley has applied scientific analysis to the figures and has come up with a number of interesting conclusions.  The improvement was not so-called “zero tolerance” policing, focussing on stopping the spread of crime into new areas.  Instead, the results were delivered by “hot spot” policing – robust, sustained policing of those areas with the highest rate of crime (especially violent crime).

The aim should be harm-minimisation as far as things like drug use are concerned (disrupting public drug markets where associated violent crime tends to happen, for example, rather than trying to eliminate drug use itself).

Crucially, he also finds that police numbers matter – provided those numbers are directed to the areas with the highest crime and, when there, officers police “robustly”.

He is also not convinced that simply locking criminals up cuts crime.  As he puts it:

“We used to think that all we could do with high-rate offenders is lock ‘em up or they’re going to offend on the street. But NYC has 28 % fewer people locked up in 2011 than in 1990. And it has 80 % less crime. The [individual] criminals didn’t go anywhere. They’re just doing less crime. So the bedrock of prediction on which incapacitate imprisonment was built, has turned out to be demonstrably false. And the proof of that is in New York City.

The data shows that the criminal activity of people coming back to NYC from the prisons dropped as the crime decline proceeded. In 1990 the odds that a prison released from prison coming to NYC would get reconvicted of a felony over the next three years was 28 %. But over the next 17 years, the odds of being reconvicted of a felony dropped to 10 percent.

The street situation changed and so had the things that their friends were doing. People were now smoking marijuana and drinking wine. Cocaine use was down. Street robbery has gone down 84 %. Burglaries 86 %. And that meant that the people that the released offender used to hang out with as a persistent offender from a high-risk neighborhood, are no longer doing those things. So he’s not doing crimes with them.”

This obviously has implications for the current debates on prison numbers and suggests that Kenneth Clarke’s approach is potentially right, if – and it is a big if – the rest of  Zimring’s conclusions are taken on board.

So what else does his work mean for policy here?

It certainly implies that police numbers are important and that the last Labour Government (and the last Mayor in London) were right to boost the number of police.  The cuts envisaged by the present Government and those that are being carried out quietly in London by the present Mayor are therefore almost certainly unhelpful. (The lack of certainty derives from the fact that it does, of course, depend on what the police officers remaining are actually doing and whether their activity is in fact robustly tackling crime hot spots.)

It also suggests that policies favouring policing the suburbs at the expense of the areas with higher crime that tend to be in the inner cities are misconceived.

I suspect that the robust and sustained “disruptive” policing of crime hot spots is consistent with the approach that Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe would wish to follow.  It will be interesting to see whether this is encouraged by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC – pronounced “Mopsy”) or whether the MOPC will be nervous about the political implications in the run up to the Mayoral elections in May.

Press stories over the weekend have suggested that my colleague in the House of Lords, John Prescott, might consider standing as Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside in the autumn.

I have no idea whether he is seriously thinking of doing so – he didn’t mention it when I saw him on Thursday, but that doesn’t prove anything either way.

However, one thing I am certain of is that he is not the sort of person that David Cameron had in mind when he first dreamt up the idea of elected Police Commissioners.

Yet in many ways, John Prescott would be ideal.  He is high profile and well-known; he has a wealth of senior-level experience (Deputy Prime Minister after all – perhaps Nick Clegg ought to sacrifice/offer himself to the people of South Yorkshire); and he is more than robust enough to stand up to any Chief Constable and hold them to account.

And after all profile, experience and toughness are the core attributes of any potential Police and Crime Commissioner candidate.

This is a piece I have written for the Mayor Watch blog on the occasion of today’s last meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority:

“The Metropolitan Police Authority was established in July 2000 as a by-product of the legislation that also created the London Mayoralty, the GLA and the London Assembly.  Until then the Metropolitan Police had been solely accountable to the Home Secretary, who was uniquely the Police Authority for London.

The MPA is now to be abolished and replaced by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC – pronounced “MOPSY”) as a by-product of the legislation that will see Policing and Crime Commissioners elected outside London in November.

The MPA’s final meeting is taking place today and the MOPC will take over responsibility on Monday 16^th January.

So what did the MPA achieve in its eleven and a half years of existence?

The early years of the MPA saw a dramatic transformation in the Metropolitan Police. In 2000 morale in the Service was poor, more officers left the Met each month than joined (police numbers had declined each year for a decade), public confidence was low, financial controls were virtually non-existent (the Met had no system for telling if bills had been paid more than once) and the quality of many serious investigations was poor.  The first tasks of the new Authority included the introduction of financial controls and discipline; establishing a new culture of openness and accountability; and reversing the decline in the number of police officers so that the MPS saw the most significant increase in its size in its history.

This was followed by a sustained focus on turning round street crime and cutting burglary.  The MPA led the way nationally on the introduction of Police Community Support Officers and then the setting up of the first Safer Neighbourhood Teams before rolling them out across London.

This contribution led to a general increase in public confidence in the police service, but specific initiatives led by the MPA on stop and search, on hate crime, and on recruitment and retention of black and minority officers also changed perceptions of the Met.

Inevitably, the direction of travel changed somewhat with a change in administration in City Hall after the 2008 elections, but the MPA continued to deliver a much clearer visible accountability of the police in London than had existed before.

Certainly, throughout its life the MPA has ensured that far more information about the policing of London has been put in the public domain.  The MPA also meant that the Commissioner and senior officers were seen to answer questions in public at full Authority meetings and at its Committees.  And this was supplemented by detailed MPA scrutinies ranging from rape investigation and victim care to counter-terrorism policing, crime data recording to mental health policing, and landmark reports on the Stockwell shooting, of the Race and Faith Inquiry, and on public order policing.

So will all this disappear with the MOPC?

The first thing to emphasise is that London’s model will – as ever – be different from that in the rest of the country.  There will not be a directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioner.  Instead, the functions will be carried out by the MOPC, led by an appointed Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime.

The policing priorities will be set by the MOPC and it remains to be seen how much these will change from those previously set by the MPA with its more widely drawn membership.

The real danger is, of course, that much of the visible accountability and answerability will be lost.  Some will be provided by the London Assembly who will have a new and enhanced role in respect of policing and crime, but their focus – as envisaged by the new statute – will be very much on the MOPC and not on the police service itself.

How this will develop will depend on the personalities involved – both at the MOPC and on the Assembly – and on the willingness of the Met itself to be open and transparent.  There are certainly no guarantees on any of this, yet police accountability in the capital will remain as important as ever – as the events of the last few months have demonstrated.

Perhaps the message is watch this space.”

In March of last year I tried (innocently) to find out whether Home Office Ministers spent more time meeting the police leadership of the Metropolitan Police or the political leadership of the Metropolitan Police.

The saga – for anyone still listening – is reprised here.

In November, I formally raised the strange refusal of the Home Office to divulge this information with the Information Commissioner.

On 11th November his office responded saying:

“I have today spoken to the Home Office regarding your complaint; they have acknowledged there have been significant delays in responding to your information request.  I have been advised that you will be getting a response within the next five working days.”

You might think that this would be progress.  (Admittedly, the Information Commissioner’s Office were less confident saying that “If the Home Office responds and refuses to release the information you have asked for and you are dissatisfied, you may, after exhausting their internal complaints procedure, complain to us again.”  They’d clearly been there before.)

In any event, with mounting excitement that I was about to see a response from the Home Office I waited for five working days.

And then another five working days.

And then five more working days.

Suffering a patience failure (if not a sense of humour failure), I left a telephone message for the Information Commissioner.

And his office responded on 7th December saying:

“I have today spoken to the Home Office who have advised me that they have in fact not sent out any response to your information request.  In the light of this information I have passed the case to our case resolution team who will contact you as soon as possible to explain how your complaint will be progressed.”

And guess what?

I am still waiting.

There was a Private Notice Question in the House of Lords this afternoon from LibDem Peer, Lord Dholakia:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they propose to take to ensure that the security of the United Kingdom is not compromised on 30 November.”

This produced the following response from the Home Office Minister, Lord Henley:

“My Lords, the security of the UK border remains our top priority. Contingency plans are in place and we are satisfied that security will be maintained. We started training additional staff for contingency arrangements in April and adequate resources are now available. Any staff deployed to the front line will have received the training required to operate effectively. Arriving passengers will remain subject to checks at the border by appropriately trained staff.”

There then followed a series of increasingly bad-tempered exchanges between the Minister and Labour Peers with the Minister demanding that Labour Peers condemn the strike, whilst admitting that the Government had been planning for a strike since April. Here are the exchanges with Labour Peers (one of whom was me):

“Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, the Government have sponsored speculation about what they will, may or might do to maintain UK security, especially at the borders, on 30 November—everything from bringing in the Army to the idea of staff from the Prime Minister’s Office manning passport control points. However, people need and deserve stability. If they have booked a holiday that day, they need to know whether they can get away. If businesses have important customers coming to the UK, they need to know that their businesses will not be damaged. I should therefore be grateful if the Government would publish, clearly and fully, for the benefit of the country as a whole, what in detail they intend to do on Wednesday in relation to border security.

Lord Henley: My Lords, I am very sorry that the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition did not take the opportunity to condemn the strikes that are taking place on Wednesday, which would have been helpful. If all parties agreed that those strikes should not happen we would not have this problem. We shall be operating the appropriate checks with the appropriate people, appropriately trained to make sure that visitors—whether they are coming here as tourists, whether they are coming here for business or whether they are returning UK citizens—can get in without any disruption or with disruption minimised as much as possible. The noble Baroness will also be aware that this is an operational matter and for security reasons it would not be appropriate to comment in detail, as she wishes, on the arrangements.

Lord Tomlinson: Will the Minister comment on reports in today’s press that part of the police force is being drafted in to take over the role of the UK Border Agency at our borders and that their training is alleged to be merely 90 minutes? Is that adequate?

Lord Henley: My Lords, I would not believe—and I would recommend that the noble Lord should not believe—everything I read in the press. I can assure him and the House that everyone assisting on this matter will have the appropriate training necessary to do the job. Yes, some police will be involved but they will have the appropriate training to do the job that they need to do.

Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, the Minister said that staff started training in April. What were they training for in April?

Lord Henley: My Lords, any sensible organisation, knowing there was a risk of such things happening—something which has still not been condemned by noble Lords opposite and I am waiting for that condemnation to occur—would make the appropriate arrangements. The border agency started that last April.

…

Lord Grocott: Given that the Minister has repeated asked people on this side of the House to talk in terms of condemnation, can we take it as read that the Government condemn the cleaners, the dinner ladies, the low-paid workers and those threatened with a weakening of their pension entitlements and an increase in their contributions? Is the Government’s position that they condemn these people for trying in any way to defend their position?

Lord Henley: My Lords, I condemn the strike as it affects our security and the arrangements we are having to make. That is the condemnation I am still waiting to hear from the party opposite.

…

Lord Davies of Coity: My Lords, the Minister has repeatedly referred to this side of the House not condemning the strike. What I want to ask him is this—can he give a categorical assurance that the motivation of the coalition Government is security and not strike breaking?

Lord Henley: My Lords, as I made clear in my original answer, our first priority, our highest priority, our top priority is the security of the United Kingdom. If the noble Lord thinks that we are involved in strike breaking he should think again. We want to make sure that our borders are kept secure. We think that the unions are endangering that security by the actions they are taking. The offer is still open to talk to the Government and others and we wish they would take that up.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, of course our borders should be kept secure, but are the Government doing enough to negotiate with the unions on this point? Are the Government in fact making every effort to try to resolve this dispute rather than, as the Minister has told us, having been preparing since April for just this eventuality? Is it not that they actually wanted to provoke a strike, for whatever political reasons they may have?

Lord Henley: Come on, my Lords. The noble Lord knows perfectly well that the Government’s doors remain open and that the Government are prepared to negotiate. It is the unions who are being intransigent and it is the party opposite which is refusing to condemn an action that will possibly endanger our security. Because of the actions we have taken, and have been taking since April of this year, we think that we will be able to keep security at the appropriate level at the borders on Wednesday.

…

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall: My Lords, given that the Minister is so fixated on the possibility of getting the kind of statement that he would like to hear from these Benches, does he imagine that the people out there who are contemplating going on strike are mostly or even to a small extent members of the party I support? I submit that not only are they not, they are members of all parties and none, and what is preoccupying them is not the question of whether the Labour Party supports them but their concern for their future pension rights.

Lord Henley: My Lords, the noble Baroness accuses me of being fixated on this issue and perhaps I am somewhat naive to be so fixated on this issue. I do not know in which way the members of the unions involved happen to vote. I happen to know that those unions support the party opposite. That is why we are still waiting for that condemnation from the party opposite.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, does the Minister agree that any strike is a demonstration of failure? Does he further agree that the Government themselves have failed to resolve this strike?

Lord Henley: My Lords, I totally and utterly reject what the noble Baroness has said and again invite her, as the Leader of the Opposition in this House, to condemn this strike.”

Last Thursday, I reported the debate at the Metropolitan Police Authority about the possible wider use of Tasers in London.  There were considerable reservations about this expressed by some members of the Authority (and by some in the public gallery).

I am personally keen that there should be proper consultation and debate on the issue and I do not think the arguments are clearcut.

The use of any weapon by the police has got to be proportionate and appropriate to the risks involved.  Any weapon can cause more harm than originally intended.

However, temporarily incapacitating someone with a Taser, so that they can be restrained and arrested, is likely to be better than killing them by shooting a large hole in their chest or head with a firearm.

Nevertheless, putting a 50,000 volt charge through someone should not be done lightly – it is unlikely not to lead to adverse consequences in at least some circumstances.  But these risks need to be weighed against the risks of not using a Taser, such as the risks of harm coming to a member of the public or to a police officer by not quickly restraining someone who is running amok.

Therefore, this evening’s piece on the Inspector Gadget blog makes instructive reading.  His police force makes Tasers available to all front-line patrol teams, and he offers three recent incidents where Tasers have been deployed as part of routine patrol duties as follows:

“1. The usual call to a ‘male with a samurai sword’ running about in Ruraltown High Street threatening to kill passing members of the public, stripped to the waist (why are they always stripped to the waist?) high on something and very, very violent. TASER crew arrives within 4 minutes, draws TASER, red-dots the man and orders him to drop the sword.

In a miracle of instant recovery, all the man’s mental health and drug issues disappear and he drops the sword. A completely compliant arrest follows with no injuries to anyone.

Previously this would have required shields, large batons, a firearms unit and a long delay during which he could have killed anyone he wanted, including the first police officers on the scene.

2. A disqualified driver, known for violence against police officers, bailed out of a stolen vehicle after a pursuit. Armed with a 2 ft long iron bar in one hand and a knife in the other, he became cornered by the two policemen from the pursuing vehicle. Red-faced, drunk, very angry and screaming death threats, a stand-off ensued which without TASER would have taken hours to resolve (remember, the public don’t like it when we pile mob-handed onto one man). The TASER crew arrived within a few seconds and red-dotted him in the chest.

Another miracle occurred. Right in front of the police officers eyes, a complete change in character. Weapons dropped, hands behind the back and a compliant arrest.

3. My own patrol officers end a siege without calling for tactical response units and bringing the whole town to a halt for hours by using TASER on a male who is clearly intent on cutting his own throat, while at the same time threatening t0 stab any police officer or paramedic who approaches him. All this in the isle of a busy local supermarket.

In this case, TASER was fired at the man. He was immediately incapacitated and arrested without any injury to anyone. In the past, this could have been another Kingsbury or it could have taken hours and hours of negotiation, maybe even a fatal shooting by police.”

His accounts also accord with the experience in the Metropolitan Police, where – in more limited circumstances – Tasers have been deployed, and reported through monitoring arrangements to the – shortly to be abolished – Metropolitan Police Authority: in these cases too often the appearance of the red dot on someone’s chest (indicating the laser sights of the Taser) has been sufficient to persuade someone otherwise presenting a risk to themselves, members of the public or police officers to calm down and relinquish their weapon.

Inspector Gadget concludes in typical – but telling – style:

“Refusing to let us have TASER in case we shoot the wrong person is like refusing to let us have cars in case we run someone over, boots in case we kick someone in the head or a first aid kit in case we give the wrong treatment. On my team we take the deployment of TASER very seriously. I haven’t even heard the team joke about it.”

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, is reporting to the last ordinary meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority before it is due to be abolished in January.

This is the first (and possibly the last) time that the Authority has had the opportunity to discuss the remarks made by the Commissioner on LBC  when he announced that he had asked for a review of the availability of Tasers for officers called to violent incidents like the one in which four officers were injured in Kingsbury on the 19th November.  According to the Commissioner, he discussed the attack and possible responses with the Mayor and MPA Chair, Kit Malthouse AM (in a break from his paternity leave) before his scheduled LBC interview and his specific remarks were in response to a phoned-in question from a Met firearms officer.

The Commissioner pointed out that he was simply “reviewing the options” and that there would be “full discussion” before any final decisions are taken.  What is not clear is how and where such discussion will take place after the MPA is abolished.

In the meantime, members of the Police Authority raised substantial concerns and issues about wider use of Tasers. At least, the Commissioner recognised that this was not an operational decision for him alone and that there needed to be wider public consultation and that ultimately the Authority would need to take a view. Of course, after 16th January, the Authority will be the Mayor and the MOPC.