Police accused of failures over anti-social behaviour

The Chief Inspector of Constabulary Dennis O'Connor has published inspection "report cards" on the 43 Police Forces where he strongly criticises Police Forces for their responses to complaints of anti social behaviour. The report measures the forces across three headings, local policing, protection from harm and confidence. Forces are then graded Excellent, Good, Fair and Poor. The results are not promising with only 4 forces getting Good across the board and one force (Nottinghamshire) getting Poor across the board. Out of a total of 129 grades awarded only 4 were Excellent. The vast majority of grades were Fair and North Wales Police was graded Fair across the Board. In comparison the other 3 forces in Wales got one area graded as Good.

Personally I don't think this is good enough and this is the second inspection in 12 months where North Wales Police hasn't come up to the mark, the first occasion was the Policing Pledge inspection. The President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Hugh Orde in explaining away this report said,

The problem could only be fully solved with better links between organisations.
"The more we engage with partners, the more we have long-term solutions which actually work,"

What Sir Hugh says makes sense, but what he doesn't say is that it has been a statutory requirement under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, for partners to work together to reduce crime and disorder through the establishment of Community Safety Partnerships. The Community Safety Partnership in Wrecsam has anti social behaviour as an improvement priority with a target of reducing anti social behaviour by 6% and the latest report shows that the partnership is on track to achieve that target. I follow the work of the partnership in Wrecsam closely and they paint a very rosy picture of their achievements in meeting their targets and of the work they do but this report by Denis O'Connor would tend to cast some doubt on the partnership's success.

Its about time Community Safety Partnership's were inspected by the Inspectorate of Constabulary. We might then get a truer picture of the value and effectiveness of the Community Safety Partnership.