Thanks to an alert UKColumn reader who picked up on the text and the hidden meaning, we can now reveal what Theresa has really got planned for policing in UK. She lets things slip in the following excerpts of her speech:
If responsibility for operational policing now lies squarely with Chief Constables, unimpeded by the Home Office, if responsibility for providing accountability now lies with the police and crime commissioners , unimpeded by the Home Office, If HMIC scrutinises police performance and the College of Policing provides training, sets standards and develops an evidence base, what is the role of the Home Office? ... The answer is emphatically not to duplicate, cut across or undermine Chief Constables, PCCs, HMIC or the College.
What she is really saying in her hypnotic language is that the police are to be under the control of a raft of unaccountable organisations. The Chief Constables are exposed as riddled with fraud corruption incompetence and more - and these are the men and women to run operational policing?
We have recently learned that Police Commissioners are almost impossible to remove from their posts whatever crime or misdemeanour they have committed. So just how are they to be forced to hold police to account? In any case they cannot interfere in police operations.
The College of Policing? A private company until it becomes a Statutory Body. ACPO, which Ms May ignores, is another unaccountable private company. HMIC which claims to be independent, is an appointed agent of the Crown and has no allegiance to the public whatsoever.
What Ms May clearly repeats is that the Home Office is not to duplicate, undermine, cut-across or impede these organisations and posts. She says more. She asks what the [new] role of the Home Office should be? Who gave Ms May permission to remove a publicly accountable Home Office from it's role of ensuring the proper, professional and accountable policing? Was this change debated in Westminster?
Undeterred Theresa sets out her stall:
the Home Office needs to build a relationship with the National Crime Agency similar to its relationship with the Security Service fight against terrorism ... the Home Office has an important duty to make sure national systems like the Police National Computer work effectively.
So policing is to be placed in the hands of a morass of unaccountable people and private companies, while the Home Office collaborates with the Security Services and helps create one of the largest databases of information on each member of the public ever known.
This woman is dangerous. She is creating a stasi police state, which is accountable to a very few people at the centre to a very murky web of control. Just think for a moment of the rapid privatisation of police 'support' functions such as investigation, prisoner handling and public enquiry lines by global companies such as G4S, Serco and IBM. Consider also the now obvious drive to combine English police districts into large regions - the very same regions demanded by the EU. Police centralisation with privatisation invariably means diminishing public accountability at every level. Consider also MAPPA, the secretive Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements which places a whole range of agencies police, Local Authorities, Educational Establishments, NHS, Mental Health and others, behind closed doors to determine who might be a 'threat' in their area? Just don't ask what kind of threat and to whom - they alone make up the charge.
Consider also the plan by the NHS under charity 'Together' to place mental health teams within local police stations. Still unsure of the plan? Then consider that many police forces are moving into joint office facilities with Local Authorities.
The next layer that Ms May is putting into place is the encirclement of the police by 'media' teams represented by the Association of Police Communicators. Hundreds of trained individuals whose task is to protect the police image and reputation - be it in day to day contact with the public or in the 'management' of media around high profile police investigations. Increasingly these 'media experts' provide an increasingly polished and sanitised media message to the public. Indeed the process is now to use such media people to drive public opinion to meet the needs of the police at the local and national level. Aside from mainstream media social media networks will be heavily targeted as a useful tool. An emerging and very well paid police super media guru in this field is Mr Matt Tapp.
It is not easy to understand who this man really is. He has moved from local newspaper reporter to Matt Tapp associates, with a few undeclared gaps, to win lucrative media training contracts with Dutch police, MET and a plethora of other local police forces.
His prowess doesn't stop there. He trains Councillors, University Students and others. He has been used as the Mr Media Fixit wherever child abuse cases emerge - Jersey, Soham, McCanns and Nottinghamshire Operation Daybreak as a few examples.
In the Netherlands he helped create Co-Creation 2.0, targeted at police media needs rather than big corporations. Nevermind BBC Crimewatch, the manipulation of the public through social media in line with aggressive corporate marketing opens a whole new can of worms. Is Mr Tapp close to being in control of the media output of every police force in England or is he just a watching eye to ensure that too much truth about policing never enters the public domain?
Ms May and Mr Tapp make an interesting couple on whom the freedom loving public should keep a very close eye.
