CCTV displaces crime to areas which are not covered by surveillance, Ray Le'Monde urges the West Midlands Police to reconsider their policy of cutting back daytime response to commercial alarms and work with the security industry through ACPO to achieve a universal police policy.
The decision by West Midlands Police to withdraw response to the vast bulk of intruder alarms for most of the time has now provoked the great debate, which as usual is mired in recriminations and finger pointing associated with the present day culture of blame.

Operationally the police service as a whole is under massive pressures: lower than needed manpower, constant high profile criticism of their policies in the press towards minority groups, race relations and the apparent willingness to criminalise society as a whole rather than tackle what the public perceive to be the real crimes.

On top of this their budgets are at best being pegged and in some instances even reduced, so they are expected to do much more for far less.

Something has to give and West Midlands have decided that it will be response to alarms.

The real disappointment of their decision is that they gave insufficient notice to enable the clients and/or their insurers the opportunity to put alternative procedures in place, nor did they take the issue through the ACPO committees which have always been recognised as the conduit for policy changes.

The fear of crime continues to be a major driving force in crime prevention activities, so the ever-growing number of intruder alarms will continue unabated. Given the perception that the police service is to become even more invisible, the need to protect oneself by other means will get even stronger.

The West Midlands' decision to change policy without reasonable notice and without consulting ACPO creates an appearance of aloofness that not only damages ACPO — by demonstrating that each force will do its own thing despite the assurances of ACPO that it is the body that helps establish common policy — but also distances the police service even further from the commercial world with which it seeks to establish even stronger partnerships.

While this decision may have been made in haste, and at best may be deferred for a period, it is probably inevitable that the police service will restrict its response to specific incidents. However, unless the basic platform for such a policy is agreed through ACPO, the variations that each police authority may implement will cause confusion to the public at large and do nothing for the goodwill that must exist between the populace and the police to enable them to even begin to do their job with their present numbers.

Source

SMT

Postscript

Ray Le'Monde is managing director of the Active Security Group