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Rent-a-cop: coming to a Southampton 'community' near you

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Well if the bouncers giving fines thread got you miffed, this certainly won't help.

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/4515649.Hire_your_own__cops_/

The source is notoriously untrustworthy so I checked it out and it appears this is true:

This the section of their website in which they set out their powers of arrest, and guess what?! It all comes from the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 - another unintended consequence of the government's addiction to sweeping powers.

This is being trialled in SO15 - the Shirley area. I expect Shirley Police Station to be inundated with complaints very soon (just to add to all the other existing things going on).

They're also claiming that they will begin patrols outside schools - this will get nasty.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    For some reason one of my local towns started paying for a private security firm to patrol on a Friday and Saturday night.

    We had to threaten one of them with arrest for impersonating police, and the other for confiscating beer off people when they had no lawful right.

    They were a bunch of morons who quite rightfully got sacked.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    For some reason one of my local towns started paying for a private security firm to patrol on a Friday and Saturday night.

    We had to threaten one of them with arrest for impersonating police, and the other for confiscating beer off people when they had no lawful right.

    They were a bunch of morons who quite rightfully got sacked.

    It is utter madness for a public service to be undermined in this way, especially by local council/government.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It is utter madness for a public service to be undermined in this way, especially by local council/government.



    And god knows why they were bothering. The money they were paying would have paid for a PCSO/PC/Special to patrol at the same time. Someone with powers and training.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I can't work that out either...well I can actually - I think it's broadly the result of several things:

    1) The area in which the trial is being held has progressively gotten worse in terms of anti social behaviour as the decade has gone on.

    2) Trust in the Police is low and has been decreasing in a lot of the affected areas, and I'm sorry to say that I have first hand experience of why this is the case (although I also have experience of a few officers trying their level best to build relations with the kids in the community when they really have no chance of winning).

    Mainly this trend is due to Police indifference, lack of response and attitude - the perception is that the Police are aloof, conscending and rude much of the time - which compounds an existing (and not always grounded) suspicion of the Police.

    3) The town has been transformed, as many provincial towns have, by the emergence of an economy where alcohol is pervasive in every corner shop, on every street.

    4) Migration from London has helped fuel a gang culture in the city and drug crime has risen, although it continues to be lower than other places.

    5) Unemployment has been a problem for several generations and what we are seeing now are also the output of several failing schools in the area.

    6) The local media and particularly the Daily Echo love nothing more than to elevate and sensationalise any kind of crime story, fuelling fear of crime - Although it should be pointed out that reported crime for Southampton has risen sharply to the point where it had one of the highest per capita rates of assaults against the person in 2008.

    7) New Labour - Unfortunately, this is another unintended consequence of the Labour government's carpet-bombing approach to legislation.

    I've been heavily (and I think, rightly) critical of the Police as an institution of late, but replacing them with jokers like this is insane - any reform or improvement needs to be done to existing services, not gimmicky ones like this.

    God knows what this is going to do to morale - I just hope some residents resist this by refusing to cooperate with them and being sharp in their perception of them overstepping their already too far mark.
  • SkiveSkive Posts: 15,282 Skive's The Limit
    Good luck to any of them if they try and 'arrest' me.
    Weekender Offender 
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I can't work that out either...well I can actually - I think it's broadly the result of several things:

    1) The area in which the trial is being held has progressively gotten worse in terms of anti social behaviour as the decade has gone on.

    2) Trust in the Police is low and has been decreasing in a lot of the affected areas, and I'm sorry to say that I have first hand experience of why this is the case (although I also have experience of a few officers trying their level best to build relations with the kids in the community when they really have no chance of winning).

    Mainly this trend is due to Police indifference, lack of response and attitude - the perception is that the Police are aloof, conscending and rude much of the time - which compounds an existing (and not always grounded) suspicion of the Police.

    3) The town has been transformed, as many provincial towns have, by the emergence of an economy where alcohol is pervasive in every corner shop, on every street.

    4) Migration from London has helped fuel a gang culture in the city and drug crime has risen, although it continues to be lower than other places.

    5) Unemployment has been a problem for several generations and what we are seeing now are also the output of several failing schools in the area.

    6) The local media and particularly the Daily Echo love nothing more than to elevate and sensationalise any kind of crime story, fuelling fear of crime - Although it should be pointed out that reported crime for Southampton has risen sharply to the point where it had one of the highest per capita rates of assaults against the person in 2008.

    7) New Labour - Unfortunately, this is another unintended consequence of the Labour government's carpet-bombing approach to legislation.

    I've been heavily (and I think, rightly) critical of the Police as an institution of late, but replacing them with jokers like this is insane - any reform or improvement needs to be done to existing services, not gimmicky ones like this.

    God knows what this is going to do to morale - I just hope some residents resist this by refusing to cooperate with them and being sharp in their perception of them overstepping their already too far mark.



    Thats the thing, the area was a bad area, but over the years with lots of hard work it has improved greatly. All the security guards did was piss everyone off and make more work for us. We got more complaints about them than we did anything else.
    This was a couple of years ago mind, and thankfully the practice of using private security firms in our city seems to have died off.
    I still detest the idea of allowing non-police staff the power to issue fines for anything other than parking or dropping litter.

    Skive, they can't. If they try it's an assault. Unless you've comitted an indictable offence.....
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Happy ending apparently - local rag's pub-stool-poll shows overwhelmingly people think this is a bad gig.

    Owner of the firm is due in court charged with impersonating a police officer.
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