David Copperfield, a former Pc now serving in Canada, explains why his new force is so much better – and cheaper – for the public.
The prophets of doom say Home Office cuts will hand Britain’s streets to criminals: 60,000 police jobs could go, says the BBC; the Association of Chief Police Officers thinks 20,000 bobbies could be sacked. I read these reports from across the Atlantic – having left the British police to join a force in Canada two years ago – with bemusement. My experience tells me that you could easily slash billions from budgets and actually improve policing, which is now a job creation scheme for bureaucrats.
I now carry a gun, and I’m probably a bit slimmer than the average Manchester bobby (as a result of a compulsory annual fitness test and a well-equipped gym at work), but my responsibilities are similar: I investigate everything from murders to school bullying; I enforce traffic laws; I give out parking tickets; and I patrol the streets. People still ask me for the time, directions to the nearest bus station, and what the drink-drive limit is.
So how do both forces stack up? Well, there are 10 violent crimes per 1,000 people in Edmonton; in Greater Manchester, Home Office statistics show 16 offences of violence per 1,000 people (in Manchester itself, the figure is nearly 24/1,000, and in Britain as a whole, 15/1,000).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, our 2009 Citizen Survey shows that 89 per cent of residents “have a lot of confidence in the Edmonton Police Service”, with 66 per cent saying they feel safe walking alone in their neighbourhood after dark. In the GMP area, only 50 per cent of people think the police are doing an “excellent or good” job, which leaves an awful lot of unhappy taxpayers.
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More evidence that bureaucracy stifles the service that the police provide.
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