[QUOTE=scastle]No, but they may be pulled off any investigations they are involved in to help solve more politically conveniant crimes.[/qoute]
Like speed cameras and local burglaries?
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Originally Posted by scastle
The problem is, it won't just be one person will it? At the very least he'll need a Personal Assistant (OK, these don't cost an awful lot relatively) and other office staff.
It's also worth bearing in mind that those 17 people are all councillors (who are already elected) or magistrates, and reading that article it sounds like they are on the Police Authority part time (so shouldn't be drawing a full-time salary).
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Which the PA members already have so instead of 17 assistants they'll be just one. Now I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure one personal assistant won't be paid the same salary as 17 personal assistants, same as one commisioner won't be paid the equivalent of 17 PA members salaries, even part time salaries!
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Originally Posted by scastle
The problem with a commissioner (as I see it) is, as is stated in the article, he or she may have one particular belief that he or she thinks is more important than other crimes. For instance, a commissioner of a certain Ethnic group (for example) may place more importance on racially motivated crime, and therefore influence the Chief Constable* to devote more resources to race crimes.
The current system is designed (as I understand it) to counteract the possibility of the Authority becoming fixated with one issue.
*Yes, I do realise that Chief Constables could do this anyway. I just think it's important for the Police to be as impartial as possible.
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Elected on policies which the public want implimented, so if the commisioner gets voted in stating one of his policies will be to tackle race hate crimes, then by virtue of being voted in, his policies, all of them, are what the public want.
It will be up to the cheif constable to organise his forces to tackle race hate crimes, not the commisioner, therefore it will be up to the chief constable to ensure that other crimes are not ignored.
If crimes do end up being ignored, then the responsibility will be with the cheif constable (just as it is now) and not the commisioner.
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Originally Posted by Graham
If I had *said* that "the Police do checks on people working with children" you would have been right.
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Really?
In response to Pierre mentioning the backlog in the employee checks you said:
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Originally Posted by Graham
Valuable and scarce resources are being expended to deal with a problem which is actually *incredibly* rare in comparison to burglaries, violence and other such crimes, because of the high profile that case got.
The *fact* of the matter is that a child is still much more likely to be abused or harmed or even killed by a close family member rather than a stranger or someone working as a caretaker, yet this fact is swamped by a mass of unreasoning emotion.
You consider it a "small price", but consider the many people who may have been mugged or had their houses broken into because resources that could have been used to deal with the criminals who commit those common offences were being dedicated to something that that is extremely rare.
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Now, as I said, no police resources are being dedicated to checking on the safety of employees working with children, and the people who do the checking don't deal with criminals who mug or break into houses.
The statement I made regarding political influence wasn't directed at you, hence the line break.
So, lets go over things for clarity:
The commisioner will be replacing a large amount of expensive beurocracy
The commisioner will be voted in on the merits of his policies
It will be up to the cheif constable to impliment those policies within operational expectations
The cheif constable will have operational independance as he currently does.
YOU could be the commisioner