Targets Would Pile Pressure On Police

ANY return to police targets in exchange for more officers will heap yet more pressure on the service, according to South Yorkshire Police Federation.

One of the Government’s highest-profile election pledges was to recruit 20,000 extra police officers.

But some Chief Constables fear it could come with a return to targets being imposed.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Lincolnshire Police Chief Constable Bill Skelly warned the Government was “going down the road of targets”, which would create “unintended” consequences.

And it is not a road that South Yorkshire Police Federation Chairman Steve Kent wants to venture down.

He said: “Targets are very dangerous things. If you give officers targets, you put them under pressure to make decisions that they wouldn’t otherwise make. If you look at stop/search, you get officers going out potentially searching people for the wrong reason, which obviously we would never want our officers to do.

“I am absolutely against the target culture. We’ve already got bureaucracy with HMICFRS, and we’re assessed against what we do and what we don’t do, so we don’t need any more of that.”

Steve is concerned that introducing targets would skew officers’ judgement and that it could potentially undo a lot of work gone into making the force more transparent.

He said: “Officers would feel unduly pressured. It sometimes creeps in with a bit of misguided mismanagement today when you get officers expected to make so many arrests or so many stop/searches.

“It takes away the officer’s discretion and common sense of the situation. Bringing in a target culture could just completely damage any kind of relationships we have [in communities].

“If you give officers increased numbers out there and officers actually have time to go and proactively look for stuff, they will find it. So naturally, stop/searches and arrests will rise for carrying weapons, as we’ve seen with the Met.

“But that has to be a natural process; it can’t be enforced by targets. Officers are under enough pressure as it is, I would absolutely oppose targets as a red line.”

Steve is not convinced the promised extra 20,000 officers will have the big impact the Government wants either.

He explained: “All they’re doing by giving us the extra 20,000, which I’m grateful for, is repairing the damage that’s already been done and getting us back to actually where we need to be to operate properly.

“Unless they’re going to put another 20,000 in on top of that, I don’t think they can necessarily expect the type of utterly drastic changes that they’re going to need.”