Gwent’s Police and Crime Commissioner has said local public meetings with officers will continue until there is something better.
Partnerships and Communities Together (PACT) meetings were established to allow local communities to highlight their concerns and identify priorities for their Neighbourhood Policing Teams and other partner members to address.
But Police and Crime Commissioner Ian Johnston ordered a review of their effectiveness which led many to believe they would be scrapped in the near future.
Mr Johnston said: “PACT as we know it has been reviewed with partners with the aim of further improving community engagement with communities throughout Gwent.
“However, as we have reiterated before, this does not mean that Gwent Police are withdrawing from engagement with the public.
“In fact, the purpose of the review was to make sure that there are better arrangements in place to allow people to engage with police and partners in a more meaningful way.
“Engagement between the public and the Force, as always, will still be paramount and will continue to be at the heart of everything we do. I am confident that where the current arrangements are working well they will be continued and enhanced but where meetings are not attended by the public, other methods will be put in place.
“There has to be engagement between the public and local policing teams. The problem is, when it fails to deliver, it can damage this important relationship. However, I am encouraged by the steps that are being taken to address this.
“It’s also important to add that PACT won’t go until it has been replaced by something which meets the requirements of the community and the other partners effectively.
“As we move away from some of these ineffective meetings we will need to allow time for local officers to agree alternate arrangements with the community. We have asked that these arrangements are in place and in action by March 2014.”
I am pleased that Commissioner Johnston believes that public engagement with the police is important. It is a long practised tradition that British police are civilians in uniform who police us with our consent. This is in sharp contrast to many other police forces around the world. To do this effectively there needs to be a mechanism whereby the public can speak to the police in open forum.
The PACT process where I live, St. Martin’s ward Caerffili, has not been successful and attendances have fallen from around 50-60 people to six in the last meeting. In my view this situation has arisen because of the way meetings have been run. Examples of poor organisation and public representation include the appointment of a chair person with no connection to the police and no mandate from the public who were, at that time, attending in good numbers. This failed experiment did not last long, at one meeting there was only one member of the public present and at another just three. We used to have four meetings a year which the police and some councillors wished to reduce to three. A vote was taken and the meeting voted overwhelmingly to retain quarterly meetings. Despite this the number of meetings was reduced. Another example is the selection of one of the PACT priorities at the last meeting being apparently chosen by councillors and police after the meeting closed, rather than the people present. The latter was reported to me as the meeting date had been selected on the same night as a Town Council meeting and both I and all the other town councillors were unable to attend.
PACT is not a sacred cow and if it is decided to discontinue these meetings that is fine; so long as there is a viable alternative where the public can speak freely to the police and vote on the issues that they wish the police to concentrate on. There are a two pre-requisites for PACT, or another type of meeting, to succeed. Firstly the police must host this meeting and a senior police officer must be present. There is no point whatsoever in a police meeting that is attended only by councillors and lower ranking police officers and CPSOs. People will only sacrifice some of their time of they feel that the meeting can make a difference to the way their community is policed. Let us hope that Commissioner Johnston can rejuvenate the PACT or replace it with something better. I am firmly of the belief that he can, so long as he includes the two vital first steps I mention.