Bedfordshire’s police and crime commissioner (PCC) has invited Bedford Independent readers to follow Bedfordshire Police on social media or go on a ride-along, so they can see how busy Bedford’s officers are.
The Bedford Independent recently received a letter where the correspondent stated they had not seen one police officer despite “numerous” visits to the town centre.
Letters: “Come on PCC, get some coppers on the streets”
“What l have seen,” the letter said. “Is drunks, drug taking and unsavoury behaviour, including people urinating at the side of the bus station in full public view, and this is going on continuously during the day.”
The commissioner (PCC), Festus Akinbusoye, said: “All this gentleman needs to do is to follow the Bedford Community Policing Team on Facebook and he’ll see [what they are doing].
“They are the most engaging in terms of community activities of all of the community police teams. They are constantly nicking persistent shoplifters, etc., in the town centre.
“Obviously I follow all of them so I see the activities and I see what they are doing – they are constantly doing stuff in the town centre. The fact that he’s not there when they are there, doesn’t mean that they’re [they’ve] not [been] there.
“If he would like to do a ride along [with officers] I can arrange that for him,” he offered.
Police aren’t the only ones dealing with issues
The PCC said that not all the problems in the town centre are a police matter alone.
“For example, many of these people have got addiction problems, they’ve got mental health problems,” he said.
“The police arresting someone who’s an alcoholic and is sleeping rough in the town centre – what’s going to happen when you take them to court?
“They’re not going to get a sentence of life in prison, they’ll be out the following day, or the same day.
“So to constantly focus on some of these societal problems and to posture them as though the solution to them is just the police, it is one, setting the police up to fail.
“And secondly, it’s losing sight of the wider situation that’s causing some of these issues in our town centres and across the county,” he said.
The commissioner said he had already spoken to the new Bedford mayor about his vision to clean up the town centre.
“Which of course I will support in whatever way that I can,” he said. “We have, of course, some significant problems in Bedfordshire around organised crime gangs and some very, very, dangerous individuals.
“But the chief constable has got to decide where he deploys his [resources] without also allowing the lower risk stuff to become worse.
“That’s just the reality of things, and I’ve been open about this with the public, and I’ll be very happy to have that same conversation with that gentleman as well,” he said.
by John Guinn
Local Democracy Reporter
