Top cop sets out force's problems

'TELL me about yourself," says Della Cannings. "I don't like talking to people I know nothing about." It's an unusual opening gambit at what is supposed to be a formal interview.

"I could say the same thing," I suggest.

She shoots me an appraising glance. "You know a lot more about me than I do about you," she says. "Or at least, you do if you've done your research."

Touche. We're standing in the car park at the McArthurGlen designer outlet near York. She's got a busy schedule, she was here to make a presentation, and when she learned the Evening Press wanted to interview her about police funding, suggested catching her here.

The financial problems besetting North Yorkshire police, and the fact council tax-payers are being asked to pay substantially more for the second year running, have been well documented. The chief constable herself has been touring the county telling people their police have been underfunded for years and the only way forward is more cash.

But why does the force never seem to have enough money? And what will we get if we pay more? These are the questions I'm here to ask.

The reasons normally given for the financial problems are the spiralling cost of police pensions, the rising cost of modern, hi-tech policing and the need to implement a host of new Government crime initiatives.

Talk to Della Cannings, however, and it becomes clear the malaise goes deeper. There are the hopelessly outdated structures the force is burdened with, for a start - and the public's unreasonable expectations. The Government is also to blame for the way it funds police forces and for the targets it sets - as is wasteful bureaucracy.

The chief constable admits the police don't always do a great job explaining what they're about and, as a result, the public does not understand the demands placed on them.

Take speed cameras. They may be effective at clamping down on speedsters, but if a camera snaps 50 people speeding, a vast amount of follow-up work then has to be done.

"Forms have to be processed, the data has to be taken off them, you have to set up all the necessary procedures to send out notices," she says. "Then you have got the man who is not happy to receive the ticket so he writes in. You have people replying to that. You've got people who don't pay, and have to be taken to court. Then you've got those who plead not guilty, so you have to prepare a court file. All this is back office work."

It's what she calls 'invisible' policing - and it means what members of the public see the police doing is just the tip of the iceberg.

That lack of understanding of the demands on the police is compounded, she says, by the public's Dixon Of Dock Green mentality - the desire for a return to the days of the local bobby who was always there, ready for a chat and a cup of tea.

But the world was a very different place in those days, she points out. PC Dixon wouldn't have had to bother recording crimes, he wouldn't have had targets - and the criminals he was dealing with would have been locals probably well known in the community. "Today, we're dealing with mobile, sophisticated criminals, globally and internationally, who don't recognise borders." Criminals such as the Internet paedophiles being investigated in Operation Ore.

So the police face a dilemma. The public want officers on the street. The police would rather target their resources for an intelligent approach to tackling crime.

"It is easy to flood an area and take out low-level suppliers of drugs," the chief constable says. "But then the drug people will just replace them. That's not going to stop the heinous business in drugs."

Much more effective, she says, is to gather intelligence about the drugs masterminds - then bring them to account before the courts themselves.

Which brings her to the need for modernisation. The North Yorkshire force is like an old distribution centre, she says. "Think of an old shoe warehouse. An old building with a staircase and shelving, and people off-loading from the manufacturer, carrying boxes up and putting them on shelves ready to take to the retailer.

"There's only a certain throughput you can get, because only one person can get up the stairs at a time. But if you put that same floorspace in a modern, open-plan office with bar coding and so-on, you could get massive throughput. The police service is like that."

It needs root and branch modernisation, in other words, to change the old, cumbersome way of doing things. That, ultimately, would release extra police officers to do the things they should be doing - fighting crime. But it will require investment.

"It's like if you know the car is falling to pieces," she says. "You know you have a big bill coming up, but you don't have the money for a new car. If you had £500, you could use that to buy a car. But you need that pump priming to take things forward."

AND the need for modernisation and new technology isn't the only pressure on funding. The Government's passion for new initiatives financed with 'ring-fenced' cash brings problems of its own.

A police force is never quite sure whether the funding for a new initiative one year will still be there next year - and much of the money is given to crime-fighting 'partnerships' involving the police and other agencies such as local councils, rather than directly to the police themselves.

The trouble with that is bureaucracy. "Money can get absorbed by running costs," she says. "We don't want money just soaked up by providing office accommodation and staff. We need to ask 'what difference does it make?'"

The bottom line is we will only get the police service we pay for. "If you pay for a Trabant, you get a Trabant service," she says. "If you want a Morris Marina, you have to pay for it."

What really worries her is the thought that, if the police don't get the funds they need, there will have to be cut-backs. The police do all kinds of things they are not, strictly speaking, expected to do, such as going out in the middle of the night to help an elderly man who's fallen out of bed but doesn't want to bother the hospital, or asking noisy party-goers to keep down the noise at night. That really is the job of the council's environmental health officer - but try getting hold of him at 1am.

The police have to meet Government targets on reducing mainstream crime, because if they don't they risk being classed as a "failing force" and funding will be cut. So if there is a budget shortfall, it is these 'softer' areas of policing that would suffer, Ms Cannings points out. And rural policing is hit too because Government crime targets apply mainly to urban areas.

That is a sobering thought. "They (Rural communities) have lost post offices and shops, they have had so many services withdrawn," she says. "And whilst they don't think they have enough police now, at least they have us."

Updated: 11:40 Friday, January 24, 2003