A friend just got a letter through the mail from the Wycombe Public Safety Team. What is interesting is that they live on a nice middle class estate. So what sort of targeting is being applied to this? Political or policing? Is this really targeting a problem or trying to impress a ross ection of the electorate that 'something is being done'?
On the one hand what they are trying to do is very laudable. They want to help people who’s life is being made a misery by anti-social behaviour. But for me it feels more like a Stasi approach to getting the population to ‘spy’ and report on each other.
The council and members of the police now are working in one team and sharing an office. Co-operation is OK but co-habitation and joint targets and objectives? That starts to feel uncomfortable. Who makes a decision on what is anti-social and where does it start to drift into cross cultural intolerance? Will the council apply this fairly? As a thought I wonder how the public feel about the anti-social nature of a fortnightly bin collection or the fact that my waste paper box does not have a lid so when it rains the paper disintegrates everywhere? What about the fact whenever I pass my local council office many lights seem to be on? Is it not anti-social to be so poor at energy efficiency.
Back to the anti-social information pack (3 pieces of paper and a glossy A4 brochure – how much did that cost to mail beyond the 24p postage?). The council helpfully defines anti-social behaviour as ‘behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons…’. Now that is a wide definition. The council helpfully enclose instructions on gathering photos and sound recordings of the incident. You can name witnesses even if they did not give permission to be included. You are encouraged to keep an Incident Diary Blog and include your name and details. It does say that the form maybe uses in any court case and even without your name will be passed to the defendant and his team.
The example they use on the form is ‘loud noise from a stereo….gave me a headache very upsetting.’
Now I wonder if I can complain about the man opposite who always mows the lawn without his shirt on. He is no Adonis and I find it upsetting. He also has poor taste in shirts when he wears one. I find his clothes taste ‘alarming’.
Now what about the neighbours children? They are always playing in the street. Streets are for cars and they should be upstairs playing on their computers.
Important action but what is the main result – apart from encourage people to use more forms, generate more statistics, and have to recruit and manage more teams? Is it not risking turning us into a nation of ‘walkers and stalkers’? This seems very much in line with Central Government policy after the recent experiment and announcement of ‘harassment’ and in your face policing of SUSPECTS announced by Jackie Smith.
A return to the discredited ‘sus’ laws used mainly against ethnic minorities in the 1970’s and 1980’s but now with added ‘people power’.