Sir,
The standard of law enforcement in Tenby leaves a great deal to be desired and Mr. Ken Fryer (Observer, October 4) is correct to blame this on the senior officers of the Dyfed Powys Police rather than on the junior officers who do their best in more than difficult circumstances. However, to be fair, it should also be recognised that the senior officers are themselves victims of the 'business management culture' that infected all public services some three decades ago.
Consequences of this infection are manifested with more managers in the NHS than there are hospital beds, teachers spending more time on administrative tasks than they do teaching and the classic instance where a council closed a fire station on the grounds that there had been no fires in the previous two years. In the police force the senior ranks are no longer leaders but managers and far more of them have qualifications in business management than in law and order related subjects.
For over a century the objectives of the police force, in order of priority were:
(a) Protection of life; (b) protection of property; (c) prevention of crime and (d) detection of crime.
With the advent of the 'business management culture', this all changed and police deployment has to be justified by a tangible result. A crime prevented produces no tangible result so deployment became reactive to reported crime. It is euphemistically referred to as 'intelligence led policing' but since there are virtually no police officers on the streets, hence no sources of 'intelligence', it should be more correctly termed statistically led policing. Everyone knows how reliable statistics can be!
The majority of senior management in the police force talk about 'targeting certain crimes' or 'according priority to certain areas' because of their limited resources. This is just glib excuse for their failure over a period of years to do their 'homework' properly to ensure that they did have the necessary manpower to discharge their legal responsibilities.
The role of the police force is to enforce all laws impartially and to do otherwise and select which laws to enforce and which to ignore is merely usurping the role of Parliament. It also opens the door to public perceptions of incompetence and corruption. Occasionally there is reference by a more responsible senior officer to a policy of 'zero tolerance', which is just another way of saying enforcing the law.
Yobbish behaviour particularly that associated with Stag and Hen parties has become prevalent in Tenby but earlier, active policing of the streets could have prevented the problem reaching its present level. Even now the police statistics do not reveal the true extent of the problem because manpower constraints do not allow the few officers on the streets to take appropriate action.
The net result is that members of the public, like Mr. Fryer, have no confidence in the police and the yobs/criminals have no respect for the police.
J. H. T. Griffiths.
3 Scotsborough View,
Tenby.