Police seek to claw back confidence

We hate to sound cynical, but must say that we think if nothing else, the Lincolnshire Police plan for the county for 2010-2013 is hopelessly over ambitious.
The force wants to pull itself up by its bootstraps after a recent spell which has seen it ranked bottom of the list of 43 forces in England and Wales in terms of public confidence; scrapping investigation into 9,650 reported crime investigations which they concluded there was no hope of solving; and a review by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary which named Lincolnshire as one of only four forces lacking the specialist skills and resources needed to manage murders, sexual assaults, and other serious offences, and said urgent work was needed to bring them up to national standards.
Now, the force says within three years it aims to be in the highest category of performance within the HMIC inspection of police authorities programme.
“In order to achieve this aspiration we know that we must continue to improve trust and confidence and
continue to cut crime. We also have to increase our detection rates and this year we intend to solve:
■ 46% more house burglaries
■ 150% more thefts from vehicles
150% more thefts from vehicles
■ 35% more assaults where injury is caused
■ 50% more offences of criminal damage”
We can’t quite work out how this is supposed to happen - but it sounds good on paper, which is usually all that matters these days.
To meet the oft-voiced demand for uniformed officers on the streets of Lincolnshire the plan says: “We are working hard to reduce the amount of paperwork that keeps officers in police stations, so that they can spend more time responding to your needs. We have already introduced a number of technological solutions to enable officers to spend more time on patrol within communities.”
Again, it sounds good - but will we actually see any changes?
Boston has been poorly served by our local police for many years, and to be honest we see no reason for that to change this late in the day.
Apparently Lincolnshire council taxpayers make a higher than average contribution to the costs of policing in the county and the force plans to achieve efficiency savings of at least £12 million over three years and to raise funding from sponsorship and other income generating initiatives, which will be ploughed back into front line policing.
Sponsorship? The mind boggles.
Certainly, the plan talks the talk - let’s wait and see whether it can walk the walk as well.
Read the plan in full by clicking here .
You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com   Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.

PS: Day Two at the Local Government Association annual conference, and  the weather for Bournemouth is expected to be cloudy with early drizzle and rain at first. Some brief sunny spells are expected to develop during the afternoon and evening period. Temperatures will be around the average for early July. Winds will be a moderate south-westerly. Not such a nice day, Councillors Austin.