Time to ring the changes in Sussex policing.
By Paul Richards
Labour & Co-operative candidate for Sussex police and crime commissioner.
The New Year brings us the prospect and promise of change. As Tennyson tells us: “Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come and whispers ‘it will be happier’”. We can but hope that 2024 brings change to our country and our county. The police and crime commissioner election is on 2 May, when all voters across East and West Sussex, from Hastings to Chichester, and across Brighton & Hove, will get a vote. This gives us a real chance to make the changes we need.
I am standing as your police and crime commissioner because I believe that local communities in Brighton & Hove, along the Sussex coast, in the towns, and in the villages, are being let down by the Tories. Our communities are plagued by antisocial behaviour, looting from shops, burglary and street robbery, hate crimes, and violence towards women and girls.
The Tories have been in Government for 14 years, and one of the first things Conservative ministers did was tosavagely cut Sussex police numbers. Police forces saw a 30% cut in police numbers from 2010 to 2022, according to the Home Office. Tens of thousands of police were lost from our streets.
We are still reaping the whirlwind of this public policy catastrophe, with lawless high streets, low conviction rates, and a sense that you hardly ever see a police officer patrolling your neighbourhood. This must change.
As your Labour & Co-operative police and crime commissioner (PCC), I resolve to:
· Introduce stronger neighbourhood police teams, with visible patrols, and swifter response times. We know that visible policing not only reassures citizens, it also deters criminals. The opposite is true: if we cede the ground, and vacate our public spaces, the vacuum is filled by criminals. There must be police on our streets and estates if we are to prevent, detect, and punish crime.
· Launch a war on looting from shops. I have met with shop owners in Worthing and Brighton, managers, and workers who tell me that shop-lifting is out of control. Organised crime gangs are organising theft to order, supplying local car boot sales and local restaurants with looted food, booze, and pharmaceuticals, and getting away with it. We need the police to turn up, to provide more CCTV, face recognition, and radio systems for shops, and faster conviction rates for the gangs behind looting. Because many of the regular thieves, who are well-known to local shop staff, are addicts, we need to tackle addiction to drink and drugs.
· Provide more youth services. I have seen the great work of my local boxing club in Eastbourne, and it is obvious that across Sussex we need more services for young people — boxing clubs, youth clubs, football clubs, sea scouts, woodcraft folk, clean-up campaigns, local volunteering, or whatever. As a dad, I know that young people have seen their local schemes and clubs cut back, leaving them with little to do apart from hanging about the town centres. Of course, not every young person commits antisocial behaviour, and young people are more likely to be victims of crime. But it is obvious that we turn our backs on young people, a minority will turn to crime.
· Support for victims and witnesses. The British criminal justice system is broken. Police stations are closed, or open only part of the time. Magistrates’ courts have shut, leaving huge backlogs. HM Courts and Tribunal Service reports that the record courts backlog increased every month in 2023. Victims of crime are often treated abysmally, suffering the trauma not only of the crime, but also their experience of the justice system. Rape cases, if they ever reach courts, are taking two years on average to complete, according to the charity Rape Crisis. People have lost faith that if they report a crime that anything will happen, other than their family would run the risk of reprisals. We must rebalance the system towards the citizen and away from the criminal, and support victims and witnesses at every stage.
The New Year is a chance to change our ways, and to resolve to do things differently. Rishi Sunak’s candidate in this election wants another four years, after 12 years already in post. Do you really feel she deserves it? Do you feel policing in Sussex is better than 12 years ago? Do you feel safer and more secure? Do we really want more of the same?
The only way to beat the Conservative candidate in Sussex on 2 May is to loan your vote to Labour. It’s a classic two-horse race fought under the first-past-the-post election system, with Labour in the strong second place. If you want change, and even if you normally vote for another party, I am asking you to loan Labour your vote this time. This time, we can vote for the change we want to see across Sussex. Like Tennyson, I believe the New Year is time to ‘ring out the old, ring in the new…ring out the false, ring in the true’.
