On Thursday, May 2 there are elections for the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner. Rye News has asked all four candidates for their thoughts on policing in Rye.
Jonathan Kent – Green
If there are no police officers free to respond to your 999 or 101 call about antisocial behaviour, likely as not it’s because they’re helping someone in mental health crisis. When my fellow candidates and I met with Sussex’s Chief Constable, Jo Shiner, earlier this month she pulled no punches. She often has multiple two-person teams queuing for hours, waiting to hand over people with serious mental health issues to A&E. It’s a significant proportion of available police resources for the county! Officers don’t want to be the first port of call for people in mental health crisis, not because they don’t care, but because they’re not the people best placed to help. But there’s no one else available to step in.
Fourteen years of austerity means our social services are understaffed and overstretched. The mentally ill often have no one to turn to. Meanwhile anyone who has had to turn to the NHS lately knows it’s in meltdown; the result of a decade and a half of being underfunded and poorly managed by government. There’s often no one free to receive people in crisis into the health system.
No party can claim to be champions of law and order if it’s unable to see crime and antisocial behaviour in context. Yes, actions should have consequences, but that also goes for the actions or the inaction of those in government. It’s not just a mental health epidemic we’re facing, it’s poverty and poverty of opportunity. Jobs don’t pay enough. Young people have few places to go. People are struggling to pay for rent and heat and food. If there’s an uptick in antisocial behaviour is anyone really surprised? The police certainly aren’t. They have to pick up the pieces as with the spate of incidents around Rye and Rye Harbour earlier this year. It might help to have politicians in government who didn’t seem to deserve ASBOs themselves.
So what would I do as a Green Police and Crime Commissioner? I’d prioritise strengthening links between officers and communities like Rye at every level. I don’t want a sense of them and us. I want officers to be seen and feel like part of a bigger ‘us’ that also includes those who might otherwise get involved with antisocial behaviour.
Such ideas have been at the heart of British policing for nearly 200 years. We don’t need to reinvent them, just give them new life.
VOTING INFORMATION
You can find your polling station here: https://www.rother.gov.uk/findmynearest
You will need proof of ID to vote in person, the official Electoral Commission guidance is here:
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-elections/voter-id
Image Credits: Jonathan Kent .