Power to the wrong people.
Online crime maps ‘putting power in the hands of the people’ scream the headlines.
They would appear to be accurate – going onto the fancy new police web site HERE today I tapped in Brandon, Suffolk to see what crime was like these days in an area previously famed only for public defaecation
Hmmn. It seems Brandon is no longer covered by any police force.
Same result for the highly popular muggers paradise known as the Bus Station in Liverpool 12.
This new web site will be very popular with those burglars with a strange reluctance to spend time housed, clothed and fed by Her Majesty and will indeed put power in their hands. Can we expect an app shortly so that they can check up on police coverage on their stolen Blackberries?
February 1, 2011 at 22:22
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I tried it yesterday (ie before the press launch) and it was working well.
Checked out my local area and a few other likely crime hot-spots – Parliament
Square was particularly lively. Today its in meltdown – how very predictable,
it’ll pass.
Most people will have forgotten about it in a day or two – but some won’t.
They’ll nag their local police to ask why certain places are so bad or where
their local copper is when there’s been a burglary or why the scum on the
corner of their street aren’t moved on (and then monitor it online) or any one
of a million things
Actually, it doesn’t matter what the local folk do with the info as long as
they do something to tell their neighborhood plod what they want and what they
don’t. Currently the police do what THEY choose and we have no way of telling
them what we want at the micro-level, street by street. So what we get is
box-ticking-policing drive by the Home Office. For once they will now get
pressure from us average folk (ie their paymasters) to tip things in the
direction we want them to go.
Of course there’s still a missing link – elected Chief Constables. So if
the police still take no notice we can get rid of their boss when its election
time.
That would fix a lot of problems.
- February 1, 2011 at 21:37
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Andrew @ 13:42
Avon+Zummerzet?
Yeah… it relies on being able to report a crime first, quite an achievement
in Wiltshire as I can vouch from having a van “done”.
I was put through from the computerised call centre to a succession of 70′s
vintage telephone answering machines with stretched tapes and oval
rollers.
Needless to say they were either full or didn’t do the wavering beep
thing….
- February 1, 2011 at 19:06
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Well said Anna. Burglars will now do their research to find out which areas
have low crime, are therefore less policed, and are ripe for the pickings.
Can this NuGovt really get any more naive? Perhaps I’m being polite when I
really mean Stupid.
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February 1, 2011 at 19:35
- February 1, 2011 at 17:32
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I anticipate that at least half the country will have an above average
crime rate, which should be an enormous help to alarm system sellers and
fitters.
- February 1, 2011 at 17:09
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surely this should be welcomed by anyone of a libertarian bent?
if we
must suffer under a state monopoly security service then publishing results in
an accessible and relevant manner is a good thing no?
previous stats are
irrelevant as they cover arbitrary meaningless areas. this new form allows an
individual to take a measure of responsibility back from the state in
ascertaining the real crime level where they are concerned. as patently says
we can now see where what problems are. if state monopolies are your thing
then surely localised, accountable and responsive monopolies are to be
desired.
although far from the accountability of a competitive market
mechanism this is a step toward greater accountability.
that said i dont
trust the state to measure, test and publish accurate and veritable figures on
its own competencies.
i wouldnt categorise this as wasted pr money a-la
police twitter accounts etc.
i believe that an awareness of real crime
levels may come as quite a shock to people on both sides of the equation. if
we dont talk to our neighbours then how would we ever know if the majority of
houses in our street had been burgled? and likewise if our world view is
shaped by a sensationalist media how would we know how safe town streets were?
this complete lack of popular awareness is not good. a fear of crime
disproportionate to actual levels fuels unnecessary police rent seeking. and
conversely an ignorance that three of your neighbours were burgled doesnt
allow the individual to take any autonomous responsibility regarding their
home security.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_police
- February 1, 2011 at 17:12
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Agreed Will – I was poking fun at the fact that on its first day out in
the world, the site was only informing burglars which areas were not
policed……..
- February 1, 2011 at 17:26
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apologies i wasnt having a pop at you or anyone in particular. i
probably should have used ‘one’ rather than ‘you’.
i tried first thing
this morning. i typed in bristol and various localities within bristol and
got the same message you did so i suspect its indicative of a system
pushed unnaturally beyond its anticipated usage levels rather than the
complete disappearance of avon and somerset police. like that census info
that got published online a while back im sure the site will be fine in a
few weeks. if it had been able to cope with the reported millions an hour
of the first day then it would have been open to justifiable criticism of
unnecessary expensive over engineering.
as with some similar reactions
to google streetview neither this nor that make much difference. burglars
already know where to go and have done for hundreds of years.
just
another apology for the general angry and contrary nature of my all too
frequent comments.
- February 1, 2011 at 17:31
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top blog btw. right at the top of my list. if i didnt agree with most
of the comment here then i wouldn’t feel moved to comment when i
disagree. thanks for all your effort
- February
1, 2011 at 16:22
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After the same experience, I tweeted earlier today that the site seems to
be about as responsive to enquiries as, err, our local police force.
Generally, though, I’m more positive about the whole thing (assuming it
starts to work properly). Humphries was grilling some poor junior Minister
this morning, trying to establish that it would make no difference because the
Police already had this data, so what was the point? The point, as I see it,
is that this releases the data to those of us with a direct interest, i.e. the
local residents. We can not take the local force to task; whereas previously
they would fob us off with “sorry, our priorities don’t allow for that”, we
can now respond meaningfully.
Yes, government IT screws up on day 1, to everyone’s amazement. Yes, it’s
funny. But there is something interesting happening here, I think.
- February
1, 2011 at 16:26
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Especially if the planned link to results is made. A wonk on ‘Jeremy
Vine’ today opined that it would help the public to hold the justice system
‘to account’ when the public could see what sentences were passed for
crimes.
Quite how, was glossed over…
- February 1, 2011 at 15:25
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Plod probably don’t bother trying to police Brandon. Burglars could never
make a quick getaway – they would be stuck in the queues waiting for the
traffic lights at the top of the high street….
- February 1, 2011 at 16:55
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Or the level crossing gates at the bottom end eh?
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February 1, 2011 at 18:00
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Yes, definitely NOT the place to try and get through on a summer
weekend…
- February 1, 2011 at
14:40
- February 1, 2011 at 14:17
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I think this is just a result of the site being overloaded, rather than the
lack of a police force. When it works at all, it is saying the same thing no
matter what area you put it.
I was going to sarcastically suggest that you could hardly expect plod to
anticipate that when they launched this site with lots of media fanfare, it
would need to cope with large volumes of traffic. Setting it up to cope with
that would have cost vastly more though, and been a complete waste of money,
since 99.9% of people will have forgotten about it by this time tomorrow.
- February 1, 2011 at 14:39
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All I can get from it is a total blank – and that’s with all things like
NoScript turned off. But then it is like all things on the internet that
have anything to do with authority – they either don’t work or don’t let you
find what you want to know.
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February 1, 2011 at 13:42
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This is just more expenditure on Police PR rather than Policing.
Where I live the CCTV cameras have stopped working, good on a civil
liberties, bad on why was this spent in the first place. Also the local police
secure intranet is breaking down and is too expensive to replace.
So lets spend more on Police PR.
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