The Continuing Role of Police Authorities and Proposals for Structural Change

Abstract

Personalities play a very real part in the maintenance of a good relationship between the three parties involved in the control of the police service, and it is just as important to select a highly capable and publicly motivated individual to be chairperson of the Police Authority as it is to ensure that the Chief Constable is thoroughly professional both as a police officer and as a man who has to recognise and deal with the sensitivities of government at all levels. The fear of many chief officers is that chairpersons of Police Authorities, in too many cases, may be political pawns placed where they may be manipulated by the party or they may be highly motivated party political animals who wish to exploit their position to maximum partisan advantage. The fear of some elected representatives is that Chief Constables are too independent and that ‘Law and order is too wide a subject to be regarded as a narrowly professional preserve; policing is too important to be left to the police’.¹