‘It’s far too easy to sack the chief constable’, warns Commissioner Jones
There’s a sideswipe at former uniformed officers who have become commissioners: “Clearly there could also be a perception where PCCs are former police officers that they might be guilty of substituting their own operational policing judgment rather than relying on the judgment of the chief constable.”
Mr Jones appears troubled by the considerable powers at his fingertips. He writes: “The protection of operational independence, which is at the very heart of policing in this country, is very limited if PCCs can move easily to a new chief constable who could be selected with a flexible interpretation of the general principles in the policing protocol.
“These concerns would have had little credence in the previous system when decisions would have to be taken by a collective, cross-party and independent consensus. A grouping that did not share the same electoral focus and, as the decision was cross-party, there was little electoral party advantage to be gained from the decision made.
“Commissioners have both the dilemma of having no independent professional source of advice to offer assurance that they are not trying to get control of operational policing but equally they have no source of independent professional policing advice to provide an assessment of whether or not a chief constable is competently performing their operational role.
“How do commissioners make the assessment of any action that is needed without being seen to interfere? Surely making a judgment that a chief constable is failing to deliver competent operational policing can only be made by interfering with operational independence.”
He adds, however, that “this cannot mean chief constables can be inviolable if they turn out to be a complete professional disaster”.
A police commissioner’s decision to sack a chief constable is open to scrutiny by the Police and Crime Panel, but only after a decision has been taken. Mr Jones does not appear to have much faith in the panel, pointing out that “some might argue that as the panel is not part of the original decision they may be open to play to the audience for electoral considerations or even internal party selection issues”.
He concludes: “I fully accept that the decision to dismiss a chief constable is one that only a commissioner can make and that any advice, whether legal or professional, is not binding.
“However, it must be better for commissioners, chief constables, panels performing their scrutiny role and the assurance of the public that the dismissal process itself has the necessary checks and balances exercised at the right time.
“Without this, how can we demonstrate that decisions, which are some of the hardest we ever have to make in our working lives, which relate to the professional head of policing are made in the interests of policing and the community rather than any other possible motivation.”
