Police and Crime Commissioner elections - important

[Needmoresleep]

All sorts of elections are taking place in early May. Postal votes will be dropping through letter boxes any day now.

The expectation is that many will vote either for the party they have always voted for, or to express dissatisfaction with the current government, and the worry is that the PCC vote will go the same way.

Please don't do this. If we want Stonewall to stop training and advising our police forces, we need people vote for the PCC candidate who explicitly says they won't allow Stonewall to influence their force.

In some cases this will be the Conservative or a Conservatively minded independent, which might not be a bad thing. The next Government is very likely to be Labour with a strong majority. Labour along with LibDems and Greens will also dominate Local Authorities. PCCs who are willing to stand up and protect their forces against Stonewallification will be a useful, indeed essential, brake.

I understand that one of the women's organisations are surveying candidates across the country and, once they have responses, will give more guidance. In the meantime think before using your postal vote.

And, FWIW, David Sidwick the incumbent in Dorset, is a good bloke, who works hard and takes his job seriously. (I know him!)

Relevant to PCCs and the drive to end female support for domestic violence: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5049427-tra-womens-orgs-and-police-end-all-female-only-abuse-support?

The role of Police Women’s Independent Advisory Groups in this seems important.

I Googled for Police Women’s Independent Advisory Group in my county. They don't mention a women's group but do say they want to hear from people who feel that their community’s voice is underrepresented in dialogue with their local /county police.

I doubt the Police mean women and especially doubt that they mean me but I shall contact them. I suggested this to a friend who also Googled. And has reported back with this tweet and news (she's in Essex). So, if I was wondering how the drive to remove single sex services had happened, I'm now sadder and wiser as to the explanation in some areas.

‘I believe the College of Police is inherently corrupted by gender ideology'

'Recently, a man named Clare, Head of the Independent Advisory Group to Essex Police, said women with gender critical views should be treated as terrorists’

- Sarah Phillimore, Co-founder WeAreFairCop

https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1769464221874434067

Unfortunately not enough people know or understand enough about the PCC role to care.

Which is why I am posting here.

David told me that the first thing he did when elected was to ask his chief of police what he wanted from his PCC and the answer was to be allowed to get on with policing and to catch criminals. Dorset Police left the Stonewall scheme in 2020 as part of a review "linked to wider work on equality and inclusivity".

This is what we want across the country. We need to vote for it.

I agree with the domestic violence point as well. We want those ultimately responsible for our police forces to understand and to take women's issues seriously.

People voting carefully and on issues rather than party, could turn attitudes around quickly. Spread the word. Tell your friends.

I get what you are saying but the message needs to spread way beyond a subgroup on Mumsnet.

Yes, but you have to start somewhere. There is already a lot of campaigning going on, but it is difficult for PCCs as they don't have a budget for post and are having to cover a whole county. It is not unknown for well funded "Independents" to win, with little scrutiny on motives or funding sources.

If each person reading this passes it on to a dozen more, and on again, women's voices will start to be heard.

I've checked out our pages. We have 4 candidates: Labour; Cons; LibDem; Green.

The Labour candidate mentions supporting Women and Girls as a priority, but no details. The Cons candidate talks about his life in the military. The LibDem's manifesto doesn't work apart from a description of his favourite biscuit, and the Green's manifesto doesn't work either.

PCC shouldn't be a politicised role anyway. The police themselves are supposed to be politically neutral, so should their PCC be.

It does. So do your bit and spread the message.

Thanks for the advice 😐 can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself.

You're welcome, WinterMorn. 😉

Thanks for the reminder, OP. PCC elections are coming up in my area, but I am very despondent about my choices.

Just check out mine prompted by this thread. Three candidates, two middle aged white men and a woman. I'll let you work out which was which.

Lib Dem: more Accountability to residents about how the Police help make us feel safe in our communities eg. through more community policing; more Community engagement amongst all communities with the Police, public sector agencies, voluntary and community groups working together to improve community safety. more Transparency, in-person and in digital media, about how the Commissioner and the Police are spending our money in a sustainable way to help keep us safe.

Labour: Safer Streets and Safer Communities, Real action to tackle violence against women and girls is taken, Restored trust in policing – with visibility and openess being a guiding principle, Local plans to tackle the crime in your area and a police service focussed on solving crime and supporting victims

Conservative: I intend to reduce crime, Anti-Social behaviour, and re-offending, with more officers, working with our criminal justice partners, and listening and responding to our residents.

All a bit wishy-washy and nothing there to convince me on any of them!

The choice is poor. I don’t even support the role to be honest and think the money could be better spent elsewhere.

One thing you can do is write to each candidate and ask where they stand on Stonewall, DV and other issues that are important to you. Hopefully google will get you email contacts.

It might not make much difference but every little helps. If enough people ask about Stonewall at this point it will feed back to local party offices in advance of their General Election campaigns.

Women's voices won't be heard if we don't use them.

Stand alone PPC elections are easy. Three men/women and a dog vote, and they will be motivated. (The dog is obviously concerned about police dog matters.) However when coupled with other elections there is a risk that people simply vote party, without considering the issues.

The police should not be political. They should treat everyone, especially the vulnerable, equally. We don't want another Rotherham, we don't want arrests on specious "hate" grounds, we don't want Rainbow lanyards, we want women and girls properly protected.

Please consider who in your area is most likely to deliver this.

I am also thinking of highlighting the importance of these elections on local Fb groups. I might even attempt a foray into AIBU.

Hopefully WRN, FairCop, or whoever it was, will soon have more detail on different candidates attitudes;.

Agreed, but the deal is done and these roles have influence.

Will any of these candidates pull your local force out of Stonewall?

What else is very important to you.

Email them and ask them where they stand.

Its like Brexit. People complain that older people voted Brexit. Rather than point the finger at them, should we not be pointing it at younger people who did not bother to vote. PCC elections are our chance to signal that we want the police to do their job.

I've attempted to email all our PCC candidates, who are also our mayoral candidates in this part of the world, but it isn't so easy to find email addresses for some of them.

Recently I have decided that the roles of mayor & PCC should not be combined, as the mayor is political. This is a conflict of interest as far as I'm concerned.

How about constructing a list of all the PCCs and recording their views on, say, the disastrous police guidance that allows trans identified male officers to strip search females?

So we know Dorset currently has a good 'un, as does Surrey in Lisa Townsend. But are they standing this time around?

This area has three old white men as candidates.
Lib Dem - former officer in the Met. No thank you.
Labour & Co-operative Party - priority in the blurb is victim support but listed priority is tackle trouble-makers behaviour (oddly written) and second priority is fly-tipping. Not convinced. Also what does and Co-operative Party signify? Not standard Labour?
Conservative - It's his last priority but it is there "Maintaining strong support for victims of crime and increasing the work to end Violence Against Women and Girls."

To find your candidates and their priorities just go to https://choosemypcc.org.uk/

Thanks for posting OP. I wasn't going to vote as ours is just police commissioner this time, but I'll research now.

I don't care if the best choice is a middle aged white man to be perfectly honest. It's the guy from Oxford who went hard on the Scarlet Blake case for example, maybe he's not quite old enough to be considered middle aged(?) but he's put his head above the parapet. That's the kind of action and commitment we need to see.

In Manchester we don't get to vote. Ours is Kate Green, she thinks TWAW and in sports women should just try harder.

the full and proper title of the Labour Party is Labour and Co-operative party, reflecting the historical roots of the co operative movement in labour history.

Fair Cop and Keep Prisons Single Sex have been on the case about the political capture in policing for some time. They're asking PCCs to support

• Policing with neutrality and without fear or favour
• Forces and officers display no allegiance to any one group
• Policing is devoid of political, cultural or social activism
• Policing decisions are based on evidence not ideology
• Services and practices are developed and managed in order to best meet the operational needs of policing and the criminal justice system

This is their manifesto that wants recording sex at birth, same sex searching of detainees etc. Well worth a read:

https://www.faircop.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Manifesto-for-Police-and-Crime-Commissioners.pdf

@Needmoresleep said - "And, FWIW, David Sidwick the incumbent in Dorset, is a good bloke, who works hard and takes his job seriously. (I know him!)"

He gets quite a lot of stick on the local FB page, especially folks complaining that his office don't respond to letters and emails, and about lack of obvious police in the town (Swanage).

Frankly I think most people around here won't look any further than the candidate's attitude to vandalism, shoplifting and rural crime.

Thanks for the rereminder, finding some emails for the 5 candidates in my area and asking some questions will be tonight's job.

Our conservative candidate has been rather lacklustre.
Must go and see who else is standing.

I'm in the Thames Valley and Matthew Barber, current PCC, has already written to the Home Secretary about correctly recording, and informing the public, about the sex of alleged criminals not just their gender identity. He also, in a statement, mentioned thinking about the impact on the victims of inaccurate information and capitulating to the alleged criminals self-identity only, without any reference to or recording of the actual sex which it is that likely every single other person - including the victim - will perceive them as.

There was a recent case in Witney, reported on this board, where the police asked the public for information and described the alleged sexual offender as a woman even though their sex is male and it is likely anyone seeing them would see them as male. So fuck all use to ask for information if you're going to lie about key facts like that. I wonder how many people saw this alleged offender at the time, read them as the male they are, and so did not call the police?

So, it'll take a lot of very public statements by any of the others about recording and describing alleged criminals as the sex they are and not just their self ID for me to vote for anyone else.

At the moment my vote will be for Matthew Barber. Very impressed with his work towards accurate policing.

Thanks for the reminder.

I've had my polling card sat next to me since it arrived to serve as a reminder to contact all of the candidates.

I hadn't really got much further than thinking about neutrality, recording sex, accurate languagae, violence against women and girls and strip searches so this thread is a fantastic resource for me to build on.