Spanish lessons for the police (From Daily Echo)

Spanish lessons for the police

11:16am Wednesday 25th August 2010 in Chief Superintendent 's Blog By Matthew Greening, Chief Superintendent

The Spanish flag

When I was in Spain on holiday recently I ended up talking to someone who was involved in trying to reduce graffiti on historic buildings in a small town in central Spain where we were staying.

It was interesting to hear how he and the authorities had come to the same conclusion we have about that type of problem.

Firstly, it's no good just blaming young people and stigmatising them as trouble makers. Secondly, policing needs to be done in a way which delivers enforcement when it's needed but is also about engagement, good communication, trust and confidence; a service not just a force.

So they had involved young people in more positive activities and helped them to understand the importance of the historic buildings in their town.

As for the policing I regretted describing, in inappropriate jest, the local Police as "PCSOs with guns". That wasn't fair to them or to our excellent PCSOs.

The Spanish Police (the local ones not national) were clearly making a real effort, as we are, to be more accessible and more responsive to people in the town; better relationships including with young people. (My one engagement with the Guardia Civil wasn't so positive!) The outcome of all this seemed to be working.

They described a real reduction in graffiti and less problems attributed to the few disruptive young people and they managed this through common sense and involving members of the community to help in the problem solving.

Pity we needed a whole Neighbourhood Policing programme to return us to this way of working which to some extent is how we used to operate anyway, albeit some time ago.

Still, there's always lessons to be learnt from the past and from other countries and how they do things although I think I'll leave the guns with the Spanish Police and others abroad.