Police need experience

THE Chief Constable of North Yorkshire, Grahame Maxwell, is right to say that difficult decisions must be taken if the police are to continue to serve the public effectively under the new spending restraints imposed by Government cuts. The particular decision he seems to want to make, however, is surely one that will set alarm bells ringing for police and public alike.

Mr Maxwell is proposing to give his force the power to impose retirement on all officers with more than 30 years' service, a blunt solution to a complex problem and one which threatens to leave North Yorkshire bereft of vital experience at the very time when the force is most likely to need it. Of course, it may be that the Chief Constable is merely shroud-waving, attempting to show what a terrible effect the cuts could have in an attempt to force the Government's hand and persuade it to take a more gentle attitude towards North Yorkshire in the funding settlement for next year.

Whatever his intentions, however, Mr Maxwell's proposals represent precisely the wrong type of response to the funding crisis, an attempt to avoid the really difficult decisions with a sweeping gesture that might make the figures add up but which makes no sense in any other way, crude salami-slicing rather than using the crisis as an opportunity to shape the future of policing in the region.

Instead of plotting their removal, Mr Maxwell should be using the wisdom accrued by his senior officers' years of service to look for ways forward that will reduce costs while not only protecting the force's effectiveness but actually enhancing it. These will inevitably involve further exploration of avenues down which Yorkshire's forces are already venturing – sharing functions with neighbouring forces, running joint back-room operations and increasingly treating more aspects of the fight against crime in Yorkshire on a broader, regional basis, but community policing must not be lost.

No one is saying that the way ahead is easy. On the contrary, it will involve much hard work, careful planning and sensitive negotiation. But these, after all, are the types of skills for which Yorkshire's chief constables were given their jobs in the first place. It is now time to start earning the salaries that go with them.