Questions for the Police and Crime Commissioner

I WAS unable to attend last night’s public meeting at the Guildhall about the proposed closure of Salisbury police station because I was on my way back from my son’s graduation.

Dedicated though I am to the fearless pursuit of truth and the public interest (!) the boy’s big day was not to be missed.

But had I been around, these are some of the questions I’d have asked Police and Crime Commissioner Angus Macpherson, or ‘Nine Jobs’ as  he’s been nicknamed by Journal website commentators (surely that should be 999 Jobs?)

Mr Macpherson, I gather you are intending to base emergency response vehicles at the Five Rivers ‘community campus’ once the leisure centre has been extended to accommodate this new role.

I am reliably informed that there can be upwards of a dozen such vehicles parked at the police station at one time.

And then there are the officers’ own cars, needed to get to and from their shifts from all over South Wiltshire. I can’t see officers using the city centre shuttle bus instead.

What I can foresee is a large number of spaces being lost by gym users and swimmers. Unless, of course, you’re going to Tarmac over all the surrounding grassed areas?

Wherever you accommodate them, there’ll be a lot of extra vehicles entering and exiting a family leisure facility where free-range children behave unpredictably (especially, in my experience, after one of those swimming-pool birthday parties when they’re stuffed full of E numbers).

And blimey, what about school sports days on the running track? I’d love to be a fly on the steering wheel when a proud mama in an outsize 4x4, desperately trying to reverse into a parking space so she can watch her little darling win the 100 metres, encounters one of Wiltshire’s finest setting forth, siren blaring, blue lights flashing. It’s a breach of the peace just waiting to happen.

Is it true, by the way, or just a baseless rumour that the Salisbury intelligence unit had thousands of pounds spent on special security doors, only to be moved within months to Melksham?

I’ve heard that a gradual exodus north has been under way for a while now. If so, no wonder you say the station is under-occupied.

Other matters are puzzling people who understand more about police procedures than I do, and I quote: Where will the child protection unit and domestic violence units go? Where will officers carry out video interviews of victims of sexual assault? Where will the sex offenders unit and vulnerable adults unit be based? What about CID?
Then there's the million-dollar question (let's hope that's not what it costs) - where will the new custody unit be?
Finally, who first suggested that a city as important as Salisbury, with its vital military connections, doesn't need a proper police station? This plan was kicking around long before your election, Mr Macpherson. So whose bright idea was it really?