An open and shut case for our police and crime commissioner

WELL, I never! If only successive governments over the years had realised there’s a way to cut crime figures at a stroke.
How? Simples! Just shut the police station.
How proud we should be that the Wiltshire force is leading by example, with 40 per cent fewer arrests in the Salisbury area between July and October.
I understand Inspector Dave Minty’s explanation that three-quarters of this fall is accounted for by the loss of the local nick where most arrests used to take place.
So presumably there’s a corresponding increase in arrests at Melksham, or wherever our ne’er-do-wells are taken to be interviewed nowadays, and where they answer bail? Do we have any statistics for that?
And what about the other quarter? Arrests are down in the Bemerton Heath, Harnham, city centre, Friary and Southampton Road, Castle Road and Bishopdown beat areas, we’re told.
Pretty much everywhere, in fact.
Have we experienced a sudden outbreak of good behaviour and model citizenship, or could there be some other explanation?
Inspector Minty says it’s “a normal variation” and “not statistically significant”.
And in case you harbour any doubts, the Crime Commissioner himself has stepped in to reassure us that the lack of custody facilities is having “no effect” on policing in the city.
In fact, Angus Macpherson says, there has been “no diminution” of arrests in Salisbury. “No change,” as he stresses.
How can this be? Has he not seen the same figures as Inspector Minty?
Well, I suppose it’s easy to make fun.
But Mr Macpherson doesn’t help his own cause when he expresses disappointment that our local judge, MP and solicitors have all revealed how fed up they are with the way plans for a new custody unit have been put on hold.
Does he think they don’t know what they’re talking about?
Then he patronisingly tells us that turning the police station into a University Technical College is a Good Thing because “good employment and education is a good way of reducing crime”.
Oh, so that’s why they did it. If they hadn’t shut the police station they couldn’t have built the college and of course, once young people are properly educated and gainfully employed they won’t do anything wrong any more and then – hey presto – we really won’t need a police station.
Of course, I see it now.