"Ask a Policeman": Community Consultation in Practice

This article examines the development of police-community consultation arrangements in one large county in southern England: arrangements made under Section 106 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. It analyses the various responses of the main parties in the process: the police, the police authority, and the local committees themselves; and considers the extent to which the practice of consultation relates to wider claims for the enhancement of police accountability. The main conclusions are that, at least in the force area concerned, the predominant conflict was not, as might have been expected, between police representatives and the local community, but rather between the police authority and the local committees, for which they were formally responsible. In so far as such tensions can occur, the article argues for a more cautious approach to the question of the democratic accountability of the police to the extent that the police authority is to be entrusted with a central role in the reform of the current system of police accountability.