Harriet's Pledges
My 5 Pledges
No privatisation of Kent Police
This is quite simple, the Tory founder of the police Robert Peel thought that policing was too important to be handed over to private profit driven operations, so do I! I have many years of a proven track record of fighting privatization – ask Tony Blair!
Victims before perpetrators
Yes, criminals need to be rehabilitated but victims need to feel that criminals have been punished for the injury against them. There has to be a way of serving both sides but victims must come first and organisations such as Victim Support must be given the help that they need to support victims of crime.
Support Kent Police
I want to support Kent Police to catch the really bad not the nearly bad. Crime is falling in Kent? Well that depends on how you look at crime. Car crime is falling but according to the forces own statistics released 23rd July 2012 robbery and serious sexual offences have risen by over 10% each. In another report highlighted by the BBC 9th August 2012 cannabis farms are proliferating in Kent. Tory members and the independent chair of the police authority have made the figures look good for their benefit, concentrating on car crime but for people whose lives have been blighted by drugs, and ruined by rape – and Kent has no 24/7 rape suite – maybe the crime figures don’t look or feel so good.
Accountability
I will visit every constituency twice a year to speak to all groups, especially those who could become victims of hate crime, the elderly with their lives shadowed by the fear of crime and young people and act as a facilitator between communities and the officers that serve them.
Transparency
Sometimes policing can feel very distant from the people who are policed and reasons and behaviours of the police need to be understood by the communities served by them. We are all in it together and we need to work together and understand each other.
