Long-serving Wolverhampton Councillor Bob Jones won election for the new Police Commissioner for the West Midlands on November 15th in a 12% turnout.
His first decision was to halt privatisation.
A decision to privatise was delayed until after the new Police Commissioner elections after extensive campaigning by UNISON & UNITE Police Staff branches.
Plans to hand over essential public services to the likes of G4S (Group Four Security), the company that has let down the British people and threatened the security of the Olympic Games by their inability to recruit security guards from some of Britain’s highest unemployment areas, have been halted.
Peter Williams, chairman of Surrey Police Authority, said:“If a Surrey resident rings 999, they want to know there’s a trained police officer at the other end – not someone in a private call centre that could be miles away – even in another country.”
What you can do….
see http://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigns/stop_privatising_the_police.aspx
More info http://www.unison.org.uk/stopPolicePrivatisation/
STOP POLICE PRIVATISATION
Unison & Unite unions are calling on the West Midlands Police Authority to stop the privatisation at the next Police Authority meeting in May.
Privatisation wouldl lead to:
1. Private Companies putting profit & shareholders before public need
2. Reduced public accountability as many police services & staff will come under the control of private companies. Privatised staff will no longer come under the jurisdiction of the Police Complaints Commission
3. Undermining the role of the Police & Crime Commissioner, before they have even been elected
4. Reduced level of service to public through fragmentation of police services to private companies
5. No public consultation on the planned privatisation
Since the initial announcement of the business partnering model (privatisation by another name) representatives from our Unison branch, staff & members regionally and nationally have all been campaigning and lobbying to stop the privatisation.
the campaign’s facebook page
Public meeting – No Private Profits from Policing, Thursday 27 September 2012, Council House, Birmingham. Speakers were Jill Harrison secretary UNISON WMids Police staff branch, Gargi Bhattacharyya W.Mids Against Policing for Profit, UNITE union. Organised by Birmingham TUC.
On 12th July West Midlands Police Authority met to discuss how to take forward the privatisation programme of critical police services worth £1.5bn
Union members from UNISON and UNITE Police Staff branches lobbied West Midlands Police Authority on Thursday 12th July outside Police HQ, Lloyd House in Birmingham City Centre.
The West Midlands police, under guidance from the Con-Dem’s Home Office, advertised contracts worth £1.5 billion to run policing services here and in Surrey. The contracts could lead to the privatisation of crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police support services by as early as February next year.
Surrey police delayed any privatisation decision to later in the year after the Olympics; but due to the G4S fiasco Surrey Police Authority decided to suspend its Business Partnering Programme at a meeting on July 12. The authority, responsible for overseeing the police force, indicated it was minded to withdraw altogether from the programme, subject to a more detailed options paper due for presentation on September 6.
Human Rights First!
Stop the Corporate takeover of Policing services
West Midlands Against Policing for Profit is opposed to this privatisation in principle and calls for the tendering to be cancelled. The shortlisted companies include corporate giants KBR and G4S who between them have questionable human and labour rights records from Guantanamo Bay to Iraq, from Occupied Palestine and to the treatment of asylum seekers in the UK.
If the procurement process continues after 12th July we are calling on the Police Authority to give full consideration to the human rights records of the companies bidding for the BPP contract. It can exclude companies from tendering on grounds of ‘grave professional misconduct’. We are calling on the Police Authority to rigorously examine the human rights records of these companies.
KBR, is a former subsidiary of Halliburton, and has had extensive contracts from the US Government to provide services to support the military occupation of Iraq. KBR’s subcontractors have allegedly engaged in human trafficking and the use forced labour to provide services for KBR in Iraq.
KBR is one of the companies that built the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The facility at Guantanamo was not only used to detain people without trial and to carry out interrogations with torture, the site itself was built in a manner designed to dehumanise and terrorise those held there.
In the UK, G4S has been the subject of 700 complaints over the treatment of asylum detainees of which 130 were upheld. G4S has been implicated in the deaths of a number of asylum seekers in its custody; in 2010 G4S lost a Home Office forcible deportation contract after the death of an Angolan deportee, Jimmy Mubenga, while being restrained on a flight back home. G4S is also the subject of a global call for action by Palestinian civil society on the grounds it ‘helps to maintain and profit from Israel’s prison system, for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law.’
West Midlands Against Policing for Profit is asking people to support the lobby to oppose the corporations bidding to run these critical policing services. Human Rights First! Stop KBR! Stop G4S!
For more information about the campaign go to:
Twitter
Facebook Group
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.