Huhne Joins the Red Shift at Eastleigh for a Friday Night on the Town

11.22.35am GMT Mon 13th Dec 2004

Chris Huhne Sees Eastleigh's Policing at First Hand

Hampshire MEP Chris Huhne joined the late 'red' shift at Eastleigh police patrolling the town to see at first hand the problems that local police face on Friday and Saturday nights in the run-up to Christmas.

Mr Huhne, who is also the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Eastleigh, said that the ten hour shift from 5pm to 3am was an eye-opener which was valuable experience in understanding the policing issues in Eastleigh.

"My admiration for the professionalism and courage of the Hampshire police is even higher than it was before" said Mr Huhne. "I saw some very tricky situations, particularly involving domestic violence and drunkenness, which were handled firmly, bravely and with great tact".

Mr Huhne is pictured here with Sergeant Alex Banks, PC Kevin Finlay, PC Lisa Poole and PC Nicky Goode of the 'Red Shift' on Friday with their area car that provides back up to foot patrols and panda cars across an area from Fair Oak to Romsey. Later, Mr Huhne was with the area car on the night 'blue shift' with PC Jim Logan and PC Gareth Roberts.

"In the European Parliament, we mainly deal with laws affecting business and the environment so it is immensely valuable for me to understand public services dealing with crime, education and health that are rightly dealt with by Westminster. I'm on a conversion course!" said Mr Huhne, who hopes to succeed David Chidgey MP when he retires at the general election.

Mr Huhne had raised local residents' concerns, particularly about mindless vandalism by some local teenagers such as the trashing of the Allbrook scout hut on Allbrook Hill, with Chief Superintendent Ann Wakefield, who runs the basic control unit that polices Eastleigh.

Mr Huhne has supported applying anti-social behaviour contracts to youngsters whose parents often do not know what they have been up to, an idea pioneered by the Liberal Democrat council in Islington. He also says that anti-social behaviour orders are an important part of the armoury, although difficult for the police to secure.

Mr Huhne said he was impressed by the way Eastleigh police are intensively policing local 'hot spots' where there have been youth problems.

By the end of the shift, all five custody cells at Eastleigh were full with people under arrest, although this counted as a relatively quiet night.

"One strong impression I came away with is that we should do much more to try to cut down the unnecessary work that the police have to do whether it is paperwork or responding to false alarms. At present, officers have to take extensive notes at the scene and then retype them all into a computer when they get back: it would make much more sense to have palm computers so that they did not have to repeat this operation. Anything that sensibly lightens the paperwork load would be good news"

"One bright idea from the team on red shift would be to charge security companies for false alarms, which can take two police officers twenty minutes and which occur far too often" said Mr Huhne. "We had one false alarm from a personal attack button that had to be dealt with, but which took officers away from real problems".