Police force and its relationship with military should be key issue for new PCC

THE police force and its relationship with the military, with its massive presence in the South West, should be a key issue for the new police and crime commissioner, according independent candidate Bob Spencer.

Mr Spencer, a retired acting Assistant Chief Constable in Devon and Cornwall, who is campaigning to become the next PCC, has been meeting with a variety of military contacts to discuss his hopes of refreshing the Military Covenant signed in 2012 between local authorities and the armed forces.

The Covenant recognises that the whole nation has a moral obligation to members of the armed forces and their families, and it establishes how they should expect to be treated.

Mr Spencer said the Covenant was a partnership that understood the special requirements of military personnel and their families.

Having worked with and chaired partnership agencies in the South West specialising in help for the vulnerable, Mr Spencer said more needed to be done to ensure those agencies were engaged to help military families but also to reduce the demand on policing.

He said it was a sobering fact that more people had been lost after the Falklands war because of suicide than had lost their lives during the war.

He said: “It is important that the PCC ensures those military individuals and their families are supported, otherwise we will continue to get more deaths.”

Mr Spencer added that there was no bigger area than mental health.

“There are, on average, 15 calls a day to the police about mental health issues, and a huge percentage of the calls relate to the military.”

“If I am elected I will be raising awareness of the Military Covenant with the area’s health and wellbeing boards and the local authorities.”

Lt Col Neil Willson, who signed the Covenant in Exeter in 2012 as Commanding Officer of the Royal Marines training base at Lympstone, said society needed to understand the unique needs of the military.

Lt Col Willson, now retired, is backing Mr Spencer in his campaign to become the next Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall.

He said: “We have discussed the special needs of the military and Bob is very aware of what is required.

“These needs include those of a family that might be moving every two years from married quarter to married quarter; the fact that the children can have access to proper schooling and are not disadvantaged by their family being in the services. 

“From a Criminal Justice point of view, there is a need to have an understanding about these young men and women who come away from some extreme operational challenges, are then given a bit of decompression and then get thrown back into civilian life just like that.

"What is needed are simple measures and clever policing, where commonsense is being applied so officers have a better understanding of people’s needs.”

Lt Col Willson said the Covenant needed to be re-examined because times had changed since it had been signed.

He added: “What we’ve noticed over the last 15 years is that now we tend to think about the whole of the military family. This starts with the young cadets and youth organisations out to all the retired people and the relationship to the Royal Marine Association, British Legion etc. This military covenant is now significantly bigger than people thought in the beginning.”