And the beat goes on
The seaside town that’s paying for its own ‘police’
Late afternoon on the Frinton-on-Sea waterfront and dog walkers huddle deep into their anoraks while a few kite-surfers wheel across the slate-grey ocean. All is calm in this genteel outpost of Essex, save the nasty breeze whipping in off the North Sea. But, none the less, the armoured cavalry is here.
Parked by a row of brightly coloured beach huts, one adorned with Emma Bridgewater polka dots, is a Land Rover Discovery bedecked in high-visibility livery. “Response” is daubed in capitals across the bonnet, and a rig of flashing lights fixed to the roof. Stephen Beardsley stands outside with his muscular arms folded, surveying the scene with a wary eye.
The 50-year-old shaven-headed Gulf War veteran is the new face of policing in Frinton – and perhaps far further afield. Last week it emerged that 300 residents in the area (the number has now climbed to 400) have decided to pay AGS, his private security firm, £2 a week per household to patrol the wellheeled streets each evening, from 7pm until 7am.
Mr Beardsley and his colleagues have so far assisted police with arrests and apprehended a vandal, as well as putting an end to a recent spate of antisocial behaviour down at the beach huts. But not everybody is convinced by the presence of the new rent-a-cops.
“Some people have compared them to vigilantes or the Krays, but this is nothing like that at all,” says one beach-walker, Paul Bartholomew-Keen, a 46-yearold commercial director who plans to join his neighbours in signing up with AGS. “There is a lot of expensive property here that belongs to ex-bankers, City workers and retired civil servants, and people just want to feel safe and secure. The police can’t be everywhere and this will fill the void. Two pounds a week is a small price to pay.”
Yet many more feel that handing the control of our streets to firms such as AGS is paying a very great price indeed. Last week, Essex’s police and crime commissioner, Nick Alston, expressed concerns that private security patrols have “the potential to create a two-tier policing system”. And there are signs that this is already creeping in.
Last month, Hampstead residents put forward proposals to raise £200,000 to pay for their own police officers to patrol the streets. Villagers in Hampshire’s Candover Valley have offered to do the same to pay for their own beat bobby. Meanwhile, numerous streets in the Surrey footballer belt are already under the auspices of private security firms. Mr Beardsley says he has had interest in expanding there as well.
The rise in security for hire comes as all 43 police forces in England and Wales struggle to balance the books. Last week, the chief constable of Lancashire Police, Steve Finnigan, told the home affairs select committee that further proposed budget cuts are “mad” and could stretch resources to the point where officers are no longer able to keep neighbourhoods safe. In recent days, the heads of other forces have openly discussed moneyraising schemes, including putting adverts for firms such as easyJet on the side of patrol cars, and ramping up speed camera enforcement to raise £1 million from those exceeding 70mph on the M1.
Across Essex, too, the axe is falling. The Government is to slash £60million from its grant to the county’s constabulary by 2019, on top of £40million of cuts already imposed since 2010. Essex Police has recently pulled out of a shared funding scheme with Frinton and Walton Town Council to provide eight police community support officers (PCSOs), covering an area of 20,000 homes. Instead, the town council has agreed to pay for six PCSOs, at a cost of 40p a week per household. Frinton’s police station closed long ago and the nearest, which is situated a few miles away in Walton-on-the-Naze, is also soon to be sold off to help meet the shortfall. According to residents, its doors are almost permanently locked – and were the day the Telegraph visited. A bike occupied prime position in the waiting room, and a flock of starlings clustered on its vast communications aerial outside.
“I don’t even think it’s tuned to the right frequencies any more,” says Ray Bunk, 73, who has lived next door to the police station for the past 38 years. “When I first moved here, there was somebody in the station for 24 hours a day. Everybody keeps saying it is costs, but we do need the police.”
The defence for such closures is that the crime statistics for Frinton-on-Sea are hardly the stuff of detective novels. In the past year, there have been three bicycle thefts reported, and one drug offence. Of the 34 total reported crimes in September, 14 were for antisocial behaviour. These are the young “herberts”, as some residents call them, making mischief on the high street and along the Esplanade at night.
“I feel very safe in Frinton,” says Judith Charlesworth, who owns Caxton Books and Gallery on the high street. “In fact, it is one of the safest places I can think of.” The 52-year-old is one of many residents who have raised eyebrows at the tactics of AGS in getting people to sign up. After a leaflet drop, staff then went door to door asking people if they wanted to subscribe.
“They knocked on my door, and I said no, thank you,” she says. “At our book club, some people were saying they were walking home the other day and one of their cars was basically kerb-crawling behind them. They are not accountable to anybody. I find it really sinister, actually.”
Seated behind the desk of his office in nearby Holland-on-Sea, Mr Beardsley admits the response to the paid-for patrols has been mixed. Before setting up his firm 16 months ago, he worked as a bouncer and private bodyguard to the model Sophie Anderton, and protected ships from Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. Clocks on the wall are set to various time zones including Egypt and the UAE. His long-term partner, Rachael, runs the phones opposite – mainly fielding calls from journalists.
“There are people who don’t like what I do, and everyone has their own opinions,” he says. “But we don’t avoid the streets where people are not paying.” Britain has a long, if not glorious, history of security patrols aiming to supplement the work of the police. In 1989, the red-bereted Guardian Angels were formed to protect commuters on London’s Tube network, but their numbers dwindled. And, as with today’s private security firms, their powers remain limited. Most can only make a citizen’s arrest, whereby they can detain a person without warrant if they are in the act of committing an offence or have just committed one.
Security firms are required by law to have a licence granted by the Security Industry Authority (SIA). A BBC investigation earlier this year found thousands of SIA cards could have been obtained through fraudulent means.
Despite their official garb, Mr Beardsley and his colleagues possess the same powers as any ordinary citizen. They can patrol and make citizen’s arrests – this summer Mr Beardsley pinned down a man who was trying to break the windows of a restaurant until police arrived – and pass on evidence for the police to investigate. He wears a GoPro camera on his jacket, as well as having one fixed to the Land Rover dashboard.
The company has applied for special accreditation with the police to give it greater scope to tackle antisocial behaviour, and enable its staff to take down names and addresses, issue tickets for dog fouling and liaise with police intelligence services. Mr Beardsley says with pride that the firm recently helped with the arrest of three men after a break-in at a shop.
But, he insists, he and his colleagues in no way view themselves as replacements for bobbies on the beat, and are a body distinct from the police.
“It is more about peace of mind and having a presence,” he says. “There is a gap between the public and police which has been created from the cuts.”
But that is exactly the issue many in Frinton have with their new force-for-hire, which aims to fill that void. If these burly men in uniform are not the police, then who exactly is it cruising in a Land Rover down the street?
‘They are not accountable to anybody. I find it really sinister, actually’