Ian R' Cook

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Creating safe, welcoming and profitable
consumption spaces Business Improvement
Districts, mobile scarecrows and private sector
involvement in urban social control
Ian R. Cook PhD Geography School of
Environment and Development University of
Manchester ian.cook_at_postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
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1. Reconstituting urban policing and public space

• a) Transformations in urban policing
• Before I begin, a definition
• Policing
• Those organised forms of order maintenance,
  peacekeeping, crime investigation and other forms
  of investigationwhich may involve a conscious
  exercise of power. (Jones and Newburn, 1998 18)
• Warning Dont confuse policing (a social
  function) with the Police (a specific body of
  personal) (Johnston, 1999 176)

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• Two core transformations in urban policing in
  England and Wales
• A pluralisation and fragmentation of policing
• A watershed in urban policing end of the
  monopoly of the Police?
• Proliferation of non-Police Officer public and
  private street patrols
• Increasing involvement by the security sector in
  urban policing
• Increasing institutionalisation of the private
  sector in the governance and delivery of urban
  policing policy

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• A change in policing styles, strategies and goals
  away from car-based, reactive and soft policing
  towards
• Penalising anti-social behaviour a focus on
  nuisances, incivilities and inconveniences
  (DCLG, 2006)
• Increased surveillance, monitoring and visible
  uniformed presence
• Explicit linkages between policing and
  entrepreneurial urban regeneration strategies
  (Johnstone, 2004)
• creating visibly and discursively safe spaces for
  potential visitors, investors and middle-class
  residents to spend, invest, work and live

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• b) Transformations in urban public space
• Increasing role of private sector in owning,
  governing and delivering in these new urban
  public spaces

Sites of spectacle, entertainment, beautification
and consumption
but also sites of exclusion, policing,
restrictive design, surveillance and conflict
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• Proliferation of pseudo-private spaces
• These are spaces that are formally owned by the
  state, by the public, but that are subject to
  control and regulation by private interests.
  (Mitchell and Staeheli, 2006 153)
• Such pseudo-private spaces have become
  necessary to the redevelopment of downtown under
  a system that makes accumulationthe increase of
  valuethe primary reason for maintaining or
  improving the public the city, and in which
  sociability and spectacle are merely the means
  towards that primary good. (Mitchell and
  Staeheli, 2006 153)

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2. BIDs and the policing of pseudo-private space

• Business Improvement District (BID)
• A publicly sanctioned yet privately-governed
  organisation that supplement public and business
  services to improve outdoor public spaces and
  business operations within a geographical defined
  area through a multi-year compulsory
  business-taxation mechanism (Hoyt, 2004 7)

• Passing of BIDs legislation (2003) and
  regulations (2004) in England and Wales
• Frequently attached to existing Town Centre
  Management (TCM) schemes
• BID services frequently focus on
• Public space maintenance
• Securing of public spaces and businesses
• Business services
• Marketing

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• Roles BIDs/TCM frequently play in policing town
  centres
• Lobbying local authority/police
• Operation of council-owned CCTV cameras (e.g.
  Plymouth and Coventry)
• Supply of Storenet security radios (e.g.
  Coventry)
• Assistance with, and promotion of, other policing
  schemes and policies (e.g. exclusion orders,
  street drinking bans, anti-begging and
  Storenet/PubWatch crime schemes)
• Management and/or funding of warden schemes and
  Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs)
• Promoting the area as a safe place
• Tackling the debris of ASB the removal of
  graffiti, fly-posting and chewing gum

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• BID wardens
• Commonplace core elements of BIDs
• safety agendas
• Two types/roles
• Mobile assistants
• Welcoming, directing and assisting customers
• (e.g. Coventrys daytime Customer Service
  Assistants)
• and/or
• Mobile scarecrows
• Monitoring public spaces of BID area (with no
  powers above citizens arrest)
• (e.g. Plymouths previous BID Wardens)
• Creating aesthetically, psychologically and
  discursively safe places for the middle-class to
  shop and return to shop
• Public safety is a means to an end of business
  profitability
• Ambiguous influence on real crime levels

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• Coventry Evening Ambassadors
• 4 in-house Ambassadors on duty, 6pm to 4am
  (Wed-Sat)
• Providing assistance and reducing tension in the
  evening and night-time economy
• Introduction influenced by rising concerns over
  excessive drinking and alcohol-related violence
  and disorder
• However, BIDs have coincided with

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• the introduction of Police Community Support
  Officers (PCSOs) under the Police Reform Act
  2002
• Patrolling the streets as the visible eyes and
  ears of the Police
• Limited powers to detain suspects for 30 minutes,
  issue fixed penalty notices and other low-level
  powers

• Police Reform Act 2002 introduced community
  safety accreditation schemes
• Non-police officials empowered to issue Fixed
  Penalty Notices (FPNs)
• Encouraged by Association of Town Centre
  Managements (ATCM) BID good practice guidance
• Police and Magistrates Courts Act 1994 Extended
  the power for police forces to charge for police
  officers/time

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• Choosing between BID wardens and PCSOs
  competition for quality-of-life street patrols
• BID PCSOs in Reading
• 4 PCSOs in the town centre
• Match-funded by City Centre Management Companys
  BID levy and Thames Valley Police
• Patrolling town centre between 8am until 9pm
  (Mon-Sat) and between 10am and 6pm (Sun)
• Focusing on low-level quality-of-life crimes,
  e.g.
• Monitoring chuggers and street traders
• Stopping/fining people dropping litter and
  feeding pigeons
• BID PCSOs replacing BID wardens in Plymouth
• 2 unaccredited contracted-in security wardens
  replaced by 4 PCSOs
• PCSOs match-funded by Plymouth City Centre
  Companys BID levy and Devon and Cornwall Police

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• Relational powers and authority (symbolic and
  real) of wardens, PCSOs and Police Officers
• What if somebody in a red t-shirt or whatever
  they wear in Manchester, looking like some sort
  of Mulisha, came up to you? What does that mean
  to you? Compared to somebody that looks like a
  police officer? You may be different but for me
  its thats a police person, theyve been
  trained, they have a uniform, they have something
  about them. Whereas what is that thing? Its a
  wardeny-person with a funny coloured t-shirt and
  it is not real. Thats real.
• Senior official, City Centre Management Company,
  Reading (interview, July 2006)
• Wardens frequently seen as having no power by BID
  officials and potential/actual offenders

BID wardens
PCSOs
Police officers
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• PCSOs and wardens - the eyes and ears of the
  Police
• Sharing of information and deployment strategies
  
• Shared radio systems
• PCSOs undertaking time-consuming aspects of
  Police Officers work
• PCSOs limited fining and detention powers
• PCSOs actually managed by Police
• 4 Plymouth BID PCSOs to be part of 17 in South
  Sector Unit and 120 Plymouth-wide by 2008
• Police frequently utilise BID/TCM CCTV schemes to
  identity crime hotspots, monitor suspects and
  gather evidence
• BIDs are one co-operating and competing node in
  the extended policing family
• BIDs and TCM schemes embedded into, additional
  to, and reshaping existing networks of new urban
  policing

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3. Conclusion

• A remaking of urban policing, urban public space
  and urban citizenry
• Citizens increasingly recast into consumers in
  BID pseudo-private space
• Reducing retail crime and creating aesthetically,
  psychologically and discursively safe places for
  the middle class to shop
• Questions and comments welcome