The new national Code of Ethics for police officers launched by the College of Policing supports the strengthened public scrutiny of the service established by Staffordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner eight months ago.
Matthew Ellis’ ambition for the county’s police service to be the most open, transparent and ethical in the country was the basis of his ‘New Dawn of Transparency’ agenda put in place on coming to office. It’s been strongly supported by Staffordshire’s Chief Constable, Mike Cunningham.
The Ethics, Transparency and Audit (ETA) Panel is made up of nine members of the public and meets regularly to monitor the work of police including whether crime recording is honest and the process of dealing with complaints from the public is fair and honest. It’s due to be localised across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent later this year.
Mr Ellis says the new national Code of Ethics which was launched by the College of Policing today (Tues) is welcome and underpins the work locally,
“As the public, we expect honest and ethical behaviour from police officers and the new code reinforces that expectation. Staffordshire’s ETA panel has used its wide-ranging and rigorous powers to scrutinise crucial areas of policing to make sure decisions made by the police are correct and are in the spirit of the new Code.”
