‘I’d rather he stayed, because he is so damaged’
The woman with the red rosette trying to oust Northamptonshire’s scandal hit police, fire and crime commissioner thinks his staying in post will help her chances
By Sarah Ward
Northamptonshire has only ever had a male, Conservative police, fire and crime commissioner. Adam Simmonds, was the first person elected to the role in 2012 and decided not to re stand for election after being charged with breaching the data protection act*.
The current commissioner Stephen Mold has himself been embroiled in scandal now for many months after he appointed his close friend and colleague Nicci Marzec to the post of chief fire officer. He remains in office after refusing to stand down, while the Tory-led police, fire and crime panel has refused to condemn his actions.
Hoping to end the male run is long-standing Northampton councillor and former teacher Danielle Stone.
In a Zoom meeting yesterday with shadow minister for policing Labour MP Alex Norris, (to which NN Journal was invited), Cllr Stone said that while she regrets the only casualty of the scandal has been a woman - Nicci Marzec ending up losing her fire chief job as well as her highly paid chief of staff role in the commissioner’s office - she thinks by refusing to fall on his sword, Mold may have done her a favour.
She said:
“From my point of view in terms of what is going to help us win, I’d rather he stayed because he is so damaged. I have not had a single person on the doorstep tell me they are going to vote for him and I have had quite a few Tories telling me that they are not going to campaign for him.”
Over the past few months Cllr Stone has been travelling around the county campaigning. Her manifesto is centred around safety in all aspects of life, from home to work. She has pledged to organise a countywide conversation if elected to hear from communities both urban and rural about what their policing priorities are.
Reducing violence against women and girls is a particular priority for Stone and on the Zoom call she told the shadow minister of her concerns having noted rising rates of violence.
“The biggest victims are women and girls and most of the perpetrators are men. We have got to bring about not just better policing, but a big cultural shift.
“One of the things we encounter all the time is people losing hope. They put up with abuse and oppression because they can’t see any escape and they don’t trust the system and somehow or another we have got to intervene.”
The shadow minister said Labour leader Keir Starmer has set out a target to halve violence against women and girls within five years if the party wins control of parliament.
He said:
“There are a series of ways to do it. It starts with early intervention. In Nottinghamshire we have recategorised misogyny so it is a hate crime, so that we can tackle it better. We know that misogyny is challenging in the digital space and so have greater control over that and greater sanctions.
“But also the system at the moment does not work very well for victims and tackling perpetrators, particularly repeat ones. So what we want to see in the court systems is to have specialist workers who understand domestic abuse and sexual violence, so they can work with victims and they can help them through their journey and so they can get to the end of the case.
“Similarly to have embedded in control rooms domestic abuse workers who are able to spot those victims and having a proper domestic abuse register so that it is harder for perpetrators to hide.
“We have got to do more to prevent it and then we have to do more to tackle it.”
Another issue discussed with the shadow minister was the rise in retail crime rates.
Cllr Stone said:
“It is happening in full view - some of us see it and there is not anything the shop can do about it. They just have to put up with it and they are told to ignore it. The advice is, ‘Don’t accost the criminals because you might get hurt.’ And if they do challenge, they are subject to a level of abuse. It is in our communities and in front of us and I feel really, really bad for those workers.”
The Labour MP said:
“We are going to make a very positive case for the change we want on community safety. We know it can be done, as we have done it before in government.
“Retail crime is one of those significant issues - there are 850 incidents of abuse against retail workers every single day, that’s really significant levels for those people who are keeping us fed and watered.
“They met all those challenges in the pandemic - there was no lockdown for them - yet what they get in reward for that is increased violence and abuse.
“That is of course completely unacceptable. With a colleague I was able to get that as an aggravated factor in sentencing, but we think we can go much further than that.
“We need to see local police forces, make a priority and that has to come through that democratic leadership too. The last thing this can be seen as is part of the job, as it is absolutely not - they should not be subjected to violence during the course of their working lives and it is happening in every town and village.”
He said some supermarkets say when staff do detain someone, the majority of the time they have to let them go again as there is no one to make the arrest.
“That is a sign of a police force spread too thinly.”
Labour’s candidate for Northampton North, Lucy Rigby, was also on the zoom call and said she was repeatedly being told on the doorstep of crimes being reported with no follow up action.
“It is so undermining of confidence and it is hugely problematic. 90 percent of crimes are going unsolved. There is a culture of impunity for crime across the board. It is absolutely diabolical. This needs to be gripped. It is the second or third biggest issue on the doorstep.”
Who is Danielle Stone?
Stone has been a Labour party councillor since 2011 and was a member of the opposition on the former borough and county councils in Northampton and is now a councillor for Castle ward on West Northamptonshire council.
She has been leader of the local Labour group in the past and was picked by the Labour Party to be their police, fire and crime candidate earlier this year.
She is a teacher and worked as an education officer in the county, and set up the study support service for schools and communities. She also runs a youth group for refugees in Northampton.
The election record so far
The closest Labour came to winning the police and crime commissioner election in Northamptonshire was in 2016 when Kevin McKeever ran winner Stephen Mold close gaining 49,161 votes to Mold’s 58,175.
Mold had a decisive victory in 2021 gaining a huge 102,752 votes compared to the Labour candidate who gained 53,166 votes followed by Liberal Democrat Ana Savage Gunn on 29,621 votes.
The next election will take place this May.
* In 2017 a jury failed to reach a verdict as to whether Simmonds was guilty or not.
I would suggest that the following is an adequate summary of the problems with policing in Northamptonshire.
https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/police-forces/northamptonshire/
Note, under the "Performance" tab, that the police are inadequate, relative to national standards, in most areas that were inspected, and that there is no area at all where the performance can actually be described as "good".
Note also, under the "Key Facts" tab, that we have fewer police officers in front line roles than the national average, also about 20% fewer officers than the average, measured relative to population. Finally, note that we pay about 20% less than the national average for our policing.
My opinion is that we have been duped by the current Commissioner into thinking that paying less means that we get better value. The basic facts about police performance say otherwise. A key step in the process of getting acceptable performance out of the police is that we are going to have to pay more, and a new Commissioner is going to have to ensure that the extra resources that are made available, by us paying more, are used effectively.
Cllr Stone is going to have to address the above issues in order to get my vote.