Staffordshire’s Conservative PCC Welcomes New Dawn for Transparency in Policing

Staffordshire’s Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Ellis has welcomed the publication of the police report on the internal investigation into what happened in the Port Vale and Wolverhampton Wanderers match last August.

He said, “I’m pleased that the Chief Constable of Staffordshire Police has been so transparent in making public the challenges faced on that day at Port Vale and where the police will need to do things differently in the future.

“It is unprecedented that a report of this type is made public and doing so sets the benchmark for a new ‘dawn of transparency in policing’.  It is the culmination of rigorous scrutiny by my office of the police process as they have investigated what happened back in August.

“The original agreement was for an edited or redacted report to be published but Staffordshire’s Chief Constable has agreed to go still further by publishing the entire report in its raw unedited form.  This is what we want from our police forces across the country and represents a major step forward.

“Police openly demonstrating that mistakes are sometime made and serious lessons need to be learned is powerful and is at the heart of PCCs holding their local Force to account.

“In Staffordshire the police have already made operational changes which will address the issues raised in this powerful document and I commend the Chief Constable and his Force for leading the way to achieving genuinely full and open public accountability.

“Ensuring this happens is at the heart of responsibilities for all Police and Crime Commissioners.”

The police report can be viewed at http://staffspolice.com/pvfcwolvesreport.