The Labour party has short listed four candidates as the potential Labour candidate for South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner whom some 5,000 Labour party members will vote on in a June postal ballot as their representative in the public vote on November 15th, 2012.

This week the BBC Sunday Politics programme broadcast coverage of the four Labour candidates utilising a Batman theme with Sheffield portrayed as Gotham city to hold viewer attention.

South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner

Kashaf Walayat, age 41, has been a Labour party member for 25 years, A former Labour Councillor; former senior civil servant at Dept for Education, and currently a member of the SY Police Authority since 2007.

Shaun Wright, age 44, has been a labour party member for 20 years, Labour councillor for 12 years and is the current Vice-Chair of the SY Police Authority.

Meredydd Hughes is the ex Chief Constable for South Yorkshire Police having led the force for 7 years, Labour party member for 6 months.

Dr Alan Billings is a retired Anglican priest who has served at several churches including Sheffield where he was the Deputy Leader of the City Council.

Each candidate gave a brief statement all of which are available for a short while on BBC Iplayer (fast forward to 35 minutes).

Kashaf Walayat stated:

South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner

"I will listen to the public, represent them, and reduce crime"

"Come 22nd of November you are going to have one person responsible not just for the a activities of the police authority but also all of the other areas".

My priorities would be to:

Reduce and prevent crime and the perception around the fear of crime.
Improve the Police response times and maximise effectiveness of existing resources and technologies.
Strengthen visible neighbourhood policing and address antisocial behaviour.
Engage with the public, Labour party members and connect with all communities and victims of crime.

Also, Diana Johnson (Labour MP) commented: " We are lucky we have a good choice there, and obviously it will be down to Labour party members to decide which one of those candidate they want to support and I look forward to campaigning with them."

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are in the process of selecting their candidates for Novembers election, though there is a high probability that the Labour candidate will win the November vote by virtue of the strength of the Labour public vote in South Yorkshire as illustrated by the May 2012 local election results.

Comments

Peter
26 May 12, 07:18

More Information

The issue for me around this election is no one seems to know what its all about or what it will actually mean for policing. The most informative site I'm aware of so far is policecrimecommissioner.co.uk which seems to be keeping track of all press releases and the like by force area and listing all the candidates, the list at the police foundation is pretty good as well. I guess this wont really hot up until October but it is a big change for policing and its important people understand whats going on and understand the policies of individuals who are standing so they know what they are voting for.

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