Meet the Police Commissioner

Ann Barnes, Kent’s first elected Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), hit the headlines in April last year when she appointed 17 year-old Paris Brown as her Youth Police and Crime Commissioner. Paris was to act as a bridge between the police and young people. However, after a Twitter outburst, Ann’s voice of youth was outed in the national press as ‘violent’, ‘racist’ and ‘homophobic’. This was one of the first times that the new Police Commissioners attracted the attention of the public.

Meet the Police Commissioner takes us into Ann’s world, where the 68-year-old retired teacher, runs an office of 16 people and has unprecedented powers combined with limited experience of public office and operational policing.

We join Ann in the aftermath of Paris-gate as she faces her biggest challenges to date – massive cuts to police funding, the retirement of her Chief Constable, the backlash from her severe criticism of Kent Police crime recording practises and an increasingly hostile electorate who question her salary, her ability and ultimately the role of PCC itself.

We follow Ann as she reaches out to the people of Kent with her regular presidential style ‘Ann Force 1’ bus tours of the country. Ann believes that she has a far greater connection with people on the ground than politicians or other establishment figures and she feels as if she can use her tenure to get the police to truly serve the people of Kent - which means getting them to stop manipulating crime figures, becoming more visible on the streets and become more transparent to win back the trust of the public.

In an age when most people have lost faith in politicians and many are losing faith in police, Ann believes that she represents a breath of fresh air - a common-sense rebel in a position of power, unfettered by party politics, but will she find that the realities of the job and her own lack of experience will wear her down and work against her?

Through her and the access she gives, we'll see how politics works. She may be the person in power, but how much can she really achieve, especially if her biggest strength - her lack of political skill - could also turn out to be her biggest weakness?

Will she be seen as an independent, breath of fresh air, who will roll her sleeves up to get things done or a gaffe-prone, amateur who's out of touch with people and the way things really work?

In making this film, Channel 4 wanted to explore the newly created role of PCC and gauge it’s effectiveness in the face of cuts to police funding, which is being experienced nationwide.  Our time with Ann Barnes, showed us first-hand the difficulties faced by an elected official wanting to meet the needs and wishes of her constituents, when faced with the reality of such large-scale cuts.