Commendable behaviour

Normally I don't read the Daily Mail, as I tend to find it a somewhat middle-england championing, opinionated and hypocritical newspaper (where else would you find articles condemning size zero culture, but turn pages to find several articles on how to lose weight in femail.....) but there was one lying around on the bus today and I read it on the way home.

Something caught my eye as a tad disturbing. The Met have commissioned a report which has criticised their handling of homophobic attacks. Now don't get me wrong here. I'm all for introspection and improvement and if we, the police as a whole (not just the Met) aren't doing our jobs properly then it should be inspected, highlighted and acted on.

I have great problems with the fact the officers writing the report are to recieve commendations. This is a reflection of the appearance-obssessed priorities upper echelons of the police have. Write a report that criticises the service for not doing a good enough job to a particular section of the public, expect commendations and probably promotion. Whereas I on lowly response team send an officer home after he inhales a lot of smoke pulling someone away from a burning van. The only official feedback I get is a whinge for not doing the injury on duty form correctly.

Perhaps myself and all the other police bloggers should expect commendations for criticising the way the police is run, currently being trumpeted in the papers after being taken up by the federation. But I doubt it. Our team came under pressure recently as our arrest and disposal stats are lagging behind the other teams. I just shrug, point to the other statistic that we consistently turn up to more calls and quicker than the other teams, and wonder if the stat crunchers will ever realise there's an inverse link between the two. Personally, I think thats the way round it should be and thankfully so does the team boss.