One day

One day, I'll be back on here. I now have much more important things to be doing in my spare time (two of them, to be precise) and until they reach the age when they're out at school all day and I can reclaim back the concept of spare time (i.e. once that long list of jobs to do the house is done.... if it ever is...!) then I'll come back on here.

I haven't deleted any posts. There's still some good stories buried in here so feel free to have a look. Having said that, I probably will delete some of the more useless chaff I've gone on about and just leave the better stuff.

There's still plenty of Police Bloggers on out there as I'm sure you've already found, and new ones come and go. So have a look through here, and some day I'll be back with several years of whinges to bore you all with :-)

Immigration debate

Immigration. Always in the news.

Two scenarios. Guess for yourself who the immigrant is

One: a man who's a pensioner himself juggles looking after the family business and being a permanent carer to his disabled mother. Owns his own business, has done for years, doesn't make him a fortune and the flat above the shop is a bit tatty but well cared for.

Two: a grandmother who just turned 40, got steaming drunk and smashed up her own council house, terrorising her daughter (who isn't old enough to have done GCSE's yet) and her baby.

Update

Ok. I've read the report, and I unashamedly admit to completely change my mind. Completely biased to the wants and desires of senior management (the only ones to maintain their pay! no freeze or loss for them!) and if adopted will have major negative impact on family life. I can take a pay cut but make my family time more disrupted than it already is??? Not happy.

Onwards and....

Okay so it's pretty clear that I am not going to have the time to be able to do anything with this for some time. Losing time to blogging when the little ones are little is time wasted for me.

I will try and edit all the posts to just have the 'interesting' stuff left of the more entertaining policing stories, and sort out the messy labels.

In the meantime, all the furore about pay and conditions.

My view:

- We are well paid
- A pay freeze is reasonable and expected
- I don't get paid any overtime anyway, I'd love to know where all these astronomical figures quoted in the media come from, they don't remotely relate to response team budgets (which is as "front line" as you get)
- Noone has actually defined what front line policing actually is. It isn't neighbourhood policing, but my local outfit are trumpeting how they've managed to save neighbourhood police all their budget.
- Media reports are fuzzy in the details. I can't quite figure out what is supposed to be happening compared to what already is.... I need to read the report fully I guess!

There's a lot more in the Winsor report I know and the fed are getting all stroppy but in all honesty the only difference I am going to see is a pay freeze. Which as I said, is reasonable and expected....

Update

Okay, so I've had a bit more of a look. Special Priority Payments are going. Well I'll always be sad to have a bit less money in the bank but I never budgeted on having these anyway. I also never quite figured the logic in who got how much and when, and they were generally a bit flawed. A material loss for myself but I always saw these as an unguaranteed 'bonus' anyway.

Competency related threshold payments are going. This will upset older service people (I haven't been in the rank long enough - i.e. over 10 years- to qualify) but I disagreed with them anyway- I saw lazy, ineffective officers being given these when they weren't deserved (and before anyone thinks it, I will happily admit I would have claimed it, disagreeing with it or not. Why wouldn't you? An extra grand a year for no extra work apart from form filling). I can see this one causing the most runcus as it will probably affect quite a few people.

Superintendents bonuses are going. GOOD. Need I say more.

Office staff are likely to get a pay cut? Well it has always rankled with me that whilst I work stupid hours and have my duties changed at the last moment, a geezer sat behind a desk doing nice office hours gets paid the same.

I like the antisocial hours pay bump, because I'll get that. I would have carried on doing response work whether or not this perk came in as it's what I joined to do, and it's nice to see a bit of reward for doing the same thing.

I can see this expertise allowance job causing issues. There's already lot of whinges around on the police forums as to why a neighbourhood officer should get this. I can kind of see their point because there are a considerable number of cases whereby those on neighbourhood teams ended up on there because of their ineptitude on response teams, and I don't see how that should be rewarded. However, neighbourhood teams do have a problem with retention. Unlike firearms teams. I'm going to stick my neck out here and say they don't need an extra payment. They already have the best and latest kit and there is no problem with recruitment on existing terms as it is already seen as a prestigous role, whereby you can avoid the tedious humdrum of minor stuff that swamps the response teams the rest of the time.

Custody Sergeant's Response

Sergeant Mark Andrews is in the news for the wrong reasons. I don't really need to provide a link judging by some of the newspaper headlines but just in case look here.

Firstly I don't condone what he did. No matter how drunk or annoying someone is we still have those three words which take precedence over everything: duty of care. He'll lose his job, and arguably deservedly so.

However, as a police sergeant who has spent a lot of time as a custody sergeant, I think I'm perhaps a bit more entitled to have something to say about all this.

I work in a relatively small police station. We only have the 10 cells. However, despite that we have generated nearly 4000 custody records this year alone. This is not even the only custody suite in our force area. 4000 custody records is just a drop in the ocean of what must be hundreds of thousands of custody records across the uk, each referring to an individual arrested and booked in at a police station. The vast, overwhelming majority of these cases pass off without incident, even with the really drunk, aggressive and dangerous people that we literally drag off the streets to keep you lot safe. The borderline psychopaths who will literally rip their arms open with their teeth to get attention (yes, I have really seen this happen). The drug addicts who start attacking the doctors when they won't give them the drugs they want. They all get treated properly and fairly. Certainly in my experience they do. Custody suites are dripping with these cameras for precisely this reason and to my knowledge they have fended off far more malicious allegations than they have found genuine ones.

So when you see the blaring headline of "BRUTALITY" and bruised faces splashed over pages in full close up just remember it refers to one, single, individual officer and his misjudgement. Not all of us.

Temporary pause...

I know this site has been somewhat neglected for some time. I just have different priorities these days (family) and I felt I was being somewhat aimless. I didn't have that anger at the ridiculousness of so much of the police service.

Well, I did, but to to a lesser extent, I guess. I was frustrated that I couldn't post what I really wanted to post about because it would lead me to being too easily identified. I've never posted anything really controversial but at the same time it's something I could really do without.

I'm trying to change what I do to go into a certain specialism. I reckon that give me some time and I'll have enough enthusiasm to tell the world about I'm up to (with the odd name changed here and there)...

I hope that I'll be able to return to blogging. I did enjoy it and the odd banter that the comments threw up. I reckon that me trying to be a political commentator opinion type blogger just doesn't suit me. So, I think I'll just return to what I'm most comfortable with, i.e. tales of what actually happens, and leave the political opinion to you.

No time frame on this specialism but I'm hoping by the end of the year. Keep an eye out....

Be the miracle

I am getting seriously fed up with a certain group of people. Any time there's a problem, they whinge and gripe about how nobody is doing anything about it. Then they come and whinge and gripe at me about how nobody is doing anything about it.

Unfortunately, that particular group of people I'm talking about happens to be police officers. I am so sick and tired of half my relief coming whinging about how stuff doesn't work or there aren't enough latex gloves or bits of first aid kit are missing.

They usually come to me for the simple reason that I tend to sort it out. However, I am royally fed up with it. I now just ask the question "What have you done to sort it out" by which I am invariably met by dumbstruck silence and a shrug of the shoulders.

At this point, I usually point out the very simple solution to whatever their current whinge is. No first aid supplies? Well here's an extraordinary solution. Email the resources people and ask for what's missing!!! Is there a fault with a bit of kit? Here's the fault reporting number!!!

I'm currently sidelined off response team after an old rugby injury came back with a vengeance and the amount of long sighs and slow shakes of the head I have off my old team about the states of various things now the only person bothered to do something about it and not leave it to the next person has gone!

That unfortunately is the case. The problem with shared kit- e.g. a police car- is that everyone seems to think it is someone else's problem to remedy, and not theirs. The end result is nobody does anything about it.

The title by the way is from Bruce Almighty, which I stumbled across last night (great film!!!). The end of the film summed it up. Don't look to others to solve your problems. You can do it yourself!

Season of Goodwill

Like many other suburban or rural forces we have a permanent travellers caravan site. The local water some time ago provided a permanent water supply to the site and provided meters to each plot akin to what you or I would have.

Nearly a third of a million pounds in unpaid bills later they got warrants to have the meters changed to pay as you go ones. The Utility company asked if we would come along to 'prevent a breach of the peace'.

After some umming and aahing by the people in charge of such things on a higher pay grade than I, they agreed to go along on a "neighbourhood style" of policing, i.e. not many officers, and the ones who are there to go round and "engage" with the residents.

Well, about half the meters had been changed and a number of plots were without any water at all when there was a perceptible mood shift and a few characters were noted walking round with various gardening and building tools, but not doing any gardening or building jobs, if you know what I mean. Combine that with a few insults and an increasing array of missiles from the youth element and the water boys decided this was not worth it and left.

Now the Utility Co won't go back in unless we can guarantee their safety. The only way to (probabky) guarantee this would mean a lot of officers to safely contain the residents away from the workers. Probably in riot kit. Effectively barricading women and children in their own homes or corralling them outside. And don't forget another lot manning a roadblock to prevent friends from coming to assist.

The Community Superintendent won't authorise that. It's not proportional. And to be fair, I understand why. Legal aid human rights lawyers would have a field day and in the current circumstances he'd find himself in rather hot water.

So. The Water Company have a court issued warrant to change the meters. The police won't help to implement this warrant despite the Water company following all the correct legal and court procedures.

In the meantime, half a dozen traveller families are without water.

Season of goodwill indeed.

******

On a cheerier note. Hope you all have a merry and safe christmas, whether working or travelling on these ice rinks masquerading as roads!

Where's Max Clifford when you need him

Just noting the relative absence of outcry and wailing about what's going in Denmark at the moment. Where's all the victims going to publicists about how they were slapped?




Can you imagine if we arrested 968 but only charged 4 or 5 with any offence? We made them sit down in lines with their hands tied behind their backs???! We'd be compared to Guatanamo bay before you could say "You're nicked!". How about if we use tear gas against a crowd? Or even imagine if we sealed off an area and said nobody is allowed in or out?


I can imagine the Guardian and Liberty offices simply self combusting in an wailing outrage.

Two Staffordshire Stories

Saw this splashed over the papers today- the girls in low cut tops with police jackets apparently causing merry mayhem in Staffordshire.

Apparently the officers have been disciplined. The Assistant Chief goes on about how these images could be negatively percieved.

What a 21st Century response. Why were these officers disciplined? The four were brought to the station as victims or witnesses. Okay they're young girls with a few Bacardi Breezers down them and put them in a station with lots of uniformed nice young men around and yes things got a bit silly and flirtatious I'm sure.

But what where the alternatives? Arrest them? Seize the cameras? Put them all in seperate rooms? They would have had no legal power to take the cameras or delete the photos. Yes they should have had a bit more control over them but they are not exactly on the al-quida wanted list are they.

Then, while I was searching through the BBC website trying to find another link to the story, I stumbled across this. Why did the media choose to splash the low cut tops and pouts over this one I wonder.

The Bonus is under threat

No, not the banker kind.

The Superintendent's bonus.

We have experienced a rise in Burglary. A rise significant enough that apparently the absolute top of the police tree is apparently somewhat upset and the rumour machine has it the Superintendent's performance related bonus is on the line.

Well hellfire if things haven't suddenly happened. We have a support squad who generally patrol in unmarked cars, although nothing as decent as the performance motors seen on Road Wars. Well, they have been hoiked out of their normal taskings and are now solely focused on burglary. Somehow from somewhere they have sourced more unmarked cars, somehow blagged from a different force.

They're normally a small unit but not any more. People have been dragged off the core response team to go and assist. I mean dragged. Some of them only a weekend's notice to turn up to a different police station on Monday. The little Support unit now has more officers parading than the entire outfit of core response team officers. Except the support lot only have to deal with burglary.

Now, not only have they taken officers from team but they've taken some of our response cars too!

To be fair to the support boys and girls they're mostly embarrassed. I've worked with them a lot and most of them are thorough and decent cops, with an encylopeadic knowledge of all the bad guys they've arrested or know are up to no good. They dig up some good results with a style of policing occasionally robust enough to make the Community Superintendent choke on his Earl Grey, but when you're talking about youths with loaded firearms there isn't time to introduce yourself and get consent for your search.

They're more than aware that they're being used as little more than a tool by the top brass to tackle one specific thing, and all their previous good work like the above has been swiftly ignored. They're ashamed of how the core teams have been stripped.

In the meantime as far as you're concerned all this is great if you've been burgled. You'll have a flood of officers arriving darn quick.

However. If you've been thumped on the head by some drunken yob; are cowering in fear from a violent partner; or have been crashed into by an uninsured driver; well, you'll have to wait. That'll still be the beleagured response team in our remaining battered Astras, picking up all the slack for every other darn call generated.

We dealt with a particularly sad fatal accident the other day. Load of units tied up for the shift with cordons etc, dealing with traumatised witnesses, furious drivers who don't care about what has happened, etc. It was a job well done by all us lot who turned up.

Next day, we're greeted by an email from the Superintendent who has analyzed the arrest figures for everyone. It is clear as a bell that as far as she is concerned that if you're not arresting people you're not performing and you need to get your act together.

Who said the performance culture is dead?

Garage Sergeant Please

I'd hate to have been the officer driving this particular motor. The Italian police's Lamborghini has been written off.

He's going to be buying donuts for a hell of a long time.....

Polar Opposites

Hero

Pc Bill Parker

Zero

Ex Pc Martin Forshaw


I know it's been a while. I was going to go on about the latest round of patheticness and career obsessions of some of the incumbent SMT round my way that are really driving me up the wall, enough to get me back on here.

However. That can wait till another day, as in the grand scheme of things they're insignificant compared to the impact on Bill Parker and Claire Howarth's families.

It's what I do

Nearly wrote this the other day, glad I didn't now. Couple of good days off does wonders for calming you down.
Now I know there's a whole load of stuff going on in the outside world that is worthy of debate- the TSG trial going on in South London caught my eye- the 'whistleblower' is either the bravest PC ever or slippery and dangerous- but today I just need to let off a bit of steam.

I don't have any regrets about getting promoted. Save one.

I don't know what it is about Custody. I always knew that I'd get custody postings, after all as a response monkey it always came with the job, being the one behind the desk. Just of late, for a number of reasons, I'm in there a lot more than I'd expected, and I might add a lot more than is reasonable. That and a couple of other things mean I am seriously fed up with where I am and what I'm doing at the moment.

Problem is, I really don't know what else I want to do. Psychologists out there would have a field day I'm sure talking about self image and identity but blue light uniform work is all I've ever wanted to do. Being the one who turns up when you call 999 is what I do. Okay granted far too often half the reasons people call 999 are a load of nonsense (that's the advantage of being promoted, I can delegate those calls off!) but ever since I can remember as a small boy getting excited about seeing a police car with it's sirens on, I'm at my happiest at work now when I'm the one behind the wheel of that police car.

Which is why I get so fed up looking at the same set of walls going throught the exact same inane questions to the next character being hauled through the doors from the yard.

I'm always keeping my eye out on the internal website to see if anything else is coming up. Problem is, there really isn't that much. I'm not interested in the Detective side of things. Traffic is an option but it's still on the politically unacceptable list it would seem and they're all downsizing- or at least having to work below their minimum strength (leading to the obvious question, what exactly is the point in a minimum strength) so vacancies are not on the horizon, and I don't know if I've got the patience to wait. Armed response isn't an option unless I can somehow persuade Mrs Simon of the merits (I know, who really wears the trousers etc)

Safer neighbourhoods? I'm yet to be convinced of the political merits and it's effectiveness. However the hours (weekends? Ha!) and lack of custody postings means I may have to give it a go.

Thing is, wherever I go, after a few months I know I'll be wishing I was back on response team, crap shifts, tedious postings, dubious line management and all. It's what I do.

Sunny Times

Saw the Sun has officially told the world that the incumbent government has lost it's support. Waiting for the return of the "Woz the Sun wot won it" headline....

Anyhoo it's rare I find myself agreeing with much that particular comic has to say for itself but their editorial on the state of law and order since Labour came to power rings actually pretty true:

"But they FAILED on law and order, their mantra "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" becoming a national joke. Knife murders are soaring. Smirking criminals routinely walk free in the name of political correctness, while decent people live in a virtual police state of snooping cameras and petty officials empowered to spy and to punish"

The next line could have come straight from a Gadget post:

"Billions more spent, insanely, making benefits more lucrative than a pay cheque - creating a huge, idle underclass for whom work is a dirty word"

I could go on about centrally enforced performance targets forcing the Police Chiefs to chase the easy targets of sanction detections at the expense of other things that don't always result in a tick in a box. The whole desperate tale from Leicester being a case in point. Harassment and antisocial behaviour- adult bullying, basically- is a long term process to sort out which goes against the ingrained police culture of once a crime report is closed (whether sanctioned detection or not), the matter is sorted. Chiefs are reluctant to spend money on a unit which doesn' t bring in the results they are required to produce.

It is no surprise that many police forces have one or two officers on the antisocial behaviour unit (who deal with the paperwork side of amassing evidence for ASBO's) whilst there are many more resources put towards the Crime Management units, i.e. office dwellers who have targets to reduce certain crime types by reclassifying them where possible, and chasing up those elusive SD's.

I'm technically not allowed to have a political opinion but I won't be sorry to see this government go. The question I'm asking is whether I dare think the Conservatives are really going to be any better.

Oh the irony

Suburbiaville is pretty much like any other town that happens to have a reasonably agreeable train link to the nearest proper urban centre.

That means parking restrictions. For anywhere within a bordering unreasonable walk to the station has restrictions between what normal society calls working hours. Where there are parking restrictions, there are parking wardens.

Now I admit I don't have anything against these girls and boys most of the time (probably because when I have to park a car with a blue strobe light on I don't worry too much about what little signs on a lamppost say), and if anything I have a degree of sympathy because they can get an inordinate amount of grief.

Quite a few times we get called to help, at which point whilst making sure nobody actually does rip anyones head off we invariably reel off the same standard lines about civil dispute, civil remedies, and generally advise people to pay the fine and then claim it back later.

(Note- this may sound somewhat contrite but this is actually how we do have to deal with these- a parking offence is not a criminal matter, and no matter what the protestations I have no power to order one of the wardens to rescind the ticket. Having been on the recieving end of these things I know how sometimes they can make your blood boil. Which is usually how we end up getting called, to stop it becoming a real criminal matter should the blood perhaps more literally boils over.)

Anyhooooo I happened to be out and about the other day when another of these calls came out to a parking dispute where things were getting out of hand. I wasn't a million miles away so I flicked the little blue switch and pootled along.

I turned around the corner. I am always surprised at how quick these parking warden people manage to get their colleagues round as there were a right old crowd there, at least 6 of them. Anyway I eventually managed to find what was going on.

I managed to supress my laughter when I realised the clamped motor was a council parking enforcement one! It seems one of their chaps had popped in to see a friend or something and had parked on private premises. Just the owner of this particular private premises had paid out for a private firm to clamp naughty unlicenced parkers. The signs were even up. Unlucky for him the private enforcement van turned up while he was still having his tea and digestive and he didn't scramble out of the place in time to stop the clamps going on.

So we had the usual standoff going on whereby removal bloke was attempting to remove vehicle but the driver had sat himself on the seat and was refusing to move. Yes, the driver was a parking warden. Many a time I've dealt with this situation on the flipside.

So I have to admit I was kind of expecting the council blokes to listen to me when I told them once again that I can't make him rescind the ticket. The private contractors were professional ones (I know some are real cowboys) and even had copies of the land registry to show the extent of the private boundary. I told him until I was blue in the face about civil remedies. I pointed out to him just once or twice that the rules are exactly the same for the dozens of times they call us to something like that, just that this time he was the one having to pay out the cash.

Would he listen? Would he heck.

He started going on about allegations of assault and rang 999 when I told him I was not going to deal with this allegation. Spoilt little boy reaction to someone not getting his own way as there was no assault unless you count a tug of war on opposite sides of a motorbike handlebar. Thank you very much. That's two completely and utterly pointless crime reports that are going to go nowhere that I've got to waste my time writing now because it's now officially recorded that there's an allegation of assault.

A colleague turned up and took over (saying exactly the same things), just in time before I lost my temper. I wasn't far off I tell you.

It was eventually resolved when after the best part of 45 minutes he finally listened and stomped off to a cashpoint and got the money. I had to get signatures from them to confirm that the assault allegation wasn't an assault. This was was solely to cover my backside from when the office monkeys picked up the "crime" report the next day and go apoleptic there were two suspects for an assault at the scene I didn't arrest!

So yes. Off the road nearly two hours dealing with what was little more than a grown adult having the tables turned on him and having a right strop about it!

Just thought I'd share.....

Stop, search, write

Well. Apparently stop and search forms are to be reduced to the bare minimum if the home secretary is to be believed.

Forgive my cynicism, but I'll believe it when I see it for two reasons:

1) In the name of efficiency I suspect we'll have to finish using up all the old forms first
2) It wouldn't surprise me in the least if my own force bottles out of this in the name of local accountability and we get an amended version which has more stuff to write on it.

In the meantime, I'd love to know where this claimed million hours of paperwork saved figure has come from and how it was figured out. It certainly wasn't from the response team jockeys whose paperwork burden remains as daft as it ever was.

Never believe someone official when they say they've taken x number of obsolete forms out of circulation. All they mean is that they've been replaced with a new version.

Old enough to play the lottery....

Shift in custody the other day, had a few in for immigration offences.

Immigration jobs make permanent custody sergeants moan, going on about taking up cells and creating them what they feel is unneccessary work. I generally ignore them as most custody sergeants fit the grumpy old man profile very well and if they weren't allowed to moan about something then they'd probably implode.

I'm not bothered about dealing with immigration offences. They do tend to take longer to deal with and there's a whole set of detention and questioning powers I don't really know much about but on the whole they're not that hard.

What does annoy me though is the little bit of small print somewhere in the immigration laws that if someone claims to be under 16 then they cannot be deported but have to be taken into care. Now this in itself I don't object to, for if there is a genuine child who has found his way into the country by whatever means then we should look after them.

I do object when fully grown adults, who wouldn't be challenged on a door at a 25 yrs above only nightclub, claim they are 16. Despite it being as plain as day- and I acknowledge there are some 14 year olds who can pass off as over 18 or even 20 - that someone is a close to 16 years old as your average Shadows single, they are treated as though they are until proven otherwise.

Unfortunately, the people at Social Services who are deemed wise enough to officially decide that someone is not under 16 don't work weekends.

The end result I had was that I had no choice to but to release this bloke (aged between 25 and 30, at least) into the "care" of social services who placed him in a foster home.

Don't get me wrong, but placing a fully grown adult about whom absolutely nothing is known, into a home full of the most vulnerable young people and teenagers in society, is a disaster waiting to happen. But unfortunately until that disaster happens I have no choice in whether I can release them or not.

Back to basics

Was being sociable the other day and was chatting to some people I had just met. Conversations as they often do turned to work and what I do.

I explained where I work, being a response team monkey somewhere in a suburb. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at their surprise when I said just how many police officers there were at any one time. It made me think for the unitiated i.e. those probably not reading this (never mind) there is a spectacular gulf between perceptions of police numbers and the reality of those on the streets who turn up when you call 999.

There's about 250,000 people resident within my particular part of the policing front line. It has a mix of everything from major trunk routes, well to do areas, old and new estates, some spectacularly notorious and in their "heyday" weren't strangers to featuring in media, and was where police trod carefully and didn't go alone. Some of them have been knocked down now, tower blocks being gradually replaced by compact brick housing on narrow roads. New buildings don't disguise the fact the same people live there.

So with this number of people, major arterial roads, a number of less socially well to do housing estates how many police officers are on duty at any one time? There used to be at least 4 parade stations in my area but it's now down to 2. Between us, we're lucky to have 30 officers.

There is an oft-quoted saying in Suburbiaville that Poo rolls downhill (you can guess what the unsanitised version is). Well, response team is in the coal pit at the bottom of the valley beneath the cliffs the top of which where the poo starts rolling from.

If there is an increase in a particular type of offence- e.g. street robbery- then response teams have new targets to tackle it and get given new fresh tarted up reporting standards by the "specialist" CID units who investigate it, as we were clearly not up to standard. When these specialist CID units fail to meet their targets then officers are taken away from response team duties to man up these teams. I have to supply officers to act as jailers in the custody suite. I have to provide officers to man the front offices. God help us if there's a crime scene anywhere needing a uniform to stand outside. Suddenly the number of officers who are actually there, in a response car with the ability and training to respond to you when you call 999, is pushing 20.

Funnily enough a couple of hours into a shift and with the volume of calls we get, e.g. a couple of shoplifters or someone presenting false documents at a bank (happens a heck of a lot), then we're down to just one or two cars covering the lot.

Now there are of course a couple of other people floating around- catch the right time in the day and you'll have the SNT (also known as NPT) out and about. But it's not their job to answer 999 calls. Someone told me the other day that we're allowed to deflect a single call a day to the Safer Neighbourhood Team. One a day. That's handy.

The effectiveness of the SNT teams is something I remain to be convinced by. Took a call the other day and was met by pretty much the entire street, up in arms about a perpetual problem they have, and the complete failure of the relevant SNT to do anything about it. I'll talk a little bit more about the other issues I have with a police force entirely geared towards the SNT model another day.

Policing is so ridiculously political these days and absolutely everything must be geared towards meeting the needs of the community. Problem is, there are so many different communities within a wider community which can often have polar opposite desires and intentions, and it would be frankly impossible to meet the desires of all of them.

As far as I'm concerned, from my own point of view, policing is really simple.

1) People don't want crime to happen to them in the first place
2) If it does, I'd want someone to turn up in a reasonable time to do something reasonable about it.

Now quite often there's nothing we can do about any particular crime. Your car window gets smashed between 10pm and 8am short of the culprit leaving a business card we've got little hope. But I wouldn't mind it properly reported and you know perhaps seeing someone on patrol between 10pm and 8am once in a while.

Problem is, whilst we are busy chasing our tails trying to meet the myriad different needs of so many different communities, there's nobody left on the response team to try and do anything like directed or reassurance patrol. Unless we're taken off response team duties to go and do that (yes, that happens).

And lets not forget all the officers doing office jobs in units with titles like "Detection Team", "Crime Reporting Integrity Team" doing their best to massage figures to meet whatever the governments latest targets may be.

Blimey. I've been ranting for ages. Apologies. Regular readers of police blogs will be more than aware that the policing situation is riduculous and that the blue line is gossamer thin when it comes to the capacity and ability to answer 999 calls. But on the offchance someone just stumbles across this post as one of their first police blogs, this is the reality.

Here & There

I have come to the conclusion that blogging is for those without children, or at least grown up enough so they can take care of themselves (most of the time). I know I have been spectacularly slack for a while now, but things are likely to remain that way for a while! On a day off, I have roughly 2 hours at the end of an evening to do the things I haven't been able to do the rest of the day, like cleaning or getting tomorrows lunch ready, you know, real exciting stuff. If I've done that then it invariably means a collapse on the sofa with the Mrs to watch something suitably untaxing.

I do try and keep check on the blogosphere every so often (there's a lot of good blogs out there!), and there's plenty of activity going on so I'm sure you're all still well up to date with the all the internal workings of the sad state of affairs that is the politicians whim of a police service today.

I noticed from the odd glance at the news websites the Met are getting it in the neck as per the normal run of thingswl. They're still as racist as usual (coming from an MP who naturally has a outstanding second home claim history.... cough) and another individual has come out about her most frankly awful treatment at G20.

If I headed up the Met's public order unit, I'd run the next protest along the lines of a barely there presence, letting everyone go and protest as much as they like, because according to the media everyone is a lawful protester just wishing to make their point unimpeded. However, I'd have around the corner a sackload of grumpy riot police in proper kit, none of this poncy yellow jackets and nice beat duty helmets to not appear offensive nonsense- and the moment when it all goes wrong- because it will- send them in. The post event media hand wringing can be dealt with by explaining the protesters had their opportunity for peaceful, lawful protest, and gave it a big up yours.

Although, now I've thought about it, with the exception of the yellow jacket and helmet bit, that is pretty much what happened. Haven't heard it explained like that though.

On a different matter, if I wanted to commit career suicide I'd publish a number I came across the other day as to how much my force is spending on hire cars to ferry various units around. Oh. My. Goodness! I'm not sure if I was supposed to see that number as I was meant to be dealing with something else but it cropped up. I have no idea what the process for acquiring a hire car is (it is almost exclusively CID units who hire cars, I noted) but no wonder they're always moaning their overtime budget isn't enough. Use public transport and you'd suddenly find yourself a lot better off!!!

Back to my first point- posting will be sporadic and not at all regular for some time yet! But every so often I'll pop up and have a little moan here and there, just to keep my toe in :-)