Well I never

Last Saturday, I did two things I normally never would do.

I bought something from a motorway service station, and it was a copy of The Times. I did the mental equivalent of a handbrake turn when I saw the headline article though, and I had to buy it just because I didn't believe it.

Top police to boycott official police paperwork? Turns out the headline is a touch misleading as Surrey police and their compatriots are not boycotting the official paperwork, but are giving a suitable finger to the target driven culture that has the bane of every front line PC, and a great deal of dissatisfied "customers".

Well halle-flippin-lujah. What this and countless other blogs have been saying for ages, in fact is the root motivation for many a blogger- has finally been noticed at the top of the policing tree.

I still have some reservations though- I put chief constables in the same bracket as politicians most of the time, and I will be curious to know if any front line officers from Surrey, West Mids, Staffs and Leics police will actually find their day to day jobs any different. Not that I'm suggesting that Chief Constables are all talk and no action, or like their league topping position a little too much to really follow through with this once the media isn't listening.

I hope I'm wrong. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times that target driven policing is a shambles to the detriment of the police and the public. So much front line work either cannot be measured - e.g. how you go about dealing with the family of a road death victim- or is ignored all in favour of the big two: total recorded crime, and total detected crime. Nothing else seems to matter come the end of the financial year.

Come March this year I had to laugh as suddenly bucketloads of cash were released from their hoarding sites as 1) it had to be spent else there'd be less the next year 2) everything was being thrown to try and keep the total recorded crime figures less than the previous year. I kid you not, up to three minibuses a day full of old bill on overtime, dragged out from every which corner, stuffed in a yellow jacket and told to do "high viz anti burglary patrol".

So I hope that Mr Rowley, Sims et al are true to their reported word, and really have decided that focusing and driving towards being top of the sanction detections table at the cost of losing common sense and discretion is to end.

Random Thought

Tootling home the other day from what felt like an interminable shift in custody and my mind was wandering.

For most uniform sections of the police, arrest figures are king. I was speaking to some traffic colleagues the other day. Their senior management have set them targets of a certain number of tickets and arrests per month. The (to my mind) absolute core function of a traffic officer- don't ask me to call them roads policing officers- surely has to be to reduce the number of serious and fatal car accidents. Job parlance for that is KSI's- Killed or Seriously Injured. Yet a target to reduce KSI's doesn't actually feature in the performance indicators set for traffic officers.

I simply just don't get that at all.

This led me on. Senior management, led by the government and whatever authorities they answer to, by the way they have determined performance figures obviously feel that the more arrests = more productive = more good.

Surely though, would the most effective police force would be the one that doesn't find it necessary to arrest anyone in a month. I admit I'm slightly in the realms of fantasyland here as while there are people in the world, some of them will always be up to no good. But do you see my general point? The most effective police force will prevent crime, not simply turn up afterwards to claim arrest points.

But we are orientated completely and utterly to the latter. Not the former.

Two pennies

Every blog has been ranting about our pay award. 1.9%.

Now I don't think we as a rule a particularly badly paid especially when compared to some other emergency services. Can't say I particularly like a pay increase below inflation though, that's really a tad off.

I don't know the ins and outs of the whole history of police pay but as far as I can tell some time ago an agreement was reached with the incumbent government that in return for the right to strike we would be guaranteed a certain pay increase each year. Quite what the mechanisms were regarding that I have no idea but the point is this government has reneged on that agreement.

MPs have such a cushy life which is what really makes this sting. Take a look at Coppers Blog for the best comparison of MPs claiming expenses for everything left right and centre. I have to buy my own torches, batteries and belt kit as the job issue ones are invariably poor quality. MPs can even claim a cycling to work allowance! At their rate, I'll have a pound a day thank you very much. Not much, but it'll buy me and the wife a takeaway at the end of each month. Oh except we don't have a cycling allowance.

I would've accepted 2.5%. What has really wound me up is the way the Jacqui "I live in an awfully nice area" Smith has said she accepts the 2.5% recommendation but won't backdate it to when it should have been implemented, making it a reality of 1.9%. Its underhand, sneaky and frankly I'd like to..... (I've been pondering what to say, and I still can't think of anything postable)

Here's the reality for me. I parade 6 officers to cover an urban / suburban population of approx 70,000. I spent 9 hours of my last shift writing a report regarding one individual person. On night shift there are dozens of spare car park spaces but come the morning every one is filled by someone, but who I never know as they're never with me on response work. Safer Neighbourhood teams have been set up with people taken from response teams to do the work response teams don't have enough time and resources to look at. The ethos of management revolves solely around perfomance indicators (and inextricably linked- whether the Superintendents get their bonus). "Support" Squads are set up with fat overtime budgets to target specific crimes (which are always but ALWAYS linked to performance indicators and bonuses) whilst team inspectors can only authorise overtime when it is completely unavoidable (i.e. arrest). They face discipline if it is overbudget and yet if there is an underspend the money is taken away from them to feed another support squad.

I knew there was a reason I didn't initially want to post about this. It winds me up just how messed up this system is. And the blame completely lies with the Labour Government as far as I'm concerned. I've not been in quite long enough to have worked under the Tories but this lot are obsessed with target culture and imposing a financial reward and sanction scheme on a job that essentially cannot be measured effectively with any statistical means. And those aspects which can be measured cannot give an accurate reflection of what they are meant to. 4 out of 5 crimes aren't investigated? So we are expected to put out witness appeals for every car window smashed as John Random forgot to put his TomTom away? There is often a reason why crimes are not investigated beyond their initial investigation. We don't have the resources to stand there at the following day asking people if they were present yesterday, to pore over hours of CCTV on the offchance a suspect may have been captured. I've known people get furiously angry for us not checking 8 hours of CCTV when they found their car window had been smashed in a car park. No suspect description, not known if he was a he or a she or in a car of their own, utterly unrealistic proposition. But my goodness she went mad at me for not doing it.

This post has gone on long enough, apologies.

Memories revisited

Went past that accident yesterday. The furrow marks on the grass are filling in, and the grass is already making a comeback. The trunk is still a scorched black with scars cutting deep into the wood near the base. Some sad flowers hang limply where they've been tied to the tree.

It's quite a different scene in daylight. The skidmarks have been worn away now by the traffic and rain.

I never mentioned that on the night in question the governor asked me to take a car away from response work - i.e. don't take calls- to specifically target the Dream Factories latest performance indicator.

We were "underperforming" because a while ago someone invented a new code to go on certain paperwork returns, and then made our returns on this new code a performance indicator. Because we weren't told about said new code, (well, it might have been published on the intranet site or even a forcewide email, but I don't count either of those as real communication) our return was zero. Oh dear. Someone didn't like that (probably the person who thought of the new code), sent word to Ivory Towers and so the governor got a rocket.

I did ponder the governor's request on the way to the accident, travelling in a blue light convoy behind the car who was supposed to be doing it.

Did we meet any performance indicators dealing with a fatal road accident? Nope. A bad day at the office for the governor.

Lunatics in charge of the Asylum

I met Duncan the other day. Well, I say met, if a meeting is what you would call several 999 calls to a naked man running around in the street.

Duncan wasn't running around in the street when we got there, but he was happily doing the backstroke amongst the petunias in someones back garden.

Still naked, I might add.

Duncan was actually quite pleased to see us, and actually had to be handcuffed to ensure there was no physical actualisation of him being pleased to see us, if you catch my drift. Although he did stop when the female ambulance staff arrived, saying he would never do that in front of a lady, but was quite annoyed at our reluctance to let him pleasure himself in front of us.

Duncan unsurprisingly was sectioned under our S136 Mental Health Act powers- which to summarise is that if we find someone who appears to be suffering from mental illness, in a public place, in need of immediate care or control for their or the public's safety, we can take them (against their will if need be) to a place of safety, usually a hospital.

I say appears to be suffering from Mental Illness. Being mere police officers we are of course unqualified to say anything definitive about mental health symptoms and so there are a number of things that must happen once we get to said hospital to ensure it really is mental illness- which involves waiting (usually for for several hours) for a suitably qualified collection of people to say that they are indeed mentally ill.

We were fortunate enough to section Duncan in office hours, so everyone was actually present and he was sectioned and sent straight back to the ward from where he was released less than 24 hours earlier.

You see, if Duncan doesn't take his medication, within 12 hours he effectively becomes a hyperactive 5 year old who cannot stop talking (or shouting, singing etc) at 120 miles an hour and has absolutely no idea of social norms. Hence the naked swimming in flowerbeds, masturbating and attempting to punch ambulance crews. He will have no recollection of these events.

But within 24hrs of ensuring he has his medication, his symptoms will have all but gone as the haywire bit of brain is brought back in line. He will be released back into the "care of the community".

He will then stay at a "sheltered" accomodation. I spoke to the warden at the place where Duncan was staying before his naked endeavours. I got seriously wound up with the attitude of this warden, which could be summed up as "Do I look like I care".

To me, this means one of two things. The warden from day one just couldn't give a hoot about their role in making sure the residents have their medication- they are happy with their state provided flat and call whichever emergency service whenever a resident gets out of line etc.

Or. They started with the best intentions, but got overwhelmed by the enormity of their task with little or no support. Their are about 50 rooms in this sheltered housing block. With the one warden who occasionally has daytime support staff.

People with mental health problems should not be locked up and hidden away. I know people who have done and do suffer with mental health problems. But if people don't have caring and patient families and friends to support them, and have to rely on the state to help, then the outlook is bleak.

Care in the community sounds great on paper, and I'm sure makes all the right political noises and has all the right buzzwords of "inclusion", "equity" and all that. But the reality is a perpetual cycle that is underresourced and overwhelmed, and has few success stories.

The title of the post, by the way, refers to the government. Not anyone actually involved in dealing with mental health.

Too much

I know I haven't posted much recently on "real" police jobs, i.e. stuff I've been going to.

A couple of reasons- a course, one which I feel Inspector Gadget would have particularly loved, a course which can be summed up that if someone is underperforming, its actually my fault. It took a week of seminars, role plays and discussions, to tell me that, and that's about all I can remember. Well, that and the fact I was now called a delegate, the trainers were now to be called facilitators, and we didn't have to wear ties.

That aside, I came to the conclusion last night I'm trying to do too much. I'm involved in projects with various senior management teams trying to improve practical stuff at my (i.e. response) level, I'm in consultation with a specialist branch developing a training package because I found out my troops are completely unsure about how to deal with these particular incidents and are running on a combination of rumour and common sense. Which most of the time is fine, but its when it goes wrong it will come back to bite them. If a standard operating procedure regarding a particular call is published deep in the job intranet files somewhere, it doesn't matter how little publicity it has or how hard it is to find, if its published it is assumed everyone knows of its existence and will be called to account for why it hasn't been followed.

But now I've found this out, the responsibility has shifted on to me to bring everyone up to speed. No pressure there then.

Combine this with a new PC needing a lot development (see above about it all being my fault) who is taking up completely disproportionate amounts of my time, plus the new governor being a big fan of figures, plus a load of other stuff which is too identifiable to blog about, but all requiring computer time. The other day I spent about 5 hours in the poxy windowless box with dodgy heating that serves as the sergeants office staring at a screen trying to make headway with all the above, in addition to the usual supervision stuff I have to do with regard to crime reports and everything else, before I said "Bollocks to this", threw on my civvy jacket and took a walk round the park round the back of the nick in what was a glorious autumn day (I didn't know, see bit about poxy windowless box), where I got hassled by an over friendly squirrel for one of my Revels.

I didn't give him one.

But even then I still took my radio with me, knowing I would feel the vibrate if someone pressed the panic button and having that bit of ear specially tuned to the high pitched beep which accompanies it, so I could sprint back to the nick and be in the car within two minutes.

So I've come to the conclusion I've got to scale back. Accept the fact that changing policies at high level is a process which happens at a pace akin to evolution, and just concentrate at the moment on the stuff that needs to be done here and now. Its frustrating because I know just a few changes, and someone taking responsibility for something rather than saying "thats not my problem" would make a world of difference. But at the moment I don't have the hours in the day to be the person to take that responsbility, which is I know what'll happen. Maybe in a few months when things have settled, just not now.

As for right now, the sun is out and this is enough time in front of a computer for today. Except for one last thing. In true gadget style, here's a song that came on whilst I was writing this which fitted my mood... one of those "sing as if nobody's listening" kind of moments for me.....

Performance, Stats, Targets etc

Carrying on with this performance v policing debate.

I was talking about our teams performance with another skipper today. The ethos on our team generally amongst the skippers and PCs is that on response teams, response work should take priority. (The governor is trying to get us to push more the other way, towards stats, more on that another day.....)

We had a look at the response times of the top performing team. They are pretty poor. For some reason, response times to calls are not one of the team performance comparisons given any weight.

And herein lies the dichotomy.

The top team have the best or at least high statistics for arrests and stop searches /stop accounts and detections. This is because they are quite happy to arrest people left and right and centre for minor crap. They are in fact encouraged to do so. The usual tales of "its not drunk and disorderly, its section 5" and all that.

So- they can be said to performing well and are providing good value for money for the public. The statistics say so.

And in a certain way, that may be the case. Unless you're one of the unfortunates who's called 999 to find that the top performing team is on duty and they're all already busy dealing with (on the whole) more minor stuff.

Broad generalisations here but the overall picture is accurate. A police team that is performing the best on paper is more likely to be providing a worse service if you're the one actually calling us.

But how do you measure the performance of the police? Its your money being spent on us lot. I wouldn't accept just being told "We're doing a good job, just believe it". But the current system isn't exactly working, nor accurate.

Suggestions welcome.....

National Crime Reporting Standards (ish)

Morning all

A shocker for you all today. Police don't always exactly comply with the ethos of the National Crime Reporting Standards, aka NCRS!!!

NCRS state "All reports of incidents, whether from victims, witnesses or third parties, and whether crime related or not, will result in the registration of an incident report / log by the police".

Then.... "Following initial registration, an incident will be recorded as a crime (notifiable offence) if on the balance of probability
a) The circumstances indicate a crime defined by law and requires recording in accordance with Home Office Counting Rules
b) There is no credible evidence to the contrary

Once recorded, a crime will remain unless evidence becomes available to disprove it has occurred" (click here for original source)

The first part is generally not a problem. Any time you call 999 a computer generated log is started. Its how the 999 call gets routed out to the officers on the street.

Its the second bit where corners are cut.

An example. Its a Friday night in urbantown. Someone calls in a fight on the high street. We despatch someone. However, these fights are normally over within 30 seconds, or the sight and sound of approaching blue lights dissuades the combatants to continue. One of two things frequently happens.

1) We never find any of the combatants.
2) We find them, and both parties swear nothing happened or refuse to tell us anything.

When this happens, (note- not including times when someone is actually injured and/or talks to us), particularly in the first case, then nothing more happens. No crime report is generated, even though we have a witness (and more often than not, cctv) of affray at the very least. Technically, that means we should generate a crime number. However, we tend not to, as it is "unnecessary" work. We cannot find a victim, and therefore no crime, right?

Well, not according to NCRS. We have a witness to a crime and on the balance of probabilities it has occurred. Therefore, we should generate a crime report until we can prove it didn't occur.

However, we don't. The balance of probabilities is magically weighted somehow to that it did not occur and so no crime report goes on. Everyone knows we are short enough on a weekend night and invariably have enough work to do with the more substantial fights and where people are injured and booze fuelled domestics to worry about the times when it was handbags.

Chiefs are happy to let this deviation from NCRS go, as it means there is less violent crime shown on the figures and less unsolved crime.

Myself and some of the other relief skippers were discussing this over the weekend. Normally we're happy for these things to go as too right we'd rather have people available for the genuine calls. But we're starting to come to the conclusion that perhaps we can be our own worst enemy. We always complain that we're too stretched, especially at the weekend. Minimum strengths are calculated by some formula I'm not told about but the volume of crime must be a factor in this calculation, especially violent crime.

So we're thinking (we haven't yet decided to properly go with it) maybe its time we really stuck to the rules regarding NCRS. Every time CCTV pick up a scrap, or someone on a passing bus says they've seen a scrap, then recorded as affray it shall be. It won't be investigated as we still don't have a victim, but on the books as violent crime it shall go.

The PC's aren't going to be too happy in the short term as yes, sorry, extra typing on the computers for reports that are going nowhere. But this could cause a stir and you never know, higher echelons of management might get a bit of pressure on, and we might even get some people out of their offices and doing some bleeding work when we're most stretched.

Emotion of the day: Frustration

A number of reasons why.

Frustation at the lack of frontline resources. The last few days have been particularly busy and we have completely lacked the manpower to adequately answer calls. Took over an hour and a half to respond to one priority call, you know, the kind where we should be there within 12 minutes? I only know of that one because I booked in the resulting prisoner (and yes, it was a domestic)- there would have been plenty more calls where it took just as long to turn up, if at all. By the time someone becomes available and the control room ring the informant back the suspect is long gone (if there is one), its gone cold and there's nothing left but reports for assault or criminal damage or theft or whatever. And we're forced to put off sending a unit again because by now another urgent call has come out that takes priority, so the bewildered and shocked victim won't get to see a police officer until the following morning. Call that a good service?

I met some people in a local takeaway (No police canteen? Don't be silly. Its the weekend). Really nice folks, we were chatting away while Mrs Leng and her family beavered away in the kitchen getting our tea. They were a touch surprised when I told them just how few police cars covered their neighbourhood (and the surrounding ones). By that time, half the cars had prisoners in and we had the grand sum of 2 police vehicles covering a big area. No neighbourhood police teams on at this time of night I'm afraid. Just us, the slightly mad officers staffing the response teams at all hours (i.e. not just monday to friday) because for some strange reason they're committed to trying to make a difference for when someone has to call 999.

Frustration at humanity. In Urbanville centre, there is a well organised group of persons (having to hold my tongue here) who come to town to prey on the people out getting drunk and careless with their belongings. I lost count of the sheer volume of calls from people saying either they've seen someone pickpocketed or have lost something of their own.
Frustration at the justice system. It is nigh impossible to convict these pickpocket gangs. The person who takes your phone out of your pocket doesn't keep it. Within seconds it has changed hands 5 times. The victims are drunk. The witnesses are invariably drunk. I know it would be a completely futile exercise going to court. The person seen to have taken the item hardly ever (ever!) has the item on them. Poor witnesses, no evidence of item on suspect. CPS won't take long to decide there isn't enough evidence. I've come to the custody desk in the morning before and seen there are seven or eight (thirteen once!) people arrested for the original offence. But by the end of the day, all are out, NFA. Maybe once or twice one will be charged.
The only way to catch these guys is dedicated surveillance and dozens of police officers in plain clothes. But that costs money, needs an awesome amount of paperwork to justify the surveillance, and the crimes are low value, low impact. Got a better chance of voting in my own pay rise.
So week after week its the same story. Who said crime doesn't pay.

Frustration at the courts. A prolific scumbag (harsh words I know, but this one is an exception. I don't know his history, of how he's ended up the way he is. I just deal with the end result- i.e. a victim- again and again. And this bloke deserves the title Scumbag.) was sent to court a couple of months back with a raft of offences. But this bloke is clever, not a brain-addled drug addict. He turns up to court very remorseful, shaved and in smart clothes, calls the magistrate Sir, spins a yarn about his attempts to reform and always makes sure he has a few offences taken into consideration to demonstrate this. He got off with a 2 year suspended sentence last time for a raft of offences that should've got him 5 years.

So he's back out. Our burglary rate has gone in one direction. He likes nice cars this chap, and is breathtakingly arrogant in his driving after he's broken into your house and taken the keys. He knows our rules of pursuit and deliberately makes it as dangerous as he can so we have to call it off. He is good enough to rarely leave any forensic evidence at the scene but we all know its him. Driving around in one stolen motor to turn over someone else: person, house or business. The anger of my team is palpable. We're all hoping its us on for when the dice falls in our favour. Every so often, it does, and we'll have everyone available, and an insomniac who spots him at work screwing somewhere, and we'll have him. But in the meantime, we're as frustrated as hell.

I'm off down the gym.

Passing the buck

On the western edge of Suburbiaville is a foster home run by Urbantown & District Local Authority. This is the place where kids with backgrounds that make you wince go to stay. (Talking of which, I had to take a girl away from her mother into protection recently, more on that another day).

Some of these kids tend to be a tad disrespectful of authority, which in moments of sanity I can understand, especially when you look at their individual histories. But what has got my wick this week is not the kids but the Authority policies which apply.

Mona is barely scraping 15. She has a curfew at the foster home, which means she has to be there by 10pm every night. As any parent of one of similar age may know, getting teenagers to abide by curfews is a touch challenging. Mona is no exception. Pretty much every weekend this year she has decided she'd rather be out somewhere else than the home and stays out late.

Pretty much every weekend this year she has been reported missing by staff. If she isn't in on her curfew time y'see, their "duty of care" is to call police. Except it isn't duty of care. Its passing the buck. Its what they have to do to prevent themselves from being criticised for not being concerned.

At the weekend, Mona goes out. She isn't in for curfew. Staff call police. Staff do nothing else. I read through the previous missing persons reports as I'm section sergeant and have to do risk assessments on all these missing bods. I read through how another Sergeant had a blazing row with the home staff, telling them that their duty of care does not completely dissolve once they've called us, they need to continue to make their own efforts to contact the "missing" person. You see, once they've called the police as per their policy, they "hand over" all investigative aspects to us. They don't even bother calling the missing kid, as it's no longer their problem. They can't even be bothered to make a phone call to speak to her.

Of course, we know as well as they do she isn't missing out at all. She's out getting bladdered with friends.

Every time Mona has been reported missing, she saunters in with likely a bit of a hangover the next afternoon.

Of course, once this happens a hapless response car has to be despatched to her to speak to her, with the hope she might tell us something about where she's been so next time we might save ourselves a bit of work and go pick her up straight away. She of course says absolutely nothing. Dont' forget that prior to this the original response car assigned to the missing person report has had to spend approx 4hrs off the road doing standard enquiries, e.g. checking with all of the regions A&E departments, custody suites, doing various computer traces.

This of course is a complete waste of their time, which the crew are only too aware of. This makes them angry at the kid and the foster home staff. And unfortunately they sometimes let them know (more by demeanour and attitude rather than anything which is said), which simply breeds further resentment on both sides.

When this landed on my desk "Here you go sarge, a great misper for you" I took an educated gamble and called the crew off all but the most basic routine checks. I classified as the lowest risk possible, spoke to the control room and scheduled it to be reassessed in the afternoon, after the time she usually comes back.

I say gamble. This is a story of the missing person who cries wolf. One day, she'll go out beyond her curfew and get herself in a world of trouble, whereupon I will probably be in a pile of big steaming poo for inappropriately classifying the risk level and halting the enquiries. But in a world of a severely reduced vehicle fleet and weekend football matches meaning a large chunk of my team are off elsewhere on public order duty, I have better things for the remaining response cars to do. Like go help search for the dangerous mentally ill person who's just escaped in Urbantown.

And yes, roughly 3pm Mona stumbles back, staying awake long enough to tell the attending officers to "f--- off" before going to sleep. Gamble pays off this time.

Knee Jerk

Again I don't have the greatest amount of time, and am only skimming over the whole issue. But am I the only one who thinks that the government's response to the media furore over gun crime- i.e. reducing age where you recieve a mandatory 5 year sentence to 17- is little better than a knee jerk reaction, designed to please the crowd and completely fails to address the source of the problem?

You see, taking time to examine and address social deprivation, the lack of suitable role models, the lack of suitable diversion activity etc etc would take time and results wouldn't be seen until well after the next election, so no point in that says Mr Politician.

So lets just do something that seems "tough on crime", keeps the Daily Mail happy but in reality is likely to have little to no positive effect? It's not as though possessing a gun isn't already illegal, with a possible 10yr sentence available to judges. Going back to the whole prisons debate, how really is sending a 17 year old down for a minimum of 5 years (meaning likely: further education- nil. Job prospects- nil. Angriness at authority- maximum) going to help in the long term? The only argument in favour of reducing the minumum age for mandatory sentencing is "deterrent". What a pile of politico-turd. If anything, that's only going to increase the kudos of having a gun, and increase the likelihood of using it against police in order to escape.