Clueless Politician Alert- Again

But this time its the police minister!

Tony asks: Do you think I'm a muppet?

Police tell him that we're focusing on government imposed targets at the expense of not being able to focus properly on more serious crime.

Response of police minister? Not to state how he is concerned at these statements being made across the country and how its the result of a 6 month review by the federation; not how he feels he should examine these claims to see if there is any substance.


Instead, we get "'I respect their views; I just think they over-egg and exaggerate to make a point, sometimes to the detriment of the members, and that's not in their own interests"


What? I got that quote from the Metro's coverage of the "Tonight" programme (haven't actually watched it to confirm he said it) but if it is, isn't that just a completely arrogant statement? Look, Tony. Bloggers, Panorama, Tonight, The Federation- we're all consistently saying the same thing. But you brush it off as though we're making it up and completely fail to grasp the point you think we're "over-egging".


Minister for Police? What a joke. Minister for Imposing Political Will On Police and Turning A Deaf Ear to Officers slightly more accurate, if a mouthful.

Clueless Politician Alert

"Everybody is worried about the rise in gun crime and violence in this country at the moment, and the destruction these weapons cause is terrible"

What is this referring to? A debate regarding the reactivation of deactivated guns? The latest set of statistics regarding youth crime? A speech about the import of eastern european weapons?

No. The mayor doesn't want rifles on a rememberance day parade.

The only saving grace is that the other councillors of Chepstow have their heads screwed on right in at least this respect and told her where to go.

Click to see the article here.

A song dedication

It's a touch naughty, but I can't resist it: Here's one for you, Mr Blair:



For those looking for a more sensible viewpoint from me, I've started posting things over at the guardians "comment is free" website.

One thing that has annoyed me from the multitude of postings on that article is the way nearly everyone labels the police as "the police", i.e. a collective of autonomous zombies unable to question anything for themselves and unwitting slaves of government and chief police.

I hope this blog and others remind people that actually, we're not hardwired blank faced drones. We question policy just as much, and sometime more so, and get just as frustrated when things go wrong.

I get really frustrated when I see some of the ignorance of how the police really works- one of the comments is that we will now shoot anyone we reasonably suspect of being a suicide bomber and we are revelling in this shoot to kill policy.

No, no, no and No.

Media Monkeys

Regular readers here- should there be any!- will know that it is not unusual I get a bit irate about the media and the way things regarding the police are reported.

We rely on the media a great deal for information regarding things outside our own day to day lives and people most of the time tend to take what they read as fact, give or take the odd pinch of salt, depending on which paper you read. You assume journalists are objective and neutral.

Well I was not too impressed with the Guardian on Saturday. Blaring headline shouting "Embattled Blair faces new armed police allegations".

Except when you read through it, he's not. The two brothers from Forest Gate have popped up again. Apparently those horrible armed bullies from SO19 said rude things to them. The way it is reported would suggest they were deliberately targeted by them. Until you read at the end it was because there was a report that a firearm had been seen and two imitation firearms were recovered. The SO19 officers it would seem didn't even know it was the two brothers until they were already stopped.

And then there's the bit which really made me question why the Guardian reported this at all, let alone across the front page. They aren't making a complaint. This is quite crucial! The Guardian completely fails to address the question why. Why aren't they complaining? They've got the lawyer, the public profile, any complaint they make will be properly addressed, trust me (instant referral to IPCC methinks! Can't see me or the duty officer trying to deal with this locally). To me, there's something missing.

I wonder how much their lawyer charged the two brothers (on legal aid?) an awful lot of money to write a snooty letter to the commissioner saying how armed officers are "flagrantly and flamboyantly endangering the citizens of london".

Whatever. I'd like this lawyer to spend a shift away from her million pound house (well, its got to be hasn't it) in a nice neighbourhood with regular let alone armed police, as she clearly has got no idea, or is breathtakingly arrogant.

Only the Telegraph mentioned the officer fighting for her life after being run over by a suspect trying to escape. Best wishes to DC Corbett.

I've got to admit, I normally find the guardian a touch more reliable than the others, but this article has got me questioning what agenda they've got.

Stop and Search- again

Barely had my fingers left the keyboard on my last missive about Stop and Search when its back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

So as a proportion of the population you are more likely to be searched if you're black. On the face of it, that seems worrisome.

But these statistics can only be the tip of the iceberg in what has to be a huge complex interlinked web of many different socio-economic-cultural factors. Why are more blacks per head of population in jail for instance. And to be in jail, that means convicted of an offence, so no issues about (un)reasonable grounds for search by officers.

Delving into this is far beyond me here. I could spend hours debating the availability of role models, challenges of peer pressure, gang culture, the impact of living in an urban or rural area (without spending time researching it, I believe the majority of ethnic minorities continue to reside in cities), how this and all the above link in relative economic depravation or wealth, etc etc.

For me, I still stand by what I said in my previous post. In my specific local area, there is a particular issue with reported street crime- robbery and mugging, and the suspects are predominantly black and to a lesser extent Asian youths- and consequently most stop searches are resultant from this, . However, my previous force area was a much more residential sector, where the principal problem was burglary and motor vehicle offences, for whom the suspects were predominantly white male youths (especially for the motor vehicle offences) and white adults.

So do I change the way I work or the way I expect my team to work as a result as a result of this research? No. I will just carry on the way I think best. Namely treat each case, each incident, each call on its own merits, and deal with it with the information I have and the powers available.

Just please don't call me racist. One of the few times I've nearly lost my rag with people over the years is when I've stopped a black male for doing a fairly blatant driving offence (red light, taking the mickey with speed limits etc) and I get that classic line "You're only stopping me because I'm black". The best one being someone at night doing 45 in a 30 in a car with blacked out windows. I couldn't tell whether it was a male or female driving, let alone any ethnicity. The only result I tend to find that particular comment brings is that the words of advice option quickly becomes less favoured and the pen is out on the FPN.

And before anyone says anything, I don't only stop black drivers. Unless you give me the finger or try and hide your face from me, I look at the state of the car first, manner of driving second and the looks of the driver a very distant and usually irrelevant third when it comes to deciding when to pull someone over. As it happens, as far as I can remember, every pursuit I've been has been a white driver.

And here's an afterthought- most of the people stop and searched are male. Does that make us institutionally sexist? Should an advisory group be formed to examine and direct us on this particular issue? Should groups like Fathers4Justice or Presidents of Working Men's Clubs be asked to comment on this male bias? I feel the media have missed an opportunity to criticise, sorry I mean highlight an issue to debate, here.

Another one gone

Feel a bit guilty as I hadn't really checked my sidebar for a couple of weeks, relying on that planet police place to see whats happening in blogland.

Unfortunately, it only tells of who has been posting. Not the ones who haven't.

I am most gutted to find one of the best ones has gone. Has been reported or found out, and the management have obviously ordered it to be shut down.

Take a look at his last post before he is told to erase that too.

Farewell, Belfast Peeler. I shall miss your eye-opening tales of what happens across the Irish Sea. It is one of the few things that made me glad to be over here, putting the management problems into a new perspective.

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.

Speedy excuses

wwwSo West Midlands Police only paid 14 out of 2600 tickets eh? Naughty.

Hang on. So thats 7 per day, roughly speaking.

More than 7 emergency calls across the West Midlands every day? I'd have thought so. Its actually nearer 2000 per day, according to their website. So a rate of one camera is set off roughly for one call in every 285. You'd have thought that might've warranted a mention..... but no. Much easier to sneer and criticise.

(Note- edited Friday 26th to the correct figures after someone pointed I completely messed up my sums. It is roughly 50 tickets per week, not per day as I originally said. Look, I posted after a long day! But it makes my point even more so, that it is only one call in every 285 that a camera is set off. Why is that not mentioned??)

An aside. We don't want to set them off though, trust me. The paperwork side is a royal pain in the butt.

Stop and Search

What a rare hullabaloo going on in the press at the moment.

It is such a touchy subject. Take a look at this old report from Devon & Cornwall. An increase of 40 stops over a year- to 146 out of a total 13500 (i.e. 0.01%). I agree with the chief, who sounds a bit bewildered when he asks what is all the fuss about when there were 40 extra searches across the entire two counties over the whole year. But look at the Race Equality Council- demanding to have an explanation for the increase from 0.007% to 0.01%, and demanding to know what the police are going to about it.

So Keith Jarrett has opened a rare old can of worms, asking that more youths should be stop searched. Predictably Ch Supt Dizeai has his oar in already, disagreeing, despite the fact Mr Jarrett is asking more youths be searched, not black or white youths, but the race element is instantly brought into it because he is president of the NBPA.

Now here's my take on it. Personally, I agree with Mr Jarrett. In my specific localised area the majority of robbery and street crime takes place with youth offenders and youth victims. I am not mentioning anything about their ethnicity because it isn't relevant. Often, these robberies are "knife-enabled" (to use the management speak) and occasionally gun-enabled (whether real, imitation, or whatever). And sometimes, people get hurt.

However, the only time my officers feel safe in conducting searches is after an event, i.e. when someone has called us to say there's been a robbery, or they've seen someone with a knife, as they then feel they have the grounds to search people matching that description. So most of the searches undertaken are effectively already too late- the robbery has already happened, someone has already been threatened with a knife. Occasionally we are lucky and get the right person.

Because with the level of scrutiny stop searches get, my officers generally don't feel 'safe' unless they have rock solid grounds to suspect someone of carrying something. A group of youths hanging around eyeing up passers by? Not enough, according to the guidelines we have to follow. Even if you recognise someone from having previously arrested them for carrying a knife, still not enough. I've seen the complaints upheld for things just like that. I have to supervise every one of their stop slips to ensure they do have reasonable grounds, because I'll get in the smelly stuff if I let slide.

Its one of those things where we could be certain a particular bunch of people are carrying something, but we know and they know unless we can point to something objective giving us that suspicion, we haven't got a legal leg to stand on.

Stop search could be one of the most effective preventative tools we have. But because of the requirements for us to have these reasonable grounds to suspect something, we are not able to be as effective as we otherwise could be.

I know the reason for this- accountability and justification. I'm not debating whether the legal side is right or wrong here, just pointing out we can't have it both ways.

False Confidence

Is the expression and demeanour displayed when it is yourself, 12 PC's in yellow jackets, and two blokes on horses holding back about 2000 football fans, who aren't necessarily pleased at your presence.

Gotta love the football season.

National-ist

I don't know whether this story is true- one thing I have learned having read newspaper reports about jobs I've dealt with, is that newspapers can be hopelessly inaccurate and too often present opinion as fact (and the Daily Mail group are especially prone)- but apparently:

A police crackdown on vietnamese drug barons is stopped because it is racist.

According to their report some forces fell foul by specifically mentioning the Vietnamese nationality in their warning letters to landlords.

Is this a good thing? Open question- if it is an accurate report, did those forces do wrong by specifically mentioning a particular nationality?

Stating the Obvious

We live in a day and age where we are encouraged if not rewarded to state the obvious.

We had a couple of incidents recently which made me laugh. Well, not the incidents, but the subsequent actions after I was required to take.

The following post is written in recommended politicalo-correct font.

Firstly, in an area of town frequented in particular by one section of our diverse community. Naturally on this blog I cannot specify which particular community segment I refer to, as actions experienced by myself are not necessarily indicative of the whole community, but a minority and I do not wish to encourage any negative stereotyping.
Early in the morning, outside a venue frequented by members of said community, we had an incident where the was a disturbance. CCTV cameras pick out one person in a small group of others has what appears to be a gun handle in his waistband.
Armed response boys come in, and a plan of action agreed which results in identified individual and his group being stopped, after a little bit of a chase. Lots of other members of the community witness police actions and aren't necessarily happy despite the fact a live loaded Eastern European handgun is recovered. "Unfortunately" the way armed response do stops with people suspected of having guns isn't particularly touchy feely with a nice chat and officially approved "Hello, I'm Constable Sidearm from Central Police Station, can I have a word please".

So as a result of the above I have identified that a particular community has had 1) what they may have percieved to be a negative experience with police 2) a community within this community appears to be having some kind of argument which is resulting in members turning up to disturbances with loaded guns. I therefore need to inform the relevant people (SMT, NPT/SNT etc) with my revelation I have identified possible "community impact factors" (such a wonderfully vague nonsensical term) which they should know about.

Of course they would know anyway about the incident, but I and the boss may be liable for criticism for not identifying these community impact factors at the earliest possible opportunity and informing the "relevant people".

Thats the way it is!

Flippers

Morning. Or is is afternoon? I hate it when its one of those days when you have to look at your watch to remember a) what day it is and b) what time it is. Night shifts. Love 'em.

Apologies for not that many posts of substance. Seem to spend my life at work at the moment. I've taken my leave this year in two big chunks and it's something I've regretted. I won't have any proper time away from work until Christmas now. Excluding sleeping, I will see the wife for a total of approx 8 hours this whole coming week. Its the football season now so weekends off are something of a rarity. One good thing about television-isation of football is that matches are no longer always on Saturday, or not a kickoff in the middle of the afternoon, so at least I sometimes have a weekend or a bit of one every so often.

And the government still want to reduce our pay. Any pay rise we have is worked out in relation to the average across the private sector, i.e. what people in "normal" jobs get. Government want to bin that, so they can pay us less.

So yeah time I'm off I tend not to spend on here.

Do you know what I'm talking about when I mention that part in Hot Fuzz, where (important, must be said in a West Country Accent) Sergeant Angel has been told so many times that things are done in a certain way round here that he kind of glazes over and mulls along until he has that flash of inspiration?

Its kind of like that with me at the moment. It seems every suggestion I have made to try and improve things on my response team has come back with the reply "we don't do it like that here". When asked why I never seem to have a clear answer, maybe an occasional rumbling containing word snippets like "budget" or "its your officers fault it got like this, therefore its their problem". Thats when I get an answer. The desk drivers at the people responsible for pursuit policy won't even offer an acknowledgement of me trying to get hold of them, as though I am completely unimportant and inconsequential, despite the fact I implement their decisions on a near daily basis with inadequate equipment. I can't be bothered with the flog across the division to Ivory Tower at a time when they're actually in the office and I'm not dealing with a hundred other things. I'd only end up getting angry at them and saying something anyway.

Trying to effect change from the bottom up in the police is like trying to change the direction of an oil tanker from in the water with nowt but a pair of flippers.

Victimised

So apparently 95% of children are victims of crime in some sort.

I don't know what to make of this. Back when I was a kid, you got into scrapes, had arguments with friends which sometimes ended up in a scrap, had stuff pinched from your pencil case, and everyone tried to think of ways of getting extra stuff from the canteen without paying for it.

But would I have regarded myself as a victim of crime? With one exception (when me and my innocent bag of chips were set upon in the park by a group of what the media love to call yobs), no.

I think the problem I have with this report, or at least the way some of the radio reports I've heard have talked about it "Every child is a victim of crime!!" is that straight away it encourages people to become immersed in victim culture. In particular I mean the way people think of themselves as completely innocent, and it's everyone elses fault they're a victim. The second question people usually ask when told someone is a victim of crime is "what are the police doing about it?". Or more usually, it's the police's fault for not doing enough to prevent in the first place. Or someone else. Definitely nothing to do with the "victim" themselves.

I would like this survey to have a few extra questions. Like- have you ever pinched anyone elses stuff? Have you ever hit someone or pulled their hair?

Because I reckon about 94% would say yes. If they answered honestly.

Don't get me wrong, there will be examples of genuine victims, unprovoked assaults like what happened to me, and other malicious stuff that kids seem capable of (especially you girls!).

But lets get some perspective, please. Ask any copper if he's had stuff pinched from his bag or locker. About 95% of us would say yes. Someone took a boot (just one) from me once. My point is- it happens. No amount of legislation and government directives to investigate every allegation will stop it. Just let us use our common sense to decide when someone is a genuine victim, and let us concentrate on them.

Joys of Autumn

No sooner had I written the last post then my body agreed with me I was doing too much and currently have a joyous head cold. Combine that with too many early turns and being posted with the skipper has been even more of a punishment posting! Well, it would be if we had enough people to double crew the cars.

Anyway, something caught my eye on the news. Normally, I have mixed feelings about the fire service- you know, usual stuff about being paid to sleep on nights, being encouraged to play sport in downtime, never having to write stuff up about demolishing peoples front doors / walls /ceilings except for "I thought there might have been a fire".

It really annoys me when they completely destroy a door, frame and surrounding brickwork following reports of a fire, leaving the place completely insecure, and then call us to babysit it for a few hours until someone comes to repair the place.

On the flipside though they are consumate professionals at major incidents, RTC's and when there really is a fire its bleeding dangerous work.

Anyhoo, they definitely have my sympathy when I read this report. Would the same sanctions (demotion, discipline, fines, diversity awareness course) be applied if they had disturbed heterosexual couples commiting the same offence? (For offence it is, to be having sex in public).

And if not, why not?

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.....

This and that

Tying up a couple of loose ends....

Pursuits. Thanks to commenteers as always. As far as I'm concerned this would be a useless blog if people weren't prepared to comment. I do have an opinion on most things but I know that mine isn't necessarily the same as yours and I'm not always necessarily right! (Just ask the wife....)

My own opinion on pursuits? I certainly wish we could have TPAC reintroduced- "nudge features", boxing in etc to attempt to bring a pursuit under our control, and not entirely in the hands of the loon in the bandit car. The reasons why it was withdrawn I'm not sure about but it would have probably had something to do with when it wrong once (i.e. over keen police driver- I'm sad to admit it does happen, look at the video on the sidebar), plus of course the big pound signs- more driver training, damaged police cars, and the fact lawsuits from injured people who were pursued are actually paid out. I don't get that. Their argument is they wouldn't be injured if they weren't being chased. I'm sorry, but as above just who is in control of whether they stop or not?

I'm not saying everyone who gets chased should be TPAC'd. But it should be an option available when the crime is serious enough, and not a blanket ban. I'm trying to find out who writes our pursuit policy so I can discuss this at high level but no-one has replied to my enquiries yet....

I'm aware that police advanced driving is just the foundation for even more advanced stuff- anti-hijack, close protection, use of vehicles as weapons etc but the majority of the techniques on there shouldn't apply to a "regular" pursuit. Indeed, I reckon it'd get you into a pile of smelly stuff if you did, knowing the job. Wouldn't stop me trying to blag a place on one of those courses though!

Secondly, PCSO's. I asked around about their training. Turns out the two in Manchester did exactly what their training (should it be the same as ours) stipulates- they are civilian members of staff, so do not get involved, and call for regular police. If they went in, got into trouble, chances are their union would not cover them for insurance etc because they ignored their training and got into a risky situation. Much as the emotion of the situation says otherwise, I can't blame them for not going in. They did what they were told they had to do, knowing that if they did go in and get into trouble, their own loved ones would suffer as they might not get a life insurance payout. The police officer, being a warranted officer and has a duty to protect the public, is covered should the worst happen.

I found out there are two general types of PCSO's.

1) Very good ones. Keen to get involved, put themselves on the line, including in risky situations, and generally do their best with what they've got.
2) Others who do the bare minimum, and seem to take advantage of the lack of inefficiency procedures, and are happy to walk around not doing a lot.

Very broad generalisations, I know, bear with me. The thing is, the ones in group one very quickly become frustrated with their lack of powers, the lack of any career prospects and scarce opportunity for skills training. So they apply to join the job as soon as their 12 months are up.

Please note I know there are exceptions, that there are very good ones who are happy to remain as PCSO's and are well motivated. But I consistently heard from across the board that the above is the case- that the good ones join the job, and it is a struggle to motivate the others.

Trainers at HQ are quite convinced that the government will continue increasing the powers of PCSOs, and quite soon there will be a two-tier police system in this country.

Thats enough about that for now. Next time, a story from the real world of policing! Unless the Daily Mail comes up with something else that winds me up a treat.

Propotional?

More on pursuits (not that I'm obsessed).

Our force doesn't have any tactical options for dealing with motorbike pursuits. The end result of this is that a criminal on a motorbike or a moped knows a pursuit is not going to be authorised unless he (or she, of course) has committed a serious crime. And then what happens is that we follow like blue lighted sheep until a) he crashes or b) we lose him through a width restriction, like a footpath.

B is the more common, by the way.

Here's a spanish tactical option for ending a motorbike pursuit.



Should that be an option available to us? Honest answers please. Police readers, who might be be more inclined to say yes- would you be prepared to be the driver of the car that does it? Non-police readers: do you think that the above is excessive? Your politicians and police chiefs certainly say so. Do you agree?

Note (27th Sept): I know this is a fairly extreme example in terms of the crime committed, and am not suggesting this should be employed on someone for evading road tax or parking on a double yellow. But at the moment this would never be considered regardless of the crime committed, and I am asking- should it be an option available to us, even if only as a last resort?

Pursuits continued

Finally managed to read through the bulk of the IPCC pursuits review.

Shockingly, most of it actually makes sense. It mostly calls for the existing guidelines to be more consistently and properly adhered to- i.e. only advanced drivers should pursue etc; fit data recorders to cars (something I wholeheartedly agree with); and a whole load of stuff to do with reporting it when it goes wrong.

The recommendation that did have me shaking my head is number 13- namely that if there are no tactical options available, there should be no pursuit.

And here lies the problem. My force no longer has TPAC- we (the drivers) are not trained in it, and it is not authorised. Apparently, it is felt it poses too much of a risk to the suspect. Therefore the only tactical option we have is Stinger.

Only traffic officers have stinger.

Last set of nights I was on, there was one traffic car across the whole district.

The end result is that despite me being an advanced driver, I effectively still cannot pursue. I have no tactical option available- and so according to the IPCC I should therefore not engage in the first place. (I tend to anyway of course, and usually end up waiting for them to crash whilst the traffic car comes from miles away, correctly second guesses which road they're going to go down, and then successfully deploy. Haven't seen it happen for a while.)

And of course, Stinger won't work on run flat tyres. Anyone else see that 5th gear show where a BMW went round their racetrack on flat run-flat tyres, and was only a few seconds slower than the properly inflated ones?

It frustrates me my force doesn't allow TPAC. A glance at the IPCC report shows the majority of pursuits happen at night. Empty roads work for TPAC, even in the suburbs. Top brass seem to wring their hands at the thought of even a suspect in a vehicle pursuit getting injured as the result of police action, and so once again the "rights" of a suspect outweigh the rights of everyone else to have a dangerous scumbag put somewhere where he can't do anyone any harm.

Which I think is what really hacks me off. I've mentioned before about the one character- a prolific burglar, I might add- on our ground who shows off how he will never stop for police, how he knows our tactics (or lack of) and knows he just has to drive as dangerously (I'm talking red lights at 70+) as he can and we'll call it off. What I'd do to be able to knock him off the road in the first few seconds of a pursuit, just to see his face.

I can but happily daydream.

Not good.

Once again PCSO's are in the headlines for the wrong reasons- the sad tale of the drowned 10 year old who had sunk beneath the surface. Apparently, two PCSO's were on scene quickly, but did nothing apart from radio for police officers.

Two things strike me from this.

One: why were they dispatched there in the first place.

Two. It is sad that litigation culture has grown to the extent that people appear exempt from criticism because they haven't been trained to do something, and their employers have to defend them because of this.

There may be more to this. Perhaps the PCSO's couldn't swim. I don't know, they didn't give evidence at the inquest.

Distinctly sour taste left in mouth after this.

Pursuits

Okay so I heard on the news today how we take unnecessary risks in vehicle pursuits.

I haven't read the report in full yet, but I will.

I nearly fell off my chair when I discovered Tony McNulty said something which both made sense and I agreed with- namely that chases only happen when a suspect refuses to stop!

However, for some reason I have only just skim read the BBC report and already I can feel my hackles rising and can feel myself getting defensive.

Hum. I'm off to the gym. Will come back to this at some point for a more measured response. I think I'll do another of those poll things asking- Whose fault is it when a vehicle being chased by police crashes- the suspect, or the police?

Here onwards

Well if there's ever going to be a day when there is renewed interest in police blogs it is today. The original candle bearer has gone and told the world about the state of policing culture, where the priority of the police is to meet performance indicators, rather than use common sense and deal with situations in the best way.

I guess that leaves myself and the other bloggers left to try and keep the world aware that despite what the government says this is what its really like. But there is an inherent risk in writing these blogs. I started because of someone else I knew who wrote a police blog (a good one at that), but got found out and got hauled in front of the Chief. There can be real discipline brought against officers writing these things.

As for Tony McNulty. Am I the only one who thought he gave the impression that he regards the front line police officer with contempt? That they should do what he says because he's the police minister? I'm sorry Tony. I know several officers who have been in the service far longer than the Labour government have been in power, let alone before anyone had heard of you. I know who I'll listen to.

So where from here? Two things, I guess. One, to carry on on here, posting now and then about what I see. I'll be the first to admit I don't post about half what I see for fear of being recognised by a colleague. How Stuart Copperfield-Davidson managed for 3 years I don't know (but am impressed).

The other, more difficult thing will be to start making more of a stand at work. We have a new governor coming next month who the rumour mill has is very stats driven and expects 1) the Pcs to have a certain number of arrests, detections, stops etc per month, 2) myself to reinforce this.

Its one thing blogging about how crap this is and another to start doing something about it. But perhaps it might be time to start. It hasn't been a problem recently, my old governor happy enough with us doing our jobs properly and as long as policy wasn't breached then didn't mind us dealing with jobs appropriately. This looks like it is going to change. Might be time to put myself to the test, can I practice what I preach.

Last word today ought to go to Mr DC- click here for his summary of his experience of writing the blog.

Inspiration

The inspiration behind myself and many others has revealed himself.

Pc Stuart Davidson, aka David Copperfield, we salute you.

Best of luck over there. Don't send a postcard, I'll only get jealous ;-)

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.....

Too many targets? Surely not?

Well its a day old news now (sorry, been busy, blah blah) but the prize for the least surprising news article of the year so far goes to the BBC.

Despite the reams of bloggers telling the world for months and even years in some cases that we have too much paperwork, and discretion comes a limping second place to government imposed targets and directives, it is now official. The HMIC say so.

The Home Secretary comes up with the usual pseudo-enthusiasm about how they will listen to this report and suddenly free up 400,000 of police hours by engaging his recommendations.

Forgive my unabashed criticism but my arse you will. I'll believe it when I see it. The trumpeted reports about how many forms have been discontinued is a sly move as they completely fail to mention that the old forms have in the majority of cases simply been replaced with a newer version that is not necessarily better or quicker.

I can remember the old version of the stop / search forms. The size of half a piece of A5 paper it recorded the essential details- who, where and why (what power) and that was it. However, the new version is half the size of A4, has codes for why someone was stopped and then a different code to enter for what they've been searched for (to help statistical compilation), has a space for you to explain why they weren't given a copy of the form at the scene (the office brigade get very uptight if that isn't completed, and I get sent them back with red pen and highlights). And we have to fill out one of these every time we ask someone what they're doing.

"Excuse me sir, would you mind telling me what you're doing? Its 2am, a residential area and you seem in a bit of a hurry".

"My mate's just dropped me off, and I really need the toilet, and the wife'll kill me because I'm this late".

"Fair enough, on you go..... oh no, hang on wait, I need all of your personal details, date of birth, current address, self-defined ethnicity, clothing description, height, distinctive features, hair style, and offer you a copy of everything that I'm writing including why I felt it necessary to ask you to account for your behaviour."

"Do I have to wait?"

"Er no but......"

"Bye"

"Dammit. I've still got to write this thing out in its entirety and now additionally add why I failed to give him a copy of it. Oh and transfer all the details of it onto a computer database. Best get myself a cup of tea then".

I was about to write this is a fairly extreme example, but it isn't. Seriously, if I or any other officer asks someone to account for their presence in any particular place, we are required to fill out a form detailing just that and why.

The logic behind this is to keep the individuals concerned in being asked to account for their behaviour an opportunity to understand why, and to have a record of it if they are feeling victimised.

Noble ideas. But the end result is we don't ask as many questions of people we think are up to no good as perhaps we should. For if one does complain that he's been victimised, and you haven't filled out your stop form, then you shall face discipline.

Yet from personal experience the only ones who really get targeted are the ones who we know are up to no good, but don't always have the level of proof required for a conviction. Amnesty would therefore say they are innocent and perhaps in some cases they are right.

But not always.

Guns and hot air

Well apparently a room full of 200 people who often seem to feel actions aren't often as appropriate as a carefully considered collection of politically approved words are having a chat about guns.

Yes, its the ACPO firearms conference.

I did think about engaging in a reasoned debate about the rise (or apparent rise) in gun crime and the media sensationalism about it- drink drivers still ruin more lives than guns, but I don't see that all across the papers. Tragic as the Liverpool lad's story is, I wonder if it would be national news for a fortnight if it was a drunk driver who killed him. (Note thats a criticism of the media, not meant as any kind of lessening of the impact on Rhys's family). It is no less tragic and no less wasteful and pointless when a life is ended because of someone else's irresponsibility with a car. Like here. Or here. Its not hard to find these kind of stories.

But then I thought I'm on nights, anyone sane would be sleeping now, and the idea of a reasoned debate arguing about firearms-enabled crime trends kind of fell into the "forget it" box.

I will, however, concede I might have felt a bit more affinity with the so-much-stuff-on-my-epaulettes-I-can't-stand-straight brigade when I read the end of this report, about their reaction to a video of a shopkeeper chasing off an armed robber with a baseball bat:

"And perhaps the greatest applause of the day came for a speaker with neither a police nor a political background.
There were cheers and shouts of approval as delegates watched a video of Jagdish Patel, a brave shopkeeper from Rochdale who saw off an armed robber with a baseball bat.
Not an officially-approved response to a potentially lethal situation. But an encouraging example of a member of the public prepared to take a risk to stop gun crime."

Maybe, just maybe they are cops at heart after all.

(Edited slightly the next day from original post after a bit more sleep!)

One for Which End Bites

May his fluffball rest in peace.

Organising etc

Rightyo have fiddled with sidebar links now to have all the other job bloggers ordered in the length of time that their page has existed. As usual if you want your link in let me know via comments or email.

Have added a couple to the graveyard, too. Dogberry has disappeared without a trace. I have added a new rule that if your page hasn't been updated for 6 months without explanation then it goes down in the graveyard too.

Following on from previous rambles about PCSOs and whether their uniform should be more distinct from regular sworn PC's, I've added one of those poll things to the sidebar. Please click your thoughts in, just to satisfy my curiosity.

In the meantime in the news here's a tale of two trains. First- ordinary member of public is prosecuted for having a her feet on a seat. Second, here's a train guard sacked for telling a youth to get his feet off a seat (ok, so there's a bit more to it, but thats how it started). Bonkers eh?

Taser taser

Well apparently some of us across the country are getting more tasers.

I just noted some of the headlines across the media.

Trust the Daily Wail to get completely hysterical and sensationalise an issue that wasn't really there. (Can anyone tell I'm not really a fan of this paper?)

"Police can shoot children with stun guns".

I mean, for goodness sake. To read their headline and leading line- "Police will be allowed to shoot children with Taser stun guns despite concerns it could trigger heart attacks"- conjures up images of officers swanning down the local play park and randomly electifying little Joe on the swings, laughingly telling mum "because we can".

Well, no. I have never heard of any child (I note the mail give no definition of what age you're still a child) but I cannot recall either in my force or reading about any incident where a taser was used or even threatened on someone under 16. The level of justification for using a Taser is at such a high level that there has to be serious risk of serious injury before it can be contemplated, and when lesser means are exhuasted.

Despite the temptation I might often feel when booking in one of our regular juvenile crime waves for the umpteenth time in a month I can't just Taser him because the government haven't expressly forbidden it.

At least the BBC are a little more... well, journalistic about it, questioning the level of training that the new taser recipients are to have.

My own opinion? I certainly don't think all officers should be armed with them. I do think more officers should be armed with them, and they should be more readily available for immediate use on the front line, and not dependent on whether the areas firearms car is tied up with something else and you have a half hour wait for the nearest available one to arrive. For example. I turned up first a domestic the other week to be confronted with the household equivalent of the Marie Celeste- door wide open, things still cooking on the stove. Slightly more disturbing was the evidence of a struggle with things hurled over the floor. Even more disturbing was the unsheathed Samurai sword lying in the middle of the floor. If we had arrived but a few minutes earlier then chances are we'd have found a rather hostile and angry male resident armed with 3 feet of sharpened steel. Baton isn't much use against that.

Taser doesn't even have to be fired to be effective. Its laser sight (I've seen this, and so have others) parked ominously on a suspects chest has been enough to calm him and subdue him to where he follows our requests (usually to get on the floor and be handcuffed).

I am interested to see what the taser training is going to be like for the new non-firearms offcers being equipped with it. I have no idea what it'll be, as the first I heard we were getting more tasers was on the news!

Leading from the front

Gordon Brown, August 2007: speaking about not paying public sector workers their recommended (by independent panel) pay rises: "We have succeeded in tackling inflation and having a stable economy because of discipline in pay over the last ten years. That discipline will have to continue".

MPs in December 2006: requesting a 66% pay rise.
MPs in 2003 voting some of themselves more of a pay rise.
MPs in 2001 voting themselves more of a pay rise.
And don't forget their 23% increase in 1996.

Whatever, Gordon.

Public Relations

Been sent an email from an officer who states he is in the self proclaimed flagship of British police services, The Metropolitan Police. Paraphrased slightly to ensure names and times remain ambigiuous, and swear words removed.

"I am a level 2, or public order trained officer. Over the bank holiday weekend myself and my serial have been on standby at the Notting Hill Carnival.

We have been kept back, in a hall, awaiting deployment in case of a major incident or fight- large scale public disorder. I was one of several dozen if not 100+ plus officers held back in this hall.

Now there was one point early in the morning when the carnival parties were still in full swing and the booze and cannabis (thats another story) were in plentiful supply. As you might expect, a couple of fights broke out.

One or two of these fights became quite serious. The carnival has dozens of PC's on the ground. Most of them are what we call level 3 public order trained, i.e. have no riot training. One or two of these PCs found themselves in a quite serious fights and unsurprisingly asked for backup.

There were over 100 of us probably nearer 200, ready to go in that hall in full riot kit, ready to deploy as soon as the command was given. No such command was given. We sat in the hall listening as it became more and more urgent on the radio. Urgent assistance was required. Next thing, officers were down.

Still we had no command. We were standing up, adrenalin going full throttle, waiting to be let out to help our colleagues.

No command was ever given.

It turns out Gold (overall command) or whoever was his deputy wasn't prepared to release us. I have no idea how they justified it but it boils down to they were prepared to sacrifice the safety of a PC or two in order to not deploy the riot police with all the negative media that that would undoubtedly follow. At least two PCs were put in hospital just so the management could say it was a quiet successful event"

I have no idea if this is true or not. I was happily nowhere near Notting Hill this bank holiday. But if this is the case- I am hoping that some of the commenters may be able to verify this story- then this is a damning indictement of the modern police service. Safety of individuals play a poor second fiddle to the corporate and media image that senior management wish to portray. I hope the hospitalised PCs make a full recovery and sue the living daylights out of the Met under the Health and Safety at Work act.

Daily Wail continued.

As I was saying the other day. Daily Mail reader is shocked and appalled to wait 50 minutes for a real police officer to turn up to a fairly nasty assault on his son.

I say real police officer. I have got to admit that I am beginning to get a little irate when I see reports which refer to a PCSO as a community police officer. You might say that it is just a minor play on words but there is a significant difference. A PCSO is not supposed to be a police officer, and to refer to them as such is inaccurate.

I've debated PCSO's and their distinction (or not) from police officers before on this blog (with particular regard to uniform and appearance), and its a post which consistently gets referrals from search engines, and I don't propose to debate that again. My view remains the same, namely that there should be more of a visible distinction between regular officers and PCSO's. I was at a motorway services the other week and a PCSO was there handing out leaflets. Now don't get me wrong, she was doing an important job of making people aware that service stations are a criminals dream with all those unattended cars with sat nave, ipods and even caravans available for the taking. But I could only tell she was a PCSO when I got close enough to read her epaulettes. Her hat even had a chequered black and white band round it, black stab vest, black trousers. To a ordinary member of the public, they would've thought she was a police officer. But she was not. A criminal intent on doing no good may decide to have a go yet she has no protective equipment beyond the stab vest and no training for dealing with it.

But anyway. Back to the Mail.

First of all, here's my perspective. I am unashamedly a uniform response officer. For me, it is what the majority of policing is about. With the exception of some ultra-specialist departments like surveillance and counter-terrorism nearly everything else the police deal with, a response team officer (I include specialist response teams like firearms and traffic here) will be the first to encounter it and make the initial moves. You'd think that therefore most other departments should therefore act to help and back up the front line. Unfortunately it is usually percieved the opposite way round, namely uniform response should do more to help the other departments.

In my division, the regular response teams are quite distinct from the neighbourhood teams. PCSO's only work on neighbourhood teams. Therefore I cannot comment on exactly what they do.

What I can comment on is the impact they have had on myself as a response team supervisor. And the answer is minimal. I appreciate this may be unpopular with some readers who are PCSO's (I know there's one or two out there) but here is why. I have only heard one usable relevant piece of intelligence sourced from a PCSO, which was when he recognised a wanted character. I cannot deploy them to any kind of call. I can only use them on a counter-terrorism cordon, and even then it has to be one where I cannot give them a scene log as they've never seen one before. It feels like we have just as much youth disorder as we've ever had. So I take exception to the Home Office stating they are there to support police officers. I have never seen this support.

Now if I was a neighbourhood police team sergeant, I would anticipate I would have a different story to tell, of how his or her PCSOs have got the time to engage with vulnerable community sections (e.g. the elderly) and how their job is not about crime and detections (true enough) but about building bridges. My argument remains the same though. For the 14000 PCSO's you could have 8-9000 PCs who would be able to do exactly the same job- and a whole lot more. My understanding of the the way this was budgeted, certainly to start with, is that the PCSO budget was extra funding made available by central government. Therefore the PCSOs have not taken over a PCs role, i.e. every PCSO has replaced a PC: the PCSO is in addition to the PC. I say 8-9000 extra PCs would make more of a difference, even in the ringfenced safer neighbourhood role.

I note the home offices definintion of a PCSO's purpose is completely unquantifiable, in complete contrast to their attitude towards police officers, which is measure everything, set a target relating to everything and then cut budgets if these targets are not reached, which of course really helps.

So we have: Reassure people (has anyone seen a survey to find out if this is the case? Perhaps I ought to do one of those poll things); build confidence in communities (ditto! In my area, I have never seen a PCSO round where I live, and I live in a fairly large town. According the board up next to the local Co-Op, there's two dedicated to my ward. Where are they?); and support police (er... maybe).

Do tell me if I ever sound like a scratched record going on about this, won't you....

Daily Wail (again)

Well, I'm glad to see the Daily Mail still gets completely hysterical about anything police related.

Example one: unfortunate tale of a man down south.

Example two: That PCSO headline.

Lets start with number one. Lad goes down to Portsmouth's 24hr european cafe culture one weekend night and encounters random hooligan and gets a pasting. Not taking anything away from the victim, my only surprise with this story is that anyone is surprised it took a response team officer that long to turn up. In all honesty I wouldn't have been surprised if it was nearer the four hour mark, let alone fifty minutes.

I can completely sympathise with the person at the 999 call centre. Its interesting how what would actually be a civilian operator suddenly become "the police" with its deliberate effort to tar everyone with the same brush. That as an aside, I would anticipate that operator had had dozens of calls from people on that late saturday night. Some of them (well, I read some of our official propoganda in a moment of boredom and found 70% of 999 calls are actually not emergencies) and this poor sod at the end of the 999 line, obliged to make a record of every call recieved was probably more than a touch frustrated at the sheer volume of idiots calling with nonsensical claptrap that would still under this that and the other charter require a police officer to go and speak to them in person. So when he or she gets a genuine call through, like the one in the article, lo and behold noone is available. Or of course there have been sufficient serious calls to mean all available response officers are already dealing, as what is reported here. The 999 operator would've been more of aware of that, too.

I must admit I've used that line before- when I've been haring round from call to call and someone says "what took you so long?" I tell them there's only 6 of us on tonight covering so many thousands of population, and if he doesn't think that sufficient to write and complain to his MP. And you know what, I wish they would.

I don't know quite know why this particular tale warrants a trumpeting around the Wail. There would have been hundreds of people calling 999 across the country at the weekend and found that the police response takes more time than they would expect, or demand.

I have sympathy with the Mr Bayliss senior too. Not his sense of moral outrage at being told to phone his MP, how could some possibly be so rude, but for the circumstances of it. Most decent people can remember how many 999 calls they've ever made and it is quite a significant event, amplified a hundredfold when its your own son.

But Mr Bayliss junior, now that things are over, you had opportunity to make a difference to other people, to try and stop such things happening again by joining up. I'm sorry but withdrawing your application isn't going to help anyone.

At the end of the day, the 999 operator is right. I would bet Hampshire's finest would have loved to have come and locked up a drunken violent hooligan. At least, I would hope so. But they were unable to simply because there weren't enough of them. And the blame for that lies with the MPs.

Which would lead me on nicely to the second article. This is where all the money for PC's has gone. Most forces are recruiting more PCSO's than PCs.

But I'll continue with this another time. This is enough for now.

Well I never

I've just noticed.

I'm one year old this month. 10 days ago in fact. Happy birthday me!

Here's my posts from August 2006 (all both of them).

(Link now works!)

Back to the Future

Well, a little rest has done me a world of good. For the best part of the last few weeks (joys of several re-rostered rest days and a bit of leave thrown in) I have been resolutely not thinking anything job.

However, the time is nigh where I shall be launching myself back in the deep end.

When I say deep end, I don't mean jobs- calls, or interacting with the public. That shall have to wait. I am going to have to wade through a pile of emails sufficiently high enough to remind me of the mountains I was climbing only a few short days ago.

I have a sinking feeling that I might a simple, but possibly fatal error before I ran out the station leaping for joy at the commencement of leave.

Cue drum roll and sounds of impeding doom riders, please.

I did not set my out-of-office email autoreply to "on".

I shall therefore expect one or more of the following.

- Emails urgently warning me for court.
- Emails urgently dewarning me for court when someone actually bothered to check the duties to see if I'm in. The Witness Liason Office or whatever their title is these days have an annoying habit of warning absolutely everybody for a court case, and then checking the roster. They even check on what date you've booked your leave to see if you didn't pull a crafty one. I got warned for court on the first day of my honeymoon. I had great pleasure in telling the somewhat snotty bloke where he could stick his warning as I had booked that leave about a year in advance.
- Emails warning a PC that he has certain work on some job outstanding cc'd to me (because the PC is on leave.)
- Utterly useless tripe sent to the entire division about how the lift in HQ is having scheduled maintenance.
- Emails advising me that a PC still hasn't completed certain work on some outstanding job (because he's still on leave).
- A good work email celebrating the fact that someones latest politically thumbs-up scheme has gone down terribly well. Too many examples to mention.

These emails shall be dealt with in the usual manner:
Delete without reading (50%).
Read briefly and delete. (40%)
Read, consider actioning, then delete. (7%)
Read and actually do something positive, like reply. (3%).

This will probably take most of the shift. The greatest sense of achievement of returning to work will likely be sourced from getting the email inbox back down to zero.

On a more serious note. Am I the only one who gets just a tang of worry about going back to work after time off? Not about nonsense on email I might add. But I do worry that in time off I'll have forgotten something. I haven't had to think about police stuff for a fortnight or so, and part of me says "Do you still know what you're doing?" (I ignore the voice which says you never know what you're doing.....)

Still, I ignore that voice too. I always seem to get back into things just as quickly as occasion demands, which is usually 10 minutes or so after parade. Except night duty, when things have usually gone wrong about half an hour before parade.

Anyway. I still have a couple of days before the joys of going back to shiftwork. Could go and top up my tan. Ha! If you include rust / weatherbeatenness as a tanning type that is.

Feet up, warrant card down

Apologies for the lack of posting, but I have joined the stampede to somewhere a little warmer and a little less wet (most of the time), although I understand the weather back home has improved somewhat the last few days.

Although whats this about foot and mouth? Not again, surely?

I shall return from lands afar (ish) soon, whereupon I shall have to get back into the habit of carrying warrant card again. It has been a lightness in my pocket not carrying it the last few days.

Stay safe y'all

Update: Normal service shall shortly be resumed.

Custard Sergeant

Had the joys of being in custody recently.

Some skippers enjoy custody. I don't.

To be fair, I can understand why some enjoy it. It is a role where you know exactly what your job is, there is considerable responsibility, and you are the boss. Anything that happens in the custody suite happens with your consent. Immaterial of rank, you still get permission from the custody skipper if you want to do anything in the cell block.

To me, I hate the fact I'm staring at the same walls for the entire shift and sat at a desk 98% of the time. Its the precise thing I joined the police to get away from. Occasionally you get interesting prisoners- after all, no matter what the offence or offender everyone goes through the custody office- whether a first time shoplifter or a murderer still covered in his victims blood having been chased all over town. But most of the time I'm counting down the hours.

Anyway some time spent in there is inevitable.

Following on from earlier posts it isn't unknown for police officers to turn a blind eye to some drunken antics that could be recorded as crime- mostly low level stuff- the odd taking a leak in corner, squaring up and posturing business that is normally dealt with a word in your ear like.

One thing that is not ever knowingly ignored is drink drive. If that little light goes red on the roadside, you're coming in. No word of warning, park it and get a taxi, you're coming in.

Had a classic in the other weekend.

Posh girl leaving club with her utterly inebriated boyfriend who turned out not to be her husband. Get in their bling shiny 4x4 and promptly reverse it straight into the taxi rank. Taxi men and club manager aren't the happiest with this and manage to stop her and call us.

Two PCs turn up. She messes about with the breathalyser until on the last chance (i.e. "if you don't do this properly this time, you're arrested for failing to provide) and surprise surprise the machine thinks for all of half a second before going straight to red.

She gets brought in before me. At this stage for her its all just such a terrible inconvenience. I start off the myriad forms with the same questions repeated about 6 times. These forms have been developed as a result of various people getting their high paid lawyers to blag them off a drink drive as a result of some poxy technicality like they had mouthwash in the preceding hour- anything to just make the breath machine not 100% accurate and so inadmissible, even if they were completely bladdered and were 3 times over the limit.

Anyway, I surmise this plunging neckline in front of me is going to have a high paid lawyer so I make extra sure everything is precisely by the book.

And she's more than double the limit. Oh dear oh dear.

This is where the fun begins. I have to wait for her to be sober so I can charge her with the offence. Police doctor advises 3 maybe 4 hours. This has the added benefit of ensuring she isn't released still too drunk to drive. Hopefully the Range Rover will have a nice clamp on it by the time she gets out.

I tell Posh Totty she's spending time in the cell to sober up, knowing precisely what reaction it will get. I am not disappointed. Cue one hysterical crying fit "I caaaaaaaaaaaan't go in the cell, pleeeeeeeeease". Unfortunately for her I am not one for bending to her every whim unlike what she is probably used to, and one of the female detention officers escorts the streaked mascara to the cell "with pleasure, sarge".

Am I wrong for taking some kind of guilty amusement out of this??

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.

Happy vs Sad

I've got about halfway through my 108 posts trying to put these reference label jobs on them.

I've noticed something. I have quite a few posts about sad stories, when things have gone wrong. Whether this be due to the circumstances of the individuals concerned (mental health, road accidents, suicides) or the frustration of various things meaning something can't be done right or the way I think it should be done, or whatever- there is an overwhelming bias towards the negative on this blog.

Why is this? Am I trying to get sympathy? Am I just a miserable git who focuses too much on the bad and easily forgets the good? I don't know.

I don't think its just me, either. Regular media seem to pounce more on the negative police stories than the positive. The recent police bravery awards are the exception, and even they don't get much of a mention beyond the Sun.

Take a look at the recent 21/7 trials. From keeping an ear to the radio and an eye on the headlines the majority of the focus has been on how "we" (the police) failed to keep proper surveillance on the group. No congratulations for the hours of paperwork, interviews, documentation, evidence gathering, exhibiting, forensicating, etc etc: instead criticism for not being superhuman enough to arrest them before they tried to blow themselves up. I'm sorry but exactly how many surveillance officers do the media think we have available??

Type in police to the BBC news search engine and the first link - the "BBC Best Link", no less- is how to complain against the police. It doesn't take long to find an example of an officer being charged with 'molesting' a recruit. I think it is fair to say that an offence committed by an ordinary citizen would barely feature anywhere but the fact it is allegedly committed by a police officer means it gets a mention on the news.

So I've decided I ought to make a bit more effort to focus on the positive side of this job rather than the general sea of malaise that this blog seems to be! I wonder how it easy it will be.

PS I wonder what the enquiry to Northamptonshire Police's failure to attend an emergency call in time will reveal. Probably that there was insufficient resources available that day. And what will be done about it? Probably nothing.

Dammit, I'm all negative again.

Reorganising

Blog admin!

I'm starting to go through the various posts and properly tagging them. Reasons are mostly selfish, really: some of my posts took some time and effort but once they're beyond the first page they get forgotten quite easily, not least by me.

I'm trying to keep the tags to a minimum, and in categories I think people would want to see (or not)- whether actual jobs I've done, things in the media I've seen and nattered about, issues like community / neighbourhood policing initiatives, PCSO's etc.

Feel free to suggest any more........

In the meantime, I ask you all to go over to TUPC's blog and read the recent story. A very, very good post that puts you in the position of an armed officer and asks that question that everyone has an answer to after the event: what would you do?

I've posted a reply but I'm not firearms trained, and would barely call myself firearms aware. Be honest with it, and post what your first reaction would be. Not your second after a moments thought, because you wouldn't get that at the time.

No winners, only losers

This is one of the posts I need to reiterate it is my opinion!

The claims by Mike Barnetts dad caught my eye on the news yesterday- see here or here for just two reports- and made me sufficiently het up to want to write about it.

Mike Barnett was the poor soul stuck in a storm drain in Humberside. Despite efforts from the combined emergency services, he died.

Now let me make it clear that I have every possible sympathy with Mike Barnett senior. I simply cannot think of a more awful way to lose a son.

However, whilst I understand his anger and frustration that Mike was not able to be rescued I don't think launching a tirade of criticism at the people who were there trying to get them out is really on.

Take a look at the photo (courtesy Sky). The bloke behind Mike up to his neck in the water is a police officer. He and his colleagues put their safety on the line, standing on nigh the same spot in the same water to keep his head above it. The fire crews and police divers repeatedly went under the surface with the wicked currents to try and cut him out.

Mike actually died from Hypothermia, not drowning. I'm surmising they actually did manage to get him out from the drain.

Mr Barrett senior states the emergency services took too long to get there, no-one seemed to have a clue what to do and just argued. A helpful friend said "all they needed was a chain and a land rover".

I feel I have to say something in defence of the people who turned up. I agree Mike's situation turned out to be one of the most tragic but there were hundreds of other people in grave situations. The Hull fire chief stated 58 people in dire circumstances were successfully rescued. There would've been hundreds of calls through the switchboard in a completely unprecedented emergency situation.

I agree that the folks who turned up probably didn't know quite exactly what do and didn't immediately launch a well rehearsed and practiced rescue plan, for the simple fact that a situation like this had never occurred before. The "helpful" suggestion of a chain and a land rover isn't really handy as they are not items of kit I have ever seen lying idle around a police or fire station. If someone had turned up with such items, I think they probably would've been used.

As to the suggestion that they should've just amputated his ankle I would believe the people there were convinced they could get him out soon enough without maiming and permanently disabling before the hypothermia was too severe. Tragically they were wrong.

My point is this. Whilst I can sympathise with Mr Barrett Snr's grief I don't think it is fair to say the rescuers didn't do enough, thus implying they didn't care. I can guarantee you that every one of the blokes in the police and I'll wager my house the fire service too would've worked their butts off and put themselves on the line to try and save him, and will be nearly just as devastated at their ultimate failure.

I'm all for learning and improving from situations, and if people are found to have ignored best practice then yes they should be criticised. But here there was no best practice. They really were making it up as they went along and I can guarantee outside of Mr Barnett's family no-one will feel the sense of frustration and loss greater than those who were there trying to haul him out.

(Slightly edited for dodgy grammar and spacing 9th July)

A good job

In amongst all the chaotic breathlessness that follows a terrorist incident anywhere in the country struggling in amongst the huge volume of calls regular police work still goes on.

Got called to an old dears flat recently. Her neighbours hadn't seen her for a couple of days and there's no reply to the door.

I put two and two together and thinking the inevitable make my way along. I check the PC en route is taking some of the door forcing kit with him. I'm expecting the routine run of reports that accompany a "sudden" death. I've never really agreed with the term sudden death. Many occasions I've been to a death the last thing it is sudden. Prolonged and lonely are more often accurate.

Anyway, we get there and speak to the caller. She's a bit more excited than I would expect someone to be who thinks their friend is dead behind a door. Turns out she's got a response from Gladys inside.

Gladys has had some kind of fall and can't move herself off the floor. She's managed to pull herself to her hallway. We shout some encouragement through the letterbox to her and set to work dismantling her door.

The door is mostly glazed and Gladys is too near it for our liking. Police methods of opening locked doors tend not to be subtle and a shower of glass is not what we need. The door is not really ideal.

The windows are wooden framed. A bit of work with a crowbar later and we're in. I won't forget her face. Exhuasted and barely enough energy to hold her head up she greets us with a smile that spoke volumes. A mixture of such relief and happiness her 3 day ordeal is over. Old eyes moist with tears.

Our job done we the ambulance boys head in. The paramedic, a young lad, pseudo-flirts with the the old girl with cheeky comments as he lifts her into the wheelchair. The knowledge it is over has given Gladys a boost and she puts the paramedic back in his place with a couple of returns like how she'd have him for breakfast. Young man.

What with all the flooding and bombs and whatnot this job has been a bright point in the last few days.

Thanks but....

What with all this terrorism we are encouraging people to report anything suspicious. I agree. See something that doesn't look right, call it in. But there are some rules of common sense that should not be abandoned. Your neighbour placing his rubbish in a different place to normal down the alleyway does not make it suspicious! Really.

"But I thought I saw some rubber gloves in the rubbish".

Right. Auto-terror alert.

Maybe.

The drugs don't work

This post won't be the first time I'm motivated to write about mental health issues: try here or here for starters.
But once again recently I found myself reminded of the reality that is mental health care 'in the community'.
We got a call from the ambulance services. A young man- Spencer- lives with his relatives. He is supposed to take various medications, including anti-psychotics.

Spencer hasn't been taking his medication.

Spencer has smashed his room up.

Unsurprisingly the ambulance control take one look at their message screen and ping it straight across to us. One of my panda crews take the call.

I don't know why but I had alarm bells ringing with this one. The address was not known to our intel checks at all but it was one of those 'impending doom' moments. I'm the other side of town and start making my way over, blue lights and sirens going, harassing the school run traffic out of the way.

The panda crew are sage enough to wait for the ambulance crew before going in. That short delay saved them getting a pasting. As soon as Spencer sees the unfamiliar faces and uniforms he launches himself at the ambulance crew. The Pc's don't hesitate and jump in the way.

I had literally just parked up outside when the dreaded emergency activation button goes. All I can hear in the earpiece is a rage of shouts, screams, bangs and smashes. I don't actually hear whether its the crew I think it is or not but I don't wait for clarification. Myself and the other skipper (yes, there were two of us, for the first time that I can remember in a long time all supervisors were in across the district) barrel out of the car, forgetting to lock it, and sprint to the address.

There in the hallway are the two Pc's struggling on the floor with Spencer. One is desperately trying to get control of his legs and is getting several kicks for his efforts. The other is trying to get handcuffs on but Spencer is having none of it and is doing his best to bite her.

Its moments like this I am grateful I am 16 stone worth of ugly rugby forward.

With the four of us Spencer is quickly controlled- or at least, his limbs are. Go near his face and you get a faceful of spit (I later find out he has had TB. Hurrah.) Get too close and he'll do his damndest to take a chunk out of you.

I'm aware that I've got the whole of late turn running like a bat out of hell to get us. I eventually get in on the radio and cancel all but one more. To get Spencer out of the flat we will have to walk up stairs. Spencer is incapable of listening to us in his rage so I call for someone to bring down leg restraints.

I coordinate who's got what limb and we bring him out to the ambulance. 4 officers remain with him.

We are fortunate in Suburbiaville to have a hospital that is able to accomodate S136 patients, albeit only one at a time. The officers know, to their credit, that despite the assaults on them Spencer is not a well man and he is de-arrested and S136'd instead. (non-police readers, follow the link for S136 MHA explained).

I run to the hospital on blues to get there before the ambulance to forewarn them and make sure the room is free of anything that could be used as a weapon- a pen, a chair. The nurse in charge is not a happy man with the impending disorder.

4 hours later, Spencer is sectioned by the crisis team. We were lucky it is only just outside office hours and the relevant people required weren't too far away. It isn't uncommon to wait nearer 8 hours for this kind of decision.

The sedatives have finally worked, and Spencer is now in and out of sleep. The team that have been restraining him the last 4 hours are able to get up, stretch their aching ankles and knees and drink a gallon of water.

Politics and money now rear their ugly heads. Although Spencer was staying in our area, his home NHS trust is across a border. Suburbiaville NHS trust therefore won't accept him. His home NHS trust won't accept him because it happened in Suburbiaville.

Our job is now done though, and we stagger off in search of somewhere still open to have a rather late tea. I am forced to settle for a kebab. I leave the political wranglings of the NHS, and the psych doctor pulling his hair out at the bed administrators, behind for another day.