Disciplinarian

Carrying on from post below there is a linked article to do with discipline, where once again skippers get lambasted for not, well, disciplining enough.

McNulty says he is doing lots to ensure police sergeants are getting more training and support. Really?

If he means this "leadership" course I had to go on some time back, then that spectacularly failed to address any of the issues mentioned in the Wail report- i.e. discipline and dealing with incidents. Of the three weeks, one day was spent how to deal with a major incident. Most of the rest of it was spent in group discussions and role plays about resolving staff conflicts.

At least a day was spent debating whether we were "leaders" or "managers". The difference may seem petty at face value but despite being told we were leaders the course was very much geared towards us managing staff, and working around rules, not applying them. I think the job even offered to pay for us all to join the Chartered Institute of Management. That might explain the frequent mailshots I get from them.

The general gist I got was that the job is trying desperately to align itself with business models, with talk of customers, clients, partners et al, improving management. All well and good, but at the end of the day policing simply is not a business. If someone messes up or has a bad day, it doesn't mean a late delivery or a refund, it can mean deep, irrevocable personal consequences.

Talking of discipline. I had cause to discipline someone about them not submitting paperwork- not routine stuff, but something that was actually essential, in fact a legal requirement for them to do. Simple discipline issue, you'd have thought? But no, before I could formally do anything I had write a veritable essay of the circumstances- why this form needed submitting, when I told the Pc it must be submitted (despite their knowing in theory it must be submitted), and what further opportunities, assistance and reminders I gave the Pc to help him submit it!

Its no surprise that minor things like rudeness and not wearing a tie are ignored, when it is simply so much hassle to do something about it. Sort that out Mr McNulty, don't send me on another pink and fluffy management course.

Time well spent?

Well, of the things to get me posting again, I'm surprised its a Daily Mail article. I'm even more surprised I find myself agreeing with it.

But an article dedicated to police sergeants? I couldn't resist.

(Graphic courtesy Daily Mail website.) According to their report, I spend roughly 10% of my time on patrol. And you know what? I think thats a tad optimistic. Lets look at a recent four shift spell:

Day 1: Entire shift in custody. Ridiculously busy. Leave suite with my head swimming. A hell hole of a shift with extremely violent schizophrenic prisoners (deemed to be quite sane by a mental health assessment team??!?), people unconscious after genuine fits; and spitting, clawing drunk females.

Day 2: Entire shift in custody. After previous day, not in the mood for doing anything other than bare minimum.

Day 3: I'm allowed out! However, I have a considerable amount of paperwork relating to a Pc who has "performance issues", a load of stuff to get signed to justify my own existence, plus a mountain of emails I've ignored the last two days in custody. The time I spend out and about is almost solely to give myself a break from the computer screen.

Day 4: First half of shift first aid training. Second half- a meeting relating to my own performance, targets and evidence.

So from the last four days- 32 hrs at work- about 3 hours out of the station? Yep, about right. But only just.

I don't know what sergeants spend only 8% of their time in custody, (are you one? what force are you in? Tell me!) but it's much nearer 50% for me.

The police unsatisfactory performance process is such a long, drawn out and tedious affair. The PC with "performance issues" is currently midway through this, and demands a completely disproportionate amount of my time. I have had to apologise to the other officers I report on as I really haven't spent a lot of time with them at all in 6 months (although I'm not sure they're complaining that much!!). I have my suspicions that this one is going to go all the way, so I have to make a note of every single conversation and instruction I give out, to prevent accusations down the line of "But I was never told that".

I'll spend roughly half an hour a week going through the outstanding crime reports the rest of the team have. I hate it, but I have to deal with them by a series of memos and emails, as I only rarely get a chance to actually sit down and speak to them about it.

If I want to spend time out doing proper police patrol, as in being out of the nick, being free to take calls and go directly to jobs with the PC's (and not just be on the other end of the phone or radio), I have to plan in advance. I generally try and work it so that I do all my paperwork on early or late shifts, so I can actually get out when we're on nights, when the thin blue line is at its thinnest, and I don't spend half my time patrolling a traffic jam.

Sometimes I actually get a bit jealous of the PC's, who each day (well, a lot of them) are free to actually get out and do stuff, while I wave at them out of the window from my computer.

Forbackward

Morning all.

A word of explanation. I know for a while now I have only been posting inconsistently. This is mostly do with a new, frankly terrible shift pattern where I seem to never have any time at home, and that time at home is spent not wanting to be anywhere near a computer desk nor thinking about anything job related.

I am also a bit frustrated that I can't blog about what I'd really like to, like the barmy amount of paperwork I have to do to evidence a particular PC isn't up to the job and the sheer length of time it takes to kick someone out of the job for not being up to scratch. Unless you commit criminal offences or are overtly phobic or 'ist' in one way or the other then it is bleeding hard to be fired in this job.

Perhaps I'm being excessively paranoid about being found out, but I know if I talk about some of the embarrassing moments this Pc has put himself in anyone on my team, and some of the more senior management involved, will suddenly have a very accurate idea of who I am.

I don't know, I seem to have lost a bit of motivation or direction for what I'm doing here. I stand in awe of the like of Bloggs and Gadget et al who are always updating with topical stuff with a good degree of wit and / or sarcasm thrown in, but I find myself thinking I'd rather be out in the garden or polishing the bike or something.

I apologise if anyone has sent an email to the one I have to the right- I haven't checked it in ages and now I look at it with a good degree of guilt, particularly with regard to one person whom I promised I'd do something and I never have got round to it- particular apologies to you.

I think this will be the status quo for some time, methinks, or at least until I get on a different pattern. I've reached a point where I am now actively looking for something to get me off response team as I figure if I'm going to put up with rubbish shifts and far too much time in custody, I might as well clear off somewhere else where I still may have rubbish shifts but can bin the time in custody instead. I can't remember the last time I was able to driven a pursuit standard car for anything other than 15 minutes and Traffic (yes, Traffic, not Roads Policing), always in the back of my mind as a career option, is coming more and more to the fore.

I'm not saying I'm going to fold this site. I just wanted to explain why I have been so sporadic in updating, and say that unfortunately that'll be the case for a while yet.

Thanks for reading.

Anyone else see this coming?

Old news now I know but I've only just found the bit of newspaper I saved, as it made me laugh in a highly ironic way.

Recall a while ago I posted in a mildly disparaging way about the government's "tough on crime" policy with regard to paying £3000 to those of foreign shores convicted of a crime here? The £3k being an incentive to take voluntary deportation?

I think I said something along the lines of what a load of rubbish.

Well, it is a load of rubbish to anyone except the criminal of foreign extraction, who must be laughing all the way to their home country having been released from prison early, and then having the UK taxpayer fund their journey straight back home. Possibly even business class.

Except that this isn't actually a hypothetical situation any more.

I am not in the least bit surprised he came back the following day. After all, what kind of punishment is he going to face? No judge will give him the 10 year sentence the Theft Act allows him to mete out.

I heard a rumour on one TV news programme or the other- I can't remember which one, I had only just fallen out of bed, I really wasn't paying attention and thus I have no idea whether it is true or not- but I heard that there was a proposal for suspected terrorists detained over the 28 day limit, to be paid £3000 per day of continued incarceration? Anyone confirm or (surely) deny this?

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.

Knife Crime

Well I'm only away barely a week and all sorts go on.

So the government will solve knife crime by a multi million pound poster campaign? Well, that'll work.

I am fed up of people asking me what we're going to do about it. I normally now just simply turn the question round and ask what they think we should do. This usually provokes a bit of a bluster and one of two responses- "I don't know, just something", or an indignant "I don't know, its your job to figure it out".

Well, no. It's everyone's job. Especially parents. Especially government and local authorities who need to give schools the proper resources- and I don't mean posters- to speak to these kids who look like they're certain to end up through my custody suite doors. I have relatives in the education system and the potential to stop a lot of children and youths going feral is clearly there, but the government and the Daily Mail readership is only obsessed with the three R's to the exclusion of everything else. Difficult kids are invariably seen as a drain and a diversion of resources and it is rare to find a school (through no fault of their own) prepared to put the time and effort into these kids to stop them becoming one of my regular customers.

So what would I personally do? Well, nothing more than I do at the moment. Legislation is sufficient and is actually fairly common sense. To not quote exactly, to have a pointed or bladed article without lawful reason is the offence, but the lawful reason is not specified and is open to interpretation.

It's a cliche but it isn't the knife thats the problem, it's the person carrying it. I have on my kit belt a multi tool with not one but three blades that should I ever decide to use it that way would cause horrible injuries, and is easily strong enough to penetrate far enough to be fatal.

Carrying it on my kit belt at work is fine. I've used it for a number of things including fixing door frames and sawing the tops off plastic bottles.

Take it down the pub with me, different kettle of fish.

This may be controversial, but police don't need to do any more. We could search more people, but that'd need the removal of the reasonable grounds to suspect clause out of the search legislation. At the moment, when we find people with knives, or screwdrivers, or anything else in circumstances we find dubious, we bring them in.

They go to court- and herein lies the problem. What deterrent is a £50 fine. Spin a yarn about they forgot it was in the car door or they left it in their back pocket after fixing a loose screw and off you go. Unless you are daft enough to talk in interview how you planned on using it against anyone whether self defence or not you'll never get a punishment bigger than a big saturday booze up.

Knife crime is one of those things where prevention is far far better than the too-late time when we happen to search them. However, the government is ploughing money only into something visible and something people can see and talk about. Utterly unsurprising. Putting the money where it'd be useful won't have the instant, visible, talk-about-at-the-next-election results the government quite clearly crave.

Next post- what's this I hear about Chief Constables officially going against the government grain and binning sanction detection targets?

(Useful website I came across: http://www.knifecrimes.org/ )

I predict a riot

Funnily enough, I did just do that. I said to a colleague, "If Rangers lose, it'll kick off".

I wasn't quite expecting several hundred of them to kick off because their giant TV broke, though. Still, thats what happens when you let several hundred people drink all day.

Still, at least the cup final was in Manchester, not Europe, where the police take less kindly to being chased down the street and would've used water cannons, CS gas at concentrations double what we're allowed and several dozen more gratuitous baton charges.

I did laugh at one outraged football shirted woman captured on some news reel, thinking how the police were soooo brutal because they pushed her over. Well, lets think about this. You've a rather hacked off police force (15 injured, plus that cctv footage we've all seen) who are ordered to clear streets, usually to allow ambulances access to one of the dozens of injured supporters. You don't move, you get shoved out of the way. If anything, they were restrained. Riots aren't a spectator sport.

In major public disorder, we don't usually have the time to stop and explain what we need to do and why. Awfully sorry.

Noddy has posted his views from north of the border, but you'll need a scottish translator to read it :-)

Lets see if the supporters this weekend take their cue from Manchester... hum...

Sorry.....

I know I haven't been posting much recently. A lot of time at work means not a lot of time thinking about work when I don't have to, combined with most of the stuff that I'd really like to whinge about would unfortunately make myself far too identifiable, and a couple of garden projects underway, all in all means not much time spent on here.

In the meantime, here's an article for Ms Chakrabarti to consider next time she stands on her pedestal to whinge about how corrupt and abusive the police here are- her last whinge I found being about they were preparing to take legal action against the Co-Op for being prepared to use that terrible tortuous device known as the "mosquito" (a high pitched sonic gadget designed to be immensely annoying to young people, so that they clear off).

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the ideals of Liberty et al, but lets have a sense of perspective?

Propoganda

The last post reminded me of something I meant to post about a while back.

Some time in April, I was off visiting the folks, and I had been saved a glossy leaflet dropped through the letterbox trumpeting the success of their local force in the last performance year. 4500(*) crimes reduced! 7000 more crimes detected! Healthy satisfaction levels across the board in all communities! We are safer than 12 months ago!

The problem is, I don't believe a bleeding word of it. I still know that if I have to call 999 when I'm there I'll consider myself highly fortunate to have a response car within 10 miles of me. The statistics trumpeted I consider with utter disdain, knowing the majority of it will be down to dubious crime recording methods. I am having regular run-ins with my own crime management unit where they even go to the extent of recording something as a no-crime until certain tasks are carried out.

Following a time year where my folks had occasion to call their local police, their (and most certainly my) opinion of them has taken a nosedive following the way they dealt with the call. Don't get me wrong, it was highly compliant with the priorities blared out, but as an "end user" left a very sour taste in the mouth. So much for high levels of satisfaction.

So I thought if I consider this performance news with the gravity I would with a steaming cow deposit, what chance has everyone else got.

(*) All numbers made up of course.... but along those sort of lines

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.

A TV review moment

Had one of those rare things yesterday, an evening free to watch the box, and happened to come across "Traffic Cops" on the beeb.

The wife doesn't understand me at all. I whinge about how much time I'm spending at the job and then when I do have some time off, I spend it watching a tv programme about the job.

To be fair, she has a point.

Anyhoo I still do find it interesting to watch stuff about UK police, if only out of a curiosity to see how other forces deal with various things, and generally have a debate with myself to see if I'd do the same thing.

Following on from my previous posts below, I definitely do share their sense of frustration with the traffic people about the lack of ability to deal with pursuits. The little oik who crashed an old dear's Micra? I can safely say he won't learn any lessons at all from being caught, and being disqualified from driving. Oh no, I'm disqualified from driving, when I don't have a driving licence in the first place.

Putting my sense of annoyance at the personal characteristics of pint sized scumbag aside, I can understand why the pursuit was called off. Barely 13 years old, haring round in a stolen motor, around a residential estate, in the daytime after school is out is a recipie for disaster. I think the greatest source of frustration is in our apparent inability to deal with pursuits, and a lack of willingness from senior management and home office to seriously invest money into researching safe alternative means of pursuit termination.

But while our options remain limited to stinger, with the odd brave force continuing with TPAC, then this will continue to be a story repeated. TWOC will continue to be common with bored teenagers with little fear of reprisal even if caught. The alternative is to commit your crimes on a motorbike, and give the finger to every passing useless patrol car.

In other news- I'm a fan of Mrs Justice Rafferty! Finally a proper sentence for two definitive scumbags who kicked a man to death in a half-robbery, half for-the-hell-of-it escapade. 28 and 26 years. Now that's a sentence that might actually do what it's supposed to do and serve as a deterrent to others.

Fulfilling the criteria

I am now happily able to type with both hands again after slicing the fingers jumping over a fence the other day! At work, not at home, I might add.

Anyhoo as promised another sad tale of the mental health system at its finest. Myself and a couple of others turned up to an assistance call from the ambulance service. We met the man in green at the bottom of the stairwell who chuckled as he saw us. He told us we'd been here before.

I understood this as we got to the front door, and saw the distinctive red circular marks across most of the door and barely there door frame, and understood that this place had been visited by someone with the 'big red door key'.

The source of all this was inside the flat. The ambulance bods had withdrawn after getting stuff thrown at them, and called us in with our highly trained negotiating skills (note- sarcasm) to try and talk to the clearly imbalanced chap inside.

Lionel, aformentioned imbalanced chap, was up and down like the proverbial yoyo. One moment he was tearful, knowing something was really wrong, wanting the voices to stop- next extremely paranoid, yelling abuse, face contorting. Some of the insults thrown at us were in all honesty quite spectacular in their originality and vulgarity. Packets of medication are all over the place. He manages to tell us he hasn't taken any of them. Which is the root cause of his now unbalanced state.

To cut a long story short, Lionel actually did want to go to the hospital, and as a courtesy to the ambulance peolpe a couple of PC's went with them in the ambulance.

Once we got the hospital, once again, things got political.

Lionel has had a drink. So, despite him being clearly not the full ticket, the mental health wing refused point blank to have anything to do with him until he was fully sober. Which meant we had to take him to A&E. Who are totally inequipped to deal with a volatile, paranoid, abusive man.

And so start the rounds of "it's not my problem". Mental health / 136 department won't have anything to do with him because "they can't assess him". We were only there as the ambulance had called us, and have not invoked any powers and so don't need to be there. The A&E have nothing to do with him as he doesn't need any "normal" medical treatment.

Meanwhile, A&E tell us we can't go as the bloke has the potential for violence. I say to them they've a quarter of my response team babysitting them whilst he has committed no offences and is not 136'd.

I hate this. I know that Lionel has the potential to kick off, and I always try to help out A&E and ambulance staff, underpaid and overburdened as they are. But now I've gone up a rank I have to say that if there's no real reason for someone to be sat somewhere, then I need them back out on patrol. If I had dozens of officers on patrol, not so much of an issue. But I have 8.

So nobody wins. I tell the hospital they have until the hour to sort out their security as I have to have my officers back out by then. If Lionel kicks off, they'll have to call us back. I'm not happy telling them this, but patient security, and their lack of security staff, is something they have to take up with their management, it isn't something we can guarantee to help them with. Of course, Lionel is free to go when he pleases as he isn't sectioned or under arrest.

I don't know what the answer is with people like Lionel. I don't advocate locking them up and going by the "out of sight, out of mind" principle, but this "not my problem" problem is just as bad. The only thing that surprises me about this story is that it hasn't happened before.

Ideally, we need a comfortable, secure suite that someone can wait safely in until sober or not under any influence. But that would cost money to build and staff. So, it doesn't happen, and every time someone who is clearly mentally ill but has been taking substances to try and cope with it, they are ignored by the system.

It is only a matter of time before Lionel, or someone just like him, becomes another statistic like the Leicestershire link above.

I don't know what the final outcome was with Lionel, whether he walked out or managed to stay long enough for the psych teams to say yay or nay. We weren't called back in any event.

Even if he was admitted, it'll only be a matter of time before he's out again by himself, forgetting or ignoring his medication.

Time waits for no man

Ridiculously busy at work at the moment. Unfortunately, it's not the "good" busy. Its the busy that keeps me tied to a computer most of the time. I've actually reached the point where I'm emailing stuff to and from home to keep on top of things.

Unfortunately for a response team sergeant, I don't really have the option of turning off the radio and cracking on with all the reports. Well, I rephrase, I could, but I don't, as I'd much rather be out there dealing with stuff than remotely directing people via the radio. So I guess the backlog of tedious stuff is kind of my fault.

As for hoping to have a quiet hour or so in custody to do this, forget it. I gave myself indigestion the other day eating my lunch so fast in the one 5 minute gap where I didn't have to do anything immediately.

When things do calm down a bit, expect a post that is yet another frustrating indictment of the mental health "system".

Stop or Not

When I initially read this report, I must admit I laughed and said "doh" on behalf of the Hampshire police officers who managed to take out three of their own cars whilst chasing a stolen car.

Now I've had a chance to think about it, it did make me think (again) about the whole police pursuit business. Three teenagers driving a seriously powerful car- a Bentley Continental- clearly having no intention of ever stopping for a roadside chat.

I think the news report would be quite different if one of the three died in the crash.

At what point does the risk of someone getting seriously injured, including the thieves themselves, override the need for them to be arrested?

This country will never follow the American example of trying to induce a "controlled" crash before they lose control (see the sidebar vids for examples) to terminate a pursuit. We only have stinger (ineffective against runflat tyres) and TPAC, or boxing in, and a number of forces don't even authorise that as its too much of a risk of someone getting injured, or too expensive to train officers, or they don't want the repair bills. A lot of forces will never authorise a pursuit of a motorbike, mainly because noone can think of a way to end it without the motorbike crashing, which obviously means the person riding it will be injured.

Its another of those which shoulder to listen to questions- pursue no matter what the risk to the person failing to stop, or stop as soon as its clear that it'll likely end in tears? I'm only thinking of the night time pursuits like the example here, where the person failing to stop is the one most at risk of injury. If someone is pursued into a town centre or through residential areas half an hour after school closing time, then the pursuit should be called off, period.

Personally, I'd like to see some of the American ideas brought in. If the suspect can be forced off the road in a reasonable safe manner as soon as possible, then I think we should before he or she gets the chance to really get the speed up and put other people at risk. All police cars should be equipped with stinger, but again to cut training and equipment costs, only traffic officers are trained. And seeing how we only usually have one traffic car on nights, for a vast swathe of Suburbiaville and its environs, it usually is never available. No pursuit I've ever been on has a traffic unit managed to get in front for a stinger deployment.

Poles Apart

Had the joys of dealing with a group of Suburbiaville's economic migrants, or whatever the current favoured term for the swell of East European fellows currently residing here for purposes of plastering and plumbing are.

These people ought to have a photocall with a government minster, as they have clearly have embraced traditional british cultural activities during their time here, but have cannily updated it with a twist appropriate to their cultural origin.

What this actually means is instead of themselves getting completely inebriated with Stella, they use Smirnoff.

However, the traditional British activity of then beating seven bells of hell out of each other remains unerringly familiar.

None of this is lost on me, being a suitably citizen-focused officer, as I survey the scene of blood spread across two streets. At least I don't understand the what I am assured are genuine ethnic swear words being yelled at me.

Chap in back of ambulance with bits of cheap wine bottle sticking out of various limbs, and the owner of most of the blood spread across the pavement is doing his best to cheerily tell us not to worry about what happened. His emotions suggest somewhat otherwise and I am grateful that this is our last night shift, so we won't be on when he's stitched back together and released to sort this matter out on his terms.

His friends are bordering on downright contemptous. They are adamant we are not required to intervene in their minor argument. One in particular doesn't bother to hide his contempt at us trying to tape off pools of blood left right and centre. I can see he thinks we're quite pathetic.

Whats the point, he calls out, it was an argument between friends. Its all over now. He feels we should therefore adopt his attitude, and as such the crime scene is therefore all a pointless exercise he can walk right through it.

Unfortunately for him, the Pc who happened to be the first on scene trying to contain all this mayhem is now just about on top of things and the crime scene is under his command. He also happens to be 6 foot 5 and the size of your average house extension. Our friend is given suitable advice that although he might think our rules our daft you start breaking them then we're not so useless after all.

I kind of wish that he tries to re-enter the scene after being assisted to leave in the manner a disobedient puppy is moved from where he is not supposed to be. However, he decides not to.

Shame.

Who to listen to

I was having a chat with a colleague from a different force the other day. I can't remember why the conversation started but once the usual pleasantries and regular comparisons were exchanged (crap shifts? yep. At work the whole time? Yep. Hours of work seen wasted by judges afraid or advised not to use decent sentences? Oh yes) the conversation turned to a recent incident he had been dealing with.

Billy the Burglar and one of his equally criminally inclined friends had had a little prang in the nice motor they had recently relieved the lawful owner of. No other cars involved, and no it wasn't a pursuit, or even a sniff of one. Just them, a crash barrier and some road signage.

Unfortunately, Billy was driving fast enough and not wearing enough of a seatbelt to be able to survive.

Herein lies the copper's moral maze.

Devil on one shoulder is almost glad of this. My colleague tells me Billy was a right piece of work, and as a result of him no longer partaking in this world they will now see a significant percentage fall in their residential burglaries. A lot of people will no longer suffer their houses being broken into as a result. The devil whispers to consider this as evolution in action.

Angel on other shoulder counters with it's still a waste of a young life, he was still someone's son, and asks what failings there have been in the system so Billy got to this stage of prolific burglar who steals for fun.

Who to listen to?

Under 18 = incapable of crime?

I would hazard a guess that Chris Sidoti is a liberal.

Now, I have nothing against liberal politics per se, but something caught my eye that I could barely believe.

Chris Sidoti is the author of the UK's first written bill of rights. Apparently, this will be enacted in Northern Ireland, according to the Observer. Good luck to the PSNI is what I say!

You thought the Human Rights Act was bad enough in letting criminals claim that criminal proceedings were against their human rights? Well get a load of this.

Mr Sidoti proposes that the age of criminal responsibility should rise to 16.

Wait, there's more.

The plan is that it should be 18!!!!

I'm sorry, Mr Sidoti, but GET REAL. Under your plans, the two teenagers who deliberately drove at the two armed cops in London would get away scot free. Crime levels would rocket, its the only way to describe it.

My old patch, nearer the centre of town, had a particular issue with cannabis dealing. Almost without exception, the dealers were 16-17. Most vehicle crime- particularly TWOC or "joyriding", is by kids under 18.

So Mr Sidoti would empty out the YOI's across the country because they're all misunderstood little darlings. Well, yes, at one point there may well have been an intervention available to deter them away from crime. But by the time they get there, it's pretty much too late. Giving them this get out of jail free card is out of touch, fantasist, and frankly dangerous.

Family Connections

I happened to browse over someone's shoulder today (well, I wouldn't buy it myself) an article in the epitome of unbiased reporting, The Sun. I noticed this article.

Some bloke is given eight points on his licence for driving like a tool at 130mph plus.

Not normally a cause for a story, there must be dozens of people going through the courts on a daily basis on speeding cases that never get a sniff at the Sun's editorial desk.

Yet this is news. Why? Because he's an ex-cop's son. Not even a serving officer. In fact, he's a PCSO. But that isn't the blaring headline.

The whole article has a somewhat unsubtle bias, and it is clear to me the person writing the article either believes, or wants you to believe, he only got this lenient sentence on the basis of him being an ex-cops son.

Sure enough, the first commenter "makes" the connection, saying how we all look after our own.

This whole article annoyed me because of the snidey anti-police connection made when there frankly is none.

For what it's worth, he should have been banned. £200 fine driving a V6 Alfa Romeo? He's got more cash than that. A non-police friend of mine, no previous motoring offences, got that fine (and the rest!), plus a 6 month ban for 105mph on a motorway.

It should be the judge that gets the criticism here. Not making unsubtle hints thats its only because his old man used to be a policeman that he got off lightly.

Investigative journalism at its finest.

Double Standards

Want proof that setting targets is a helpful method of improving performance? Ask the senior NHS man who's just been sent down for a year for trying to make his results meet government targets.

Okay so he falsified some documents to fiddle the figures, but two questions I have:

1) Is that really a million miles different to the crime classification games the police play to make certain crime types appear not as prevalent as they really are? The over emphasis on sanctioned detections, where a 5 pound shoplift carries the same statistical weight as a murder or rape?

2) How come this bloke, on a first conviction, without any personal gain or injury to any other person, gets sent down for a year, whilst violent drunks, car thieves and burglars get (barely) supervised community orders?

All of this, of course, whilst the government themselves are desperately trying to not make themselves accountable, and have all their generous expenses claims kept secret from the people who fund them.

Show me the.....

Well, a couple of days a long way from the grey walls of Suburbiaville, where by some terrible mistake of planning I forgot to take the phone, and I'm feeling a bit better about actually going to work.

It's surprising (read: not at all) to find that after a bank holiday weekend the email inbox barely registering anything new at all. As crime doesn't happen on bank holidays, not least in offices within police stations, there has been nobody in to send force wide emails on minute (but god help you if you don't implement it) changes in policy, or the unneccessarily detailed breakdown of the last so many hours crime patterns. I shall wait for the deluge upon my next non-bank holiday login.

Before I get criticised for criticising people not working the bank holiday- I know, I wasn't there for all of it either, but it was only my second weekend off this year that just so happened to be a bank holiday weekend. I did get calls to ask me to work various days within it but I balanced it up and thought the ire of the duties office was a better bet than the wrath of the wife.

Anyhoo one thing has caught my eye. Ever eager to clamp down on expenditure on every public sector (excepting, of course, within their own unaudited, mileage-claiming, second home owning, self-pay-rising, family employing walls) the government has put forward the suggestion that PC's and Sergeants should have overtime payments abolished in favour of a higher basic salary.
The details are in the most recent Police Review, for those who are able to log in.

I can hear Inspector Gadget's hollow laughter already. Inspectors and above forfeited their right to overtime back in 1996 for a higher basic salary.

Now, this higher basic wage would be a fantastic idea for anyone office based. An extra 3 grand a year for doing precisely nothing more. For muppets like me still flogging out rotating shift patterns and the unpredictability that response policing inevitably generates, we'll probably lose out. There's been at least two or three occasions this year already where circumstances have dictated I have had to stay at work long enough to work into a rest day. Things like this aren't planned, and are generally actually an inconvenience, but at least the following month when you've forgotten all about the extra tiredness and rapidly rearranged childcare stuff there's an extra couple hundred quid to play with.

I don't want to see overtime scrapped in favour of a higher basic rate. I'm no overtime bandit unlike some other safeguard-aholics I work with, but I still wouldn't want it on principle. However, it worries me that if it went to a vote, there's a lot of Pc's and skippers working in office based units, with no intention of being in a situation where they could end up being late home, who would vote yes if it came to it.

I think policing would suffer, too. Don't pay the overtime and there's a real risk that an hour before the shift end, every car is going to be parked up in the back yard with the log books shelved. At least now, if you're late off, there's extra money to be had off it. Be late off with no recompense at all, and especially if your finishing on time colleagues will get exactly the same cash, then there will be a real motivational issue. Coppers generally are decent people who want to help the people who call 999, but we're not complete fools and we all have bills to pay- and if we get the same money for whenever you finish what's the point in taking the last minute shoplifter that'll make you 4hrs late home.

But of course, McNumpty et al don't care about this, they only see the pound signs, and if they think they'll go down, then it'll be worth it whatever the price, if you catch the irony.