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The following are extracts from some of the current Police Blogs and discuss topical issues. The views expressed are the authors and are not necessarily those of Surrey Police Federation.

From The Thinking Policeman 31st December 2009

Happy New Year

In the warm, drinking tea again.

I would like to wish Jack Straw a Happy New Year, but I won’t. He gave an interview today during which he stated that the police aren’t really bogged down with paperwork. We just like hanging around in police stations where it is warm.

A number of recent Home Secretary’s have upset the police with their lack of understanding of policing issues. As a former Home Secretary and now the Secretary of State for Justice I expected better. The gaffs this Government have made with regard to the police have been beyond compare. Jacquie Smith did really well shafting us on our pay deal resulting in a protest march of more than 20,000 officers. off duty police officers.

We have had more Home Secretary’s over the last decade than I have had prisoners and a few hours in the warm. Most of them, including Mr Straw, departed because of their incompetence. I thought Mr Straw would have learnt his lesson and thought a little before putting his foot in it on the subject of police bureaucracy.

I wrote recently about one of the most bureaucratic pieces of legislation and it's interpretation by the Surveillance Commissioners. This was the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. (RIPA.) One of a myriad of pieces of legislation that has been introduced in recent years and which keeps dozens of police officers skiving in the warm, filling out forms, ticking the right boxes, risk assessing everything. We love it! All this form filling stops us having to go out and do our job. Mr Straw introduced RIPA when he was Home Secretary, along with lots of other legislation that keeps us in the warm.

I see that Jack Straw’s father was banged up at Her Majesty’s pleasure during the Second World War because he was a conscientious objector. Did he prefer it in a nice warm prison rather than going to fight? I doubt it. I suspect there was more to it than that. I thought, Mr Straw, you might be a bit more understanding.

Happy New Year!

 

PC Ellie Bloggs, Saturday, November 21, 2009  pcbloggs.blogspot.com/

 What, you really mean "all" crime?

All-Crime has been coming to Blandshire for some months now.

I first heard about All-Crime Attendance on a Quality of Service input (part of the proces of turning me from a pretend-sergent into a real one some day). "Soon," intoned the trainer, "Blandshire Constabulary will be sending police officers to attend reports of every crime."

It turned out that by "soon", he meant next year it will be piloted in a couple of areas. By "police officers" he meant PCSOs or civilian investigators. And by "every", he meant criminal damage.

Now Alan Johnson, crime fighter extraordinaire- er I mean Home Secretary- thinks it would be jolly nice, in principle, if we tootled off to every report of a bally old crime, what.

I think it would be jolly nice if we had marked police cars with the fluoerescent stickers not peeling off, hats that don't make us look like German strippers and enough blankets in custody to comply with common human decency in housing prisoners. If money were no issue, no doubt the Senior Managers would like us to have all that too.

So my questions to Alan Johnson are:
1) If he would like the police to attend all victims of crime, what would he like us NOT to do instead?
2) On exactly which planet is the Home Office based?

There's also the small matter that not everyone who thinks they are a victim of crime actually is one. And at the moment we spend more time visiting people who were looked at funny in the street or sent racist Bebo messages, than we do commiserating with the owners of smashed up cars and ransacked houses. And we still don't have time to get through them all.

Don't get me wrong, Alan Johnson has not yet made this "gut reaction" of his into a mandatory requirement to be measured with a brand new mandatory key performance indicator. But it's jolly nice that he had the idea.

Now perhaps Mr Johnson could get some gut feelings about violent thieving thugs going to prison for just two or three years, or police forces parading more than the bare minimum of officers required to stay alive from day to day.

PC Ellie Bloggs Wednesday November 18th pcbloggs.blogspot.com/

What's in a grade

PC Ellie Bloggs  pcbloggs.blogspot.com/ 14th October 2009

A Hiatus

Apologies for the recent absence. During the lull in your life which must be occurring in such period when I do not post on my blog, perhaps entertain yourself by perusing my archives. If you can't be bothered, or haven't yet figured out how to use the Scroll function on a web-page, read on.

As domestic violence is a subject likely to rear its head again in the near future, and I am likely to write something scathing and sarcastic about the police approach to it, instigating dozens of comments along the lines of "If you don't like it, leave" and "You murderer, you hate victims!", I have decided to reflect back on how domestic violence was dealt with two years ago, to see if we have moved on.

See below, first posted on 28th October, 2007.

But I loves him!

 

Victims of domestic violence are often criticised for staying with their partners. The police are then criticised for bringing prosecutions where the victim is unlikely to attend court and unlikely to be summoned against their will (for example where the assault is minor). If they don't bring these prosecutions, they are criticised.
 

It is common knowledge that most police officers joined the force thinking everyone would be happy and smiling with them and that no one would ever criticise anything they did. Therefore to avoid the horror of upsetting people, they weave a web of lies and deception to play down the seriousness of the domestics they attend. It is obviously in the police officer's interests to ensure that all victims they visit get murdered later on.

To this end, an array of auditing and checking mechanisms is in place to save the officer from their destructive desires. Any domestic I attend will mean a four page questionnaire. The first "check" occurs when I ask the victim to sign it, to confirm I didn't take it away and make up the answers.

Next my sergeant checks and signs it.

Now the form is split in two directions. The "virtual" version (which is where the same information was recorded on the Crime Management System in the first place), goes one way and the paper copy another.

In the Domestic Violence Unit, the paper version is checked by a civilian. Any blanks, obvious lies or failures and it will be sent back to the officer.

Next the civilian or pregnant officer carries out a telephone follow-up. This is a five page questionnaire with many more questions. Depending on the outcome, it goes into one of three different colour folders.

Meanwhile, the virtual version is at the Crime Desk being checked by the Investigation Supervisor. This is a PC who can check the work of patrol sergeants and override it.

Before long, a Scrutineer will have glanced over the virtual version. This time it's a civilian who monitors all crime reports to make sure we aren't missing the chance to arrest someone or solve a crime.

The supervisors of both DVU and the Crime Desk then check the work of the civilians and constables to make sure it is up to standard.

Several months later, an Auditor at Headquarters (I have no idea if this is a civilian or police officer or both) will check everything that has gone before.

All of this checking and re-checking is done whether or not there has been any previous problem with the original officer's work. Whether or not they have ever been accused of lying or laziness. Whether or not they have ever made a single mistake. And it's all in place to prevent victims of Domestic Violence from dying at the hands of their partner.

Which it doesn't.

Victims of Domestic Violence stay with their partners because it's DOMESTIC violence. That's what the word means. No amount of auditing and checking is going to stop that happening. Bureaucracy isn't the way to save someone who won't save themselves.

The day they do want saving, we'll be there. If we aren't too busy filling in the questionnaire at someone else's house.


Come back soon for the updated approach. Or just re-read the above.

 

 

The Thinking Policeman 11th October 2009

PCSO's Don't Work

 

PCSO's: a cost effective resource?

I have been involved in Neighbourhood Policing for many years and welcomed the first tranche of Police Community Support Officer’s (PCSO’s) who were introduced to the Utopian Police Force in 2003. We had recently introduced beat officers into every area in the county. They were spread a bit thin and PCSO’s were welcomed by most as an additional resource to help us gain intelligence, provide a uniform presence and deal with low level anti social behaviour and problems in the community.

Even then PCSO’s had their critics and they were seen by some as policing on the cheap. They were ridiculed for their lack of powers and it was suggested that the public were being conned when they saw uniforms patrolling the streets with limited training and effect.

Like police officers, some of the PCSO’s proved to be very good, others not so. The good ones got stuck into their communities and became well known. They came up with diversionary activities for young people and kept Neighbourhood Watch, Residents Associations and Councillors happy by giving them time and providing a conduit for information. They gathered intelligence and were a font of knowledge regarding their communities.

Over the last 6 years I have seen things change. We still have two types of PCSO in Utopia. We have the younger recruit who is using the role to have a look at the police with a view to joining as an officer. Their commitment to Neighbourhoods is limited. If they want to join the police all they want to do is jump in cars and respond to 999 calls. The majority are not really interested in getting involved in communities.

The second type are the older PCSO recruit, some of whom are an interesting bunch and vary from housewives returning to the workplace after having a family to people with all sorts of experience who may have been made redundant or just fancied a change of career. Disillusionment has set in among many of these. There is no career structure for PCSO’s. Pounding the beat on your feet in all weathers for year after year starts to lose its appeal. Even the best of our PCSO’s are struggling with motivation and the best managers are struggling to get value for money from them.

The media has made a lot of a small number of incidents where PCSO’s have apparently failed to act. I don’t place much store in any of that. We have all heard the story of the two PCSO’s who allegedly watched someone drown. The truth is they arrived ten minutes after the victim had disappeared in the water. There was nothing they could do. The fact is the public and, of course, offenders are wise to the limited powers and capabilities of our PCSO’s. The police cannot help them every time some yob is lippy or abusive to them. The public are becoming disillusioned with this role. They still regard it as better than nothing but want real police officers with powers and who use them.

I was a fan of PCSO’s; now I feel we need to review the role and its place in our police force. Should we try and make the role more interesting and support other areas of the business by giving PCSO’s additional tasks to do, for example, taking witness statements and viewing/seizing CCTV?

In April 2010 the Home Office subsidy on PCSO funding comes to an end and the whole cost will be borne by the Police Authorities. I now believe that is the time to reduce the number of PCSO’s and use those savings to increase the number of police officers in Neighbourhoods.
 

 

 

From PC Ellie Bloggs pcbloggs.blogspot.com/30th September 2009

The Persistant Caller

Last week there was a 999 call in Blandmore area from a woman reporting decades of sexual abuse by her parents and a historical rape by a co-worker. The police responded to it by phoning Social Services, logging the call, and hanging up.

This isn't because this is how we deal with allegations of serious sexual abuse and rape. It is because the woman was Patricia Levy and she calls the police three or four times a month to report the same thing. She usually makes the calls in batches of 30-40 in a day, and she's usually drunk. Patricia Levy was indeed abused as a child - at least that is what her mental health worker believes and he's probably right. She is now an alcoholic with learning difficulties and an obsession with sexual activity. She thinks it's happening to her everywhere, all the time. If that was happening to you, you'd call the police 30-40 times a day too.

The trouble is, Patricia is always drunk, so the mental health team can't/won't treat her. The alcoholics' programme won't take her on because she has mental health problems, and they can't deal with her sex abuse allegations. It used to be the case that the police was the one service who always had to help her, but now even we have a 'Patricia Levy policy'. The policy isn't all-encompassing: if Patricia reports a recent sex offence a detective will be sent to speak to her. She usually shouts abuse at them when they arrive, or denies ever calling the police.

I don't know anything about Fiona Pilkington other than the fact she killed herself two years ago along with her daughter and her rabbit. I suspect she didn't have quite the array of problems that Patricia Levy has. But I also suspect that Patricia will end up meeting a similarly grisly end, and I am sure the police will be blamed when she does. One thing I do know is that anyone who torches themselves and their child to death in a car is mentally ill, and that has nothing to do with kids harassing them (although it probably doesn't help).



Alex Simmons: yob who drove a woman to suicide, or normal kid blamed for someone else' vulnerabilities?






It's not about eschewing responsibility - I'd be horrified if someone I went to visit about harassing antisocial behaviour was found dead the next day, week or month. God forbid they take out their innocent child at the same time. But it's complex. You have to work out whether the antisocial behaviour is really that harassing, or whether it's being perceived that way by someone who is vulnerable. You have to figure out if there's a way to reasonably protect someone from a group of kids they're scared of, when there is no evidence of criminal offences. You have to consider what will happen if you put the kids before the court, how soon they'll be walking free with their fistful of community hours and unenforceable ASBO.

It's all very well calling the police 30 or 40 or 100 times. As long as you realise that only the police will even pick up the phone every time. The rest of society's infrastructure just isn't bothered, until it all goes wrong.

One final point: the coroner asked ,"Why did no one sit and chat to her over a cup of tea about her problems?"

If he's aiming that question at the police, the answer is to be found on this and all other police blogs, as well as here.

Another BMW Driver!

From The Thinking Policeman 15th September 2009

More Leadership

I read with interest Inspector Hobbes article on Leadership. This is an area that has concerned me for some time. We regularly castigate politicians for the apparent lack of support we get, quite rightly. Leadership is something that we can address ourselves and we are not doing it.

I joined the police twenty something years ago and I still vividly remember some of the leaders around then. There were a lot of strong characters. They were in charge. There was no doubt of that. They understood policing and had the respect of their teams. There was a lot of shouting and barking but the really good ones maintained that equilibrium between compassion and direction. The important thing was, when the wheel came off the sergeants and inspectors knew what they were doing, took control and no one questioned their directions.

Now, some of you will be thinking that the old twit has got his rose tinted glasses on and we all like to believe that things have gone downhill since our day. Hear me out and let’s have a look at how things have changed.

Once you had passed the law exam, promotion used to be by recommendation from line managers. Experience in the field counted for everything and you had to show that you had the skills and experience to do the job before you got recommended for promotion. The system was open to abuse and allegations of ‘jobs for the boys.’ Largely though, it worked pretty well.

Over the last 15 years the Police Service has taken up the cudgel of political correctness and decided that law and order is not our only raison d’être. We must also educate the general public in all ‘isms.’ Height, fitness levels for recruits, anything that might suggest we are discriminating against anyone were thrown out. I’m not suggesting that we should reverse this but somewhere the baby went out with the bath water.

Senior Police Officers were tasked and built careers on the race to increase representation from minority groups at all levels. We needed to recruit women and other under-represented groups fast and push them up the ranks as quickly as possible. The unwritten rule that only a few exceptional people were promoted or went to CID before five years experience and service was torn up. We started promoting officers barely out of their probation period. Many of them had not learnt the massive role of policing and had few leadership skills. I am not suggesting for a minute that it is the minority groups within the police that are ineffective. This was part of the cause, the effect of which led to a significant number of ineffective leaders across the whole spectrum.

Around the same time the service also decided that it needed a more academic recruit to cope with the plethora of legislation and accountability being foisted upon us. More recruits came to us from the middle classes, some of whom had never so much been in a playground fight, never mind got stuck into a Friday night brawl. Some of these recruits want to progress quickly through the ranks, but lack leadership skills: Supervisors plotting target results on a spreadsheet, is for many, their idea of leadership, rather than leading from the front.
Fortunately, there are still many good leaders within the service but too many are a manifestation of the blind leading the blind and a self perpetuating cycle of poor leadership. We have ineffective leaders recommending too many applicants for promotion when they are totally unsuitable. The promotion system of a paper application and interview is not weeding out sufficient of those applicants. We need to break out of this cycle.

We need leaders like Inspector Hobbes who go the extra mile to ensure that their staff are delivering the service and not falling into bad habits. Leaders need to have the knowledge and experience to command respect, manage staff and control critical incidents. Just as importantly, we need leaders who can identify and develop new talent and manage the expectations of those who are not ready to do so and who may never be.

The answer to any problem is never very far away. In the services potential NCO’s are identified and put forward for promotion. Once recommended, they attend a selection course that is pass or fail. If they fail badly, the officer’s that recommended them are held to account.

Taking the police promotion exam should trigger a meeting with a line manager where an honest discussion should take place regarding the candidates suitability for promotion. A clear plan should be put in place so the candidate understands when, and under what circumstances, they may be recommended for promotion.

No one should be recommended for promotion unless there is a consensus from the applicant’s first and second line managers that the candidate would be a welcome addition to the recommending officer’s team, capable of leading that team and gaining the respect of all they work with. The candidate should then attend a pass or fail course based on practical assessment.

It should always be born in mind that not everyone will be suitable for promotion and everyone has a ceiling. Being honest and managing expectations are also qualities of a good leader and need to be practised more often.

From PC Ellie Blogs  pcbloggs.blogspot.com/ Monday, August 24, 2009

Just One Crime

Apparently 1000 of London's CCTV cameras solved only one crime last year.

This statistic amazes me. CCTV is pretty much a requisite of any prosecution in Blandmore whatsoever, regardless of the offence. You need only mention to the crown prosecutor to whom you are "selling" your case that the CCTV in a shop/street/dwelling was down/out/non-existent, to see a great sigh appear on their face and a big red pen cross out your hope of a conviction.

The court system in this country is adversarial, which means both sides argue their case to a normal bunch of people and take an approach of "Who's right? YOU decide!" You would think, under this system, that the credibility, articulation and motivation of a witness would be crucial, and that if they were essentially compelling and had no real reason to lie, their evidence would carry as much weight as forensics or CCTV - both of which can be misleading or hold partial truths.

But the world of the court-room has changed and it is now a commonly held fact that if it wasn't caught on camera, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. Which is why more and more police officers are walking around with cameras in their coats to prove just how often they get shoved about and spat on. They have only themselves to blame if their camera fails to record one such incident and cannot really expect anyone to be brought to justice.

In another few years, I wonder how we'll ever detect any crime at all.

 

 

From PC Ellie Bloggs Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Victim vs Customer

 I've moaned a bit about victim focus recently. Mainly because the Senior Management have been moaning about it, and they tend to delete my email diatribes without responding - whereas they can't delete this without some serious effort and court injunctions.

The problem is that whenever frontline police officers moan about Victim Focus, it sounds like we hate victims and want them to die.

The truth is, we moan because the language of the government and Senior Management team assumes that the majority of our 'customers' are the same thing as 'victims'. They aren't. Victims of 'volume' crime* are generally bog standard, middle/low income, hardworking taxpayers. For these people, being burgled, having their car broken into, God forbid being mugged or having their kids being beaten up at school, are jaw-aching, heart-crushing blows in their already precarious uphill struggle of life. The chances of getting satisfaction over their burglar/thief/mugger/bully are virtually nil.

So instead, we concentrate on our 'customers'. To identify whether you are a customer of Blandshire Police, please fill out the following questionnaire:

1. A night out clubbing should involve:
A. Beer, kebabs, dancing, and late into work the next day.
B. Beer, kebabs, dancing, being put in a taxi by friends and carried into bed.
C. Beer, kebabs, dancing, begging the police for a ride home whilst vomiting on their boots, then putting in a complaint when they arrest you for punching the guy who looked at your girlfriend funny.

2. Complete the following sentence: "I know where my kids are..."
A. "All the time"
B. "Most of the time"
C. "Never, but the police will find them for me when I want"

3. If you saw a terrible crime that scared and worried you, so that you called the police, would you then:
A. Watch and wait until the police arrive, then tell them what happened.
B. Agree to be seen at a later date to give a statement.
C. Phone fifteen times demanding why the police haven't turned up yet, then just as they're on their way vacate your house to go out drinking and in the morning tell them you really can't be bothered to give a statement as what's the point.

4. What are the key ingredients of a good relationship?
A. Compromise, love, trust.
B. Loud fights and make-up sex.
C. Waking the neighbours; screaming and crying; strings of obscene text messages; 999 calls over who let the dog out; stabbing, punching and throttling each other; and ultimately, the ability to unite together physically against the police officer that both of you asked round to sort the whole thing out.

5. If your child was arrested, and you had to attend the police station for their interview, how would you conduct yourself?
A. Politely but furiously attend and tell your wayward child to cooperate in every possible way, apologise to the police and ground said child for a month.
B. Resign yourself to a long night and quietly get on with it.
C. Down two bottles of wine as soon as you hear the news, then turn up demanding to see your little angel immediately. You'll have a family friend in tow who's just embarking on a law course and expect them to act as your child's solicitor. Every police officer involved in the case will have a complaint made against them, and when you are told firmly that because you have turned up drunk your child will have to be bailed and interviewed another time, you tell the police they are pathetic and throw a brick through the front window on your way out.

And finally...
6. If you went into the police station to ask whether your lost handbag had been handed in, how would you expect the enquiry to go?
A. You leave your name and address at the counter just in case, and thank the clerk.
B. You receive your lost bag, intact with all its contents.
C. You discover it's not there and demand to see someone more senior, then start shouting and swearing in the foyer, insisting that you will make a complaint. When some police arrive, you take off your stilletoes and batter the officers round the face until you are carted off to the cells in leg restraints.

Real victims will answer mainly A. Blandshire Constabulary customers will find themselves answering mainly C. Who do you think takes up more of our time?

Victim Focus, for all it's dressed up to be, is about trying to stop our customers ruining our crime figures without getting their stories printed in the Mail.
 

* er, that is, crime happening in large volumes and forming the bulk of our crime stats

 

From PC Ellie Bloggs Monday, August 03, 2009

The Victim Focus Dance

 The public at large may be surprised to hear that the police nowadays are entirely VICTIM-FOCUSED. In fact, Blandshire Constabulary is so victim-focused that it pays a lot of people to draft victim focus policies, carry out victim focus surveys, and monitor how many uniformed front-line coppers are really as focused on victims as they should be.

Then, every morning, the superintendent chairs a meeting where he demands to know how each officer on duty the night before focused on victims, how many numbers have been generated proving it, and whether there are any victims still out of focus that could be addressed later that day.






"We're gonna find that pesky victim, wherever he's hiding, and focus on him whether he likes it or not!"








The golden rules of Victim Focus (sent to us daily as an attachment in every cheery email from the superintendent, thereby filling up my inbox so that emails I want to receive such as replies about whether or not I have annual leave or crucial information about upcoming court cases cannot get through aboutwhichIamnotevenslightlybitter) are:
 

• All officers secretly hate victims and want them to die. Blandshire Constabulary's job is to stifle these impulses.
• It's about victims, so it's not performance culture.
• When the word 'victim' is mentioned, the rules of evidence and procedure cease to exist.
• Even where a crime has no known victim, the victim has given false details or told the police to fuck off, a surprising amount of resources can be used to focus on that victim from afar without his/her permission. 

 From Disgruntled Thursday, July 02, 2009

ACPO support long sentances...

In their response to the Government green paper on policing ACPO cme up with this unbelievable sentence of complete drivel.

'The promise of reform which the Green Paper heralds holds much for the public and Service alike; local policing, customised to local need with authentic answerability, strengthened accountabilities at force level through reforms to police authorities and HMIC, performance management at the service of localities with targets and plans tailored to local needs, the end of centrally-engineered one size fits all initiatives, an intelligent approach to cutting red tape through redesign of processes and cultures, a renewed emphasis on strategic development so as to better equip our service to meet the amorphous challenges of managing cross force harms, risks and opportunities.'

Anyone care to translate??

 

From Coppersblog May 2009

 

From Officer Dibble, Thursday, May 14, 2009