A strange thing happened the other day. I was busy listening to the airwaves, reviewing prisoners in custody and making up shortfalls in manning (sorry – staffing) levels. I could hear the troops on the air giving the despatcher the familiar coded reasons why they couldn’t go to the outstanding quality jobs (threats by text – switch the phone off!). Strangely enough, all the troops were either “putting fuel in the vehicle” or had “urgent paperwork from yesterday” etc. Suddenly an urgent despatch came out for a missing 5 year old child. She had gone from the parent’s (sorry – persons with parental responsibility) garden and they were beside themselves with worry. In a flash, every unit on the ground was available and responded. And I mean every unit. A coordinated search was carried out and the child found safe and well. The parents were now beside themselves with joy, as were the neighbours and all the police. We were thanked again and again for the response and the way officers had remained calm and organised evryone and everything. I was happy, the troops were happy, the community was happy, the parents were happy and the child was safe. Tax payers money well spent and all that. The whole incident took over an hour. When I returned to the nick I struggled to find a single Home Office target or performance indicator that we had hit or achieved. In performance terms, the incident never happened. We had failed during that hour. We are a disaster. Does anyone in their right mind believe that the public would have prefered us to have attended the “threats by text” call instead? Ofcourse they don’t. Not even the texted person probably. Well, I am proud to have failed in such a way. That child will now be brought up being told the story about when “Mr Policeman found you that time”, the family will tell everyone who will listen how great we are and a life was probably saved. What total nonsense all this performance rubbish is.
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Just been directd here thanks to The Policemans blog and I love the common sense and straight talking from a boss!
Major coincidence but around the time this was posted and the date in question our division had a 5 yr old missing found in an hour! I followed the releif on lates but would be refreshing to think that you are one of my leaders!
Why the hell haven’t we got more senior officers who think like you? Probably because they’re all too busy meeting Home Office targets to get their next promotion.
Good old targets and figures hey
This is a shining example of how much utter nonsense we have to work with, sorry that should be against! 99% of our work is unmeasurable is the HO terms. How on earth can you measure gratitude, reassurance, crime prevention by simply beingseen. You cant, end of!
The culture that we all now work in is more suited to a board room and not the reality of policing our streets.
I feel sorry for Inspectors and above as their hands are often tied because they have us going on at them as well as their bosses. At least we can only be moaned at from above. It is a shame that once a person becomes and Inspector they seem to get ‘chipped’ and wear the company colours.
I know of only one inspector who fights for his troops and does a brilliant job. He is approachable in many ways but will also pull the party line if needed. This blog is refreshing in many ways. I wonder if the author is like this in ‘real life?’
You are a dying breed boss.
I am a bobby with 27 years service and on my patch the new breed of sergeants and inspectors generally talk the talk but for fear of jeopardising their promotion prospects inevitably cave in and tow the party line. At the end of the day, they NEED a decent write up for their next promotion outing….
Nevertheless,this link (from the Guardian) is very welcome and makes a refreshing change from the bullshit propoganda spouted by Force Press Offices aroung the country.
We all know,boys and girls, don’t we,that we’re tough on crime and the causes of crime …ha ha ha…
Totally agree-all this performace measurement is designed by desk pilots with there heads up there a####. On the Dog Section we spend a massive amount of time searching buildings such as schools and factories after the have been burgled to try to find suspects and or evidence. Do we have any performance recognition for it? Strangely no! Arresting people and doing the job counts for nothing. I want to goout on patrol unhindered and nick bad people who are doing bad things-simple isnt it? And strangely its what the public want too!
Guv, Please transfer to my force immediately!
During an appraisal a few years back I was given a ‘not acheived’ as I had not attended as many injury RTA’s as I had the previous year. I pointed out to my supervisor that the divisional objective was to reduce the number of injury RTA’s, therefore, there would be less per officer to deal with (which is good, yes?) I also pointed out that RTA’s happened or they didn’t. I could not drive out of the traffic base and think “right, let’s go and do an injury rta”.
My Sgt remained unimpressed and said “you can’t argue with the figures”.
I was also told that, as a family liaison officer, I was spending too much times with the families of victims from fatal crashes. This was reflected in a corresponding drop in the number of speeding tickets I’d issued.
It was the beginning of the end for me and I left the traffic division shortly afterwards.