The truth in F Division at the moment, is that no-one can truly say where they will be this time next year. There seems to be a trend in uniform departments to move good people constantly. Crap officers get to stay in post forever. HR deliver the usual nonsense to justify this – the infamous “development oportunity”. Just as you get to know the players, you are moved. This is why we stare blankly at members of the public when they try and tell us about local problems. We don’t have a clue what they are talking about.
You only have to listen to Airwaves. A call for assistance, one of those broken transmissions with all the shouting in the background (the background noise we weren’t going to get when we spent £ millions on the system, remember?) where the officer just manages to say “outside WH Smith”. A hapless despatcher then starts to try and get a location, cutting out other units attempting to respond. Fact is, only one of our towns has a WH Smith, and if she had been on the F Div position for more than a day, she would know this. We all know it, but we can’t say because Airwaves won’t let you in.
I personally go to every Urgent Assistance call when I’m on duty. I drag myself out of custody, meetings, complaints or whatever and jump in the nearest ERV. I expect the same service from my people. It’s what we do.
Develop that.
OMG… Your force sounds very similar in “Stupid” policy to ours! We actually have a Tenure policy that states we have a minimum AND maximum number of years in a district. That basically means you can’t move if you want to in the first 2-3 years, then when you finally do get used to it after 4-5 years, you are forcibly moved! Either way, in that gap between min and max, you are looking for a new job before they shaft you to the sticks! ~ Bugger…
I’m a civilian, but my local (American) force has a similar policy. Every fall there’s an open season where they shuffle the assignments around. I’ve heard it’s to cut down on corruption, which has historically been a problem in this city. On the one hand, it means that if our District Commander is an idiot or our Service Area lieutenant is clueless (as per 18 months ago), “this too shall pass.” But our current commander is wonderful, and we all hate the fact that she’ll probably be moved on in a year or so.
We have a wonderful model that means Probies spend nearly two years in an office, then come to the frontline. Ah now for them to go front line they have to move an experienced officer. Makes sense doesn’t it. Get rid of those who know how to deal with people and replace them with some immature uni grad who cant talk his way out of making a cuppa. It’s not the probies fault, they have been let down by the suits and it had had almost dangerous/disasterous consequences.
Interesting point about airwaves. Urgent assistance call. CAD Operator’s have no clue about the location, nearby roads, which division covers which area, who the Officer is, who that Officer is posted with, what vehicle that Officer is posted to. By the time they have looked it up on their map Officers on the ground have used a mobile and found out the location of their colleague. Airwaves do not allow you to break into a inexperienced CAD operator’s diatribe about ‘units standby trying to get location’. By this point the individual who requested assistance…well you can work the rest out. In all this knowledge is key. Knowledge takes time. Stop the musical chairs.
Airwave is a good tool in as much as the scum bags no longer know we are on route well before we get there, by use of scanners. But also having a mostly crystal clear reception and a national network for coms between other forces, very useful to me this last week while on mutual aid to High Wycombe.
But as the gaffer says there is no way to speak over the anoying despatcher who insists on giving you a tale of woe about how someone is getting anoying text messages from her ex boyfriend 50 times a day. When all you needed to say was, that you wont be able to attend this fantastic job as it takes more than 5 minutes to deal with the last pile of crap they sent you to. And there is the comms operator who leaves his foot on the pedal for ages while thinking what he or she is going to say next. FRASTRATING or what.
My father – a retired policeman, was always of the opinion that the truly useless were usually promoted quickly up and out of harms way…