It’s a cruel, cruel summer.
July 17, 2007 by inspectorgadget
No doubt we will be kept amused again this summer by reports of police forces around the country spending your hard earned tax money on “Youth Diversion Projects”, also known as “Promotion Portfolio Building Projects”.
Examples from last year that made us all titter were mobile skate parks and dancing workshops. These things are very helpful for the community, but I am unconvinced that the police should be running them.
Remember, we don’t get any extra staff for this and we are still trying to answer 650 emergency calls a day in Ruralshire.
Clearly something has to give, and it’s NOT going to be the Superintendent’s latest shot at the big time, believe me.
The sheep in Ruralshire are unconvinced by the Chief Constable’s new plan to swell their numbers by providing knitted fakes; but they will give it a jolly good try!
Ruralshire Constabulary are now largely responsible for:
1. Out of hours mental health provision.
2. Parenting children from Ruraltown’s large housing estates during the school holidays.
3. “Enabling” community groups to “communicate” with each other.
4. Apologising for historical events none of us were actually alive for.
5. Dancing and skating.
But not at the same time. Not on my watch at least.
Oh, and err…. preventing crime and locking up the bad guys? A poor sixth in the rankings this summer I fear.
The military call this kind of thing “mission creep” and they do everything in their power to prevent it. Even to the extent of risking their careers in the process. This is called “having principles” and is a relatively unknown concept at ACPO level.
It’s already started, the mobile skate park is stocked up, checked, and raring to go with a PCSO at the helm - once they have had their ‘towing’ course for the trailer that is.
Who is the biggest and most stupid sheep of them all. The real sheep going about its daily business munching grass OR the sad ACPO sheep who without question follows whatever will get their next promotion or good PR in the local, national press,
The next time you show that photo could you please have a distinguishable uniform on the knitted sheep so i can tell the difference as it may cause some problems if i can’t. What’s that you say, that’s the point. Oh, right. That would never happen in real life. Who’d want an inferior service mistaken for something else? Who could benefit. Ridiculous.
General Wheeler wrote “This two-way obligation forms a covenant between the Army and its soldiers. Both share a common bond of identity, loyalty and responsibility for each other which is unwritten but unbreakable, and which has sustained the Army throughout its history. Soldiers volunteering for the British Army accept that, by putting the needs of the Service before their own, they will forgo some of the rights enjoyed by those outside the Armed Forces. But in return they can at all times expect fair treatment, to be valued and respected as an individual, and to be rewarded by reasonable terms and conditions of service. By extension, this covenant also exists between the Army and the Nation it serves”
Commisioner Sir Ian Blair wrote “Ladies and Gents, you’ve accepted the queens shilling and chosen to adorn the cloth. If there is one piece of advice I can give you it will be ‘Don’t ever, ever, f*ck up, or we’ll hang you out to dry’ If you are seriously unfortunate and do f*ck up, just be sure you try and cover your arse by taping conversations with high level ministers and members of cabinet, they appreciate that”
Ok, so I made that up, but if you can show me an officer in the job below the rank of Inspector who sincerely believes and trusts any of the Ivory Tower crew then I will show you a liar - or just someone who has worn comfortable shoes in an office for way too long.
If anyone ever has the guts to try and say it like it is and actually a) manages to keep their job and b) isn’t ripped to shreds by the media and hung out to dry then I will eat my own head. I honestly think no one in the service of ACPO rank has the bollocks to do what General Sir Richard Dannatt did and tell the country exactly what a shit state the job is in and how completely f*cked the country will be in the not too distant future if we carry on how we are.
Roll on day shift.
“…………….With that in mind I have asked the police authority’s monitoring officer to undertake the necessary enquiries.”
Who does this cracker think she is? It’s the authority who hire and fire her, so i’d say that they don’t have to wait for her to ask them, for them to carry out an enquiry into her £28,000 shower.
Who the hell authorised the shower in her office, at a price of £6000, in the first place? Some of these ACPO ranks really have lost the plot.
Why are the sheep not wearing their hats ? Don’t they know, as soon as they leave their cars, hats must be worn - and the boss doesn’t care if it was to wrestle a terrorist
or catch a priority criminal.
By the way, my force ( can I say that ?) have deployed a mobile 5 a side football pitch in an effort to lower/prevent youth crime. And no, it hasn’t worked as far as I can see.
It seems to me that cops in the U.K. are required to spend more time performing social work assignments than actual police work.
Obviously part of the big plan to provide a multitude of services to the public at a minimal cost.
One must ask just how effective are those services and how cost effective are they? Might provide good PR value today but the residual costs in the future will no doubt be astronomical.
The more I read on the UK PC Blogs the more I realize what the Home Office has under it’s control. A one stop shop for all feel good services with a blurred line between imagined entitlements and real public needs. It does apparently find sometime and minimal resources to protect the citizens and fight crime. But in the main, it comes across as a feel good government bureaucracy.
UK cops have been made the face of those meets all needs bureaucratic decisions. Herding and tending sheep is a good analogy. Be careful lest you become the sheep. Then no one will be left to deal with the wolves.
How it appears looking across the pond.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6897298.stm
This is a prime example of that sort of thinking. If they had said ‘No’! this wouldn’t have happened, but I guess it looked just too good on paper for someone’s (well at least half a dozen people) CV.
They hung a PC out to dry as well!
Capitulation is the one word we all learn in this job. Someone doesn’t like what we do, they complain, and our future is changed irrevocably. We need people who can say… “we’re doing it this way, because we’re the police, and it gets the job done”
Not so much as mission creeping, as walking open eyed into a shit storm, blinded by our own incompetence.
Last night I watched some real policework. Unfortunately for us all, it was 1973.
Guv,
Reading the PC websites, a MOP like me might get the impression that it’s all quite hopeless. But then I think ab out my own local force in Bracknell Forrest, Berkshire, and the reality is quite different. Bracknell town centre should be a no-go area on Saturday nights, but it isn’t. In my experience, response times on call outs are impressively short- in one case six minutes from my call about a “suspected burglary in process” to a return call advising me of the outcome.
Clearly, it can be done right, but can I ask you all, what is it that makes the difference? Is it local police leadership, staffing levels or what? What do we MOPs have to insist upon politically so you guys (and lasses, of course) can get what you need to do it right?
U.S Detective Sergeant: Superbly put. I joined with the purpose to ‘put people in the State Pen’ as it were. HA, I’m too busy babysitting a nation of wasters to fight crime. Insp Gadget, I wish I could send you a copy of L&B’s latest publication. The ENTIRE thing is devoted to ‘partnership working’ ‘multi-agency approach’ ‘Youth Outreach Initiatives’. I had a look at it yesterday and almost puked into my piece (refs for colleagues Dahn Sarf).
Gene Hunt is GOD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixsc9POvY7E
I’m trying to persuade my force to hold a summer long ‘Battle Royale’. The response has been mixed so far, mainly because of fears over the human rights of the yoof who’ll be denied access to their normal intake of Lambrini.
Pat O’ Donnell,
I am glad you got a good service. Every MOP should get that ,but in reality you are not consulted about what you want. If proper consultation took place we would have a resilient 24/7 response which is what you and everyone else wants, but we have neighbourhood policing instead which thinks it can solve all problems by not turning up . Research shows that the police have a better chance of catching criminals if they respond quickly, witnesses and other evidence is also a little easier to get. It really is that simple.
Reassurance ,like diversity, is another great rock n’ roll swindle. A lot of people make money on the back of it . Most neighbourhood teams and PCSO’s seem to work days where I live and work. Not very reassuring.
Keep telling people you like short response times Pat, every little helps.
Well,we always had a lot of 6, and a bit of 1- and that included1973! I guess the others are add-ons, by our enlightened senior officers and their political masters.
What did you have to post that you tube Life on Mars thing for? Now I had that “remembrance of things past” thing all over again
it’s the same as it ever was ,the line of least resistance , here’s the rub , The Police service has become a pick what you want ,say what you want disorganised , unfocussed mess , promulgated by managers who are gossamer thin , the merest hint of a wind of change , a new perspective rolled out, means that we ALL change .
The “old” contract between the British people and their custodians has been changed by minor interest groups; we were the arbiters of what was necessary and proportional
Do the higher echelons not engage with plane spotters and geeks in Ruralshire?
Re your ACPO link
Ms CANNINGS has now gone. She resigned for reasons of ill-health, although the fact that she was allegedly escorted off the hq premises two weeks before her announcement to the press suggests there may be more to it!
The MP, WILLIS, is also retiring soon. He seemed to spend most of his time rubbishing the police in the local press, with good reason or without.
Needless to say, North Yorkshire Police Officers are being issued with ACPO approved onions so we can look suitably tearful at such a double blow.
By the way, can you guess where all the extra council tax spent on the police went?
A) Recruiting policemen
B) New response vehicles
C) New showers for those below the rank of Superintendant
D) Recruiting PCSOs
i left the private sector (i was a sales manager) to join the police.i wanted to help people by locking up offenders and making this world a little bit better.they would spend time in jail and if not reformed would at least be off the streets for a while.
of course i was sadly mistaken,you wouldn’t believe what s**t with pages of form just walk away from court with a slap on the wrists………but then you would if you have read enough police bloggs.
what truly amazed me,and frightened me is the management culture we live with.i’m sure i was a bit nieve in thinking that the focus would be on catching and prosecuting criminals but in reality its just on performance statistics.to arrest and prosecute a schoolchild for a playground “assault” is just as valuable as catching a rapist.it simply comes down to figures.
why spend many hours investigating a complicated fraud (despite the fact we are told they might fund terrorim) when i can walk out of the nick and arrest some poor,mostly law abiding,working,tax paying individulal for sec 5 public order?………for the unitiated,go out , get a bit drunk and swear a bit…….that should do it.no interview,a small file or a ticket and job done.
the point is a tick is a tick in the book.if i dont get enough ticks then i’m in the s**t,so what would you do?
what i do is my job.i go to the job i’m sent to and if someone needs arresting,then they are.i do not create arrests and i will never do that,i’m not sure if anyone has been sacked for low arrests but that is always an underlying threat.
as a former ,sucessful manager in the private sector in my professional opinion the police force is in management meltdown.the focus is not on crime and criminals,just figures to prove how well we are doing and personal advancement for those higher up the food chain.of course a lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of politicians,but our “leaders” need to show a lot more backbone and try to remember why they joined the force.
jules
Great post. I love the picture too!
Those knitted fakes seem remarkably undiverse. HR of Ruralshire may have dropped an opportunity there.
Pc Mcgarry. Thank you for reminding me of the Life on Mars clip.Cheered me up no end.
If you can believe the BBC; North Yorkshire Chief Constable Della Cannings in 2002 asked for and received a 76% increase in that County’s Police Tax. A couple years later she asked for an additional increase.
This past October she was under investigation for installing a private $48,000 shower in headquarters office.
The results of the investigation indicates that staff failed to control the construction and did not go through a bid process. C/C Cannings became ill shortly afterwards and placed the blame on someone designated as the estate manager. So after throwing a subordinate under the bus she was able to walk away with, I assume, a full pension.
Hey, we have more in common than I thought. The top Llama is never guilty of any wrong doing. It was SODDI….( Some Other Dude Done (sic) It )
Don’t forget the Force that sought volunteers from their officers to assist traveller children to learn to read…
[...] him. He’s only the messenger. I bet those policemen were sent by an Inspector who’s seen this before. “Remind ‘em that you’re their to provide protection from passengers as well [...]
You don’t really strike me as a Bananarama fan though…
Call the police - they’ll sort it out
Like the recent flooding last Friday. We had dozens of calls effectively asking us to make it stop raining. And asking us to bring sandbags - we don’t have any. Or to stop the floodwater ruining their premises - certainly madam, we’ll drop everything else and come round to YOUR house and remove all the water immediately.
The worst thing is that these were all put on the computer by our wonderful call-handlers - whose only ‘training’ is to take the call, put a job on and switch it to the radio operaotrs (who will of course, send an officer straight away to deal with it)
Recent examples include;
My 10yr old son is refusing to go to school. I want the police to come and take him.
I’ve bought something off eBay and it doesn’t work. I want my money back.
Kids are playing football in the park again. Come and tell them not to.
There’s a squashed hedgehog in the car park. Come and remove it.
As the name of this wonderful blog says….You really couldn’t make it up.
Your recent trend towards the displying of so many members of the flock is both worrying and intrigueing (if thats how its spelt). I have seen this racing and I am amazed at how the riders never actually fall off, they are side-on or sometimes almost underneath but they cling on with amazing determination. I’ll have £5 each way on the green.