The new centralised Force Control Room has to be one of the biggest, and probably most expensive arse covering exercises ever known to man.
Emasculated by crippling political correctness, stripped of power by numerous oversight committees, fearful of dismissal and loss of pension and slaves to various Government inspired targets, the so called decision makers are basically just a bunch of scardey cats.
I’m not talking about the excellent staff (usually female) who take all the abuse and stress for so little pay. They are marvelous. If the current Mrs Gadget ever booted me out, I could quickly become fond of some of them. But that’s a different story.
Ruralshire’s sheep know for sure that they are not living in South Central LA, but does the Force Control Room?
If I could say one thing to my fellow Inspectors in the Control Room it would be this;
“We police in Ruralshire. It is a rural area. People go shooting in the countyside at night. It’s not an Al Queada terrorist cell. It’s the local farm lads out looking for game. Please don’t waste the time of our heavily armed firearms officers by sending them to my Division just because some city-dweller who has just moved to their third home in the country, hears a few shots in the forest”.
I admit that Ruralshire has been bombed in the past. The German Luftwaffe used to drop any surplus explosive on this County, on the way back from bombing the docks near Metrocity. Even Hitler only bombed us by default.
“Ruralshire is that way you fools! send my best bombers!”
And yardie gangs from Metrocity are not about to choose the woods near Yew Tree Farm to start a turf war over drugs and bitches or whatever it is they fight over.
My final message on this subject? “It’s OK to shoot woodpigeon with air pellets (unless you are a woodpigeon) in the countryside. Everyone has to eat. Grow up, look around you and stop declaring World War III just to cover your arse everytime some idiot picks up the phone”.
Rant over.
Spot on !! who would have thought people in the country have guns? and the fact that they use them for sport and to provide food whatever next!! Still as always our response is nearly always way over the top much to my annoyance/amusement depending on the time of day.
Your comments are spot on, no matter how well a local copper knows their patch some fool will still demand an immediate response from beat followed by men with guns and carpets.
Foxes cause the biggest problem, the caller tells us they can hear a woman/baby screaming in the woods and assumes (due to a constant diet of horror dvds) that people with chainsaws are going about their business chopping and hacking up A.N.Other.
No matter how often they are told of the habits of our local fox population ‘just to be sure’ they send cars whizzing to the scene from across the force area and launch the helicopter.
After and hour of buggering about they all leave realising that the people in charge of the control room have no backbone and an hour of their lives will never come back.
It will have also cost ££££
Nice perspective. I particularly liked your take on airguns/woodpigeons – this labour gov’t wants to control everyones lives to the finest detail by waves of trivial legislation and who might benefit in this example? Um, the woodpigeon!
Well said Gadget. Round here we are going through a spate of every child with a BB gun being declared as a spontaneous firearms incident. Silver commanders appear to be ever more keen to declare them and send the appropriate resources to these calls. That’s four armed officers bristling with firearms plus two snarling dogs onto our housing estates every time a group of kids start playing with a toy gun.
Frankly it terrifies me.
People are idiots when it comes to guns. Particularly people who are not used to country goings on.
I remember someone getting grumpy when we told them we were shooting in a particular glen on a particular estate one day… “But I want to go for a walk” said he. Not quite understanding he would be at risk of getting a lead backside if he didn’t do as he was told. No sense whatsoever.
You must live near me. The hysteria of the local second homers everytime someone shoots the poor ickle birdies for the pot beggars belief.
A farmer I am friendly with left me a brace of lovely pheasants during the winter, and hung them from the wing mirror of my car when he was passing the site I was surveying. My client went nuts when he saw then, saying the farmer should be shot for such cruelty(!)
He was from London, poor ignorant soul.
There are others near here who complained to the council about the noise from the rooks in the trees opposite… no mention of the traffic of course.
Alice with a lovely brace of pheasants – a mental picture worth having!!!
Do we all live in the same county? What are the chances of that happening eh?
But plucking a brace of pheasants is such a messy job; my preference is for a gift of a nice carrier bag of venison (shot under licence of course.)
Re police control rooms, I have just gone all nostalgic for the days when I could talk to our local police station and need say no more than ‘The slime ball who has just passed a duff £20 note in my small market town shop is running up the steps at the back of Argos’ to be told ‘All right luv we are on our way.’ and then here sirens in the distance.
Now it is all so far removed that I will be asked for two street names and a post code and possibly a six figure grid reference.
They sold off the crown jewels as far as we were concerned when they ‘centralised’ call taking. Local knowledge is ( was) priceless
We’re not all arse-covering fops, sitting in our cosy air-coditioned cocoons trembling with fear and perverse anticipation everytime a caller mentions “loud bangs in the countryside” or kids “brandishing” a handgun. On average I deploy armed officers to roughly one incident a week as a 24/7 Force Control Centre inspector, and every day I make at least 4 times as many “non-deployment” or “normal deployment” decisions, which I am 99.99999999% certain will turn out ok (however I always breathe a small sigh of relief when they do).
I think the reality of the situation is that with most Force Control Centres being quite miserable performance-driven “dark satanic mills” where the business practices of the private sector have been adopted with indecent zeal, many Inspectors probably find themselves tempted to go for a firearms deployment just to break the monotony of performance management and staffing issues, Or is that just me?
No way near as good as when district based with district PC’s. No local knowledge to call on, they were also out on the streets for some part of their career. Someof them were useless as PC’s on the streets but found their niche within comms and had enough experience to help the front line officers. All change in the name of saving money and giving ‘allegedly’ a better product.
As for sheep, this is getting a real habit. At least they aren’t as tall as llamas, not whilst standing anyway. You’ve still got the pretty one near the tree I see.
Also, I like emasculated. I don’t know what it means so I must look it up.
I don’t like arse covering fops. I know what this means and I wouldn’t even open the book.
A lamb with seven legs was born in New Zealand with an extra set of front legs and three back legs. The lamb was also hermaphrodite. The lamb was euthanased by a local vet.
I wonder what ruralshire’s flock think about that ?
Oh yes, emasculated.
1. To castrate.
2. To deprive of strength or vigor; weaken.
This sounds worrying.
Centralised control rooms don’t work on anything but paper, the one at my old force failed from day one and is still after several years appalling, people got injured, the 3 the Met have don’t work and people have been injured. I heard a spurious rumour the other day (from a Chief Inspector, not that that makes much difference to rumour) that once ‘Metcall’ as it is called is finished and ‘proved to have succeeded’ in its single handed destruction of response policing, then local control rooms will be coming back.
A very large number of people are exceptional, most are very good, some are a waste of oxygen and need to be removed but for what ever reason they are still there, but the bosses have an obsession about not letting teams and control rooms develop a relationship because it leads to ‘unprofessional radio procedure’
I’m sorry, but if I know the person on the radio is even remotely interested in my personal safety because they actually know me, then why should I have to care if someone else is worried that I may have a joke with someone I know on the radio?
Just like everything else in this job, everyone but the frontline PC’s. skippers, guvnors, socos, etc forget who is supposed to be supporting whom.
YOU DONT KNOW HALFOF THE SHIT THAT GOES ON. NOBODY DOES. THE CRAP THAT COMES OUT OF THE”HOUSE OF SECRETS”[HOME OFFICE] IS BEYOND BELIEF. P,S.O’s are now out in fully liveried police vehicles with radar guns checking speeders!! This without any traing or powers to stop. my so is a serving Officer but I’m glad to be out of it
YOU DONT KNOW HALFOF THE SHIT THAT GOES ON. NOBODY DOES. THE CRAP THAT COMES OUT OF THE”HOUSE OF SECRETS”[HOME OFFICE] IS BEYOND BELIEF. P,S.O’s are now out in fully liveried police vehicles with radar guns checking speeders!! This without any traing or powers to stop. my son is a serving Officer but I’m glad to be out of it
Hahaha IG has someone touched a nerve there ???? Me thinks IG has found himself at the end of a ‘its more than my jobs worth’ type incident lately
If you think centralised control rooms are bad (which they are, except on balance sheets of the Force accountants) then you should try Virtual Call Centres!!!
what a ******* joke! Heaps and heaps of money for so little productivity, you call the Police, get put through to control room who due to staff shortages cant answer the phone in the designated time to meet there targets, so after a set period the line immediately diverts to the Virtual Call centre which basically means any poor civvy sod in a post deemed part of this utter bollocks who must log on and show as available so many hours a day or be punished!!! So you get wee Mavis fae some big housing scheme on the outskirts of a city calling to get the Police to come round as her house is being pelted by the local youth with bricks only to be answered by a typist sitting somewhere in a tiny office in Auchtermuchty or some other backwater station who idea of an angry mob is a group of midges out the back door of the station!!! Hasn’t a clue where this place is and usually gets the wrong details and cuts her off when trying to transfer her too ………….. the control room!!
Chapeau!
As a trained and qualified deerstalker, all I can say is thank feck someones got some common sense – unfortunatley most “out of hours” countryside policing seems to be down to urban based response units, whose response to anything bang stick related is utter panic – twice I’ve now had ARV’s with Helo’s circling overhead whilst out foxing.
Fortunatley on one occasion the ARV was sensible and relaxedly pulled up for a chat – the other time it was a full armed challenge, too much watching the bill methinks – should have shot the fecking townie scum – my .308 somewhat outranges their 9 mil!
Uphilldowndale : I spend Boxing Day morning on the patio plucking and drawing the pheasants in question. It was cold, they were gamey and smelly, I was covered in blood and innards, and I loved every minute of it. Later, I roasted and ate them – they tasted all the better for having known the very bullet that shot them, the land they came from and the fact that the feathers were on the compost heap and my cat was enjoying the lites.
Bliss, pure bliss.
Welllll, I can’t comment on today’s Control Rooms, but……….. ’twasn’t all rosy in my day. One evening, as we were driving past Hammersmith Palais, we saw a massive punch-up at the entrance, involving the bouncers and a load of hard-men. As I pulled-in to the side of the road, my R/T Operator dashed into the fray, and I took time to call C.O. (Control) just asking for ‘urgent assistance’ – which was always good enough to ensure prompt action. I then joined the fray, just as one of the combatants was hurled through the glass doors, severing an artery in his arm. The Operators at C.O. were too busy talking to each other to hear my call, and it was only the intervention of Charlie 2 – a car based in the West End – that saved our bacon.
Not sure whether we were any better than today’s. (Though I accept that you all will know better).
dickiebo, unfortunately that still happens, however rest assured those of us who actually care if someone needs to hear you can still listen to the radio while talking to someone about nothing, typing a crime report and wondering what to eat to keep us awake!!
Definitely miss the old area control rooms. Yet another example of incorrect applications of private sector / mgmt / financial practises being shoe horned in to a unique service with unique challenges. Oddly enough the latest principle to hit the upper echelons of blue chip companies is empowerment. Actually its been around for a while. The troops on the front line make the decisions most appropriate to the circumstance. Wow, what an amazing concept!
Have to say, it works brilliantly for the most part. Of course there are cock ups, but we don’t castigate people when it happens. If it happens repeatedly they get told their fortune! Doesn’t happen that often.
And the key to all this? Management, thats me in the private sector, spend time with my troops on the ground, those closest to the customer, who tell me what works, what could be better and whats LOB. We launch something new, and its normally come from them and / or they’ve been involved throught the whole process. If it works, great, we’re all happy. If its shite, bugger, we all got it wrong. Suffice to say its not usually shite!
They love seeing us out there with them. Its not until i did some of things they have to do that I understand whats wrong with it. You can’t get that from an office or around the meeting table. Its a back to the floor exercise every month, but it works.
So imagine how frustrating it is after 11 years in the job doing my weekly shifts, mostly at the busiest times of the week, to have seen someone above the rank of inspector approximately 6 times in parade and once out on the street. ( he was the Area Commander, bloody caught two for TFMV after a footchase too that day!typical!)
One of the fundamental issues in the job is the lack of tenure of senior officers in post. There are loads of so called good ideas, but people arent around long enough to be held accountable for whether they work or not. If they don’t what happens?? Not a lot!
Consequently, here’s my new idea we’re trialling / rolling out, there’s my promotion board, thanks very much I’m promoted, you losers deal with the aftermath of my lovely new idea, I’m off to my new job!
That wouldn’t happen in the private sector to anything like the same degree. In any case it catches up eventually and you’re out.
Sorry, for non Police readers TFMV – Theft from Motor Vehicle
So is there anything, other than finance, that is better with centralised control?
About the sheep; do they get repeat fees? And shouldn’t they be in the freezer by now or are they mutton dressed as lamb?
When you mention covering your arse every time some idiot picks up the phone are you referring to the f******* running the police service when they call you or are you referring to the misunderstood section of society or ,finally, are you referring the the silent majority who NEVER call us BUT pay vast amount of taxes to support the f******* in our society (That can cover SMT or the misunderstood).
Inspector Gadget
This is totally off your post topic but seeing that picture reminded me. I spoke to a Normandy veteran in the local supermarket on saturday while we were shopping. He was dressed smartly with a blazer and badge. We spoke for 30 minutes. He talked more sense in that time than I have heard for years. I put my hand out at the end of the conversation wondering if he would shake it. He did and it made my day
Keep blogging and speaking the truth
Regards
Mark
[...] Simple Minds The new centralised Force Control Room has to be one of the biggest, and probably most expensive arse covering […] [...]
Alice… are you trying to turn me on?
Ah, sounds like the call that I recently got involved with.
A call received at the FCR from CCTV that a man dressed in paramilitary clothing was brandishing a firearm in the square of a small valley town. The Balloon goes up and the ARV’s are scrambled from their holding area outside a Starbucks some 25 miles away. Strangely, even for this particular town, the FCR states that there are a lot of strangely dressed individuals on the town that night.
Our van’s a mere 10 miles away and suspecting that the said Paramilitary wasn’t Micheal Stone we head over for a gander. CCTV confirm that there’s not a massacre going on or in fact that anyone appears to be acting in a threatened manner. they’re not looking at all Harrassed, Alarmed or Distressed (damn, no detection). We pass some traffic officers cautiously lurking (some may say hiding) in a layby at the edge of the town and cheerfully enter what the FCR believes is a scene from Blackhawk Down
A quick spin around the town and there is no sign of the male but the search does allow us to cross paths (and luckily not plastic swords) with 3 pirates. After a quick chat with said Buccaneers it appears that the military enthusiast seen in the town is their mate and, strangely enough, they’ve all been to a fancy dress party. The said swashbucklers are advised to hide their swords so’s to avoid another mass panic in the control room and we head back to where we came from after deflating the balloon with a hearty dose of common sense.
Now i know that there’s those who will say better to be safe than sorry but that just sounds like FCR talk to me. The fact that there were loads of people out in fancy dress not at all bothered by said gunman should indicate that there’s not a major issue and, with some sensible precautions, it could have been dealt with a bit more calmly. Which it was, by my lot.
As a former FCR Inspector (quite a few years back) I agree there is nothing to beat local knowledge. We made sure we had people on seats who knew the area and it’s problems. Off topic can anyone tell me why Cambridgeshire have issued PCSO’s with black and white chequered bands? Can they be arrested for impersonating a police officer? Sad days now !
[...] 3, 2007 · Filed under Crack a Smile, Bitter Blue I was interested to read Inspector Gadgets comment yesterday about centralised police call taking, it took me back to when I had my business, I thought it was [...]
John you should visit Devon & Cornwall. PCSO’s down there are identical to PC’s. I actually approached one to talk about transfers. He was wearing a metvest (well maybe a Cornvest down there ;o), white shirt, blue nd white checked cap band and force badge on his vest. Only saw PCSO lable about 2 foot away from him…..
Impersonating a police officer?? Clear up on my next holiday to the west country and a recall to duty..
sometimes I cant see the differens between sheep and human beings
sofia
South Wales PCSO’s wear white shirts and police black and white chequered banded hats too. Very confusing for the sheep when they go over expecting a Lama.
Give it time Gadget. In a few years when the current senior officers have moved on someone else will come along with what they think is the best idea since sliced bread and remove the centrally located control room and move them all back onto area. A similar thing was done in a large market town on my patch a few years ago when the ABOs decided to start riding bicycles on their beats. They talked about how they were being progressive and forwarding ideas that meet the needs of community policing in the 21st century. What they didn’t mention was that the station had a nice supply of rusting bicycles long forgotten in a storage shed that had been forsaken for a nice comfortable, air-conditioned patrol car in the early ’80s.
Days of Future Past
When I was young in service and walked the blue suit of truth and big hat round one of our market towns, we had a dedicated comms PC. Lets call him “Tom” to save his blushes. Tom would do his 8 hours manning the front office, the phones and the radio. Tom wore slippers on duty because Tom had 3 years to do and he was likely never going outside ever again. Tom knew our town like the back of his hand and more often than not could make a shrewd guess as to where running baddies would emerge. Tom knew his job. If Tom gave you a disturbed break and gave no description or direction of travel, that’s because there was none, not because he never asked the caller. Tom was our firewall from the lonely and disturbed attention seekers who called in the wee small
hours with trivia. Tom dealt with the enquiry desk with firmness, charm, courtesy and total professionalism. Once in 2 years when the wheel fell off one Sunday early morning, Tom locked up the station and deployed in his slippers and 1948 pattern tunic in the section van. He never did a van conversion course and nobody cared. In short Tom was quality and we were privileged to have him.
Each of the 4 scales in our market town had a Tom and they were all good. At Big Town, they had a Sergeant Tom, another Tom and a WPC Tom but they had more calls.
It was the same in every division of my county.
In my simplicity I thought this was such a good,clever way to utilise experienced old in service uniform officers and mostly they seemed to enjoy it as well. Something went wrong though. Someone somewhere thought they could get the same thing on the cheap. First it was Public Enquiry Assistants and then it was centralised comms. Well folks, new was not improved and everybody knows it. I sometimes wonder how the new Police Service would deal with a Tom today and I suspect that whatever we do we wouldn’t get the same value as he gave his colleagues as the Scale 1 Station Duty Man.
Hardly relevant… but I had to share this!
A tourist visiting a far away country in the heart of god knows where
(possibly Shropshire), walked into a pet shop and was looking at the
animals on display.
While he was there, a Police Sergeant walked in and said to the
shopkeeper, “I’ll take a Traffic Patrol monkey please.”
The shopkeeper nodded, went over to the cage at the side of the shop
and took out a monkey. He fit it with a collar and leash, handed it to
the officer saying, “That’ll be £5,000 please Sergeant”
The Sergeant paid and walked out with his monkey.
Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and said “That was a
very expensive monkey. Most of them are only a few hundred pounds. Why
did it cost so much?”
The shopkeeper answered, “Ah, that monkey is a qualified breath test
operator, can write twenty tickets a week, can deploy Stinger at a
moments notice, knows all there is to know on traffic legislation and
is authorised by the Chief of Police in pursuit driving – well worth
the money.”
The tourist looked at the monkey in another cage. “That ones even more
expensive! £10,000! What does it do?”
“Oh, that ones a firearms training monkey , it can instruct other
monkeys in Basic Firearms Skills, Counter Terrorism Training, Physical
Training, Small Unit Tactics and investigative techniques, and even
type. All the really useful stuff,” said the shopkeeper.
The tourist turned and saw another monkey, with the price tag of
£15,000. “That one must be even better? What does it do?”
That one is a general duties monkey, he is required to know everything
about anything, be there yesterday, and then duplicate the information
12 times before tomorrow, relay the same information to 20 different
departments, write reports about everything that the old monkeys cant
see any more, be in 5 different places at once, get yelled at by
everyone who passes by, and takes the blame for everything all the
other monkeys do wrong.”
The tourist looked around for a little longer and saw a fourth monkey
in a cage of it’s own. The price tag around its neck read £50,000. He
gasped to the shopkeeper, “That one costs more than all the others put
together! What on earth does it do?”
The shopkeeper replied, “Well, I haven’t actually seen it do anything
yet, but it says it’s a Detective!”
FUNNY!!!!!!!!!
It really is no good blaming those higher up in the force. We now have a government which in creating more and more laws, creates more criminals!
Better get them all on the database whilst you are about it too!
It would be better if people loved more instead of planing to kill each other all the time. the world seems to go down in may eys
Kama Sutra the art of sex is better. During the hippiemovment they sad better to make love that make war. but as with everything it goes with a great responsibility.
sofia
http://sofiawinterborn.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/sofiathe-art-of-sex-and-lovekama-sutra/
Congratulations Inspector Gadget for doing a PR job for the police that, including the ACPO team, nobody else has come anywhere near to.
Perhaps you and your readers may like to consider the rights and wrongs of the following local spat near chez Olderbutwiser in SW France.
I was taking the air together with Mrs Olderbutwiser when we noticed our neighbour, Mme D (a widow of advanced years), struggling with a dog on a piece of string. I recognised the dog as belonging to a particularly indolent couple from the nearby village. I had seen the dog, a very nice springer spaniel, out on it’s own before. Dogs out on their own around here are not welcome because of the large amounts of poultry that are reared in the vicinity. Foxes are quickly despatched by the local hunt. Chickens, ducks, guinea fowl and geese free range around here.
Mme D had a digital photo of the spaniel biting off the head of one of her chickens. She was, quite understandably, upset. She said that she had lost four chickens to the spaniel that afternoon and she was going to seek compensation from the owners but didn’t hold out much hope of voluntary compensation, she went on to describe the body piercings, the electric pink hair and etc, of the dog owners.
I saw her the following day and, as expected, she had received a dusty reply from the dog owners. I suggested she might seek a mutual settlement with the dog owners through the mayor.
I wasn’t prepared for the response to my suggestion, and I wished I hadn’t suggested it. There were many words that I didn’t understand and even if I had and reproduced them Gadget’s moderator would have deleted them. Plus there were ascertations about the mayor’s alcohol consumption which were, quite frankly, impossible (not to mention slanderous). “I’m going to the police” she said.
Our tiny village (pop 66) doesn’t support a police office but there is small police office open on week days at the next village down the road (pop 300). Much the same as the old village policeman (sergeant) did years ago in my old home county of Bedfordshire.
The police (a gendarme and a sergeant) agreed to meet with Mme D at the indolents house immediately after lunch the same day. The meeting went something like this (I wasn’t party to it):
After the polite preliminaries:
Sgt: Your dog has been roaming the village and has taken four of Mme D’s chickens.
Nuisances: Whaa?
Sgt: We have pictures of your dog biting Mme D’s chicken’s heads off. The English bloke was there and saw it. (I wasn’t)
Nuisances: Oh
Sgt: Right -10€ for each chicken (the local going rate) plus a further 10€ for Mme D’s trouble. (All payable to Mme D)
Nuisances: ooooooooooooooooohhh (but they stumped up)
Sgt: Right; if I see that dog out without a leash I will shoot it. IS THAT CLEAR.
Up to now the indolents have behaved impeccably
[...] the Duty Inspector at the Force Control Room literally wet himself with joy by ringing me at home and placing me on “standby” [...]
Hit the nail on the head again Inspector G. The FCC in my force is a totally disaster, and got slated again in the local press about a week ago. Some divisions are now forming teams to deal with Grade 3 and 4 calls, that come into the FCC, with cops being taken from the already scant resources. Odd how only about 3 years ago there was no such problem when we didn’t have an FCC and only divisional control rooms. Thats progress!
Clouseau also makes a valid point. Until recently I was a Community Officer, and there was a total over reaction every time one of our local youths was seen with a BB gun. What got me was by the time all briefings, firearms teams, strategies etc had been discussed/assembled, if the gun had been real a significant number of the population would have extra orifices. A few years ago I’m sure the local cop would have taken the gun, dispensed suitable advice and the matter would have ended, swiftly and peacefully.
Glad to say I live in a county with a sensible attitude towards shooting, the Licencing department is the best I have ever encountered too.
I might feel a little happier about the armed boys (and girls) if they could demonstrate knowledge about guns other than those they carry Lets face it, it’s unlikely they are going to be looking at Glock 17s or MP5s out in the sticks, they just aren’t considered sporting….. I understand that having an interest in shooting is actively discouraged.
SD
AH ye want central clearing house. Ist. get an Office in down town Bangalore, , Staff it with high waged local people at 10 bob an hour, have google map up and running ready, then …