And Did Those Feet…..
January 29, 2008 by inspectorgadget
Ruralshire may be on this list.
As regular readers will be aware, from time to time I like to explain why no police officers will attend your burglary or stolen vehicle any time soon.
When you look at the figures above, and you see Warwickshire alone go from 21 to 447 arrests the picture becomes clear. Don’t forget that an arrest can take a police officer away from the streets for three hours or more.
And then there is the cost and time of keeping them in custody, taped interviews, duty solicitors, gathering evidence, taking statements, going to Court etc.
As luck would have it, this issue was raised by the UK’s only black Chief Constable, so the liberal elite can’t accuse him of being racist.
Mike Fuller was only stating the bleedin’ obvious, but it is a shame that his comments make headlines because of his ethnicity. What does that have to do with the subject? Why does his ethnicity make the points he made seemingly more valid than if a white British (or Irish or Scottish or Welsh or Jedi) person made the same observations.
More hand wringing, more inititatives and above all more empty promises (like mixed wards in NHS hospitals) will be the end result.
Dont forget the huge increase in costs for translation now at the locus when we have to use interpreters via phones, then again at the charge room, the interviews, oh yeah and not forgetting the courts! All for the poor soul to just be told its too much trouble for the prosecution service so they are going to desert or just admonish him and please go away. He walks off smiling and funnily enough on many occasions suddenly regains an ability to speak and understand english very clearly. The bill for these services is now frightening yet again we are told no more money in the pot so it comes out your patrol on the streets budget people I am afraid.
True about interpreters. Be a suspect or even a victim in Europe and you provide the interpreter at your expense. I’d like to see the various policing authorities recommend that as a cost saving measure. Language Line costs pounds per minute but I’ll have one on the end of the line for 20 minutes going through a drink drive procedure, and thats at turbo speed and doesn’t include rights and entitlements, or charge etc etc
And the Met’s increase alone dwarfs the rest of the table put together! Good one
I am amazed at how often the defendant corrects the interpreter in court. Had a drink-drive taxi driver recently who claimed he couldn’t speak English (why is he a taxi driver in my town????), needed an interpreter for a little spoken dialect and a new copy of the Koran on which to swear the oath. Remember, this is drink-driving…..
You can almost hear the collective groan when a call goes out over airwave re possible drink driver who may be Polish/lithuanian/latvian etc.
A family member of mine was at court in recent months ( not as an accused either !) and was in the public gallery area. She was able to hear two men talking perfect english wthin the courtroom just prior to their case being heard. When the case started, these two males suddenly spoke no english and an interpreter was used.
Yes, you couldn’t make it up could you ?
Not to worry lads, everything’s gonna be just dandy from now on:
http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/newsrelease290108a.htm
Hurrah for Uncle Jack!
you know what… I just tried to remember the last time I nicked a british white male for anything other than drink/drug drive and I honestly think it was over 18 months ago. This isn’t because I am “one a dem racist feds innit”….. on my patch it is tourists, southern hemisphere barstaff, the south/west/east/north london boys playgound and the easy pickings for eastern europeans looking for targets to mug/rob/nick handbags off of.
I can fully believe the +13,000 difference in the met alone, aside from usual ‘trident’ crime our biggest targets are hugger muggers (dance around like pissed idiots as they hug you and nick everything out of your pockets) and robbers - the majority from our new Eurpoean family, or algerians claiming to be french so they don’t get ejected.
I would really love to have a camera with mike on me some times so when you get those who speak perfect english at the scene and then lose all power of speak in custody except in their native tongue we should be able to dispense with the need for interpreters in interviews. That would save millions of pounds in fees and police time and might encourage some of those people to stop blatantly taking the piss.
And we are told that there is a recession under way. No chance, productivity is well up.
We have got plenty of improvements in other areas connected with the processing of this increase in trade. We also have a whole series of other growth industry connected and directly reliant on this area of improvement.
I’m sure that we have made a real impact on the lives of those who have lives which suffer as a result of the statistics we keep. This shows how we are working together hard to produce an real increase in the measures we take to show how well we are measuring things.
Whether UK or non UK resident, it should not matter one bit. If you offend you will be punished or prosecuted (in the loosest possible terms normally) that is the law, before being returned to whence you originated.
Wow, those statistics are staggering. Either Warwickshire has a port I don’t know about, or Warks police have set up a “task-force”. Do you think the ratio of arrests of UK residents has gone down proportionately?
Goes to show how racist Warwickshire cops are. Methinks they be in need of some diversity training……..
“one a dem racist feds innit”
Haven’t laughed as much for a long time. Fantatstic.
as accused by someone who responded to the question “where do you live mate” by saying “I is from ealing man innit blood, ya ged me”
Hello there,
I would like to interview you (telephone would be best) for a research paper I want to write on work blogs.
I am interested in the meaning and motives for blogging about work, with particular emphasis on people who work for the public sector.
Please let me know if you could help me out or whether you would like some more details.
Many thanks.
James
PS it’s totally anonymous
James - all the answers you need can be found on the Blog my friend.
James, I cannot comment on behalf of IG but, I comment on this site as I know most posters are police officers’ like myself who are frustrated with the system and the blatant bullsh** the the public are fed.
In the modern police service we are not allowed to express an opinion that is not endorsed by our masters.
Have you ever seen Magistrates slide under their desk. A foreign gentleman was charged with possessing an offensive weapon, ie a flick knife. Through his interpreter he pleaded Not Guilty, and subsequently was found not guilty. Over the gasps from Old Bill, the defendant asked in perfect English, “please, can I have my knife back.” This is true, I was there.
Arrests of non UK residents.
Hmmm several years of basically unrecorded and unfettered migration to a liberal democracy from everywhere in the world that isn’t.
Solid evidence of Balkan street crime gangs moving in and setting up in London. Not really a surprise. Come one and all to the UK. If you get caught and if you get convicted and if you get sent down its still better than doing your time at the Tirana Prison and there’s less time to be done.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that opening our borders to keen, motivated and cheap workers also opens them to keen motivated and prolific offenders. Its all just basic economics.
It costs too much to do the crime there so do it cheaper over here. As an added bonus you may even get a house and a bit of free cash and if you can spin a good enough tale you might even get to claim asylum.
Still you wouldn’t want to forgo all that lovely cheap labour that is helping shore up this leaking ship of state against economic depression, inflation and double digit interest rates. Sadly there’s nowt left to flog or raid. Nationalised industries? Sold them to us. Yup sold us all stuff we already owned. Suckers. Savings and Pensions? Squeezed until the pips squeaked and now all spent up. Taxes? Hiked as high as possible already.
When i’m in the hot seat my opening question to a new client is normally:
“Hello Sir, do you speak English?”
Whoever runs Language Line must be raking it in, that said it’s really useful. I did hear some places won’t pay for it though.
Some of the said clients get caught stealing within hours of arriving too, what’s driving them to travel across Europe to commit crime?
Perhaps it’s the free Legal Aid, instant access to a Doctor, free food (Veggie option available) and little prospect of getting a long prison sentence? (Unless you’ve been really, really bad).
By the way 3hrs to turn an arrest round is very quick in Metrocity, try at least 4-8hrs even for a simple job.
James - we blog because the job we do is F*cked up, but against all the odds, we still try. the frustration comes out in anonymous words like a valve!
Dear James,
Be a dear and fuck off would you? This isn’t the first time you’ve asked is it? Are you getting the picture yet? Good.
jackthecat - they tried to ban language line in the met. The ‘instruction’ came out because it can cost up to £400 an hour for an obscure translator based in australia of a dialect used by about 4 people, and around £100 for the rest.
It lasted about 2 days because all the official translators were booked up and we had no option so they folded and let us use it again! we certainly couldn’t run our front office for a day without using it.
MetCountyMounty - in both your comments you have summed up the state of crime in this country. We’ve imported almost all of our current problems, I’ve said it all before so I won’t bore you or myself by saying it all again. I’d hate to be accused of racist imperialist colonialism….AGAIN!
The lack of morals and values as displayed by our politicians and especially by the tory with his HUGE snout in the trough, the DIS-honourable Member fro Bexley & Sidcup should worry them all - our ‘leaders’ that is. That particular constituency could go BNP. And then where would we be? I’m off to wring my hands helplessly and buy a big issue from an Romanian Peasant Woman outside Waitrose
Have you seen this which the media and pressure groups and have always associated with unfair targeting of ethnic groups, like the evil Officers in Warwickshire (despite the fact that high a high proportional transient labour force in their agricultural sector that is particular represented by non uk residents)?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7216815.stm
Apparently “The government is to announce plans to cut the red tape that hinders police powers to stop and search suspects, the BBC understands.”
and
“She (Fagan herself el Jacqui Smith) is set to promise to cut the bureaucracy surrounding stop and search, and allow officers to record the details of a search without having to return to a police station and fill in a form.”
Erm
Jacqui we don’t have to return to the Police Station to fill in a form already, we have to do it on the street. So basically your going to reform the stop and search powers by not changing anything apparently. Sounds like Nulabour idea if you ask me. I envisage extra safeguards being put in place which will translate to a form with twice the amount of information required.
The net effect will be that we will be still filling out forms on the street but they will be longer, more pointless and waste more time. In other words it could be summed up as “Bumbling Bureaucrats Increase Bureaucracy” which is’nt that surprising really. Well done Jaq’s that NVQ you have in Good Governance is paying dividends now i see.
the other lot aren’t much use either
“Like the government, the Tory leader is also proposing to end the practice which means that officers have to return to the station and fill in a form after they stop and search someone.”
Did any of them actually ask how stop and search actually works before the decided to fix it?
I think i need a lie down.
I’m sick of these people coming to this country, ignoring our culture and our laws then claiming discrimination, anti-multiculturism, racism etc when we try to enforce the law equally upon them. In short i’m f****** fed up of “positive discrimination”.
The majority of the time the above claims are just taking the p*** to see if they can wriggle off the proverbial hook.
Here’s a thought, you come to this country BY CHOICE then you learn to speak our language, respect and defer to our culture, promote multiculturalism by learning how to fit into our communities instead of segregating yourselves, and not commiting crime.
If people can’t do the above which is expected of every decent British citizen then why the hell are they being allowed in? Any government that promises to introduce citizenship tests and fitness to parent tests (fail the former you are ejected immediately and cannot reapply for a minimum of 5 years, fail or refuse to be subjected to the latter and you are not eligible for benefits / housing / child support and get your young scrote taken away from you when it pops out so that it actually stands a chance in life!) gets my vote immediately.
Failling that let’s introduce a 3 strike rule ala the USA?
oh no not another idea copied from the USA, weve been doing that for a while now and it hasnt worked out that well for us.
There must be another way, another source of ideas, whats Australia doing these days or New Zealand, perhaps other Northern European Countries, anything but the US, they are more f*cked up than us.
I mean they fry mentally retarded kids, invented the concept of private prisons, plea bargaining and they have a ridiculous murder rate a percentage of population, mainly with guns.
oh no not another idea copied from the USA, weve been doing that for a while now and it hasnt worked out that well for us.
There must be another way, another source of ideas, whats Australia doing these days or New Zealand, perhaps other Northern European Countries, anything but the US, they are more f*cked up than us.
I mean they fry mentally retarded kids, invented the concept of private prisons, plea bargaining and they have a ridiculous murder rate a percentage of population, mainly with guns.
Hang on a minute…
“Currently, police can only carry out a stop and search after being granted permission by an inspector or an officer of even higher rank”
That is complete and utter shite!!! we can use S.1 stop search at anytime to search for articles listed in the various acts, not when and Inspector says we can?? Have they confused it with S.44/43 stops? Yet another piece of quality, factually based, unbiased reporting from the BBC. Fabulous.
Poor old JAMES eh? wonder if he was ordered to do it ?
During a short respite from very partial and biased coverage of the elections which American political parties are having now to choose a candidate to stand in the presidential elections in the Autumn, the Balkanise Britain Corporation addressed what was, the United Kingdom.
Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers here tells us why prison isn’t working and building a series of superprisons might not help.
There is a crisis in our prisons according to the chief inspector Anne Owers. She has told us the crisis was “predicted and predictable”. We [BBC] speak to the man in charge of the prisons, justice secretary Jack Straw here
As the violence continues in Kenya, worries grow that tribal divisions will end in genocide. We speak to people from the Kikuyus tribe, that support President Kibaki, about the situation there. 2:30 in Of course this cannot happen in the UK, because whilst the whole of humanity is at once the same and different, a simple change of location to the UK will allow these differences to be celebrated in peace and harmony.
Home affairs editor Mark Easton has found that the NHS has spent multi-millions on maternity services for immigrant mothers. 11:30 in They state that half of children born in Slough have foreign born mothers and up to three in four in parts of London. No mention of which proportion have a foreign born father or grandparent. They state that maternity units are under pressure, that the NHS have invited foreign workers in and could not function without migrant labour. Any relation to the statement by Kent chief constable Mike Fuller?
For some reason these last two articles do not have a direct link, whereas Mark Doyle is … planning to get to India relying entirely on the goodwill of strangers …. does. Why not, which is more important?
Why does the UK need immigration whereas Japan, with a much older population, does not?
Metcountymounty
have you noticed that the article has been rewritten since my post and your comment. You think they read IG? Perhaps they just got someone who has a clue to copy check the piece and yank it so it could be edited and corrected. I often wonder about the quality of journalism today, too much bias, too little fact, too many needless and obvious errors. Thats not a dig at the BBC but its reflected accross the whole media to a greater or lesser extent.
Another institution(s) brought low, i need another lie down.
Notellin wrote … the article has been rewritten since my post … You think they read IG? Perhaps they just got someone who has a clue to copy check the piece and yank it so it could be edited and corrected. … Reportedly, on occasion the BBC edit web pages without changing the time stamp. I seem to recollect that it was discussed on Laban Tall last year, I do not have the exact reference.
For the benefit of Auntie, its not the range of powers we have, they are quite good enough for virtually all circumstances. In fact there are sooooooooooo many powers that at any given time any Officer could probably apply them to any one.
We dont need more powers thats a given but we could do without the bloody stop forms which take at least 5 minutes per person to do properly and if you stop 4 dodgy looking types thats 20 minutes gone on paperwork.
The worst thing about the stop forms is that they are just repetition and needless repetition at that. My stops go in my pocket note book, as they have done for as long as Police have existed, they also get submitted on intelligence forms as the stop forms are just too small to get everything down and 99% of the people i stop, who i ask if they want a form say no even amongst the minorities that pressure groups and the media accuse us of victimising.
I am not saying that said victimisation didn’t occur once upon a time and i am not saying that there aren’t a few bad apples in the barrel as after all the public are the police and the police are the public so you’ll get a few but i have NEVER met one, luckily for them. It seems that the policies such as the stop forms are designed for era long past. Its as though the government are passing policies designed to address issues from their generation whilst being blind to the fact that things change. In fact that’s a good description of government policy, designed to fix problems long ago solved.
I am quite sick of being labelled a racist because i wear blue for the Queen and through her everyone. Stephen Lawrence was murdered in 1993, now i have a fair bit of service (over 10 years) but that’s before my time and definitely beyond the time of the majority of the Officers i work with on the front line who do the stops. Racism to me is an alien a concept, its pointless, routed in childish idiotic fear and ignorance and frankly something only the people who i arrest do not the people who i work with. In fact i’d go as far to say its largely a diseases of the underclass and we don’t recruit from the underclass and neither does anyone else (mainly because they don’t want to work).
So you can stick your idea of Police being automatically institutionally or overtly racist back in its 1990’s box or failing that where the son doesn’t shine. Its the new millenium and racism in the Police (in my experience of 10 years +) is bollocks or so rare i have yet to encounter it, (stupid documentary recruit aside)
Notellin, Please, don’t misrepresent my comments
I didn’t say “copy some of the quite frankly crazy policies the US has”.
I said take one method that appears (note the word appears - as this is based on statistics which as i’m sure the police readers of this blog know are frequently ‘tweaked’
to be deterring serial offenders.
The current system of punishment / sentancing leads to serial offence. Something has to change to deter that - whether it’s the three strikes or whether it’s the first 1/3 of every sentance being menial hard labor, with the next two thirds being behavioural correction / education i don’t know!
TheBinarySurfer i know, i just have an aversion to yet any “new” imported US policies, to the point where even if its a good idea i am unlikely to trust it just because of the decades of “good ideas” from over the pond.
For the record i don’t agree with 3 strikes system or capital punishment, i think neither are a solution of worth. However i hope nobody mistakes that as some sort of liberal agenda on sentencing policy, i think anyone who has read my voluminous comments on the subject will know i favour much tougher sentencing than we have had for the last 20 years.
Translation: More porridge for more offenders.
I feel i have drifted from your post IG and engaged in a bit of rant based Blogg Jacking, sorry. Anyway got to get going to fight some more crime and fill out some more forms, my shift starts all too soon and i have yet to iron a shirt or polish my boots.
Notellin - your post at 11.25am re racism in the job.
Top post, well put and exactly my viewpoint.
Notellin - re your posting at 11.25. try telling that to the very large ‘Race’ industry that has grown up since the late 1970’s. Think of how much income the Guardian job pages would lose should your thinking become prevalent, think of how many groups would be unable to benefit from the largesse of Red Ken and Lee Grasper, what would the Diversity Directorate (or whatever they are now called) do, what would all those trainers and chief inspectors, inspectors and sergeants do - back to borough? Etc, Etc Etc. This awful scenario would also have to occur in all public sector industries and across the private sector. Racism isn’t a one way street - the very continuance of the IDEA of overt and institutional racism benefits a great many people, financially and politically.
The cost of translation services has soared in the last few years since the UK has become the home of the united nations. I recall once dealing with an Oriental gentleman who was stopped driving without a licence and docs. Ofcourse, he was unable to understand a single word of English so the services of LanguageLine were obtained.
The mother tongue was Mandarin and once the formalities were over I enquired as to where this interpreter was in the UK. He was slightly baffled by this question and replied, ‘I’m in San Francisco and it’s 4am.’ (That explained the slight American accent over Chinese.)
Our force has asked the Gov for more cash to deal with the influx of migrants and you can see why.
I too noticed that the BBC stated we need ‘permission’ from an Inspector. Typical ‘factual’ reporting from the beloved Corporation.
Oh and Brown stated the introduction of ‘neighbourhood policing’ is making people feel safer on the streets. Well, it may do monday to friday, 9×5, but what about evenings and weekends when it’s left to the poor, bloody response officers.
Yes folks, the Director General of the BBC rang me personally after lunch to sort the search authority problem out. I told him to trust what he read on the Blog and edit his website accordingly! Cheeky get he is!
Ranter wrote … the very continuance of the IDEA of overt and institutional racism benefits a great many people, financially and politically. …
Here is a good example, on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free Claudia Webbe
Claudia has spent a lifetime campaigning against racism and injustice. She is the chair of Positive Action Training, which provides a pathway to employment for black and minority ethnic communities.
She is vice chair of the MPS Operation Trident Independent Advisory Group tackling gun crime. She was the former director of Westminster Race Equality Council and the former director of Bath and North East Somerset Race Equality Council and an adviser to the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.
Claudia is an executive member of the National Assembly against Racism and an adviser to the Football Association on the Kick Racism out of Football campaign chaired by Lord Herman Ouseley. She is a board member of London Crimestoppers and a board member of Homes for Islington. Claudia is also on the working committee of the Nelson Mandela Statue fund.
Over here in NI we’ve got the same total disregard for driving laws by East Europeans,despite numerous community initiatives and press release’s.By far they are also biggest suspect’s involved in ATM crime. There’s not a week going by without some bunch of East European’s based in Dublin involved in a scam. In fact I stopped and spoke to the same group three weeks in a row who were involved in trying to distract people going to ATM’s. Imagine my surprise to see them all being arrested a few weeks later for robbery and getting bail!
On another note,notellin.I’m also a bit sick of being labelled a secterian lout as well! Our terrorist handshaking Chief Con issued some sort of leaflet on what naughty word’s we shouldn’t be saying including “old” or “auld” because that would be inferring that some-one was useless.I really can’t think who this nonsense is aimed at. I can only think that it’s aimed at those of us who joined the RUC and he think’s that we are obviously bigot’s.The only person I’ve only ever worked with one idiot , who was and I’m glad to say he was disciplined and forced to resign.
Guv - seeing as you have the ear of the BBC DG, could you find out the background behind the talk about stop search forms being scrapped?
Bert, expertly illustrated. There’s plenty more where Claudia came from. What would they do otherwise?
http://www.order-order.com/2008/01/how-much-did-hugh-muir-pocket-courtesy.html