Hello, is that the police? hello?…. hello?……
April 26, 2008 by inspectorgadget
Has anyone else noticed the increasing number of “wanted” persons handing themselves in at the front office?
I wonder if this story has anything to do with it.
How on earth can anyone, the public or the Government, hold us accountable for crime rates when the ultimate sanction we have is seen in this way.
“Hurry up and pass the caviar will you Reg, The Bill is on in a minute”
As I walked around the police station today, I couldn’t help noticing the new Neighbourhood Police posters stuck to every vertical surface. Photos of hapless PCSO’s are headlined with patronising slogans like:
“Together we can make a difference to our community”
“Anti Social Behaviour is everybody’s responsibility” *
“Give Respect - Get Respect”
“Never mention guns in a 999 call or we won’t come for six hours”
Actually, I made that last one up. It’s still true though. If you mention Dog Mess we will be round presently. Meanwhile on the mean streets of Ruralshire; there no patrols in two of F Division’s towns for two whole days and nights last week.
The Patrol Inspector didn’t know because she was too busy doing her Masters Degree on her laptop and didn’t have the radio on. The Patrol Sergeant was an “Acting” from G Division and didn’t understand our deployments, Duties didn’t know because they were having one of their famous “closed door” sessions trying to re-arrange the deckchairs for summer leave.
The public didn’t notice because the Central Control Room managed to either “cuff” the calls or send teams from Ruraltown. I was present on Friday morning when this was announced as a “service failure” by a smug member of the civilian management team.
The senior police at the meeting stayed quiet for a while…… sighed……. and continued to talk about Citizen Focus targets and posters of PCSO’s.
* Really? The Gadget kids do not hang around in the street making everyones life a nightmare and Debbie and I even pick up litter when we see it - there are millions like us - how and when exactly did ASB become our fault?
Next time you’re on nights Gadget, take a permanent marker and draw some outrageous moustaches on the PCSO posters. (My own personal favourite is the ‘cock duster’ as worn by Magnum P.I.)
a) It will annoy the SMT.
b) The PCSO’s will feel more macho (even the ladies)
c) You will feel empowered and slightly naughty.
The object of the game is to see how many sets of posters the SMT replace before they send out an e-mail “Would the person….criminal damage….investigation.. discipline….blah….blah”
Remember: “Anti Social Behaviour is everybody’s responsibility”
oooh, thats wicked!
Hadenough - done already I’m afraid (not by me I might add - not quick enough) they all look like Groucho Marx! Funny how life imitates art!
I can’t believe that your not embracing the latest God of Policing “Neighbourhood Policing” or as I like to refer to it as “re-inventing the wheel”.
Lavish money has been spent in Taffshire to ensure that the public are aware of their dedicated teams of PCSO’s and tame PC’s who will make every effort to be available to them Mon-Fri 9-5 (except for when there’s a PACT meeting to go to - pass the hobnobs please), with large bill boards, adverts on the back of almost every bus, posters in every shop doorway, and the latest shiny leaflets available for the uninitiated inside the organisation to let them know how they can support the neighbourhood policing effort.
It’s the future, lets all embrace it. Or be damned with the mark of “resistant to change”.
It’s for “The Greater Good”, “The Greater Good”
(hopefully this wasn’t overly sarcastic)
‘there were no patrols in two of F Division’s towns for two whole days and nights last week’
And my town was the same. Just me for 2 days with a pile of statement requests and memos to sort out. Never seen the outside of the station. Public service….pah. And cockduster made me smile.
Hadenough & Insp’ Gadget - We *cough* managed to fine some fine facial hair for our PBO’s & PCSO posters, an e-mail went out demanding the practice stopped, however predicatbly it continued…. they have now laminated the posters to stop us *cough, cough*.
Never to be defeated I… err I mean someone, has brought a marker pen which looks even better on laminate that biro did.
Keeps me amused no end.
Can we MOPS have a go? Would we get away with adding a few extra details to the posters of our ‘Neighbourhood Team’ now adorning walls of local Market Towns, shopping centre?
You really must not deride the SMTs and other deskbound geniuses. I read on Police Oracle that ‘Crime’ is down 12%, and, according to the Home (Not fit for purpose) Office, is the biggest drop in 5 years. See? You should be thanking these ‘architects of good news.’
Knowing, as we do from your blog, that there are no occifers on the streets, the drop in crime can only be due to the efforts of these magnificent deskbound people.
dickiebo
A while ago, I managed to reduce burglary in F Division by 4% without ever leaving the Nick, investigating anything or leaving my desk. It’s called “re-classification”.
Do I feel bad? No.
None of the crimes I “looked at” should have ever been on the system in the first place. They were all petty tit-for-tat efforts, or obvious lies by benefit cheats, to get insurance money.
If you ditched every crime called in by anyone called Wayne who has a criminal record, you would get your 12% reduction on the same day!
Guv,
Sometimes your posts make me laugh, sometimes they make me sigh, and sometimes I just nod slowly in agreement.
This caused all three - and then a slow banging of my head against the desk.
The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.
Did someone say Queen?
Our FARCE in one area is deploying officers’ to deal with anti-social behaviour involving school age child. The deployment is between 01.00hrs to 04.00hrs despite the fact the no children are out at that time.
We are still trying to work out how the officer dweller came up with that one. Never mind.
We have a poster on the door of our Insp’s office, quoting Robert Peel.
“The test of Police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder - not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.”
Not a truer word has been said. We seem to have come a long way from that belief in a very short space of time.
Click on Dickiebo’s link to his / her blog @ 8 .There is a great link to an article here under the heading ‘The British Bobby’. You will all see a lot of truth in that very piece - unfotunately.
One of my colleagues was telling me of his foot patrol last night.
It sums a lot of things up.
He was walking back to the nick and began to be followed by a drunken ass who started to shout and swear at my colleague.
Being the end of his shift and him being tired, he tried to ignore it, but the drunken ass actually followed all the way to the nick.
One swift arrest at the doors to the nick. Despite being deadbeat, he arrested the drunken ass.
Why has it got to the point where people feel they can do something like verbally abuse an on duty cop and feel like they get away with it ??
My colleague is a good cop, but he has had enough. He and I got into a bundle a few months ago with some drunken numpties. He got bitten and is left with a scar on his arm.
The ‘biter’ went to to court, plead not guilty and it was accepted ! We never even got to give evidence.
Tonight, before I go on duty out of the nick, I am gonna find some of those posters and draw some great big taches on them.
I think we need more postings like the story of the ‘cock duster’ Bit more humour, far too depressing otherwise !
You want humour? OK. I’ll go talk to the Diversity Training Officer on Monday and get back to you.
That’s the way it is nowadays. The problem is that basically that although we have more and more police officers, we have fewer and fewer in the front line.
Scarier still is an organisation that has spent years (and several small fortunes) developing command and control systems and still doesn’t manage to know or predict when the lights at the station are on but nobody is there. Wonder if it will improve when we are all chipped.
In this case it seems to boil down to the supervisory staff not actually being supervisors or having the first idea about how to run a shift. I do not aspire to stripes pips or anything else but I think if I was running a shift, I might perhaps want to know who I had available and where they are. We have managers* like that where I work as well
Scary post IG but the truth.
*Failure to use the word leader. Intended.
We know all about this in NE Scotland. A friend, who is a school teacher, was going for a walk when she came across a scrote defacing a scheduled ancient monument with a can of spraypaint. The teacher recognised the scrote and told them to hop it, and there’d be words said to scrote’s parents.
When the teacher arrived home from her walk, she found two police officers waiting for and was arrested for breach of the peace. Apparently scrote was “alarmed and disturbed” by the incident and phoned the police.
The teacher was taken to the nick, interviewed and advised to accept a police caution for breach of the peace or find herself in District Court. She declined and is now waiting somewhat nervously to find out what happens next.
Stonehead; Exactly highlights my main criticism of today’s police. Where is the commonsense of the arresting ocifers? Although most criticism can clearly be aimed at senior ranks who encourage this nonsense, what do the arresting ocifers actually think of this wonderful arrest? AND…….can you blame the basically law-abiding public for wanting nothing to do with them? I very much regret to say that I have now become one of ‘them’. Tragic.
dickiebo@18
Very well said Sir.
@ dickiebo & stonehead: Why do you protest? It is exactly this type of officer that the government needs in today’s “police service”. Any similarity between today’s “police service” and the County Constabulary of yesteryear is merely for the purpose of public deception. Peel’s Principles seem to have gone the journey a long, long time ago.
Why else does IG refer to a “member of the civilian management team” in his post. Why does the service need officers devoted to the management of civilians? Why are the police officers not civilians? (See Peel: Principle 7).
Jeff
Its worse, the civilian management have clout in police operational matters as well. Who would have thought that Civilian management a la Sheehy would have come in anyway? Many crown wearing types are near enough civilian so as to make no difference.
The constables discretion has been gone so long that many “front line” officers have never worked under a regime that allows them to resolve situations other than by treating them as full blown crimes. Its an experiment that needs ending now.
When the government changes, perhaps they could bend their minds to scraping NCRS and “ethical” crime recording and benefit from a record drop in violence and disorder offences as we stop criming school fights and neighbour disputes. Its just an idea.
I use “civilian” in the sense of not a sworn officer. We are all civilians but some of us get to swear an oath and carry a warrant card.
It’s clearly universal then…as per my post from the ’swamp’ thread
“So depressingly familiar. But the Local Policing teams march on (until 4pm). The latest ‘I’m too busy to attend a real job’ is that they spend an inordinate amount of time sticking posters up around the nick, telling everyone what a superb job they’re doing.”
I try not to dislike the Local Police Officers..I really do. It’s just the smug look they have on their face as they ignore red calls on the radio, fail to alter duties and actually deal with evening anti-social behaviour, waving their payslips when they get their priority payment.
One of them tried to accuse me of bullying when I went into their office and directed him to a minor job in a playground. He made the fatal mistake of saying it wasn’t his remit and I wasn’t his supervisor. One of the few times that I’ve had to ‘explain’ the concept of Sergeant and PC.
He ultimately got the backing of the local Inspector though, the Inspector lost my respect (and co-operation).
It’s a very sad state of affairs.
I just left the comment below over at ‘area trace no search’ on a similar theme. It’s the bit about the sign in front of my house that’s relevant here “this area is actively patrolled by the police” (of course it’s not, hence my finding the sign so offensive).
There’s another one of these signs, this time about iPod theft, on the crossing by the station (this one handily disables the crossing button on some days while on most it merely disables the lights that tell deaf people when to cross). It’s just next to the mobile parking enforcement camera parked illegally on the double yellows helpfully obstructing the junction.
In the toilets at the local pub there’s a box plays a recorded announcement that reminds you, on behalf of the met, to look after your possessions each time you enter the toilets, use the urinals or wash your hands (happily you can remove the fuse or disable the infrared sensor with some chewing gum when it gets annoying).
Outside Stockwell tube, on one of the lamp posts next to the Jean Charles memorial there’s a similar box which twitters on about iPod and mobile phone theft all day long - you can just about hear it above the traffic.
Just be glad the PCSO posters don’t talk to you, unlike the one’s on the tube begging you to join the police specials!
——————
This doesn’t surprise me at all, I’ve had three occasions to call the police in the last three years and in all three cases the police response was woeful or just missing.
Thursday night was a case in point. Around midnight a gang of five lads began letting off fireworks in the middle of the road, pretty soon another gang of lads tried to ‘convince’ them to stop. Queue running fights with fireworks involved and a call to the police. “The police are currently busy, please wait and your call will be answered shortly.” was the recorded response from the police control centre after the emergency operator handed the call on. This was followed by seven and a half minutes of details taking (having to repeat most of the details two or three times) - the response? Nothing. No car, no officers, zero! Several of my neighbours now have to get their cars repaired because they were damaged during the thirty minute running street fight.
The other two calls relate to ‘domestic’ situations. In one case a neighbours drunken ex husband tried to kick down her, thankfully robust, front door. It took an hour and a half for an officer to respond by which time the 84 year old bloke who lives in the flat upstairs had tried to ’sort out’ the ex with a two-by-four and I and some other neighbours had ended up coming to come to the rescue of both.
The third call related to a young couple who were having a fight in the middle of the street. The girl was crying and screaming while being occasionally punched, the boy was crying and screaming while alternately beating her and breaking car windows. I call the police and then run for them because the 84 year old and his mate Charlie are going for the lad. An hour later a police car drove to the junction and slowed briefly before driving off; they didn’t even get out of the car.
There’s a yellow sign on the road outside my house which exclaims ‘this area is actively patrolled by police’.
I won’t bother calling again; it’s pointless.
“A while ago, I managed to reduce burglary in F Division by 4% without ever leaving the Nick, investigating anything or leaving my desk. It’s called “re-classification”.”
Ahhh, that explains a few things; when my (domestic) garage got ram-raided, I was told I couldn’t have a CRN because it wasn’t being classified as a crime.
Apparently it was an RTA.
The Law of Modern Policing.
The number of times that a photograph of a neighbourhood police officer appears in the local paper is in direct proportion to the pointlessness of their existence.
Jabba; It got worse with me! After calling police re 11 cars of ‘young men’ outside my door, completely blocking both the road and the pavement, the chaps ‘maintaining’ their cars in between farting in my face, etc. The police did arrive - and threatened to arrest me for ‘being aggressive’ in referring to one of the lads as a ‘twat’. I beat a hasty retreat indoors and vowed never, ever, to assist any police officer in future. Oh, and the constable informed me that he was ‘using his discretion’ and taking no action re the offences being committed by yon lads.
A (formerly) cherished British Institution - our Police. RIP.
Jabba @ 24 - Listen, mate. This post seems to me to be typical of Mail-reading MOP’s. You make it sound like us response bobbies are all sitting around chewing the fat instead of “policing” and being at your beck and call. Do you really think that when you don’t get a response within 4 or 5 minutes it’s because we just can’t be bothered to turn out? Maybe, just maybe, it’s because we’re at some other pointless “‘e’s sent me mean texts” call or that we’re at the other side of the division sorting some other pondlife’s life out. Engage your brain before you engage your mouth in future, would you? Thank you.
Oh - BTW - if you’re not happy don’t hijack “our” blogs with your moaning. Write to your MP or move house.
Dickiebow @ 27 - It’ll only get worse. Lots of younger-in-service bobbies have been indoctrinated and I can quite believe that you were threatened with arrest. Just wait till they’re in charge in 15 years or so!!!!
17, 18, 19
Mmmm, I smell something fishy about this story and not because it emanates from the NE of Scotland….
Scottish officers would be unlikely to offer anyone a ‘police caution’ due to the fact that this method of disposal is not open to officers north of the border. What else in the story is inaccurate?
XTP what the hell do you mean ‘our’ blog? Do you think this is for you and you alone? Only for serving police officers? Only for serving police officers with more than 10 years experience? Your attitude in the post above says a lot about why we’ve, and I mean we as in serving police officers, have lost a lot of support from the public, who the hell are you to tell a member of the public who’s had a bad experience to wind their necks in and complain somewhere else.
I have to say one of the worst things about the internet is the tendency of petty little experts to pup up and proclaim everything is fraudulent, fishy and suspicious.
Teofilio Cubilas, I’m a MoP and not a police officer so I don’t know all the correct terms. I also lived in England and Australia for many years where I did have friends who are police officers (and where I had professional experience of policing and the legal system) so what I do know obviously draws on the terminology and procedures I came across there.
The incident in question did happen, the teacher involved is very reputable and known to me in a personal capacity and to people I know in a professional capacity. She was taken to the police station to be interviewed and was told accepting a caution would mean she would not get a police record (although the caution would be on file).
She was surprised to find that she was not entitled to legal representation while being interviewed and that the interview did not need to be taped.
As for cautions not being used in Scotland, I just googled “breach peace scotland caution” and found a story on the BBC News website about Artur Boruc who was cautioned for breach of the peace for crossing himself while playing for Celtic against Rangers in 2006.
Is that story fishy, too?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/5288184.stm
I do my damnedest as a MoP to help and support the police, but incidents like that experienced by the teacher (and other events experienced by myself) undermine the good work that many police officers do (as I’ve experienced and witnessed myself).
Suspect everyone and suspect everything is not a good way to build and maintain trust.
No offence, XTP, but ‘Mail Readers’ are your biggest supporters. The Daily Mail is one of the few newspapers which has consistently tried to highlight the fact that government figures are bogus and the police are trapped in a bureaucratic hole.
Stonehead
I work north of the border. We don’t call them cautions. It would have been a formal adult warning. That would have been kept on record by the Police but isn’t a conviction. It is just a means of disposal, usually when the job is so crap it really isn’t worth Police time. Like your teacher friend ‘incident’.
Unfortunately, the Police are in a position where we have to follow up every complaint no matter how shite. Discretion should have been used with your friend, but we aren’t allowed to anymore.
Personally, I would have told the scrotes to F off.
You mention just one scrote involved. Where was the corroborating evidence for what your friend had said to the scrote ? Your friend must have admitted under caution during interview to having said something that could be construed as a breach. If there had been corroborating evidence, she could have just been warned re said Breach and in likelihood, not even interviewed.
I’m surprised that the bobbies attending just didnt speak to your friend at her home address.
It wouldn’t have been a case of accepting the warning, you just get given it. There isn’t a choice. I find that a tad odd. Is your friend confused on some of what happened at the station ?
The press may have used the word caution, not knowing what it is.
We also have detentions and arrests, which are two means of bringing someone into custody, different things, but the press just call them ‘arrests’.
No, north of the border you won’t get a solicitor during interview. Interviews can be taped, but generally are just written in notebooks. Two officers will have to be present for corroboration in the interview.
Having worked both sides of the border, I prefer the system up north. With only having 6 hours of detention time with your suspect, you can be pushed to get your enquiry done in that time, so waiting for hours on a solicitor to turn up isn’t on.
Besides, I have yet to see a solicitor in any interview who actually does much other than tell his/her client not to say anything - not really representing their best interests eh ?
Bobby, my friend was confused and upset by the experience. She hadn’t had any dealings with the police before, didn’t have a clue what to expect other than what she’d seen on TV (most of which is English or US in origin), and felt she’d done nothing wrong in telling this teenager quietly but firmly to stop their vandalism and that she’d tell their parents. Of course she “admitted” to the officers that she’d told the teenager they were doing something wrong.
I suspect the little ratbag had been in trouble with the police before, probably for breach of the peace, as the two officers apparently repeated several times that the teenager had been quite clear about being “alarmed and disturbed” by the way the teacher behaved. As I understand it, this is key to the offence being committed but I may be wrong again.
The irony is that it’s probably much easier to trip up a responsible, concerned citizen and catch her out with “admissions” to get a result, then it is to catch out a wily little scrote with experience of the system. If someone does need help and representation in a situation like that, it is someone like her.
My friend has gone from being passively pro-police to upset, untrusting and, yes, scared of you collectively. It also means she’s now another person who thinks anti-social behaviour is not her responsibility or concern. She’s made it quite clear that in future she will not get involved, say anything or do anything should she come across anything similar.
Is that a good result?
Right, just checked and she says the word caution was used, but she’s not entirely sure how it was meant although she was asked if she accepted it. She said no. She also says a report is going to the procurator fiscal and she thinks it means she will be in court as that’s what the officers seemed to imply to her.
xtp:
‘Engage your brain before you engage your mouth in future, would you? Thank you. ‘
Good advise. Take heed next time you post!
Teofilio Cubilas
‘Mmmm, I smell something fishy about this story and not because it emanates from the NE of Scotland….’
Maybe your feet!
Advice even!
Stonehead
As I said, I personally wouldn’t have taken the little shitbag on about his crap complaint.
Did she tell them what he was doing to the monument, perhaps they should have been bringing him in as well for that.
If a report has gone to the PF, that will not be a formal adult warning. The PF doesn’t/won’t want to know about warnings.
Was she cautioned and charged then ? That may be where she heard the word ‘caution’.
With a report being submitted, it may well end in court proceedings, however, if it is all as you say it is, I’d like to think that the PF there will put a big red pen through it all. They can and do do that. They will know shite when they see it.
Yeah, breach of the peace up here can be a great thing. It covers a multiude of sins. Also, unfortunately, it can be used in situations like with your teacher friend, then it is known to cops as a ’shitey breach’.
Knowing how the law works up here, if interviewed, I’d have kept me gob shut. If they had sufficient evidence, they would have just charged her. Reading between the lines, she must have made some sort of admission during interview to having caused alarm,annoyance or distress by her behaviour.
No, I’d agree, not a good result. Hopefully the
31 Stonehead
Nothing fishy about the Artur Borac story. He was charged by the police for a breach of the peace and a report submitted to the procurator fiscal. The PF then elected to dispose of the case by means of a written warning which the BBC described as a ‘caution’. Nothing to do with the police and nothing to do with formal police cautions of the type found south of the border.
And as you get tired of petty little experts popping up on the internet, I get tired of reading tediously exaggerated third hand accounts of the middle class’s latest encounter with the boys in blue (or, as we’re in Scotland, the boys in black). As we say up here, “gies peace”.
gosh! Anyone for a prawn sandwich?
If officers alienate fundamentally decent people with a strong sense of right and wrong and an old-fashioned faith in the police, then who’s left to support them? (I’m not counting myself in that group BTW.)
As for being middle-class, I’ll decline the promotion and continue with my manual labour.
Jobs fucked!
XTP, a few things:-
I don’t read the Daily Wail and I live in a reasonably nice area (It’s as nice and quiet as Zone 3 in south west London gets). We don’t have much trouble around the place and I can’t really blame my neighbor for a having a s**t of an ex husband.
I don’t blame the rank and file officers involved either! I do think it’s reasonable complain when calls about violent incidents go unattended because all of the cash is spent on laughable initiatives such as the signs, talking boxes and PCSOs hanging about mainline train stations.
I don’t waste your time, the only I would consider calling a police officer is when someone is in physical danger.
Mention guns..”be round in six hours” This rings a bell. In quiet - only two murders this year so far - Horsham its unusal to come across a Policeman YET when last weekend Green Peace or something similar decided to have a rally/march the Police where everywhere. Vans of them. When I asked one of the Policemen what was going on and was told he also added that Horsham was for the day the safest place in West Sussex.
Not knocking what you do - but as they say in business - “sometimes you can spend more time looking after your bad customers than looking after your good customers”