Answer: when there is less of it here, than in the next county.
Here in Ruralshire Constabulary, we have been issued with a small Aide Memoire, consisting of ‘positive messages’. It is now accepted that we have to admit to having a certain level of crime. So; each time we admit to a crime, we have a ‘positive message’ to go with it. Here are some examples.
There has been a (fill in the gap) in your area. Deliver (choose from list) positive message. Make appeal for witnesses.
Violent Crime – ‘Mercifully, such crimes are very rare in Ruralshire. In fact, Ruralshire has less violent crime than (insert name of neighbouring county).
Vehicle Crime – ‘We are working with vehicle owners to ensure that valuables are kept out of sight, and anyway, we have less vehicle crime than (insert name of neighbouring county).
Burglary – ‘The good news is that Ruralshire suffered less burglary last year than (insert name of neighbouring county).
We have always been at war with Blandshire Police.
As you can see; a positive message for Ruralshire is a negative message for, say, Blandshire. This effectively means that for us to succeed, another police force has to fail. Personally, I don’t imagine that as a victim, you really care who is better or worse than us. You just want it sorted.
But who cares what you want? Not us apparently,
We just want to be better than the next county. A kind of huge game of playground football. A sort of ‘My Dad is bigger than your Dad’ kind of thing.
Gadget Note: We are at war with Blandshire Police. We have always been at war with Blandshire Police. Blandshire Police are our enemy. (Sound familiar?)
Whilst here in the big smoke we have more crime than anyone.
Well we had to be good at something
Yes, but is crime higher in your bit of the big smoke than someone else’s bit, that’s the question!!
In mine it is, we’ve got the most crime the most prisoners and the lowest morale!! Get in!!!
IG where does bullshit and having the public over come in the message?.
reminds me of the story about the camping trip in the jungle, when the big scary lion is outside the tent one of the campers starts putting on his running shoes, the other says you’ll never out run the lion if we work together we can beat the lion, the one with the running shoes replies I don’t have to out run the lion!
Talking of the big smoke ‘watch what is coming?’.
It’s always the other shift…the other county…
Ok so where is the least crime area? Or does each area specialise in different crime at different times?
In Bromley this week we had someone beaten to death on the High Street on Saturday night, a teenage riot on Orpington High Street on Tuesday afternoon and all the Bromley pubs closed Tuesday evening for fear of violent reprisals for Saturday’s murder.
Our Chief Superintendent told the local tabloid:
“As a local resident I share the community’s concerns about the violent incidents that have occurred over the last few days.
“However, I can assure people that our investigations into all the incidents will be thorough and our operational response will be both firm and proportionate.”
The chairman of our local “community engagement forum” (???) added:
“There is not and has not been a sudden crime wave and you should not be discouraged to enjoy the many amenities the borough has to offer.”
http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/4720527.BROMLEY__Police_reassurance_after_violent_crimes/?ref=mr
The Met and / or the London press have always done a decent job at keeping the lid on the simmering pot of moral panic … I rememer hearing a Met cop remark, of a murder in another part of the UK which attracted significant attention, that this happened in the Met at least twice a year and had done for a decade or more. When I researched that point, it was true, although the only medica that reported it was local London media … sometimes, not even pan-London media.
All good stuff!
Ruralshire has less vehicle crime than Blandshire and has less violent crime and burglary than Grottyshire. However, Blandshire has less violent crime and burglary than Ruralshire and less vehicle crime than Grottyshire.
Grottyshire sounds awful and Blandshire pretty good.
Just an ignorant MoP of course.
That reminds me of my maths o-level…..
Does anyone wonder what the crime rate was in Afghanistan under the Taliban?
Or in certain parts of Northern Ireland after a yobs’ kneecapping?
“Does anyone wonder what the crime rate was in Afghanistan under the Taliban?”
It was slightly worse in Mordor under Sauron, but doing away with the Precious certainly helped. And I always thought that “ORC” stood for Officer Reported Crime.
It might have been worse in Mordor under Sauron, but the re-offending rate was very low. Now of course Mordor is in moral decline and people reminisce about the ‘good old days’ when you could leave a dismembered hobbit to dry in the garden without fear of it being nicked…
I was thinking “1984″ whilst reading your quotes. How sad that we’re now relative instead of absolute.
You should hear my Chief Inspector going on about how well we compare against similar BCU’s. Well, quite frankly mister, I don’t give a damn about your sodding statistics. The only one’s I worry about, are how to Police a population of 70,000 with 2 Police officers. How about lending us a hand instead of colouring in silly pie charts? And by the way, if we are doing well in your silly league table, it’s despite your management, not because of it!!!
I like that Madmax. So much so I’ve cut and pasted it, and will leave a printed copy on the notice board at my nick.
Obviously I will use paper that cannot be traced to my computer and printer and I’ll wear surgical gloves at all times so they can’t get my greasy dabs off it.
Don’t forget to double glove, you can get a decent latent print through a pair of surgical gloves. Either that or wear a cloth pair under the surgicals, less sweaty too!!
It’s always a Ch Insp, isn’t it!
Surely this will just mean more fiddling / massaging / improvement of statistics so that one Chief Constable can shout across the playground to another that he is doing better than them?
Old Trafford anyone.
Blandshire 600 muggers for 1 arrest vs Rural 440 muggers for 2 convictions.
I luv it,lets get Littlewoods or Ladbrookes to set up the betting office.
There’s a whole compendium of children’s games to be played; hide and seek with missing persons, pass the parcel with mental health, the career driven can play snakes and ladders and of course there’s always a challenging game of jenga on the high street on a Saturday night.
You’ll never be bored, not even on a rainy afternoon.
Here’s a great clip doing the rounds. Not sure what sort of positive message it sends out regarding the future of roads policing though – apart from to those few criminals who use vehicles as part of their illicit activities.
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=6crnKL_zhtw
Sir,
Just wondering what your thoughts are in reference to the article below about electing local police chiefs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8347702.stm
I think it will last as long as it takes for the first Muslim area (Bradford for example) to elect a Police Chief who is instructed to ignore honour based domestic violence, arrest homosexals and allow unlimited immigration.
Then, suddenly, ‘local priorities decided by local people’ doesn’t sound so attractive does it?
Worryingly you are absolute correct about what could happen. If only the powers that shouldn’t be, let the police actually do a job that the vast majority of the public want us to do.
As my doctor said to me ‘When a person commits a criminal act in Malaysia, they are deemed to be a criminal, their rights as a human being go out of the window, in this country the law is too soft and that is why they get away with it’.
Last year, some bloke made a complaint about me for refusing to take his complaint of ‘adultery and homosexuality’. He wanted to make a specific complaint that his wife was getting it on with A N Other, he wanted to make a general complaint of the latter.
Needless to say, the complaint about me didn’t inlucde allegations of incivility or inappropriateness, etc., only that I refused to put pen to paper and record the complaint despite spending 60minutes of my life (that I will never get back) outlining precisely why.
Shocker ….
More farm yard stables recyclables, ‘nout’ about ‘thems’ that say, there be no case, cannot prosecute because the the lawyers were not there to see the yobs commit the ALLEDGED offence .
Us old folk would be most happy to go to the flicks at ‘nite’ and not wish having a sten loaded to keep the baying hyenas at distance, I would rather have sawn off 12 ga then I could say I be ‘untin’ rats.
But as thee have floppy truncheon and a toothless prosecution group, ‘nout’ will change ’till those sitting on the sidelines complaining and sit on the those lawyers who do not prosecute.
Its “getting tough on the fear of crime” as the propagander goes in my neck of the woods.
Nothing more than infintile tittle tattle akin to one 5 year old pointing to their older brother when they’ve both been caught with their hands on the biscuit tin and saying “but he took more than me”.
Nobody other than Senoir Police officers who have the sense of self delusion similar to that of a failed tyrant actualy believe this bollocks. Especially when mops can’t leave their houses at night due to gangs of ferral youths stalking the streets.
When I talk to IPs they always remember the burglary they had 10 years ago. The assault their friend suffered 6 years ago, the car they had broken into 2 years ago. You cannot eradicate this fear of crime over night with some choice lines lifted from the “art of posative speaking”.
It takes years of hard work by well resourced, well funded teams of officers to undo the years of neglect…. But the chances of that happening?.. I might as well be talking out my piechart.
You are so correct, 70 yrs ago, I can still PC Young telling me off for not having lamps on my Bicycle.
1000 good deeds are forgotten when one Shite happens
HPB said “How sad that we’re now relative instead of absolute.”.
Precisely.
Everything these days is ‘relative’. Being the best is now decided by who is ‘least worst’. If you can make yourself look better by pointing out worse performance elsewhere that somehow makes it alright.
Our force sets single digit percentage point targets for reduction of this type of crime or that type of crime. How about no targets at all, how about zero tolerance and every resource lined up behind the effort to eradicate crime completely. No efforts wasted on anything that doesn`t support the anti-crime effort.
We`re all told about the ‘reducing crime, and the FEAR of crime’ message. But think about it, if you allocate resource to reducing the fear of crime, that`s resource taken away from actually reducing crime in the first place. To switch effort in this way implies that the current crime rate is as good as it`s going to get.
Fear of crime will fall when crime falls and remains low, you can`t achieve public confidence with flash in the pan initiatives and strategic targeting of this months pet hate. The public will have confidence when this blog and others like it aren`t needed any more.
No crime at all? Is that an unrealistic target?
What about the zero tolerance approach to racism? Not so unrealistic then is it?
No crime would never happen, even if you spent every penny the government has (or currently, doesn’t have) on it.
Population increase, better crime reporting, multiculturalism, the rise of the career thug etc etc – but no no, crime hasn’t increased under labour apparently…If you believe the figures.
Sorry Labour, the King in fact has no clothes. Good luck in those 3m+ unemployment lines you helped create…
An interesting factoid…
Two Youths had got into a building site, and when been accosted by a site security guard, they legged it.
They fell through a roof, one died and the other was seriously injured.
Now you may guess what happens next…
Yup, the mother of the dead youth is given a huge wad of cash.
See, crime and stupidity do pay. On the plus side, said youth has earned a Darwin.
Since a Darwin was (technically) awarded for removing oneself from the gene pool before reproducing, I suppose it rather depends on the age of the youth.
And/or on how obliging the local chavettes are?
Didn’t we use to be at war with sheepshire? Or are they the ones we’ve signed a regional cross border agreement with?
Tell me which is the right one. I’ll say anything you want me to say if you’ll just promote me…..
Just like supermarket advertising isn’t it?
That’s a con trick as well
That’s for the link BTW
I meant thanks for the link – guess who’s off nights
Seems a little childish to me and makes no difference to any victim of crime.
Don’t worry it could be worse if you lived over the county line? What a load of old shit, do they think the public swallow this bollox?
Would think it makes for interesting regional ACPO meetings, must make it fun to diss the neighbour. Is this supposed to represent the new era of regional collaboration?
Those that have come up with this ploy need to remember what goes around comes around, You can only fiddle figures for so long and we all know that any police figures cannot and are not believed. The public have also sussed this for themselves.
Leave the play ground antics to the kids and lets tell the public the truth. Large parts of society are vermin and the criminal justice system has failed us all. Oh and this Labour Government are a bunch of fisters for fcuking it all up.
What a shameful way to behave.
Believe me, in my area of the public sector, competition happens too. Even though we are supposed to be on the same side!
Intellectually, this is the other side of the coin which reads, “let’s just not publish crime rates at all, because if they don’t know whether it is going up or down, then they can’t worry aobut the rises and they can’t tell us how they don’t see the reductions”.
That wouldn’t fit on a coin, but you know what I mean …
I think it’s probably true that the public no longer pay attention to official statistics of any kind and the comparison of one lot of massaged numbers with another lot is seen for what it is.
But there seems to be a tendency here for people to hold the higher echelons in the police to blame for a dislocation in the relationship you have with the public.
Fair enough but only up to a point. There is sadly too much of the police looking after their own – the de Menezes case, the Mark Jones acquittal last week in which all but one of his colleagues refused to give evidence, the way the drivers of police vehicles cannot be identified whewn they’re “flashed”.
You can choose the company you keep.
Police drivers do get identified when flashed and I have spent many a worth while hour typing justifying why I went through the red light or over the speed limit on a blue run
Ditto re the flash, where do you get your information from?? we have to log the vehicle out and account for every tenth of a mile for every journey and considering that all authorised emergency service drivers have legal exemptions from speed limits anyway, literally millions of pounds in wasted time and resources have been spent by the Met alone justifying camera flashes just to appease people like you.
The De Menezes incident was a tragedy but the guys who pulled the trigger did everything right, they were told numerous times they would only be sent in if the target was confirmed. As far as they were concerned they were going into a tube station to try and stop a failed suicide bomber. The issues of did he stand up, didn’t he, did he raise his hands, was that strange etc are classic examples of perceptual distortion that ALL humans experience in high stress situations. No two witnesses ever recall exactly the same thing and yet the public expect Police officers to be super human and not subject to normal – albeit hardly known or understood by the general public – psychological and physiological reactions. The failure in that case lays with the op commander (Cressida Dick) for giving intentionally vague and deliberately slow orders and the former commissioner for blocking the IPCC from the investigation to start with.
As for the TSG officers, every person in this country has the right NOT to give evidence in court when they are accused of a crime, are you suggesting that Police officers shouldn’t have the same legal rights as every one else? also considering they didn’t give evidence, the jury STILL found in their favour, do you suggest that by default that they have been charged that they aren’t entitled to have a case heard before a jury?
Yes and you can choose which blog or newspaper you read. We have to look after our own, no-one else will do it for us. Unless you have done it, you have NO idea……….
and the vast majority of us value our job and pur pension too much to distort the law, it simply isn’t worth it.
Perhaps we should just remove the blue lights and two tones from all our cars.
That way I’ll never get to use them, thus never have to waste a great deal of time explaining and justifying why I went through a red light or got ‘flashed’ by a speed camera.
That way, we can keep all the moaning types who believe we keep protecting our own, relatively happy.
Shame for the person who dialled 999 expecting me to come dashing there as quickly as I can to help them.
That only means one complaint ( from the hapless person who dialled 999 ) – and we prevent dozens who accuse me of speeding / dangerous driving / careless driving etc when on a blue light run.
Remember that if you need me.
Oh dear.
People like me.
As to the flash, it was a BBC Radio Four programme like File on Four based on FoI information they had obtained where no prosecutions were made against groups of police officers travelling together in police vehicles but where a kind of collective amnesia meant that the actual driver could not be identified or prosecuted.
As to de Menezes, my point is rather more that the claims of shouted warnings were heard by all of the police witnesses but none of the civilians which many think it hard to find entirely plausible.
As to the Jones case, the facts that emerged after his aquittal suggest that he had a very lucky day and there was, of course, one officer who gave evidence for the prosecution but whose evidence was discounted by the jury. The officers who did not give evidence were entitled not to do so. Jones and the other officers are not colleagues of mine. I’m glad of that.
Leave all that to one side but do at least allow me that perceptions do count for something and that the public perception is not that our problems with the police begin at Ch Inspector level.
Oh no – this old chestnut. I ditto MCM re: De Menezes and the Group not giving evidence. Mate – when you read in the Mail, etc, that 4,000,000 (or whatever) Police “got off” speeding, what they really mean is that about 3,999,990 went through a red ATS or a gatso on the “I”, or on a “Grade 1″ (for our county colleagues) on our way to help someone as quickly and as safely as possible. Sometimes it means going over the speed limit etc, which we can do due to legal exemption. The odd one of these calls is genuine, but most of them are a complete LOB and, obviously, we don’t know which is which till we get there.
But if the mail published that as a story no one would read it would they? Still – it gives people like you something to moan about, doesn’t it? And at least we’ve reset your perceptions now and you won’t need to mistakenly “perceive” any more, will you?
You try remembering who was driving two or three weeks after the event (when the ticket comes through) when you have BOTh or ALL been driving from pillar to post like headless chicken. (mixed metaphors there). I am not saying all coppers are perfect (they too are members of society remember) but a lot of the time it ISN’t how the meedja present it to be.
I’ve got my own.
News: Police officers were on patrol today in ruraltown. Add in: There were only two of them but plenty more staff sat in offices looking after the figures, spreadsheets and diverse communities.
News: PCSOs undertook a high profile patrol of the problem area.
Add in: In years gone by, this would have been done by sworn officers but now it is done by PCSOs who have to put up with abuse from kids as they don’t have the powers to deal with them.
News: Police made two arrests in this case
Add in: Don’t be alarmed, the case will either be discontinued by the CPS or the magistrates/judge will impose a conditional discharge and they will soon be back out on the streets.
Laurence you know what? last night there were 2 response drivers and a basic in my car. Over 12 hours WE ALL were driving at one point or another and we also had a couple of legitimate gatsos as well. I know right now which ones were mine, but we also dealt with over 40 individual calls over the night, if I get an NIP in a couple of months time (as the two week rule doesn’t apply to Police drivers of course unlike everyone else) will I be able to remember which of us it was, especially as they were legitimate and I don’t need to remember?
For your information we call up to our control room to tell them when we activate a gatso, it goes on the CAD for the incident we are attending – accountability and legitimacy and all that. There is no problem, we are allowed by law to exceed the speed limit so there’s no cover up and no issue when we do it, despite what the Daily Wail claim.
As I said the amount of time and money wasted proving the legality for each NIP sent out to Met drivers alone is in the millions of pounds. Each time we get one we have to track back to the call we were attending at the time, confirm the activation, confirm log book details and then write a report justifying it. Just as last night, if several of us were driving the vehicle over the shift it is highly likely that in a couple of months we honestly won’t remember. Would you rather we were concentrating on the call at hand, and the driving to get there or stop and make a full note and justify each one in full depth just in case someone asks us later?
Get a clue, ask questions and feel free to join in, or sod off and keep your misguided and bullshit opinions to yourself. The choice is yours, but don’t expect anyone here to pander to you.
First of all, I entirely agree with Officer and a Lady when she writes that police officers are members of society and perhaps part of the problem that I have tried to identify is that both the police and civilians can lose sight of this important feature of our policing system and the philosophy of consent which always used to underpin it.
I really don’t want to get anybody all wound up again but let me say this in the mildest possible way. All practitioners of a particular trade or profession will have a jargon or shorthand that they use among themselves. I’m obviously a layman so there is little likelihood that I am going to know what gatso’s, nip’s and cads are. Isn’t it a reinforcement of our differences for police officers to retreat behind linguistic barriers like this? Add to this references to me as “people like you” or suggestions that I would like to hobble officers like Bobby and we further reinforce an ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitude which does neither side any good.
I really am not wedded to the examples that I quoted off the top of my head. Let’s forget about those but surely it’s reasonable to look at the overall relationship between the police and the public and how this relationship has developed over the last few years. I don’t think it’s been improving and I don’t think that’s healthy for society.
When a Government is authoritarian, it is more important than ever for the police to identify more with the people than with the legislators. On the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, it’s timely to think in such terms.
Jack Straw on the Midnight News just now appears to want to curb your ability to caution. Not good for you, not good for me, not good for society.
Laurence, I wouldn’t like to suggest that we ‘retreat behind linquistic barriers’ when referring to the use of police jargon, having previously already described us as practitioners of a trade or profession that has its own jargon.
If you’re not sure what a CAD/GATSO/LOB is, then ASK – but to suggest that we are ‘retreating behind barriers’ by talking as we do on a daily basis using terminology that is fluent to us and available to the public (trying reading newspapers or watching The Bill – not that I’d recommend it as even a vaguely realistic representation of real policing!) is merely highlighting your own biased agenda/prejudice behind your messages.
Phrases like NIP, GATSO etc are used commonly in the press in reference to speeding stories.
Anyhoo – for your information:
NIP = Notice of Intended Prosecution – generally speaking, that bit of paper you get sent with a photo of you speeding on it.
GATSO = particular make of speed camera
CAD = Computer Aided Despatch – computer database that logs all calls, who’s been sent, what action’s been taken etc.
LOB = Load of Bollocks. What somoene speaks when they talk out of their arse from an ill-informed, misguided or highly skewed viewpoint.
I-Grade/Grade 1/Immediate/Flash/Blues ‘n’ Twos Call = the kind of call that can see you hurtling along busy streets at faster-than-speed-limit speeds in a rush to get to a call where someone is trying to stab someone else/steal their car, handbag or virginity/club your colleague to death with a baseball bat with nails in it. All whilst trying to get backup from the only other copper to be covering the town with you at that point and try not to enrage members of the public talking LOB because they’ve been slightly inconvenienced by your speedy passing.
Laurence – re limiting cautioning, that’s actually a good thing. The police federation have been voicing for years our complaints about it. A caution should be a once only deal and never for anything that could attract a custodial sentence or that has an element of violence. The government forced it on us to stop sending so many to court, the cps use it to get a judicial disposal without ever having to fight a case at trial. Sending more people to court WILL clog the system up again, but only if the judiciary and the government continue to give or direct ridiculously lenient sentences. If someone is in prison, they can’t commit offences, given that the reoffending rate is 70% you could argue that prison doesn’t reform people so why give long sentences? Our argument all along has been that whilst they are in a cell they can’t break into your home, steal your things, rape people or beat up your kids. Who gives a toss whether or not they are reformed? After ten years in a prison cell for injuring a paramedic while they are drunk for example, if they are stupid enough to commit another crime that gets them locked up again then that is their problem, not everyone elses.
Ah, I see. Thanks for explaining this. I take your point entirely.
Why don’t you tell me more about my own biased agenda, my prejudices and what “people like” me are like?
Tell me about the profile of someone who dares to suggest that there may be a disconnect between the public and the police?
And tell me that I am dreaming if I get the impression from the replies I’ve had here (excepting from Officer and a Lady) that there’s also a disconnect between the police and the public.
We should be disconnected. We are the ones who come to take you away when you have been naughty. We don’t need you to be our friends. Get over it. I bet you don’t really like your dentist either, but he still has a job to do. If you don’t like the British police, there is always Zimbabwe.
I like the dentist analogy.
My relationship with the dentist is based entirely on consent and although I am usually happier leaving his surgery than arriving, I am grateful for the skills he deploys in my best interests and for which I pay him.
Your point about Zimbabwe is facile.
If you feel hard done by and badly managed by your superiors and the politicians, take your own advice: get over it.