I get really fed up with these publicity operations. My team are tackling crime all the time. We arrest people, we execute search warrants and seize stolen property every day of the week. Then someone with scrambled egg on their hat has the big idea to carry out an operation. We give it a fancy name, Operation Vanquish or something daft. Dates are set for a week or two week campaign. We have lots of meetings about it. We defer arresting people or executing search warrants until the operation dates.
The publicity machine is put into action. The press, members of the Police Authority, Councillors etc. are invited to come out on some raids. For a week or two the cells are filled, stress all round, much back slapping and the press swallow it hook line and sinker tell the public what a marvellous job we are doing. The statistics show that in the two weeks before the operation we hardly arrested anyone and in the two weeks during we arrested dozens. (I wonder why?) It just shows you that you only have to give something a fancy name and focus your efforts and we can really be effective when most of the time we must be sat around doing nothing. Perhaps we should be arresting people and executing search warrants all the time? We do? Oh!
The officer with scrambled egg who was in charge of this Operation will have something to put on his next promotion or transfer application to show that with his/her dynamic leadership crime was cut for two weeks and dozens of criminals were arrested. It seems to escape the notice of even the very senior management in the Force that a week later things are back to normal and we are working away in the sound knowledge that the Operation has had no long term effect whatsoever.
Just wait until we get the new 'National Crime Agency'...plenty of opportunity for those show piece operations months in preparation for a day or two of activity - all spin for the media and polyfilla for some pole climbing careerist...
ReplyDeletezorro
"This sends a clear message to criminals/drug dealers/thieves in this borough that their behaviour will not be tolerated and we will catch you and prosecute you"
ReplyDeleteClassic bullshit quote by every officer in the case after a big bust.
Jaded
Endemic I'm afraid in most LEAs particularly UK Border Agency...unfortunately it doesn't wash or convince anyone except the terminally deluded.
ReplyDeletezorro
This was being done in the 70s. Policing by objectives it was called. Great results where we did it, the crime spreading out of the area targeted, then back in when the scheme left. 2006 and cash-in-transit targeting in Merseyside (a really good scheme) leads to a big drop there and an increase in Cheshire and Manchester.
ReplyDeleteGiven the crime always 'refers' itself somewhere else or into different crime we have to guess that crime stats are useless as presented to the public.
As Allcopped inferred, whenever we seemed to be making the pips squeak, some nob in a white shirt would call a halt. We always knew when the SPG were working our manor before it was announced, because all the bad people scattered. And before someone mentiones the `bad eggs` within such task groups, let me state that I hated thugs and bullies all my service. I liked nicking criminals and a well motivated task group gets really good at it - if allowed, correctly briefed, equipped and supported. Its a really simple thing to do.
ReplyDeleteIn my Force one of the Boroughs tackled this in a different way. Through intelligence, but also using a lot of gut feeling and personal knowledge, we identified the top 20 criminals who we felt were responsible for offences in the Borough.
ReplyDeleteThese top 20 were targeted by everyone for anything. Many of them were also subject to long term surveillance and test purchase operations.
2 years ago 17 of the top 20 were in prison. Crime in the Borough dropped almost 50%. This was a sustained reduction which lasted for almost a year. Sadly, those in prison were slowly drip fed back into the community and now 17 of the 20 are out of prison. Crime is now down only 8% on the original figure.
This work took considerable investment by the police and there were substantial additional costs involved in TP and surveillance work. In this age of austerity I do not see that we are going to be able to repeat this exercise.
I would emphasise that I feel the police did an excellent job and there was potential here for sustained long term reduction. Unfortunately, the Youth Offending Team, The Probation Service, The Prison Service and to some extent the courts failed the public and allowed these offenders to be released from custody and simply return to their criminal ways. Lex
Lex, your above was precisely what we did in my last div command. There is no point in having targets of `the week`. You have your top 3,5 or 10 targets (if you can sustain such high numbers with your resources! We had just 3 targets at any one time) and they stay the target until they fall off the radar. Ditto re results, massive downward effect on crime. I find it sad that it is considered `a different way` - it is the simplest and most logical. I never wanted anyone at the tasking group meetings other than the OiC of the crime management unit (for flagging up the targets), the Crime Reduction Officer (for additional intel, mapping, analysis etc)and me (the c/i) who could juggle the resources/beg for o/t etc to achieve the goals. My predecessor had a TCG meeting that seemed to include half the division. Total waste of important people's (beat officers, sgts etc) time. Our analyst told us that 80% of the crime was down to half a dozen people QED: there's the targets!
ReplyDeleteSettling disputes is one of the primary responsibilities of police officers. This can at times be difficult and sometimes situations happen so quickly, that you feel the best decision was not reached, especially as a new recruit.
ReplyDelete