The Thinking Policeman: A Police Officer's Blog

Respect?

2012-01-27T10:26:00.000Z

Tony Melville

Following on from my last post, the Chief Constable of Gloucester, Tony Melville, has put his head over the parapet and publicly stated that the force are on a cliff edge regarding cuts to the budget. This is highly unusual for a Chief Constable and would normally be the end of a career.

Policing Minister, Nick Herbert, has come out with the usual rhetoric that cuts can be made without affecting front line services. Rubbish, Mr Herbert! Just count the number of police officers. 6000 less now than six months ago and still falling.

At first, this may seem a brave move by the Chief Constable and then you notice that he has 34 years service. Gloucester will be electing a new Police Commissioner in November (could be Katie Price or John Prescott, God help us!) and with it they will be getting a new Chief Constable. So this is just a parting shot from Mr Melville. I suppose it may cost him his QPM or other award.

Here is a letter dated May 2011 signed by 53 Chief Officers, including Mr Melville, telling the Police Federation that their concerns over cuts to the policing budget were legitimate but suggesting that the focus should be on the service to the communities we serve.

Let's see if some other senior officers, whose careers are on the line, step up and join, the retiring, Mr Melville. That will deserve some respect.

Senior Officers - He Who Pays The Piper?

2012-01-23T23:16:00.002Z

Lord Stevens - Police morale is worryingly low

You may be aware that the Labour party commissioned a review of policing by Lord Stevens, (former Met Police Commissioner) Dr Tim Brain (former Chief Constable Gloucester) and Kathleen O'Toole (former Police Commissioner, Boston.) This claims to be a comprehensive review and the full report will not be produced until early in 2013.

Lord Stevens has been interviewed recently regarding his findings and has stated that he has found the morale of officers to be worryingly low. So much so that he believes this should be of serious public concern with major events such as the Jubilee and Olympics coming up.

If I was being cynical, and I am, I wonder if Lord Stevens would have reached such a conclusion or been so forthright were he still the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Labour, amongst others, are his paymasters for now and so perhaps it suits him to make an honest statement at this time. The Government will state that he is the piper and Labour are paying for the tune.

Police morale is the worst I have ever known it and it will continue to decline when cuts to pay, increased pension contributions and reduced numbers of officers come into effect. Will we ever hear a serving Chief Officer say this? The only one I ever remember speaking out was Sir Robert Mark, for which he never got his peerage.

Put The Kettle Back On

2012-01-22T16:42:00.000Z

Back in April 2010 you couldn't pick up a paper without reading about the High Court deciding that the police use of kettling at the G20 protest in 2009 was unlawful. You could read about it here, here, here, and here, for example.

You may be forgiven if you were not aware that a few days ago the Court of Appeal overturned the High Courts decision and ruled that the kettling had been lawful after all. It was covered in the Grauniad but elsewhere you would be hard pushed to find the story.

Protesters and their lawyers have vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court next and, if they lose there, I suspect the case will end up at the European Court. (Who is paying for all this?! The taxpayer I suspect.) If the case goes against the Metropolitan Police expect to read lots more on the subject. If the police case is upheld you may not hear so much as a whisper.

Police to Sue For Being Kettled?

Stupid Coppers!

2012-01-17T18:30:00.000Z

I can't help watching cop programs on the TV. My favourite is Police Interceptors. Mostly, the officers are highly motivated and they know the law and arrest lots of bad guys, and that is how it should be. I get depressed when I see what the rest of the justice system does with these offenders but then that is another story.

Last night I watched Coppers on Channel 4. I cringed with embarrassment watching some officers behaviour. We saw a female officer referring to criminals as 'shits.' We saw a male officer pushing a drunk away and telling him to go away. The drunk just wouldn't go. The policeman pushed the man hard four times causing him to fall over and then eventually arrested him. There was no justification for pushing him in that manner.

Later in the program we saw a number of police officers attend a disturbance on a social housing estate. It is fair to say we had about ten drunk men, women and children as young as 14. All those involved were of very limited intelligence and were probably inter related. There was no reasoning with them. They wouldn't heed any instructions or warnings and some were abusive. Arrests started being made. A woman shouted abuse at one of the officers and was taken hold of and thrown on the ground causing more mayhem as those present protested about her treatment. I understand this was a difficult situation but there was no justification for the way this woman was thrown to the ground.

The above video has just popped up on Youtube. The police officer is on a bike and has stopped another cyclist who he says he has seen ride through a red traffic light. This offence is an increasing problem and pedestrians and the cyclists themselves are being injured or worse by this behaviour. The alleged offending cyclist is an arrogant barrack room lawyer who is one of those pedantic idiots I actually like to deal with. But it must be done properly. The problem is this officer doesn't know what he is doing and makes a complete arse of himself. He even stupidly tries to grab the cyclists camera.

I guess the point is the police are having to deal with more and more awkward and difficult people. The days of almost anyone doing what they are told by anyone apparently in authority are almost over. To effectively deal with these people you need to be calm, composed and in control of yourself at all times. You also need to have a good knowledge of the law.

From what I have seen over the last few days some police officers are failing miserably when it comes to these qualities. Supervisors need to get hold of these officers and get them shaped up or shipped out!

Police Shafted! 2

2012-01-11T12:07:00.000Z

Winsor - Bothered?

I wrote back in March last year regarding the Winsor report and how this might affect police officers remuneration and working conditions. This was always going to be a difficult subject and I am certainly not expecting the public to be queueing up supporting the police cause.

The Police Arbitration Tribunal (PAT) have now decided that the Government can go ahead and impose most of the changes to our pay and conditions. You can read the full PAT report here. The summary of decisions is on pages 44 and 45.

Without going into detail, the PAT decision confirms that police officers will receive no pay increase for at least two years. A number of allowances and overtime payments will disappear or be cut. In addition to this you need to understand that officers pension contributions are being increased by up to three and a half percent. At a time of high inflation and economical difficulty, police officers face an average pay cut of around 10%.

Historically police officers have not been financially motivated. The job was largely vocational and officers were happy to work hard and answer all the demands of the role secure in the knowledge that they were reasonably rewarded. This used to be the case in other public sector occupations such as health. Nurses were always the saints who had the time and motivation to take care of patients. Over the last 20 years this has changed. Public servants are often portrayed as expensive and inefficient. The bottom line of the private sector has been seen as the panacea to solve these inefficient organisations. Cleaning is contracted out. Auxiliary nurses were brought in to do the menial tasks that we were paying nurses too much to do. Targets and qualifications with rewards for achieving them were seen as the answer to the perceived inefficiency. Private sector management understand little regarding the service the public sector provides.

The same management has now infiltrated the police service. We have seen the introduction of PCSO's to replace 'expensive' police officers. But they cannot carry out many of the tasks that police officers on patrol are required to. We have a target driven culture (despite what the government say) with senior managers being rewarded for achieving them. The myriad of tasks we carry out that don't appear on the target list are neglected. The culture has seen policing becoming less of a vocation and more and more officers are now treating it as just a job. The problem with this has already compounded itself in nursing. A recent inquiry has come to the conclusion that many nurses lack the compassion and ability to do the job.

What has happened in health will manifest itself in the police service. The remuneration package the police will now receive combined with the target culture and attack on conditions, such as shift patterns and on call, will result in fewer capable people joining the police and a lack of care and compassion for the law abiding public we try to do our best for.

I am seriously concerned regarding the future of policing in this country.

Diane Abbott MP

2012-01-05T13:28:00.000Z

As one might expect, the white supremacist groups are crying for blood regarding the stupid comments tweeted by Diane Abbott. If you missed it she tweeted 'White people love 'Divide and rule' We should not play their game.'

What annoys me is that Abbott has tried to defend the indefensible. In an interview, (shown above) that was clearly uncomfortable for her, she said. "Some people have interpreted it maliciously." (For some people insert racists. Diane's defence usually labels critics with this tag.) She claims she was referring in the tweet to 19th Century colonialism. If you read the thread of the tweet, this is not true. During the interview she got a call from Ed Milliband who was hopefully trying to show some leadership and tell her to apologise.

Here is Diane, looking very uncomfortable, being questioned by Andrew Neil regarding more stupid comments.

There are calls for the police to get involved in this. I have no doubt they would be champing at the bit to do so if the circumstances were different. Arguably the police could be looking at investigating the statement under Sections 17 to 29 of the Public Order Act 1986.

It now appears that Ed has given her a dressing down and told her to apologise. It is a pity she did not do this immediately. She has now issued a statement saying “I understand people have interpreted my comments as making generalisations about white people. I do not believe in doing that. I apologise for any offence caused.” I hope that is the end of the matter now and that the police do not become embroiled in investigating these stupid remarks.

Wasting Police Time

2011-12-31T20:26:00.000Z

I really drew the short straw this Christmas, working a late shift on Christmas Day. In my Force if you work Christmas Day you don't work New Years Eve. Sounds great but I am on an early New Years Day which means a very subdued celebration tonight.

Christmas Day wasn't too bad this year, a bit like a Sunday. We only had three domestics to attend. These were all at, dare I say, social housing. Very sad really but a product of the society we live in. In every case we have a woman who is quite inadequate in many respects. There are children and there are the current 'partners.' In all three cases the current partner is not the father of all or any of the children in the house. The 'partners' have their own issues and inadequacies. Only one of them was working, for example. In every case there has been excessive alcohol consumption and petty arguments. The sort of arguments that only these children in adults bodies can have. In two cases there are allegations of assault and so off to the cells two of the 'partners' go.

The next few hours the children's Christmas is taken up with the police completing a 12 page risk assessment and the mother making a statement to police. A statement they will withdraw in the morning when they realise the inadequate waste of space they have given a roof in their taxpayer provided house, will not be coming back if charges are pressed. And after all, they do love them really.

I paid a visit to the control room. Thank heavens it is not too busy. The number of police officers working on a Bank Holiday has been cut to worrying levels. The control room has also been pared to the bone in an effort to save money. Trying to run more than one incident in the County would be quite difficult.

Of note is the calls coming into the control room. Christmas Day is one of the few days in the year now when everything is shut. So the calls for help come into the emergency services. Can we find a plumber for someone whose heating has broken down? Are there any trains running today? What time does the Next Sale start tomorrow morning?

I shall be at work at 5.30 a.m. tomorrow morning. There will be a skeleton staff on again as it is a Bank Holiday. The biggest concern will be do we have enough staff to deal with all the drunken idiots that will be arrested tonight.

Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas 2

2011-12-24T19:58:00.002Z

I thought I would share with you another festive video and my favourite joke of the year which also has a seasonal theme.

Some of us will be working over Christmas and sadly we know from experience that Christmas Day and Boxing Day will mean demands that are difficult for some to comprehend. Domestic violence calls will feature high on the list. Last year I had to take two kids into police protection on Christmas Day while their parents spent it in the cells. I hope all of you working over the Christmas festivities have a quiet and peaceful one.

My favourite joke of the year.

Police were called to a suspected massacre of snowmen in Lincolnshire. A pathologist attended the scene and there was relief all around after it turned out to be a field of carrots.

Merry Christmas!

Scotrail, No Ticket, No Charge

2011-12-22T10:18:00.000Z

Many people have been outraged at the news that the yob, by the name of Sam Main from Falkirk, wants the person that threw him off a train prosecuted.

You can view the video of the incident above, but in summary, Main had no ticket. He was asked by the guard to leave the train. He insisted he had paid and refused to get off the train. He was rude and abusive. Eventually a big man by the name of Allan Pollock had had enough and asked the guard if he wanted Main removed from the train. The guard said yes and Pollock took hold of Main and took him to the doors. Main resisted and fell to the floor. He is picked up and pushed off the train. He immediately tries to run back on and is taken hold of and thrown away from the train. He ends up on the ground with a grazed cheek.

Main goes home and tells his mummy that he got assaulted and thrown off the train. Main's mummy is outraged that her darling son has got a graze on his cheek and wants revenge. An allegation of assault is made to the police. I take the view of the majority of people. Main is a foul mouthed yob who had every opportunity to leave the train and any injuries he received were as a result of his own stupid actions.

The press are reporting that Pollock has been charged with assault. This is NOT correct. The police have carried out an investigation and passed the file to the Procurator Fiscals office for a decision on prosecution. This is much the same as the police sending a file to the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales. The Procurator Fiscal will decide whether or not Pollock will be charged with assault and if Main will be charged with trespass or travelling without a ticket.

I sincerely hope that the Procurator Fiscal will take the view that Pollocks actions were perfectly lawful and he should be commended rather than prosecuted. I wouldn't have bothered charging Main had he accepted his just deserts, but as he and his mother have decided to make an issue of it, I hope they throw the book at him. If his mother had taught him how to behave in the first place he would not be in the position he is now.

Happy Christmas!

2011-12-16T11:11:00.000Z

I bet we see this girl on the X Factor in a few years time!

Just Go Home!

2011-12-14T17:10:00.001Z

Another Arrest Caused by the Police

I was out on foot patrol in the town recently in company with a young PC. It was about 2.30 a.m. and we were standing minding our own business near one of the towns nightclubs. Club patrons often congregate here and it is not uncommon for arguments and fights to break out between those who have had too much to drink. A police presence usually provides a deterrent to this sort of behaviour.

As people walk past us I give some cheery 'Good Nights' and hope they all find a taxi and go home quietly. Two lads walk by and I bid them a good night. One says "It's the filth. I don't like you lot." The PC with me suggests he has a word with him. No, I say, just ignore him and hopefully he will go home. The two lads stop about 20 yards down the road. A minute later the one who spoke earlier comes back. He says. "Why are you hanging around here? Instead of picking on innocent people you should be catching murderers and rapists." Most police officers have heard this a dozen times. I politely tell him why we are there and wish him good night." He doesn't go. "I don't like you lot. In fact I hate pigs. You're all a bunch of arseholes." No one else has heard this comment and, of course, I am not at all offended by it as Justice Bean has decided such language should not offend me.

The lad has had a good drink and I could arrest him for being drunk and disorderly but I really just want him to go home, so I say. "Fair enough, we're all entitled to our opinion. Good night." We walk away towards the club hoping he will just go home. The lad follows us. "Yeah, go on. Fuck off! Fuck off and do something useful. Bunch of fucking arseholes." Now, I don't care what Justice Bean says, if you tell me to fuck off you are going to be arrested. I turn around and walk back to the lad. I arrest him for being drunk and disorderly. As soon as I take hold of him he resists. He tries to pull away, thrashes his arms around, then says he is going to knock me out. There is a torrent of abuse and threats while I subdue him. His friend decides he is going to intervene and the PC with me has to keep him away while I end up with the drunk lad on the floor.

He is eventually handcuffed and I await a vehicle to take him to the police station. He is continually being abusive and threatening. His friend is still hanging around nearby. A police car arrives and the arrested lad doesn't want to get in it so we have another scuffle and a little pain compliance until he gets in. I can then hear air escaping. His idiot friend is round the back of the police car letting one of the tyres down. He gets arrested too.

I wrote an article several months ago about working with probation officers and how they generally accepted that many public order incidents are caused by the police. This has become so commonplace that I believe magistrates almost accept there must be some truth in this. The penalties certainly reflect this.

The idiot who let the tyre down sobered up and was given a Fixed Penalty to pay. The idiot who got arrested in the first place has a history of violence and public order offences. He has eleven previous convictions. He was charged with being Drunk and Disorderly and Resisting Arrest. He pleaded guilty at Magistrates Court. In mitigation his solicitor stated on his behalf that the arresting officer had been rude to him and the cause of his poor behaviour. He was fined £50 with £30 costs.

I have little confidence that this penalty will deter this man from any similar behaviour in the future. So this man will become another crime statistic and it is the police, not the rest of the failing justice system, that will take the blame for not reducing crime.

Another Wasted Life

2011-12-04T16:46:00.000Z

This is Danny O'Shea who died last Friday evening near his house in Canning Town. The story was reported but did not gain any significant publicity and you may well have missed it. Danny was chased by a group of black youths and stabbed in the neck. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A tragic waste of another life in some apparent gang related testosterone battle.

Reading the story it struck me that there is something missing here. The police officer investigating the case makes a plea for witnesses but there is no mention of the police dealing with this as a racial attack. There is no reassurance to the community that no stone will be left unturned to bring these offenders to justice; no press conference; no mention of a community reference group being set up to advise the police, monitor the investigation and feed back reassuring messages to the community.

I haven't read any reports of the community marching on the local police station demanding to know what they are doing about this murder. I haven't seen the family in the media suggesting that the police won't take the murder seriously, despite their apparent blase attitude to it all.

I haven't heard a peep from the MP for West Ham, Lyn Brown condemning this murder or offering her reassurance that she will do everything she can to ensure the police investigation is effective. I haven't seen her visit the scene or the family. The latest entry on her website is about her husbands birthday and scoring points regarding the Tory's pension changes.

It appears we have learnt nothing about dealing with race crimes or am I still missing something?

Smiley Culture - Police Innocent!

2011-11-30T12:58:00.000Z

Back in March I covered the story of David Emmanuel's suicide whilst the Metropolitan Police were execting a search warrant at his house in Surrey. I made comment that there were undoubtedly flaws in the planning and execution of the warrant and the IPCC would no doubt highlight those to try and show the family their investigation was thorough and independent.

The IPCC have now completed their initial investigation but the full report will not be released until after the inquest, which will take place in front of a jury. You have to feel some sympathy with the IPCC. The family and some sections of the community will never be happy unless a police officer is convicted of stabbing him, no matter what the evidence might dictate.

The family have, of course, reacted angrily to the news that the IPCC have found no evidence to prosecute any officer for any crime, nor is there sufficient evidence to prosecute any officer under the Police (Conduct) Regulations. Merlin Emmanuel said "We firmly believe that Smiley was murdered and that the IPCC have let us down and treated us miserably." If only there were a shred of evidence to support that statement.

The family have stated they will now take out a private prosecution. I just hope that doesn't waste any more taxpayers money on legal fees. The family will have their day in Court when the officers involved will have to answer questions at the inquest.

We will have to wait for more detail to be made available after the inquest. This cannot take place until after the two drugs trials to which David Emanuel was connected. That should be interesting.

Parenting

2011-11-29T09:45:00.000Z

I never forget about 25 years ago executing a drugs warrant at a Local Authority house occupied by two drug addicts who dealt drugs, got drunk, committed numerous public order offences and stole anything that wasn't bolted down.

Any police officer will know the couple. Let's call them Wayne and Waynetta. They don't like the police because the police regularly deprive them of their liberty. But Wayne and Waynetta had a baby. The baby was a dispensation from any effective punishment by the Courts. The magistrates were always told that Wayne was about to get a job having realised his responsibilities, and he would soon be a fine upstanding member of the community supporting his family. Waynetta was a devoted mother who was doing her best to tackle her drug habit.

When we executed the warrant their child was two and just starting to talk. The child was living in squalor with two drug addicts who could barely look after themselves never mind a child. While we were there, Wayne thought it was a great wheeze to point at one of us and tell the child to repeat his phrase 'fucking pig.' Oh how he laughed on hearing the young child repeat what he said.

At the time I was a naive young PC and I thought it was outrageous that anyone like this should be allowed to have responsibility for a child. I wrote a long report detailing the living conditions and the behaviour of the parents during this search. The report was sent to Social Services. I didn't hear any more. Several weeks later I telephoned Social Services to ask what was happening about the family. I received a phone call later from their Social Worker assuring me that she was working hard with the family but there were no grounds to remove the child from the parents. Sixteen years later the child was sentenced to five years imprisonment for supplying drugs and GBH.

I have lost count now of the number of young people being arrested and brought into custody who are the offspring of the parents I was arresting a generation ago. Our social and justice systems are not effective in dealing with this never ending cycle.

Here is another woman who is unfit to be a parent. The poor toddler sat on her lap might be a future member of the National Front and what are the chances of him escaping a Court appearance at some time in the future?

Deterrent Sentencing

2011-11-28T11:53:00.000Z

Junior Henry, the 17 year old youth, who stabbed a 20 year old man in the stomach at the Notting Hill Carnival in August was sentenced to four and a half years custody by Judge Peter Beaumont on the 24th November.

The public may at first be conned into believing that this is a half decent sentence for the crime but most of us now know, of course, that he will only serve half the sentence anyway. His estimated release date is shown on the court papers as 26/2/2014. Furthermore, because of pressures on the prison population, he will almost certainly be released after two years and be home for Christmas in 2013.

When you look further into the circumstances of Junior Henry's offending and refer to the sentencing guidelines it is difficult to see how such a lenient sentence was ever passed. In September 2007 aged just 12, Junior Henry was part of a gang known as MDP (Murder Dem Pussies.) About 15 youths from this gang went out looking for members of another gang. They came across two innocent young men and attacked them. One was stabbed to death and the other seriously injured. Henry was charged with Murder, Conspiracy to cause GBH and Violent Disorder. The jury acquitted him of Murder but he was convicted of Conspiracy to cause GBH and Violent Disorder. Some of the gang were imprisoned but, because of his young age, Henry was sentenced, by Judge Peter Beaumont, to a Supervision Order!

Since that Supervision Order was imposed, Henry has been back in front of Judge Peter Beaumont three times for breaching it. On March 7th 2011 he appeared before the Judge and was told this was his last chance and if he breached the Order again he was going to feel his wrath. On 16th March, just nine days after this warning, Henry was arrested for an assault and charged. He was convicted on the 26th July and bailed back to the Crown Court to see Judge Beaumont and feel his wrath.

On the 29th August, Henry was at the Notting Hill Carnival when a fight broke out. A man tried to break up the fight and Henry pulled out a knife and plunged it into his abdomen/ribs. It is quite simply luck that the man did not die. A few inches in another direction and this could have been the result. The whole incident was caught on CCTV and there were good photographs of Henry running away clutching the bloody knife. He was arrested and charged with Causing Grievous Bodily Harm With Intent, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. He pleaded guilty in the face of overwhelming evidence and was sentenced to four and a half years.

I have referred to the sentencing guidelines for that offence and the recommended sentences are between 3 and 16 years. There are three categories of offence:

Category 1 - Serious Injury and Higher Culpability, starting point 12 years, 9 to 16 years depending upon aggravating and mitigating factors.
Category 2 - Serious Injury and Lower Culpability, or Less Serious Injury and Higher Culpability, starting point 6 years, 5 to 9 years depending upon aggravating and mitigating factors.
Category 3 - Less Serious Injury and less Culpability, starting point 4 years, 3 to five years depending upon aggravating and mitigating factors.

Higher culpability will include things such as use of a weapon.

Aggravating factors can include, previous convictions, on bail for other offences, location, ongoing effect on victim, failure to comply with current court orders.

Mitigating factors can include things like single blow, age/lack of maturity.

I cannot for the life of me see why this offence was not dealt with as Category 1, resulting in a sentence starting at 12 years and ranging between 9 and 16 years taking account of the aggravating and mitigating factors. The aggravating and mitigating factors above should have resulted in a sentence of at least 12 years, with a third off for a guilty plea, should have been at least 8 years.

Judge Beaumont has obviously placed this as a Category 2 offence under the guidelines. I cannot see where on earth he can show that either the injury or the culpability is not serious. He has then determined that following consideration of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances a sentence of 6 years and nine months is appropriate. He has then reduced this by a third to 4.5 years. The judiciary often defend their poor sentencing by claiming that their hands have been tied by the sentencing guidelines. I often point out that sentencing guidelines do not prevent sentencing outside of those guidelines in exceptional circumstances, such as where defendants have dozens of previous convictions. In this case the guidelines do not appear to have been followed, to the detriment of justice.

Some people felt the sentencing following the riots in August was harsh. Most people felt that, for once, the justice system was performing it's function and providing sentencing with a deterrent effect. Readers of this blog will know I am not someone who just wants people thrown in jail, but there must be deterrent sentencing combined with effective rehabilitation in our justice system. The sentence of Junior Henry, a knife wielding gang member involved in the murder of one young man and directly responsible for stabbing another, is an ineffective disgrace.

Mark Duggan Inquiry

2011-11-24T20:20:00.000Z

Stafford Scott

We heard this week that two of the three members of the community reference group who are giving advice to the IPCC regarding the police shooting of Mark Duggan, have resigned. One of them, Stafford Scott, has stated that he no longer wishes to be associated with the investigation, which he describes as shoddy and flawed. It is true that he raised some concerns but also that he refused to attend a meeting with the IPCC where they wished to try and allay those concerns.

I have been involved in many incidents where the police have pulled together 'community consultants' to give advice and to try and ensure some transparency. On many occasions I have wondered who these representatives speak for and what their motives are. Stafford Scott works as a community and race relations consultant. He clearly has some passion regarding Tottenham but are his views really representative of the community? His idol is Bernie Grant, so I doubt it. And doesn't membership of these consultative groups give some credibility for the paid day job? Is there not a a conflict of interest here?

The other member of the group who resigned is John Noblemunn. He also declined to attend the meeting where the IPCC hoped to allay any concerns they had. Noblemunn is, among other things, Chair of Haringay Black Independent Advisory Group and Deputy Chair of Trident Independent Advisory Group.

Perhaps there are flaws in the IPCC investigation, they are by no means perfect. I really suspect that Mr Scott and Mr Noblemunn have seen the writing on the wall. They would like to be seen as the architects of an investigation that results in the conviction of police officers for the cold blooded murder of Mark Duggan. Perhaps the investigation just shows that the police lawfully shot an armed gangster. Time to bail out and distance yourself.

Thanks for Your Support

2011-11-22T00:38:00.003Z

His Honour Justice Bean - Cretin

Other bloggers have covered this story but I am going to repeat it here as it is yet another symptom of where our society is going wrong. A yob is searched in the street. He uses foul language to the police officers searching him in front of a group of young people. He was charged and convicted by Thames Magistrates of disorderly conduct and fined £50.

The defendant Denzil Cassius Harvey appealed the decision to the High Court where His Honour Justice Bean decided that the police are used to foul language and therefore not offended by it and he was sure the youths nearby thought it all very amusing. He quashed the conviction. The message delivered to yobs of all descriptions on the street is appalling. Once again our justice system holds no consequences for poor behaviour. Ignorant morons who lack the education and upbringing to express themselves properly will simply be encouraged by this cretinous decision to treat the police with complete contempt. Thank you for your support Mr Bean.

Denzil Cassius Harvey - It's all about respect, innit

Our justice system is not alone in making these crass decisions. A similar decision was made in the Courts in a case in Australia. And this is the level of support you can expect from some of our Magistracy and pompous arses that write and read that blog.

The public and judiciary need to wake up to the fact that the ONLY part of the justice system that is currently preventing more of the riots that occurred in August is the police. Deterrent sentences and effective rehabilitation are almost completely absent in out justice system.

The Government are currently shafting us from behind regarding pay and pensions and now the judiciary are shafting us and consigning us to a job where you are being constantly abused with impunity all day. The risk is that one day the police will stop giving a damn too and watch the anarchy that then follows. Sign the petition here.

Student Protest

2011-11-13T00:05:00.000Z

7 minutes of tedium if you want to watch it.

I went to Dale Farm weeks ago now and was sent home as a learned judge decided that he wanted more time to consider the case of the travellers before he confirmed the eviction could go ahead. When the eviction eventually took place I was away on holiday. I saw on the news that the usual suspects or 'swampeys' as they are sometimes known, had taken over the protest on behalf of the travellers.

The police took it all slowly and steadily and dismantled the barriers and lock-ons etc. Some officers had buckets of urine and excrement thrown over them. There were some fires and a few scuffles. The media had some good pictures to show but overall the eviction went without any major problems or criticism of the police.

I was slightly surprised to be packed off to London last Wednesday for the student protest march. The Met have rarely asked for assistance and support from County Forces but the August riots seem to have changed this. In the short term at least, it appears the Met don't want to be criticised again for under-resourcing incidents such as this.

Fewer protesters than expected turned up at the event and the police were robust regarding setting up tents at Trafalgar Square and ensuring that the march followed it's prescribed route. Inevitably a few agitators tried to cause problems and there were around 20 arrests. In general, the protest march took place peacefully.

As no rioting took place, no premises were smashed up or invaded, no looting, coverage within the media was not significant. The march organisers criticised police for what they perceived as over policing of the event. They also suggested that protesters had stayed away because of the threat of the use of baton rounds. This is a shame because in reality this was democratic protest almost at its best. No 'kettling' took place. Students exercised their right to protest. The protest was largely peaceful and nearly everyone went home afterwards unhurt.

I don't believe that the policing of the event was overpowering or that the threat of baton rounds influenced attendance at the event. I believe the reasons for the reduced numbers and lack of violence at this protest are fourfold.

1. Some of the agitators who attend these events were unavailable having been imprisoned or placed on bail conditions following the riots in August and the Dale Farm eviction.
2. Robust sentencing has provided the much needed deterrent that has been missing in our justice system. On the day of the protest four thugs who took part in the previous student protest (riot) received sentences totalling six years.
3. The protest was midweek and many genuine students were not prepared to travel to London and miss their studies.
4. The police had sufficient numbers and their actions made it clear that the agreed terms of the march would be adhered to and those protesters who wished to commit criminal acts would be dealt with robustly.

Remembrance Day Message

2011-11-11T10:28:00.000Z

This is especially for those that abuse our society. Those who take to a life of crime, abuse the benefits system, take drugs and generally waste their lives. You get the picture.

Home Secretary Resigns!

2011-11-08T01:11:00.003Z

"I knew nothing about it. Honestly. Well, I did authorise a trial but this was outside of its parameters."

She hasn't resigned yet, but we have had this one for 18 months now, it must be time for a change.

I posted recently about the complete ineptitude of the UK Border Agency and how people are coming to this country every day clearly intending to stay or work. The recent furore about immigration abandoning proper checks and just allowing people through is not surprising. On one occasion just three members of staff were on duty at Heathrow and could not cope with the thousands of passengers trying to come into the country. The floodgates were basically thrown open.

Some senior managers have been suspended and I have no doubt one or two will have to take their pensions early so that the Government can try and wash its hands of responsibility. Middle managers sent out an arse covering e-mail asking staff to use their discretion when conducting checks. Those of us experienced in the ways of management would ignore such an e-mail and continue carrying out proper checks. This is because what the e-mail is really saying is we haven't got enough staff to do the job properly so cut corners, but if you get caught or mess up we will wash our hands of you. Less experienced, or less cynical, staff will assume they can take shortcuts and that they will have the support of their management if something goes wrong. Poor naive people!

Cuts are being made to public services and the effects are starting to be felt. There will be more and more pressure from managers to make things work with less resources. If staff take shortcuts to try and make things work and it goes wrong you can be assured that the management, who implement the policies, and the Government, who are imposing the cuts, will try and wash their hands of all responsibility.

With regard to policing and the 20% cuts being imposed to budgets, the Government needs to accept that we cannot continue to do everything that we currently do. The Government and senior management need to decide what we are no longer going to do and give some clear directions to officers regarding this. Until then all officers should continue ticking all the boxes and not taking shortcuts and chances, no matter what pressure there is to do so. When it goes wrong, the officer on the ground just trying to do their best with what they have got will be hung out to dry.

Town Centre Violence

2011-10-15T06:57:00.000+01:00

I have been away and visited a number of countries where the attitude to alcohol is far different from that at home. I have touched on this subject before and it seems obvious to me that this is one area where the police and local authorities are failing miserably in applying the law.

If you take my home town, during the week you will see fairly quiet town centre pubs. The punters are generally sitting at tables. Some are eating. They are all generally served at the bar. Come the weekend however, tables and chairs are removed and loud music is played. Service is still at the bar. There is almost no monitoring of who has had too much to drink. The most sober of a group of friends can go and buy a round of drinks and no one has a clue how drunk the others are. Packed pubs and loud music means conversation is impossible and so punters just sup their drinks. No one monitors consumption effectively. The whole philosophy is to sell as much cheap alcohol as possible.

The result of all this is that drunks pour out of the pubs, they are sick in the street, they threaten one another and fight, they need medical attention and get arrested and we just put up with this every week. The demands these pubs place on the police, ambulance, hospitals and other services is outrageous.

In many countries abroad you cannot buy alcohol at a bar. You go in and sit down and you are served. The premises are not packed, music is not deafening and the waiting staff can monitor carefully how much everyone has had to drink. Because it is not being thrown over the bar in huge quantities, alcohol is more expensive and so it is drunk more moderately.

It seems obvious to me that police and councils in any area where town centre violence is a problem, should be applying conditions to licenses that all alcohol is served to persons seated at tables. If grounds are needed all the police need to do is video the exit of patrons at weekends. The sight of drunken men and women falling out of pubs, vomiting and being violent and aggressive should be more than enough to justify the conditions being imposed.

I suggested this some time ago to my superiors and my colleague in charge of town centre policing and it has been ignored. I need to pursue this and push it forward. I would be interested if anyone else has tried anything similar elsewhere in the country.

British Justice System Executes Criminal

2011-09-21T23:24:00.002+01:00

Well I was anticipating my next post being a blow by blow account of the Dale Farm eviction. A judge has decided that they can have another few days respite while he considers their case in more detail. If he allows them to stay it is yet another blow for justice. Does the law apply equally to all or does the law not apply to minorities? That is the only decision he has to make. If he allows the eviction to go ahead, the blow by blow account will follow next week.

Raymond Jacob

You may have read about the case of Raymond Jacob, 37, who was stabbed to death during a burglary at the Bramhall home of businessman Vincent Cooke. It turns out that Jacob has a long history of offending dating back 20 years. Mr. Cooke was arrested on suspicion of murder but now been released on bail.

Jacob has dozens of convictions and was first sent to prison in 1995 for theft of a car. Since then he has served seven other custodial sentences, in between community penalties and suspended sentences, for numerous offences of theft, burglary, assault and robbery.

Jacob was jailed for 18 months after beating up a stranger during a night out in 1999. He admitted grievous bodily harm when he appeared at Mold Crown Court following the incident in Handforth, near Wilmslow. He served 8 months.

His longest sentence was 30 months for a burglary. He was also separately given eight weeks in jail for theft, five months for robbery, five months for assault, four months for burglary and another four months for burglary. He served less than a year.

Yesterday Jacob's alleged accomplice, Michael Anthony Thorpe, 33, of Outwood Road, Heald Green, appeared before Stockport magistrates accused of aggravated burglary at Mr Cooke’s home on Saturday night. He was remanded in custody and the case was sent to Minshull Street Crown Court for trial on December 2.

The role of the police within the justice system is quite rightly scrutinised and investigated. If we make a mistake or do anything wrong the IPCC or CPS will direct charges or discipline. The multi agency 'lessons learned' committee will give us the benefit of their wisdom having stuffed itself from the trough of hindsight.

The judges who dealt with Jacob's, The Prison Service, The Probation Service, The Crime and Disorder Partnership, The Prolific and Priority Offender Team, those responsible for writing the farcical sentencing guidelines, the Parole Board and the Government who approved the ridiculous early release programs to reduce our prison population are all responsible for his death. If Jacobs had been given appropriate sentences for his previous offending; if any meaningful rehabilitation existed in our prisons, Jacob's would still be alive. There needs to be a Royal Commission regarding our joke of a justice system.

My congratulations to Mr Cooke for defending himself, his home and his family so robustly. I apologise on behalf of our pathetic justice system that you will have to live with this for the rest of your life.

Tough on Immigration?

2011-09-17T00:04:00.000+01:00

I have had a couple of experiences recently with the UK Border Agency or Immigration Department as they used to be known. My experience confirms that our country's border controls are nothing short of a joke. There is little control over immigration and there is systematic abuse of our laws which we seem incapable of overcoming for fear of legal action and particularly the Human Rights Act.

One sunny morning this summer, some of my officers assisted the UK Border Agency executing a warrant at a local business premise. The result is that five Pakistani men were arrested. Each of the five had entered this country on six month visas allegedly to visit relatives whilst on holiday. All five had stayed in this country for between two and five years and were living and working here. They were brought to the local police station where they were interviewed . It was established that they had all overstayed their visas and were working in this country illegally. They were then removed to an immigration detention centre.

You may be forgiven for assuming that all five would be put on a plane back to Pakistan within days. I assumed that is what happened, but I bumped into one of the Border Agency officers and got an update. At the detention centre all five applied for leave to remain in the UK and appealed against their deportation. One was given leave to remain, the other four were released and told to report to their local police station daily until their appeal was heard. The four disappeared and have have not been seen nor heard of since.

More recently I spent two days at an international airport working with the UK Border Agency. I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. We have people arriving in this country every day who are obviously intending to stay or work. We interview them. They lie. They are evasive. But nine times out of ten we let them in anyway as we cannot prove what we believe. Occasionally we refuse them entry and sometimes they demand asylum. Sometimes they appeal against refusal of entry and we just let them in anyway because the appeal process is expensive and loaded in favour of the immigrant.

I am not against all immigration. Our transport system, our health service and, more recently our service industry have been saved by immigration. It is just a shame that we have more than one million unemployed who do not have the social skills, or any other skills, to fill these gaps.

Currently, for every illegal immigrant the UK Border Force detain only one in three is actually deported. The rest are given asylum or permission to remain or just disappear into the black economy.

If we are going to get tough on immigration we need a very simple system. If we think you might be bogus you go back from whence you came. No appeal, and no asylum, unless you are from a country on a list with serious human rights issues. If you overstay your welcome, you are on the next flight home. No appeal, no discussion. The current system is a complete joke and is being abused and capitalized upon.

Elf and Safety

2011-09-13T23:42:00.000+01:00

I have mentioned before that my job involves attending a lot of meetings. I came to realise that many of these meetings are a complete waste of time. I stopped attending many and nothing happened. I had more time to do my job and focus on policing. The service we provided did not suffer. I thought I was not missed.

My boss recently told me that I had not been attending the Town Centre Management Group meeting. I had been missed and they would like me to attend. So I attended. The agenda had nothing on it that I thought need my presence but clearly I was wanted. Item 7 on the agenda was the turning on of the Christmas lights in the High Street. I was excited to hear that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will be the pantomime at the local theatre this year and the actors taking part will be invited to turn on the lights. The actors will stand on the first floor balcony of the town hall. Concern was expressed that people would not be able to see the dwarfs on the balcony. A suggestion was made that the dwarfs could stand on a bench so they could easily be seen. There was then concern that the dwarfs might get caught up in the excitement and fall off the balcony. The solution: We can stand the dwarfs on a bench but have them all wear harnesses and tie them to the building so they cannot fall.

So, nearly two hours into a meeting that has no relevance to the police at all, we have discussed for nearly half an hour whether some dwarfs from the local panto can stand on a bench and whether they should be harnessed and tied to the building to ensure they don't fall off the balcony. I kept having to remind myself, this was not a dream and this discussion was really taking place. You couldn't make it up!

Questions For the New Met Commissioner

2011-09-12T22:03:00.000+01:00

Bernard Hogan-Who?

Well Bernard Hogan-Howe is the new Met Commissioner. What we know about Bernard is that he is pretty straight talking and doesn't mind ruffling feathers. We also know that he thinks he can run the Met despite the cuts that are coming. He is obviously not going to ruffle the Governments feathers regarding their proposed cuts to the police service. We also know that as the Chief Constable of Merseyside he cut back room functions and focused on the front line and reducing crime. Taking on criminals and gangs is his focus and we should applaud much of what he achieved in Liverpool.

The Guardian has spoken to a number of individuals and asked them what they want the new Commissioner to do. Her are a few of them.

Lee Jasper: ex-equalities adviser to London mayor
He should immediately request the prime minister to announce a royal commission into all suspicious deaths in police custody. I would also hope he would immediately seek to massively reduce the over-representation of young black people in stop-and-search figures. And finally they should abolish the 12th-century office of constable, which gives rise to so much discretionary policing that is not capable of judicial or professional challenge. We need a 21st-century conception of policing not one that relies on feudal law that is completely unsuited to modern times.

Pam Hothi: manager at Chaos Theory, the gang violence prevention charity

I'm a strong believer in building community relations and, given the recent riots, the Met have got a hard task in starting again. Without those relations, you're not going to have positive outcomes in getting people to engage … particularly gangs.
You need to work for and listen to your community that you serve. Zero tolerance policing won't work. Enforcement alone cannot solve the problem. You need a strong balance of enforcement and intensive welfare support. You can't lock everyone up. You'll only end up further marginalising that community.

Jody McIntyre: who was manhandled by police during student demonstrations last year (The Guardians words not mine)

The priorities for a new commissioner should be to end the complete culture of unaccountability that exists within the police and challenge the double standard that is clearly in effect. The police might be there to enforce the law but they are also subject to that law so, if a police officer is suspected of killing someone or mistreating someone in their custody, then they should face the punishment for that crime just like any other member of the public.

Well, Lee Jasper is going to be disappointed. Pam Hothi doesn't seem to understand what the function of the police is. Intensive welfare support is the function of other public services who are failing miserably. Jody McIntyre's comments just confirm what an ignorant bigoted cretin he is. The police have never been more accountable. And as far as I am aware if police officers kill people or mistreat them they are subject of the law. But unlike everyone else, police officers, as enforcers of the law, are subject to far more robust investigations than the public and far more serious sentences on the rare occasions they do break the law.

I have one question for the new Commissioner. At the peak of the riots in London, Jody McIntyre urged people everywhere to rise up and riot in their area. Specifically his post on Twitter said. 'Be inspired by the scenes in #tottenham, and rise up in your own neighbourhood. 100 people in every area = the way we can beat the feds.'

Since then he has tried to say that the tweet was made before the riots and he wasn't inciting people to riot. This is a lie. His tweet was made at 10.02 pm on Saturday 6th August. This was well after rioting started and had been posted all over Twitter and the television. We know that McIntyre will lie to try and substantiate complaints against police and now he is lying to try and escape justice.

I made a complaint to the Met police that McIntyre had committed the offence of incitement to riot. I know others did so too. I have contacted the Met and no one can tell me whether this crime has been recorded or whether any investigation has been carried out or completed. Can anyone in the Met tell me?

My question to the Commissioner is. "If you are going to be tough on criminals. If you are going to be brave and rise above the adverse media that will inevitably arise out of this case, when is McIntyre going to be arrested and charged with this offence?"

Mark Duggan Buried

2011-09-09T21:00:00.001+01:00

I was dismayed to see the funeral of Mark Duggan today. His family insist he was no gangster but we had a funeral akin to one of the Krays.

I was pleased to hear some of the church leaders involved in the ceremony speaking out against violence and recriminations.

I am not surprised at all that David Lamentable, the disgraceful MP for Tottenham, is still blaming everyone else for the riots. His attention has turned to the IPCC. He now states that if the IPCC had dealt with the family and community differently all the rioting could have been avoided. If the IPCC had made clear to the family that they were independent of the police and if they had held a press conference assuring everyone that a thorough inquiry would be carried out none of the rioting need have happened. Isn't the clue in the name? This pathetic, apology for an MP will never ever suggest that some of the people of Tottenham were wrong to start rioting because the IPCC hadn't given them enough respect. Innit.

The IPCC do have some questions to answer. How did they manage to put out a press release stating that Duggan died in an exchange of fire with police? Why did the IPCC not tell the family that Duggan had been shot and killed? Calls for the disbandment of the IPCC are ridiculous. Whatever organisation or process is put in place to investigate police action will never appease some.

I am disappointed that the family, and some of those that latch themselves onto families in these circumstances, are still making ridiculous speculative comments regarding the circumstances of Duggan's death. According to some, the police now have a shoot to kill policy. Duggan's fingerprints are not on the gun found at the scene and so it must have been planted by the police. Duggan was an ordinary family man who was hoping to get a job with London Fire Brigade.

We should, of course, wait for the result of the inquiry but these ridiculous allegations deserve a response. For an unemployed man Duggan had a lifestyle way beyond a person in receipt of benefits. The gun found at the scene was loaded and capable of being fired. The gun was in a sock. This is a well known method for criminals to avoid leaving fingerprints and other forensic evidence. The inquiry may reveal that the police had intelligence that Duggan intended to shoot the person who killed his cousin, Kelvin Easton. He had been stabbed during an argument about a woman and drugs. The police were following Duggan and made the decision to intercept him. What threat Duggan posed to justify being shot is the only real question. If the officer felt he was at threat from the weapon that should be the end of it.

The Trouble With Travellers

2011-09-05T14:46:00.000+01:00

My Force has been asked to assist with the Dale Farm Traveller site eviction and I am getting briefed on the role of our PSU teams. I have read some of the recent rhetoric on the subject. From the right we have calls to bulldoze the site and throw them all off into the sunset and from the left we have calls for compassion, human rights and understanding of the honourable nomadic people. The cause is now being taken over by the usual anti establishment leftie brigade who are rushing to the scene. The proposition of a chance to bash a few coppers is too much to resist.

Dale Farm is green belt land which is occupied by Irish Travellers. The land was agricultural land which has been bought by some of the travellers. All over the country the same thing is happening. There are three illegal encampments in the area I work. The Council are in the process of taking similar enforcement action against two of the sites. The third, they tried to take action but the Court decided that no eviction could take place as there is an elderly lady living there who is ill. When she finally pops off the Council can try again, but if history is anything to go by there will be a pregnant mother or sick child who cannot be moved for one reason or another.

What do I know about Irish travellers? Well when I attend diversity training a Christian traveller lady comes to talk to us. She tells us about the history, the culture and the morality of the traveller community. She talks about the work they do, the travelling and of her own Christian travelling community.

Like nearly all police officers I have had many dealings with travellers over the years. I remember the first non payment of fines warrant I ever tried to execute. It was at the home of a settled traveller family. I knocked on the door and an upstairs window was opened by the person named on the warrant. I explained why I was there and he shouted "Fuck off." No power of entry for a fines warrant, so I did.

Most traveller families keep themselves to themselves and are no different to any other community. A significant number however are criminal and antisocial and have also settled green belt and common land. The travellers sites in my area have never ending piles of tree cuttings and other rubbish dumped on the roads near the site. The Council spend a fortune cleaning up after the few who give the majority a bad name. If we attend the sites we always have to have extra officers to guard police vehicles or they will be damaged. Artifice burglaries are almost exclusively committed by Travellers.

The romantic notion of the community travelling on the open road is pure bunkum. Some Travellers attend the odd fair and visit family occasionally but the vast majority do not move from one year to the next.

I have also learnt that Traveller children generally attend junior school and then most drop out. The girls leave to help mothers look after younger siblings and the boys go to work with their father's. Very few traveller women work. Their role is to cook, clean, bear children and look after their men and children.

It is children that are the main issue with the Traveller community. Most of the girls are married before 18 and they have large families. The Traveller community is therefore growing at a significant rate. If we accept the male dominated, sexist culture that brings this about then we are either going to have to allocate more traveller sites or accept that more an more green belt land will be occupied by Travellers. If the latter happens then there may be more and more Dale Farms to deal with.

Bleating Magistrates

2011-09-01T22:35:00.001+01:00

Some Magistrates seem to be miffed that they didn't get to hear some of the cases against the rioters. From the comments on their blog we should all be grateful that they did not or they would all have been bailed and given community sentences.

The city riots were an extraordinary event and warranted extraordinary action by the police and judiciary. I have explained in my previous post why I do not believe that the sentences being given to those involved in the disturbances are excessive.

The concern now turns to bail. I think it is naive to simply say that now the police have put sufficient officers on the street the likelihood of re-offending has gone. The vast numbers of officers put on the street to quell the disturbances was a very short term solution and those numbers cannot be maintained for more than a few days. If suspects/offenders were not incarcerated there is still a significant risk of further disorder. District Judges made the right decisions regarding bail and set the right tone and example which helped abate the disturbances. Thank God for District Judges!

To suggest that swift justice cannot be fair indicates that the author has fallen for the spin of the lawyers that bleed our legal aid system and denies justice to victim’s day in and day out. I am not suggesting for a minute that defendants should not get proper legal advice and representation, but 25 years ago the vast majority of defendants pleaded guilty on their first appearance and were dealt with. Charge to sentence within 48 hours was not uncommon.

Even in straightforward cases, what we now see are adjournments for legal advice, adjournments for disclosure, more legal advice, interviewing witnesses, mitigation etc. Etc. Often, the defending solicitor has no interest in justice for the individual, simply of extracting as much as possible from the legal aid budget, which has tripled over the same period. (I know many solicitors will howl with rage at the suggestion, but I know some who boast that this is what they do. Others would never admit this but follow the same practices.)

What one Chief Constable was suggesting is that we revert to a system where if you are guilty, you plead guilty at the first appearance and mitigation and sentencing can follow and you are given credit for a very early guilty plea with a reduced sentence. If you want to look at how good the case against you is before you plead; if you want to give it a run and see if the witnesses turn up, or your mates can intimidate them in the Court: if you want to just mess everyone about, hope the CPS lose the file or just assist your solicitor bleed the legal aid system, fine, but if you are convicted, you should have a sentence that deters such behaviour.

Sentencing of Rioters

2011-08-30T18:40:00.000+01:00

There has been some concern expressed from some quarters, including here, regarding the sentencing of those involved in the recent riots.

Personally, I feel the District Judges and Crown Court Judges have not been politically influenced. I rather suspect that, having been constrained for years by our ludicrous sentencing guidelines, the Judges have jumped at the opportunity to step outside of the constraints of those guidelines and give sentences that appear to actually reflect the offence and public demand.

Those who work outside of the failing justice system in this country need to be aware that the sentences given bear little resemblance to time actually served. For example, an offender looting a shop and pleading guilty to burglary has been attracting a tariff of around 3 years imprisonment. A third is taken off for a guilty plea, and so we are down to two years. The offender is eligible for Home Detention Curfew (introduced in 1999) after serving just one quarter of their sentence. So what may seem a harsh 2 years prison actually means 6 months prison followed by around 3 months on a curfew order at home. The home curfew usually applies from 8pm to 6 am but may be less or up to 12 hours maximum. (The maximum curfew may be increased to 16 hours in the near future.)

Shorter sentences are equally reduced. Magistrates currently are only allowed to impose a maximum sentence of 6 months imprisonment. A sentence of 6 months results in 3 months prison at the most and usually 2.

Recently we had a spate of burglaries. The suspect for these offences had been sentenced to 5 years in prison (he had convictions for more than 60 offences) in 2009. You may be forgiven for thinking he could not be responsible as he must be in prison. We have learnt this means nothing and always check. The prisoner may be on weekend release, work experience or even paroled. This man had been released on parole after 14 months in prison.

Successive Governments have conned the public regarding prison sentences and the lack of almost any rehabilitation for those serving less than three years. These policies are just parts of the significant failings of the justice system and one of the reasons the system fails to deal with offenders effectively either from a punitive or rehabilitative perspective.

Notting Hill 2

2011-08-29T22:47:00.000+01:00

Well at least we got out and about tonight. Generally things were pretty good but there were some tensions.

The Carnival is being hailed as a huge success. One man has been seriously assaulted. At about 8pm some youths started throwing bottles at police lines. Couldn't be better could it? Well worth the estimated £4 million policing bill?

What I did see tonight was some much better tactics from the police. Snatch teams backed up by a number of officers resulted in a number of arrests that may not have happened in other circumstances. The yobs will get wise to this and we need to be careful how this develops.

Notting Hill

2011-08-29T00:13:00.000+01:00

I have just got home from the Metropolis having spent almost ten hours sitting around waiting to see what happened at Notting Hill Carnival. The Met didn't seem to want the county Mountie's out on the streets, which was a shame.

I still haven't worked out who is actually in charge of the policing of the Carnival but we did get a few words from a youthful Commander, Steve Rodhouse, who gave us the Young Mr Grace speech. "You've all done really well!" (Sorry, that shows my age. Are You Being Served circa 1973.) The whole of the Met seemed to be crawling with scrambled egg on hats and shoulders.

Commander Steve Rodhouse aka Tin Tin?

The press have hailed the event a success so far and one of the most peaceful with fewer arrests than normal. Radio traffic suggested there were some serious issues. A female officer was slashed with a knife. This seems to have gone largely unreported. At one point youths were throwing missiles at officers and running amok, although that seemed to be sorted out quickly.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

A Man With Some Balls at Last

2011-08-28T00:52:00.010+01:00

My thanks to Zorro for this. Readers of this blog will know that I have been asking for someone from the black community in this country to stand up and speak out about the drug and gang culture in that community. David Lamentable, that pathetic, disgraceful apology for a leader and so called MP for Tottenham will never be that man.

This is quite a long video clip but listen to the Mayor of Philadelphia talking about similar issues in the USA. This man has got the balls that David Lamentable is missing.

More Unrealistic Expectations

2011-08-27T00:16:00.000+01:00

I was going to write a few thoughts down regarding the aftermath of the riots. I am concerned that the Government seem to be happy to allow the Courts to wave the stick and there is a distinct lack of discussion on the policy changes required to reverse the mess we are in. I loathe the disgusting Daily Mail and I don't always agree with him, but Peter Hitchens has said it all for me here.

Ashleigh Hall - befriended a sex offender, Peter Chapman, on Facebook and was subsequently murdered by him.

On another note, this story caught my eye. It is a tragedy that 17 year old Ashleigh Hall was murdered by Peter Chapman a known sex offender. Ashleigh's mother has decided that she is going to sue four police forces who should have been monitoring Chapman. I don't know if these forces failed to carry out basic monitoring of Chapman but to suggest that supervising sex offenders in the community will stop then re offending is like suggesting that having a chat once a week with a drug addict will stop them taking drugs.

There are thousands of registered sex offenders and they are supposed to notify the police where they are living and meet with police supervisors regularly to discuss what they are doing and to try and establish if they are a risk to anyone. I am aware of one case where a sex offender has refused access to the police and the courts have agreed that it is an infringement of his human rights to have the police calling at his home. He refuses to go to a police station and so his supervising officer meets him once a week in his car in a street, 2 miles from his home. How this can have any influence on his offending I don't know.

If you want to eliminate the risk of sex offenders re offending keep them behind bars until you are sure and then we won't have to worry about ridiculous monitoring in the community, which is designed to empty the prisons and give the public confidence, but in reality achieves almost nothing.

PS. I see the former Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith has had the painters in again. Does this mean we can expect another invoice for her husbands porn?

David Lamentable MP

2011-08-22T00:27:00.000+01:00

If you want to make yourself really angry, violently sick or even both, read this article by Tony Blair in The Observer today. Tony doesn't think the riots are anything to do with moral decline, it's all about Tony. He had a plan to solve the whole issue of the underclass. The blueprints were left with Gordon and apparently buried by him. If only Tony had been left in charge the whole issue would have been resolved. How can they print this crud?

All political parties share some of the blame for the policies and strategies that have led us where we are but none more so than the last Blair/Brown regime. While some are still trying to blame the greedy irresponsible bankers it is worth reminding ourselves that these two clowns put the country into £800 billion of debt before the banking crisis. The banking bail out cost us about £65 billion. An unwelcome additional burden on our already debt ridden country, but responsible for less than 10% of our total current debt. So politicians conveniently blaming the state of our economy on bankers are being disingenuous to say the least.

Blair and Brown threw money at the social ills of our society, wasting it in the most disgusting way. Encouraging irresponsible lifestyles, benefit culture and buying votes; discouraging responsibility, boundaries and consequences. Even the wretched Milliband recognised that the Labour party has become the party of the scroungers rather than the working man/woman. For Blair to suggest he could have prevented and solved the problem is an insult to any person with a modicum of intelligence.

I see that David Lamentable, the disgraceful MP for Tottenham, is calling for more money to be thrown at the area. He doesn't seem to understand that just throwing money at poor areas doesn't solve the problem but I guess it is popular with the voters. Voters in Tottenham also seem to like the suggestion that the police are killing black people in custody rather than any suggestion that the black community needs to sort out it's criminal elements.

Incidentally, you may have missed in the news that yet another young black man, Leroy James, has been murdered. There haven't been any protests, demonstrations, riots or even demands for justice because he wasn't shot by the police or stabbed by racist thugs. His killers were members of another black gang. When his father, also called Leroy James, was asked if children should carry knives, he replied. "It is up to them." Mr James is clearly no Tariq Jahan or any kind of role model.

I refer back to my original post on the riots following the shooting of Mark Duggan. When is someone from the black community going to stand up and and actually speak out against the drugs and gang culture in that community?

Some Light Relief?

2011-08-13T00:11:00.003+01:00

" I am pleased to say that the whole situation is now under full control."

THE LOOTERS PRAYER:

Our father, who art in prison,
Even my mum knows not his name,
Thy Chavdom come,
Thy will be done in Manchester
As it is in London,
Give us this day our welfare bread,
And forgive us our ASBO's,
As we happy slap those who give evidence against us.
And lead us not to employment,
But deliver us free housing,
For thine is the Chavdom,
The Burberry & the Bacardi,
Forever and ever.

Innit

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

2011-08-11T20:06:00.002+01:00

The Good

You cannot help but admire the bravery and dignity of, Tariq Jahan, the father of one of the three young men killed in Birmingham on Tuesday night. How he managed to hold it together and speak to the media, I do not know. Rather than demanding justice he simply asked for restraint and an end to the disorder. The way that this community in Birmingham have behaved and the trust the community have placed in the justice system to deal with it is really humbling. Compare that with the behaviour of the animals in Tottenham.

The Bad

I am really worried that the Government just don't get it. It would appear that as the riots have abated for now already the seriousness of the situation is being downgraded. David Cameron talks tough about rioters going to prison while the Courts bail them. He also makes it clear that the reduction in the policing budget will go ahead. Kenneth Clarke has announced that the Government will increase the maximum curfew sentence from 12 hours a day for 6 months to 16 hours a day for 12 months. So already we can see that the focus will be on non custodial sentences.

It needs to be clearly understood that we have a growing underclass who are putting this country at risk of anarchy. We have to address this quickly. Investment in effective parenting, education, prison with real rehabilitation and a Probation and Youth Justice Service that actually sets boundaries and consequences are an absolute requirement for any sort of change. Curfewing these animals in their disfunctional homes and expecting the police to enforce the curfew and keep them under control is not the answer.

The Ugly

Here is Darcus Howe being interviewed by the BBC. With the benefit of hindsight he foresaw these riots coming and it is all because the police have been stopping and searching young black men like his 'angel' grandson for no reason at all.

I recall Mr Howe making a documentary in the West Midlands regarding relationships between the black and Asian communities. Asian youths told him to clear off or they were going to 'mash him up.' I would have thought that Mr Howe would have learnt then and since that young people of all races in many communities are out of control for all the reasons previously outlined.

Shouting racist and blaming the police is the ugly face of commentators and community 'representatives.' It is irrelevant to this situation now and I suggest you are too Mr Howe.

It's Not Over Yet!

2011-08-10T13:06:00.033+01:00

Well, last night London was at peace again, although elsewhere in the country the feral youths went on the rampage encouraged by the scenes in London over the last few days. ‘Free stuff’ is too much of an attraction for the underclass who waste their lives rather than even think about becoming useful members of society.

The best thing I saw last night were decent people out on the streets protecting their properties; some white faces, but largely Sikhs, other Asians and Turks. Earlier in the day, hundreds of people were on the streets clearing up the mess. This sends out a strong message to the yobs that decent people are standing side by side with the police to enforce law and order.

We must remember that it was well advertised that the capital would be crawling with police last night. This cannot be maintained for long and we need to take steps quickly to ensure that there are no serious repetitions over the forthcoming weeks. Offenders need to continue to get knocks on the door and the justice system has got to stop pussyfooting around and incarcerate them. We need to consider setting aside prisons for these yobs. The message should be that you stay in custody until you are fit to join society. Education and training should be provided and you stay there until you reach a level of achievement. The namby pamby nonsense I have to put up with all the time from the Youth Offending Team and Probation needs to stop. All I hear is that they are ‘working with’ someone. This means they have a nice chat with an offender for half an hour and arrange for them to go on a daytrip and have a McDonalds. This is achieving nothing. Goals, boundaries and consequences need to be set and enforced.

These riots are music to the ears of the academics who might now get funded for another ten years to give us their enlightened opinions on all the social causes. For nothing, courtesy of another contributor, I can tell you the issues are family breakdown; absent fathers; grossly inadequate parenting; failure of education; welfare dependency; political correctness; victim culture; the irresponsible toleration of soft drug-taking; the distaste of the notion of punishment and the consequent collapse of authority in the entire criminal justice system; the implosion of the policing ethic and the police retreat from the streets; the increasing organization and boldness of anarchist and left-wing subversive activity; and the growth of irrationality, narcissistic self-centeredness and mob rule and a fundamental breakdown of morality and order.

In the area of self centeredness I would highlight the morals of our politicians and the greed of the affluent and overpaid rich and lack of philanthropic attitude are also contributing factors. In Europe, salaries more than £100K are still quite unusual, unless you are an MEP. In this country we have followed the American model and pay senior executives disgusting amounts of money that cannot possibly be justified. Funnily enough we have the same issues with a disenfranchised underclass and the police are not going to just beat them into submission for you.

We need wholesale changes in policies and strategies to address these issues.

From a policing perspective, the current liberal policies have led to two generations of violent, thieving, drug infested, welfare dependents that breed the next generation with no thought of responsibility. We simply house them and offer more benefits, education, social services etc. They take what they want and discard anything that might show any responsibility. The police to these people are just an irritation or the enemy. We have been talking about rights and responsibilities for years. Let’s have some firm action!

In some communities we have so called community leaders whose only concerns are self interest and adulation. Multi-culturalism is their life blood. Integration would render them irrelevant. The police and politicians have been fawning all over these people for years. We have seen now that they have no control or influence over behaviour in their communities and it could be argued that they actually deter the police from taking action allowing the criminal elements to go about their business unimpeded. We need to maintain and build good relations with the law abiding section of these communities and tackle robustly the criminal underworld within. And when someone shouts racist, we need to reflect on that, but we must not let it deter us from doing the right thing.

I do not agree that events such as the Notting Hill Carnival should be cancelled. This event is a good example of what has gone wrong with policing and society. The Carnival itself is not a lawless event and to cancel it would punish the law abiding majority taking part in it. What I see every year is the unlawful element moving into the event after dusk. I see gangs ‘steaming,’ robbery, violence and drugs. The police play it very softly, softly, scared stiff of the R word and upsetting the criminal elements. We need to let the event go ahead and tackle the criminals head on and clean it up for the decent people. This is a time for action not falling on the back foot again.

PS: It doesn't look as if there is much hope. Just watching the news and looters are walking out of the Courts on bail. That will show them!

You Reap What You Sow

2011-08-08T22:55:00.001+01:00

Well as I write, various parts of London, Croydon and Birmingham are burning. But fear not, I have just read in the Guardian that the Home Affairs Select Committee are going to launch an inquiry into the rioting so that should resolve it PDQ.

This is no longer anything to do with the police shooting a gangster in Tottenham. It is nothing to do with police and community relations. It is nothing to do with police racism. This is about 30 years of a liberal ineffective education system. This is about people being allowed to behave as they wish without any consequences. This is about pandering to to peoples rights with no regard to responsibilities. This is about a criminal justice system that is totally ineffective and that holds no fear for criminals. This is about failing to imprison violent and persistent offenders.

This is the legacy of Blair, Brown, Cameron etc. This is the legacy of the liberal hand wringers who just want to help all these poor offenders and never set boundaries or consequences. You reap what you sow. The blame for all this will no doubt be pointed elsewhere. Last week the police were criticised for being too hard on protesters. This week we are too soft. When the ashes are raked over this will need a wholesale change in policies not just laying the blame at the door of the police, a la MacPherson.

This is not a popular uprising such as the Arab states as some cretin suggested. This is about 2% of the population who have been taking the piss for years with impunity from the justice system. The police can sort it out but the liberal hand wringers might have to accept baton rounds and a few cracked skulls. If you cannot accept that then let them carry on. The Government might have to have a rethink on cutting police officer numbers, and before they cut payments to officers for being riot trained and for being called back to work they need to think that one through. Thousands of police officers have been called in to help tackle the rioting tonight. Cut the payments and next time you will find no one answering the phones. Most of us are devoted to the job and are happy to take all the crap and criticism and inevitable shaftings, but don't expect it for nothing.

Tottenham Shooting - Community Response

2011-08-06T23:25:00.001+01:00

When an alleged gun toting gangster, who tried to murder a police officer, is shot dead you might be forgiven for thinking that a decent law abiding community would support the action taken or at least await the outcome of the investigation. Apparently decent law abiding community does not apply to some of the residents of Tottenham and the usual hangers on who use any such incident as an opportunity to vilify the police.

Tonight about 120 people marched on Tottenham Police Station demanding justice. The dead man, Mark Duggan, was described as 'into things' but apparently he would never harm anyone, ergo he must have been murdered by the police. So a bunch of criminal thugs decide to set light to some police cars and run riot.

When are we going to hear from someone from the black community who will speak out against the drugs dealers, the stabbings, the shootings and the gangs in the black community instead of the silence, tacit support or usual cries of racist police.

When someone dared to highlight the fact that gun crime, stabbings and robberies are disproportionately committed by black offenders this was decried as low level racism by Diane Abbott MP. The same Diane Abbott who sent her son to private school as she was worried that he would be indoctrinated into gang culture if he went to her local state school.

White offenders are also involved in all these types of offences but in general the community does not support them and the press, MP's, community leaders et al line up to publicly show that they are anti crime and want to be seen to be tough on crime. The imbalance in offending rates and the future of many young black people is not going to change until the community start speaking out instead of spouting the usual racist diatribe. I am delighted to see that Diane Abbott has at last acknowledged the problem. When is someone going to have the balls to actually speak out against it?

More on Supervision and Promotion

2011-08-03T00:51:00.000+01:00

One of my PCs is taking the Part 2 Promotion exam. He is not a bad lad and if he passes I will recommend him for promotion next year, not now. Today he showed me one of the Part 2 practice papers. Looking at the problem and the marking sheet I think I would have failed it.

The scenario is this: the Superintendent has been to a community meeting on a local sink estate. The residents are up in arms as burglary and auto crime are up 45% and local youths are believed to be responsible. The meeting is largely attended by the elderly residents who are frightened and were unaware they had a local beat officer. Following the meeting, the Superintendent issued a memorandum stating that proactive patrols of the estate will take place by a number of other officers from various departments and they will be targeting the local youths.

The local beat officer has 15 years service and he has worked on this estate for three years. He is focused on improving relations between the police and young people on the estate. He rarely makes arrests. He has written to the Superintendent asking him to stop the additional patrols as this will alienate the police from young people. The Superintendent has told his Inspector the patrols will continue and to deal with the officer. As a newly promoted sergeant you have been asked to speak to him.

My thoughts were:
1. Tell him not to write to Superintendent without going through supervisor.
2. He has worked this beat for 3 years. What intelligence has he gathered? Who does he think has been committing these offences? What has he done about the suspects? What support and help does he need to deal with them? How can these additional patrols/resources be used to help tackle the offenders without alienating innocent young people?
3. Why is he focused on good relations with young people on the estate? What has he done to engage with other residents and the more elderly/ vulnerable?
4. Why wasn't he at the community meeting the Superintendent attended?
6. What is his arrest record? Why has he made so few arrests?
6. Does he want to be a police officer or a youth worker?
7. Action plan. Monitor performance regarding the crime problem, intelligence, arrests etc. If no improvement move to unsatisfactory performance procedure.

The specimen answers included 1. and 3. and then said thank him for all his good work as a beat officer and tell him an action plan would be considered if he doesn't improve. Nothing about 2. (too challenging perhaps?) And no mention of his poor arrest record.

Is this why we are producing airy fairy supervisors without the balls to challenge or deal with poor performers?

Hacking, Working with Probation and Supervision

2011-07-24T14:35:00.002+01:00

I've gone out of my way this week to talk to people about the phone hacking issue. It is clear to me that the general populous are thoroughly bored with the subject. There is an acceptance that this has happened, the politicos are trying to score points, millions will be wasted on inquiries and little will change. The terrible events in Norway have now taken over the front pages and even Amy Winehouse shooting up her last dose of heroin is up there above the hacking story.

So moving on and back to the sharp end; this weekend my team were joined by a Probation Officer who wanted to come out on patrol with the police and see what it is like from our perspective. I like these attachments and hope that we can genuinely show partners what we have to deal with and that they will learn and take something back from this. There is always some trepidation, I still worry that an officer may say something stupid, but after two years of weeding out the idiots I am confident they will acquit themselves well.

After almost two nights with various officers I met the Probation Officer to have a chat about her experience. She told me that she had been surprised at how tolerant officers were. In the face of drunken abuse, threats and violence she felt that officers had shown remarkable restraint and maturity. She told me that whenever 'clients' had been arrested for drunk and disorderly or public order offences they always said that the arresting police officer had wound them up. This excuse is so commonplace that most Probation Officers accept that D & D and public order offences are actually caused by the police, hence no one ever gets recommended for any substantial penalty in the Probation Officers report. Worse still, Probation Officers when compiling their reports for any offence simply interview the 'client' who gives their account full of bullshit excuses and lies, which the Probation Officer's generally accept. So when the case comes to court the prosecution case is outlined and then the defence outline their case, which is supported by the Probation report. Two one to the defence and their story is accepted as the truth.

We hadn't finished our conversation when a neighbourhood officer called for assistance nearby. I attended with the Probation Officer. On arrival we find two neighbourhood officers, a drunken idiot and a gathering crowd all in a residential street. The drunken idiot is shouting at one of the officers. "Fuck off you bald cunt." The officer is trying to reason with him and to calm him down and send him home. The other is standing there like a lemon. After repeating the abuse twice more I told the officer to arrest him. "What for?" says the officer. He later told me that abusing a police officer was not an offence. I end up arresting the idiot before more embarrassment is caused. He wants to fight but he is drunk and he finds his face kissing the tarmac before he knows what is happening. The crowd are the residents of the street and not the usual drunken town centre morons. So instead of abuse and threats I got a cheer and a few claps from the residents who obviously thought it was about time someone did something.

Back at the police station I have a frank discussion with the Neighbourhood officers, including suggesting they might like to think about a change of career. I will speak to their supervisor, hope they are not equally useless, and tell them to put the officers on performance measures. I have one request for supervisors. Don't send useless officers to Neighbourhoods or CID. Deal with them and if they cannot be developed then get rid of them. In my Force Neighbourhoods have become infested with ineffective officers. We cannot afford to carry them. If we had good Neighbourhood officers our jobs would be so much easier.

Update 24th July - I have just found out the officer who failed to make the arrest has not arrested anyone this year. How can an officer be out working the streets and not make an arrest for almost 7 months. I am going to be on his case from now.

Direct Recruitment of Police Leaders

2011-07-20T12:33:00.001+01:00

Goodbye Ma'am, Been Great Working With You

David Cameron and the Tory hierarchy have decided to use the phone hacking scandal as an excuse to reopen the debate on direct recruitment of police leaders. In his address to parliament today he said. "We believe this crisis calls for us to stand back and take another, broader look at the whole culture of policing in this country, including the way it is led. At the moment, the police system is too closed. There is only one point of entry into the force. There are too few - and arguably too similar - candidates for the top jobs. As everyone knows, Tom Winsor is looking into police pay, conditions and careers, and I want to see radical proposals for how we can open up our police force and bring in fresh leadership."

The first thing I will say about this is that it is one of a number of proposals that Cameron made today criticising others in an attempt to deflect the concerns regarding his own actions and decisions around the phone hacking issues. For example, at least the Met fired Coulson when concerns were expressed regarding his integrity. Cameron kept him on the payroll for sometime afterwards. So should we consider the direct election of Prime Ministers in the same way as American Presidents? Would that open up the job to those that haven't been corrupted by expenses, junkets and nest feathering in Parliament?

His statement criticises police leadership but at least some of those leaders have fallen on their sword and gone as their judgement and integrity has been seriously questioned. I look forward to some politicians doing the same............NOT! And let it not be forgotten that it was Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that cosied up to News International more than any other politicians. And the insipid Milliband, who is trying show himself as being above all of this, was Gordon Brown's chief advisor and still employs a news International executive.

Cameron gave further details about the Public Inquiry. It is broad. It could take years. I suspect that he hopes that after the summer recess the whole issue will have died down and be thrown over to the Inquiry and I will be surprised if the Inquiry reports before the next election. I suspect the whole thing will be a waste of money.

I am against direct recruitment of police leaders. This issue has been discussed at length and I don't think there is any point going dissecting those arguments again here.

There are two important points that may come out of all of this. I hope that now the focus of the police moves away from media spin and returns to crime prevention, detection, terrorism and disorder etc. The press should go back to reporting on our performance and not reporting the spin and garbage being produced by the police media machines. Secondly, ACPO, to date, has been very silent regarding Tom Winsor and his reporting on police pay, conditions and structures. Now that ACPO's future careers face curtailing can we look forward to their voice joining the rest of the service's concerns regarding some of his proposals?

PS - Getting political but I feel the need to remind people what a useless cretin Gordon Brown was. Banking crisis aside, he spent this country into over £100 billion of debt. He has never explained why he sold off 60% of Britain's gold reserves. The only conclusion is that he wanted to spend more. Between 1999 and 2002 he sold 395 tons of gold at an average price of 276.60 dollars an ounce. Since he sold up, gold has risen steadily and now stands at 1600 dollars an ounce. Had this moron kept the gold we would be almost £10 billion better off. Or we could have paid off 10% of the debt the halfwit left us with. Thank you. Just needed to get that off my chest.

Murdoch's Not All Bad.

2011-07-16T14:49:00.000+01:00

Mrs Ferenda has taken to buying the Daily Torygraph. Like all the national papers it contained a grovelling apology from Rupert for all the upset caused regarding the phone hacking. Reading the Torygraph does make you realise that The Times is probably the only decent paper you can read these days. The Times only exists now because it is subsidised by The Sun and News of The World (RIP.) So we have something to thank Sun and News of The World readers for and even Rupert for continuing to produce it.

A story in the Torygraph did catch my eye. It appears to be true. If it is, what has happened to common sense in the police and could we still learn a lesson or two from News International in offering apologies?

Page 16, Daily Telegraph 16th July 2011.

POLICE ALLOWED DRUNK TO DRIVE TO THE STATION FOR HIS BREATH TEST
A motorist stopped for being drunk behind the wheel was told to drive himself to the police station for a breath test, a court heard yesterday.
Jon Herron, 33, a marine engineer, was stopped in his Land Rover on his way home. Officers were unable to breath test because they had run out of the disposable straws suspects are asked to blow through. Instead they asked him to continue his journey slowly to the police station as they followed behind in a patrol car. The route took him across three junctions including two roundabouts. When the father of two was tested at the station in Lymington, Hants, his blood alcohol reading was 105, Southampton magistrates court heard. The legal limit is 80.
Hampshire Constabulary defended the decision to ask Herron to drive himself to the station. A police spokesman said. "He said he had only had one pint of lager." (They all do!) The distance was minimal."

I thought the police had moved on from defending the indefensible. Sometimes acknowledging that perhaps a decision was stupid and offering an apology sounds better.

Phone Hacking

2011-07-10T22:40:00.000+01:00

I picked up the Sunday Telegraph today and the first 8 pages were dedicated to the phone hacking story. Four pages of excuses, apologies and promises from Assistant Commissioner John Yates. Three pages of hand ringing and editorial. One page of opinion on how the press should, or rather shouldn't, be regulated in future.

I am not sure that there is public interest sufficient to justify this coverage. Did anyone give a damn when the Royal Family, celebrities and politicians were having their voice mails hacked? The current revelations are quite disgusting and the politicians are falling all over each other to be seen to be taking action and show some leadership. The same politicians that were fawning all over News International to get support for their party.

After two very expensive public enquiries we will learn that there has been extensive phone hacking taking place within News International and perhaps elsewhere. Some people will go to prison as a result of the police investigation. (The current one that is actually investigating rather than burying it.) Phone hacking will still be illegal. We may get a new body to replace the rather toothless Press Complaints Commission although this is fraught with danger if the independence of the press is to be maintained.

Little will change while there still remains an insatiable appetite by a significant proportion of our population for the salacious gossip and scandal that fills most of the Sunday rags.

The Drugs Debate

2011-07-08T12:29:00.000+01:00

I did not want to get into this debate again but in a recent post I was challenged to put the case for drugs to remain illegal. I delayed this as Gadget stuck her toe in the water on the same subject, although for some reason this did not attract the usual hysterical pro drugs legalisation brigade.

I have read extensively all the arguments for drug legalisation. They are largely weak and flawed. Firstly, the pro legalisation lobby need to come up with a cohesive strategy that sets out exactly what they want to achieve. What is meant by legalisation? Does it mean that there are no controls on drugs and anyone of any age can just buy them in Sainsbury's with their weekly shop? Does it mean that they are licensed in some way such as cigarettes or alcohol? Does it mean that we prescribe controlled drugs to addicts so they do not have to go out burgling and stealing every day? Does it mean that simple possession of a limited amount of drugs is not illegal or subject of non criminal process. Until there is a clear strategy and model the pro legalisation lobby will not be taken seriously.

In country's where drugs have allegedly been 'legalised' it usually means that possession of small amounts of drugs is not dealt with through the criminal justice system but may mean a mandatory referral to a drug clinic etc. This model has been hailed as a success in Portugal, where possession of small amounts of drugs are dealt with by way of mandatory referral to drug counsellors. Portugal had the highest use of heroin in Europe at the time and this reduced up until 2009, but if you delve a bit deeper there are other factors that account for the alleged benefits of legalisation. Portugal's affluence increased significantly during the early 2000's. Portugal had almost no rehabilitation in place when possession was legalised, but significant rehabilitation was introduced at the same time. Some academic studies point out that heroin use is cyclical and has natural peaks and troughs. This is because every decade the current batch of heroin users either die or reach such a low that they chose to use rehab. Heroin use in Portugal is rising again as the current cycle of rehabilitation and deaths has taken its course and the economy finds itself in recession again.

Mexico legalised drug possession two years ago. It may be too early to judge, but clearly this has had no effect on the drugs cartels murdering and butchering each other for their stake of the trade. I do understand that most of that trade is north of their border.

Holland has long been lauded by the pro drugs brigade as a society where a liberal attitude to drugs has brought benefits. Go and visit Amsterdam. There are seedy drug dealers crawling all over the city and equally seedy users looking for their next fix and the money to buy it. Property crime in Amsterdam is one of the highest in Europe. For example, there are 1.5 million bikes in Amsterdam and every year 600,000 are stolen.

Sweden has one of the lowest rates of drug use in Europe and is a model many western countries should consider adopting. They have strict enforcement of drug legislation coupled with significant investment in prevention and rehabilitation.

To my knowledge, no country in the world has de-criminalised or licensed drug production, sale, distribution or supply. This is largely due to the fact that there is a United Nations mandate in place that states that all member countries must have legislation in place to make these activities a criminal offence.

I can understand the argument to supply existing addicts with drugs to prevent them turning to crime to feed their habit. This may make sense but there are risks attached to it. Supplying addicts with drugs will mean that unlawful dealers will work harder to maintain their market and recruit other customers to fill that gap. A strategy will need to be in place to deal with this which will undoubtedly mean further investment in prevention. I am a firm believer in consequences though and if anyone being supplied with state drugs sells them or has other drugs then it is straight off to prison.

I have heard all the arguments against regulating drugs including for the police; diminished public respect, alienation from youth, recruiting difficulties, increased workloads, budget pressures, corruption, injury and death. For society in general; reducing, gang violence, organised crime, property crime, HIV and Hep C, negating organised crime. For the user; state control on price, purity and safety of the product, controlling supply to minors, encouraging users to control or abstain from drug use.

I wanted to touch on a few of the myths that the pro legalisation lobby roll out and which, I believe, are total bunkum.

1. Prohibition of alcohol didn't work in America and drug prohibition does not work either. Prohibition was actually tried in a number of country's before the USA jumped on the bandwagon in 1920. Organised crime took over the supply and distribution of what was an already large and developed alcohol market. What seems to be ignored is the fact that alcohol had been in common use for hundreds of years and was used by the majority of the population. Prohibition was never going to work when alcohol consumption was endemic in society. With a few exceptions, drug use was the preserve of the affluent few until it was made illegal in the 1920's. Making drugs illegal did not mean that a large vacuum was created and it did not affect the general population. Most importantly, by making it illegal a strong message was delivered that drug use was harmful for you and society. Drugs are far more addictive and potentially harmful. The number of alcoholics as a percentage of alcohol users is tiny compared to drug addicts/users.

2. We are losing the war on drugs and we cannot afford to enforce drug laws and we are criminalising 'innocent' people and filling our prisons with drug offenders.
We are certainly not losing the war on drugs and in fact strong drug enforcement combined with rehabilitation has ensured that drug use has remained under control. Drug users have a false belief that more people are using drugs than in fact are. This is because users tend to associate with other users and non users avoid users. In fact only 7% of the British population regularly use cannabis and only 3% cocaine.

Using the same argument there is a better case to legalise all crime. Crime has been endemic in society since the evolution of man and that war is no closer to being won. It is criminalising and alienating far more people than drugs legislation. At age 25 almost one third of young men have criminal records. If we legalise criminal damage, shoplifting, assault, public order offences, drunk offences etc. etc. we can prevent criminalising almost all of society. The argument is ridiculous.

3. Drug legalisation will significantly reduce or eliminate organised crime and make drugs safer.
This is another complete fantasy. Organised criminals currently involved in drugs are not going to just disappear and become volunteer churchwardens because the state is supplying or allowing regulated drug supply. Organised criminals will fight for their market share and simply supply drugs at cheaper prices, target new markets such as young people and, more worryingly, develop more and more new drugs with higher potency and effects. If you look at the current licensed alcohol and cigarette trades, organised crime has moved into it supplying duty free bootlegged goods at cheaper prices but also supplying fake beer and wine largely produced in China and the Far East. The pro legalisation lobby then argue that we don't tax drugs and make them so cheap that the criminal suppliers cannot undercut them. There is some evidence that legalisation does not affect use but supply and price does. Cheap readily available drugs will cause an increase in users and all the costs to society that that brings.

In my view the risks of a liberal experiment of lawful drug supply by way of regulation coupled with lawful possession far outweigh any potential benefits. Liberalisation of possession in countries such as Portugal and Holland has done little to address drugs and crime. The Swedish model of strict enforcement with investment in prevention and treatment works better. Legalisation to an extent that the state is in competition with unlawful suppliers brings genuine risks of significant increases in users and addicts and the damage and cost to society that this will bring. Once you end up with a significant percentage of the population using drugs going back will be very difficult, if not impossible, as was prohibition. Most importantly, making drugs unlawful delivers a strong message to society that, like other crimes, drugs are bad for the user and society and should remain criminal offences.

Hats of to Cleveland CC Sean Price

2011-06-15T10:53:00.000+01:00

TODAY'S HERO, TOMORROWS VILLAIN?

In 2004 a 2 year old boy, Kyle Fisher, tragically died in Hartlepoole 2 days after being taken to hospital from the care of a babysitter, Suzanne Holdsworth. Kyle's short life was not the happiest one. Neighbours stated that his mother was a regular drinker and sometimes left Kyle alone at their home which was in a filthy state. He had an injury to his eye socket, allegedly caused when he fell out of his buggy, while in his mothers care months before. He was due to have an operation to rectify this.

An autopsy report stated that Kyle had fresh bruising to his head and that he had died of a bleed on the brain caused by a significant trauma or blows to the head. Holdsworth was arrested and lied in interview. There was evidence, for example, to show that she had gone shopping while babysitting but she had denied this.

On the basis of the medical evidence that Kyle had died of blows to the head while in Holdsworth's care and that Holdsworth was a liar, the Crown Prosecution Service decided that there was sufficient evidence to charge her and she went to trial and was convicted by a jury.

Holdsworth spent 3 years in custody before being granted a re-trial. This was granted on the basis that there was further expert medical evidence to show that Kyles death could have been brought about by a seizure following a blow to the head earlier, probably within the last 24 hours. Holdsworth claimed that Kyle already had bruising to the head when she went to look after him that night. At the re-trial in 2008, the jury were basically told that either Kyles mother or the babysitter caused the blow that brought on the seizure and Holdsworth claimed it wasn't her. The jury acquitted her, although this hardly confirms her innocence.

Following her acquittal, Holdsworth's partner made 27 complaints against the police. After all, if his girlfriend was 'innocent' it must be the fault of the police that she was tried and convicted. The IPCC carried out the investigation and have dismissed all the complaints but recommended that the police apologise to Holdsworth. No significant faults were found in the investigation that resulted in Holdsworth's conviction. The medical evidence, her lies and those of other witnesses were the main contributors. Chief Constable Sean Price has basically told the IPCC to get stuffed. There will be no apology. Quite right too. You can read his far more eloquent comment on the case here. Hats off to Sean Price!

Yes, this is the same Sean Price who is under investigation for using undue influence in appointing a member of staff. Hence the caption! But lets give credit where it is due.

Police Target Criminals! - Is this news?

2011-06-10T10:29:00.000+01:00

This story caught my eye. The Met have announced that they are cracking down on crime, targeting criminals, executing search warrants and arresting offenders. To help get some publicity for this amazing fact they even took along the mayor, Boris Johnson.

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.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty! Unless it's the Police

2011-06-07T11:54:00.003+01:00

I have read some bigoted shite in the Grauniad but this one probably takes the biscuit.

Babar Ahmad is a terrorism suspect who has been in custody since 2004 and is fighting extradition to the US. He is fighting it as they have a justice system there that sometimes punishes offenders if they are convicted.

When he was first arrested in 2003 Ahmad alleged that the arresting officers assaulted him. An IPCC supervised investigation took place and there was found to be insufficient evidence to charge the officers but direction that one officer should be disciplined.

In 2009 the Met agreed to pay Ahmad £60K rather than go to civil court. You can read another totally biased Grauniad article here as to the case for Ahmad, which doesn't even mention the police response to his allegations.

In 2010 a decision was made to prosecute four Metropolitan police officers for assaulting Ahmad. This went to trial and was concluded last week. The four officers were acquitted and the jury, who took less than an hour to reach their decision, asked if they could shake their hands. Evidence had come to light that MI5 had bugs in Ahmad's house. The recordings from these bugs revealed that specific allegations by Ahmad regarding comments and actions by the officers were not present on the recordings. You can read more here. For example, he stated that the arresting officers forced him into the Muslim prayer position and shouted at him. "Where is your God now!" This, of course drew out all the usual suspects shouting about racism and religious bigotry. It never happened. It is a lie and fortunately for the officers there was a recording to prove it.

So Ahmad has been exposed as a liar, who at the very least exaggerated the circumstances of his arrest, and possibly self inflicted bruising and made the whole lot up. But the fact that he is totally discredited is of no concern to the disgusting excuse for journalists at the Grauniad, who just insinuate that the officers have had other complaints so they must be guilty and that Ahmad, the terrorist suspect, is still a hero for taking on the the fascist police bullies.

I hope that now Ahmad has been exposed for what he is, that he is now relieved of his £60K ASAP and that the officers push for him to be charged with perverting the course of justice.

Concerning Statistics

2011-06-04T23:00:00.001+01:00

There has been a plethora of statistics reported in the press recently. I do try and read behind these as we all know there are lies, damned lies and statistics and, like many organisations, the police are very good at manipulating them.

The first story that caught my eye related to rape offences in Oslo. In the last five years every single rapist charged has been a male born outside of Western Europe. I put this to the back of my mind and then a few days later similar statistics were released relating to the UK. Nationally, one in five rapes is now committed by a person born outside of the UK. In London it is almost one in three. Murder statistics are similar and in some forces more than half their murders have been committed by non UK born residents.

Inevitably there have been calls from the far right to halt immigration and repatriate everyone, especially those of a different hue. I have no time for these people and I do believe that, on balance, some immigration has been beneficial to our country. I do have serious concerns regarding the numbers that have come here in the last 15 years and the problems this is causing in areas such as housing, health, maternity and demands on other public services, including the police.

Another interesting statistic I saw recently is that in the last 15 years the number of households where no one has ever worked has almost doubled. We have an increasing number of British born families sat around at home on benefits while foreign workers have taken up the opportunity of jobs. I for one am glad they have. Our service industry, health service and building industries, amongst others, would be in a mess if left to British born workers (or non workers.)

I am not sure there is a link between these two issues other than immigration. Regarding the rape and murder offences, my view is that we have somehow got to get a grip of the Human Rights Act which allows serious offenders to commit rape and murder but remain immune to repatriation for many bizarre reasons. Somehow we have got to get over the ridiculous HRA. Any immigrant should understand that if you commit a serious offence you will be punished and then sent back from whence you came, and I for one really don't care what happens to you when they get there. But more than that we need to understand more about who is coming here and the risks they may present. We also need to do more about some of the cultural issues that exist, such as where men from some countries come here and see western women as a legitimate target for rape and sexual abuse. That will need some balls Mr Cameron!

Regarding the households where no one works, this will take a generation to resolve. I firmly believe that the reduction that has taken place in acquisitive crime over the last 15 years is largely due to the huge increase in benefits. While the unemployed still make up a significant proportion of offenders that the police deal with for drugs, alcohol and acquisitive crime etc many have stopped offending as their benefits are so generous they neither feel the need to offend or work for that matter. Another interesting statistic for you; currently in Britain one in 10 of all adults of working age are in receipt of incapacity benefit. If the figure was one in 50 or one in 100 then I might think that was reasonable. The idea that one in 10 people of working age too sick to do any sort of paid work is ridiculous. Here is a good example of how that little scam works.

The Government are allegedly cracking down on benefit cheats and reducing some benefits. While I applaud this, I hope that they are prepared for the inevitable rise in crime that will result. We have got to get to grips with the culture that has developed in this country that if you cannot be bothered to work you can live rent free, council tax free and have a decent income and lifestyle on the back of the working taxpayer. The justice system though needs to do its part and have a strategy to deal with an increasing number of offenders who decide that crime pays better than work. I have little confidence in this happening.

Prisoner Released - Breach of Right to Family Life

2011-05-28T09:05:00.000+01:00

This story is from the Mail but it does seem to have an element of truth in it.

Brandon Bishop a thieving, burgling piece of scum, who has a string of convictions, has just been released from prison after serving just one month of an eight month sentence for burglary. He appealed against his eight month sentence on the basis that he is a single parent and his five children cannot be looked after properly by his sister who is trying to look after seven others. It therefore breached their right to a family life under the HRA.

Interestingly it is stated that while he was in prison, the children's mother looked after them at week-ends but not during the week. I assume she works. Can she not use childcare like other normal people have to.

This decision could have huge ramifications. It will only go to encourage the chav scum that infest our estates to carry on banging out children. Every time one of these people commit an offence suddenly they will claim they are their children's sole provider and carer (they know how to work the system) and a prison sentence is no longer an option.

So to all burglars/criminals the message is start banging out a few kids now or you might have to serve some porridge. We may as well give up!

R v Harwood

2011-05-25T14:52:00.000+01:00

I really don't understand all the fuss that some officers are making regards the news that PC Simon Harwood (pictured) is now to be charged with the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson.

Tomlinson may have been a drunk who sold the Big Issue and lived in a hostel for down and outs. He may have fathered nine children who he hardly had anything to do with and let the taxpayer pick up the cost of his irresponsibility. His family may have had nothing to do with him and may have now come crawling out of the woodwork smelling the scent of money. He may have been drunk on the day of his death and he may have been being a bloody nuisance. PC Harwood may have had a long day. He may have had a bad day. He may have been under a lot of stress. His supervisors and colleagues may have been inept at keeping him under control.

But none of that is relevant to his innocence or guilt. Some of it may be mitigation IF he is found guilty. If a member of the public had been videoed striking a man with a baton and later pushing him violently when there did not appear to be good grounds to do so, and that man shortly after collapsed and died then I think we would be surprised and probably outraged if they were not charged. I won't need to change my behaviour following this decision and no other officer should either if they behave appropriately and their actions are justified.

The only contention with the decision of the DPP, Kier Starmer, to charge PC Harwood is that a year ago he was told he would not be. The DPP has decided that significant new medical evidence arose from the inquest to alter that decision. This is a bit thin but, on balance, I think it the right decision.

The significant questions in this case are 1. Did anything else happen to Ian Tomlinson between being pushed over and a short while later collapsing and dying? 2. Did PC Harwoods actions cause Ian Tomlinsons death?

I am happy to let the jury decide.

Don't Dress Like Sluts!

2011-05-14T19:34:00.000+01:00

I loved this story from Canada. A police officer was giving crime prevention advice to a group of young women at a college in Toronto. The poor naive officer at one point said that he shouldn't really say it but if you want to avoid sexual assault then don't dress like a slut.

These comments have caused outrage amongst women's rape support groups and the feminist movement as a whole and 'slut' marches have been taking place all over the world. Their message is that women should be allowed to dress and express themselves however they like but this is not an invitation to men to rape or sexually harass women. The suggestion by the officer is that women are perpetrators rather than victims.

I have every sympathy with the protesters view on these comments. In an ideal world women might be able to walk down the street wearing next to nothing and no man would so much as offer a wolf whistle. Likewise in an ideal world you should be able to walk down the road waving around a grand in cash and no one should think about robbing you. The trouble is that this Utopian state does not exist yet and so it probably is best not to dress like a slut or wave large wads of cash around.

This naive officer made the mistake of of giving some practical but non PC advice. He has been discliplined for it and hopefully will learn not to offer honest advice again.

More on Drugs

2011-05-11T14:02:00.001+01:00

Drugs - Never Did Me Any Harm!

A long time ago now I wrote an article vehemently against drug 'legalisation' and received the wrath of the liberals and users/addicts who believe that de-criminalising drugs will in some way improve the current position. I have not changed my view and having seen the real world of drug addiction, I loathe drug dealers.

Most of you will have read the story the death of Isobel Reilly a 15 year old girl who died of a drugs overdose. She was at a friends party. The hosts father went out leaving a bunch of 14/15 year olds to themselves. (I love this laid back attitude that you just leave young people to it and they set their own boundaries.) The daughter knew her father kept a stash of drugs in his room. She and her friends went and found them and consumed them. Cannabis, Ecstacy and Ketamine. Just the sort of thing that every liberal freethinker has stashed unlocked in their bedroom. Isobel died and three others, including the 14 year daughter of the occupant, ended up in hospital. The father Brian Dodgeon, a University Lecturer and owner of the drugs was arrested and released on bail.

You may have also read that last Tuesday Mr Dodgeon jumped off a bridge in a failed suicide bid. He is in hospital with two broken legs.

Now, I am not suggesting that the case to continue to criminalise drugs hinges on the death of this young girl. The case does however highlight that liberal parents and drugs are a dangerous combination. Drugs are bad for you, whether you smoke a bit of cannabis, do some coke or ecstasy at weekends or you are a heroin addict stealing or prostituting yourself for your next fix.

We all have a responsibility to young people to set an example and encourage others not to break the law or do things that are injurious to their health and well being. Parents using drugs, no matter what their personal views, is wholly irresponsible and wrong. It isn't fashionable in today's liberal society, but it is about time public comment and influence on behaviour was reintroduced without the outcry that we should not be judgemental of peoples choices no matter how stupid they are or how much it costs us. People like Mr Dodgeon deserve to be judged.

Prison Works!

2011-05-11T00:26:00.002+01:00

I wrote an article on this subject some time ago. Now research has shown that recidivism rates for those sentenced to 3 or 4 years in prison is significantly less than those sentenced to one or 2 years. There may be many reasons for this. I suspect that one of them is that those given short sentences are rarely engaged in any diversionary work in prison. Another is that a year or two means 4-12 months actual porridge. 3-4 years means 12 to 24 months which is a long time to reflect.

I reiterate what I said in my previous post. I am against throwing offenders in jail and throwing away they key. There needs to be significant investment in education and workplace training in prisons. Early release should depend on effort and progress.

I wonder if this research will have any effect on Kenneth Clarke's rather liberal view of sending fewer people to prison in favour of community penalties? Probably not.

Olympic Pay Bonus!!!!

2011-05-10T22:53:00.000+01:00

You may have heard that the rail unions have made a deal with Network Rail. Transport workers will receive a 10% pay rise over the next two years and those working shifts during the Olympics will also get a bonus of £500.

In return for this the rail unions have agreed that during the run up to, and over the period of, the Olympics they will not take industrial action.

So, should the police look forward to a similar deal over the next two years? Of course not! We have been given a two year pay freeze and significant cuts to allowances. Anything to do with the fact that the police are legally barred from taking industrial action?

Sudden Deaths - I hate them!

2011-05-03T23:38:00.000+01:00

I have just been to another cot death. After speaking to the grieving parents I had to go and inform the grand parents. If anyone dies unexpectedly, the police have to attend to establish whether or not the death may be suspicious. It is a part of the job I have always detested. We live in a sterile world now where most people have never seen a body. In the third world it is commonplace.

Years ago I attended two cot deaths in a week when I had a nine month old baby at home. I sat up for hours checking my baby was still breathing and tried to buy equipment that would alert me if he stopped. Anything so as not to go through what the parents of those two young children went through.

More mundane, but a regular occurence, is following an ambulance up to the hospital with a heart attack victim who had collapsed in the road. Booking in the body at the mortuary. Searching the body and recording and securing any property. Removing clothing to check for injuries or any other signs of a 'suspicious' death. Are you aware that many bodies lose control of their bodily functions after death?

I don't know what it is but even after a few hours dead bodies have a dinstinctive smell. I know when an officer has been in the mortuary. The smell stays with them until they have showered and changed.

When I joined the police I hadn't even thought about dead bodies. I have lost count of the number I have now seen. Most were ill or just old, but some have been very untimely and awful. The motorcyclist who lost it on a corner and his face hit a lamp post at about 50 MPH. The farmer who sat in his armchair and blew his head off with a shotgun. The depressed woman who jumps eight stories off the town centre car park. The 19 year old boy who hung himself in the woods. The wife and mother who dies of a stroke in bed with her lover. The woman who throws herself in front of the train.

All of these people had families and either I or another police officer have to go and tell the nearest and dearest that their loved one is dead. Not easy, but do it as quickly as decency will allow in my experience.

Sometimes I hate this job!

Complaints Against the Police

2011-04-23T23:48:00.002+01:00

After initial police training I was posted to my first station and given a welcome introduction by a grumpy old Inspector. I didn't think about it at the time but he would have joined the police in the mid 1950's, a very different world from today. He told me that he expected me to get complaints. 'Any officer who doesn't get complaints, isn't doing his job.' He also told me that if I ever got assaulted and ended up in hospital, the offender had better be there too. 'In intensive care!' Sometime later I recall walking past his office and heard him on the phone, almost shouting. 'My officers wouldn't do that. How dare you complain about my officers. Now, go away and stop wasting my time!' He would however, summon the officer concerned and God help them if he thought they had done something wrong. That is how most complaints were dealt with in those days.

I didn't let him down and in every rank I have held, I have received a lot of complaints. As a PC, I spent a lot of my time policing a busy town centre. I didn't tolerate all the drunken yobbery taking place and arrested hundreds of them resulting in a lot of rolling around on the ground and numerous complaints of false arrest, assault. excessive force, abuse etc. I have kept a folder full of all the notices you are given to inform you that you are under investigation for a complaint. I went through them recently and found some quite bizarre ones I had forgotten about. e.g. 'While searching X you squeezed his testicles and when you searched his car, you stole a packet of polo mints.' and 'When driving a police vehicle in XXX Street you stared at Mr Y causing him to hit the kerb and fall off his bike causing injury.' I never even recalled seeing Mr Y.

Nowadays most of my complaints stem from members of the public who haven't got what they want from their local beat officer. They ring me and demand that their issue is dealt with. If it is reasonable and we should be doing it, I agree. If not, I don't. For example, Mr Bloggs rings me demanding that we prosecute his neighbour for putting his bins out on the footpath the night before collection. The local officer has declined to do so. I try and reason with him but he won't have it and I get a complaint. I have had about 120 complaints made against me during my career. These complaints have taken hundreds or thousands of hours to deal with. I can honestly say that not one of these complaints is justified and none have ever been upheld.

The other Saturday I was about to get out of the office on patrol when I get a call to attend the front office. John Smith is in there, he has just been released from custody and wants to make a complaint of assault. I go and have a quick look at the custody record. Smith was smashed out of his brains and tried to start a fight in a local takeaway. The police attend and he decides he wants to fight them. He gets taken hold of and put face down on the ground, handcuffed and taken to the station. In custody it is noted he has a large graze to the side of his face. A doctor is called out to check him, and to examine the officers for cuts to the knuckles etc. There is CCTV of the arrest and the officers actions are reasonable and justified. In the morning Smith is charged with threatening behaviour and resisting arrest. He is released on bail and walks straight round to the front office to make his complaint. He knows the system and when he goes to Court, he wants to be able to say that in defence of the charges he has made a complaint against the officers who arrested him and that it is under investigation. The magistrates are not empowered these days to lock very many people up. They are even more reluctant to do so if someone has made a complaint, in case it is justified. I just wish they would cotton on to the fact that every bugger has made a complaint. To be fair to John Smith he is also very angry. His face looks a mess, but it is superficial grazing.

I ask him what his complaint is. 'Look at my fucking face. Your fucking officers beat me up.' I calmly explain to him the circumstances of his arrest and that the officers may have used perfectly reasonable force to arrest him. The incident is recorded on CCTV and just because he has injuries does not mean that he has been unlawfully assaulted. 'Look at my face! I'm the best man at a fucking wedding this afternoon. Your officers assaulted me and I want to make a complaint.' I would really like to give him the response that my old Inspector did but nowadays the only thing you might get into trouble for is not recording the complaint, even if it is complete tosh.

I fill in the forms and send them off to Professional Standards. I ensure that CCTV of the incident is retained. Smith has wasted the first couple of hours or so of police time that will add up to 20 or more before this complaint is now filed. Smith will either fail to co-operate with the investigation, in which case after his Court appearance it will be written off, once agreed by the IPCC. Alternatively, CCTV will be copied and sent to all and sundry, he will make a statement, the officers will be interviewed, witnesses will be interviewed and statements taken. The file will be sent to the IPCC and he will be told that there is no case against the officers.

I have sat in many an interview with our Complaints Department, or Professional Standards as they are now called, thinking how many more crimes might we investigate if we were not spending so much time dealing with this nonsense.

I do understand that there needs to be a robust complaints procedure that everyone has confidence in. There are some current issues ongoing, such as the Tomlinson case, where officers behaviour is questionable to say the least. The problem is that the system is being abused and overwhelmed which actually makes it more difficult to identify and deal with inappropriate behaviour. We need a system that quickly allows the bogus and unjustified complaints to be dispensed with which will allow more focus on the cases that require it. Incidentally, regarding the incident in the above photo, the IPCC decided that the force used by the officers was justified. This went largely unreported of course.

Between my old Inspector, above, and the current situation, as in many areas of policing, complaints have become a bureaucratic nightmare detracting from public confidence and reducing focus on the real issues.

Police Culture

2011-04-11T00:13:00.000+01:00

The idea for this post came mainly from the comments on the Smiley Culture post but also on a few others. I never cease to be amazed at the outdated and paranoid views of some contributors regarding what they perceive as a culture of corruption within the police. The truth is that, in general, the opposite is the reality.

Fifty years ago under the auspices of good old Dixon of Dock Green, the truth was that public disorder was largely dealt with by the police by way of a beating in a dark alley. Suspected criminals were arrested, confessions were coerced, and occasionally where evidence was lacking, it was fabricated and the bad guys went to prison. The police didn't care what you went to prison for, if you deserved it that's where you should be. Very occasionally an innocent person was convicted and there have been a number of high profile cases showing this. Despite this, some people yearn for a return of the Dixon of Dock Green era.

Legislation, accountability and bureaucracy were introduced to address these cultural issues within the police. Over the last 50 years summary justice has disappeared. Rather than covering for one another there is now a culture of fear meaning officers are hampered in their effectiveness and watching every word they say, worried that another may report them. For example, violent offenders are assaulting police officers because they are not being robust enough, concerned that use of force may be perceived as excessive by a colleague. I am not naive and there are a few exceptions, particularly in some specialist departments. The Met TSG is one. I know two supervisors on the TSG. They are good supervisors and are slowly changing things but there is still an element of covering for some officers poor behaviour.

One of the worst changes in the police is the big brother approach to political correctness. When you attend one of the numerous diversity course it is drummed into you that on or off duty you must report inappropriate behaviour. One of he results of this is that supervisors are reluctant to attend any function where alcohol is present. So celebrations and leaving do's are high risk. The reason is that after a few drinks there is always a chance of someone making an inappropriate remark. It could be a sexist joke or, God forbid, a derogatory remark about sexuality for example. If you hear such a remark, and choose to ignore it, but someone else reports it, the risk to you is that you will be disciplined for not reporting it. For a PC that might mean a reprimand, for a supervisor it almost certainly means dismissal. I rarely attend off duty functions.

Regarding the comments about the police covering for each other and not getting rid of bad apples, nothing could be further from the truth. Every day, police officers are resigning or are sacked because of inappropriate behaviour. Every month a police officer is standing in a dock charged with an offence. In more than 90% of all these cases it is the police who have uncovered and dealt with the crime or behaviour. Officers being disciplined or charged as a result of complaints by the public are few and far between because the majority of complaints have no firm basis. That is another story.

Rather than corrupt thugs, the 2011 police 'service' is fast becoming staffed by ineffective automatons all made in the same PC mould.

Back on the Frontline - 'Yer Mother's Cunt'

2011-04-02T19:34:00.001+01:00

Sorry about the language but this is a reminder to readers and the SMT that this is what the frontline put up with every day.

I don't get out as much as I would like but I do love getting out and am pleased that I still know most of the local offenders. I was out on patrol with one of my officers when we got sent to a report of a domestic in a street nearby. Residents are reporting a disturbance in the street. From the location I knew exactly who we would be dealing with.

Jane has been living with Tony for about two years. This is a record for her. Jane has a council house, she is 38 but looks at least 50. Her 18 year old daughter also lives with her. Jane has never had a job that I am aware of. She regularly gets arrested for shoplifting and drunk and disorderly. She likes a drink and is drunk most nights of the week. Jane has had a series of waste of space boyfriends, who she moves in and out on a regular basis. Tony is a full time thief and preys particularly on the elderly, fleecing them at every opportunity. He is in and out of prison. He too likes a drink and most nights the pair of them are drunk and fight and the police are regularly called.

Jane's mother lives four doors from Jane, also in a council house. She doesn't work, but at least she doesn't get drunk all the time. About three months ago Jane found out that Tony had been sleeping with her daughter. About a month ago she found out that Tony had also slept with her mother. Three generations, probably not a record, but class. After each revelation Jane threw Tony out for at least 24 hours and since then the drinking and fights have escalated.

We arrive in the street and there is Jane as drunk as a skunk shouting and swearing at Tony. She seems to still be upset about him sleeping with her mother. I thought she would have got over it by now! For some reason she still sees her mother is an innocent victim in all this and they are still on good terms. Tony, for once, is sober and trying to calm her down. We try and talk to her and the only response I get is "Fuck off, yer mother's cunt." We try and calm her down and get her in the house but she is having none of it. She gets arrested and I take her to our vehicle. Tony is trying to stop her being arrested (He does love her really!) and has to be told to go away. Jane is repeatedly saying to me. "Yer mother's cunt." Unprofessional, but I just couldn't help myself. I said "You want to ask Tony about 'yer mother's cunt.' He knows it very well." It took a moment to sink in but when she finally realised what I had said she takes a haymaker of a swing at me, which is easily avoided. "Yer mother's cunt." She says.

Jane gets charged with drunk and disorderly (not assault, that would have been unfair) and is sentenced to one days imprisonment. She has already served the days imprisonment having spent a night in the police cells, so she is free to go and do it all again.

Drugs and Gaol

2011-04-01T00:49:00.000+01:00

A few newspapers ran the story about new sentencing guidelines for drug dealers. Apparently, if you have only got up to 50 deals of heroin or a kilo of cannabis then in future you will be viewed as a small time dealer and are likely to receive a community punishment rather than prison.

The same day this story broke, my officers began to report that all the local drug dealers and runners are cock a hoop about this. The only concern they have in their wasted lives is getting caught with drugs and going to gaol. A community penalty is no penalty in their eyes and they can now continue wasting their lives secure in the knowledge that their liberty is not at risk.

It appears to me that the police are the only criminal justice agency left that actually gives a damn about crime and consequences. I hear more and more officers expressing the view that we should not bother any more. I countermand that view but wonder how it is being reflected on the front line. I do believe that these sentencing guidelines will encourage more people to become involved in unlawful drug supply and all the negative consequences that brings to our society.

TUC March - Who is Responsible?

2011-03-28T23:28:00.000+01:00

Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens

Like many police officers, I felt angry and frustrated that a few hundred extremist idiots were allowed to run amok in London last Saturday almost with impunity. I live in hope that evidence gatherers will be able to identify at least some of these cretins and they may yet be brought to justice. That is of course justice as we now have it in this namby pamby, arty farty, airy fairy apology for a justice system. Remember the lad arrested following one of the student fees protests for throwing a petrol bomb? He got a 12 month referral order, a.k.a. a slap on the wrist and an occasional chat with a youth offending team worker. But, is it strategically acceptable to stand by and allow premises to be destroyed and people injured and then try and pick the offenders up later? I think not.

Having thought about the violence further, I thought surely the management could not have got it that wrong? The intelligence was there, the officers were there, we just didn't have the strategy and tactics in place to deal with a small minority of people intent on just causing trouble and injuring officers. Forget the latest offers from Theresa May about new policing powers. The powers are there. All these idiots could have been searched and photographed and even turned away from the area if that is what was needed. Forget also the talk about all the arrests made. The vast majority of arrests were made at Fortnum and Masons. The protesters there were pretty soft targets. Hardly any of the real violent thugs got arrested.

The person responsible for public order policing in the Met is Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens. Lynne is a high flyer and potentially the first female Met Commissioner. She is nobodies fool. So what was the plan that day? If Lynne is going to get that job then she cannot afford to mess up in a big way.

Was the plan to take a softly softly approach because of the criticisms over kettling and risk what took place? Or was the plan to let the extremists run riot and smash up business, banking premises etc. Perhaps that will wake a few people up to what will happen if the police are not there to protect them. Was Lynne thinking about our future pay and pensions?

Smiley Culture - Murdered by the Met?

2011-03-19T00:54:00.002Z

A slightly risky subject, but here goes. Firstly, my sympathy to Smiley's family for the loss of their son/brother/father. Whatever he may or may not have done, no decent person would have wished harm on him.

The story reminded me of a drugs raid I was on many, many years ago. I was young, naive and inexperienced. Instead of handcuffing the suspect, I let them wander around. We were conversing while other colleagues were searching the house and all seemed well. The next thing I know they have managed to grab a knife and are slashing at their wrists. Fortunately, I managed to get the situation under control without serious injury to the suspect or harm to my colleagues. A short time later we found a substantial quantity of Ecstasy. The suspect knew we were going to find it and that he was going to go to prison for a few years. He was an addict himself and decided that he didn't want to go to prison and attempted suicide. I was fortunate. The suspect was white. He wasn't seriously injured and I was able to learn a lesson from this experience without it being taken further..

Smiley Culture had a couple of minor hits in the 80's. He has led a lifestyle since that begs some questions. He claimed to have made money investing in third world gold and diamond mining. In September 2010 he was charged with conspiracy to supply cocaine and was due in Court for trial on the 21st March 2011.

I don't know what further evidence the Met had to execute a search warrant at Smileys £1million house on the 15th March, but a magistrate was obviously satisfied there were grounds to do so. An hour and a half after the Met arrived at his address, the officers allowed Smiley to go to the kitchen to make some tea. In the kitchen he took a knife and stuck it in his chest, piercing his heart.

The family don't believe this and are calling for a public inquiry into his death. I have no doubt that the Met are not responsible for his death. I feel sorry for the officers involved in this search. They are going to be dragged through the mill with an investigation by the IPCC and at the inquest by legally aided barristers, representing the family. All sorts of nonsense, with no basis, will be alleged. I hope they get through it unscathed.

Working with Partners

2011-03-16T00:06:00.000Z

I get a call to help out. In the front office of the police station we have a young mother, a Social Worker and a lady from a women's hostel. The young mother and her boyfriend have had a row and he has taken their 13 month old daughter to his mothers address nearby and says he is keeping her. They want the police to go and seize the child and hand her to the mother.

I ask some pertinent questions. I am nice and polite and want to create a good impression with these partners. The lady from the hostel is rude and ignorant. She clearly hates men and loathes the police, so I have no chance. The Social Worker is polite but naive in the extreme.

I explain that we have no power to just go and seize this child. The lady from the hostel has the simple view that the child belongs with its mother and no man is fit to be looking after her. Clearly not been on the police Diversity Course. Perhaps we could offer her a space and build relationships?

I know the lad who is the father. He has been in a bit of trouble but he is not bad and I know I can talk to him. I tell them that the Social Worker and I will go and visit dad, while mum and hostel lady can park up nearby and we will see how we get on. I go to the door with the Social Worker, it is answered by the lad. The Social Worker immediately says. " We've come to take Kylie (not real name) away." The lad says. "You can fuck off." And slams the door shut. I suggest to the Social Worker that perhaps that was not the best opening line. I will speak to the lad alone. I knock again, get invited in, The lad is their with his mum. The child is fine and being well looked after. After a cup of tea and a chat he agrees that he cannot look after the child. He has work in the morning and it would be best to hand her over to her mother. I call Social Worker in and child is taken to mum. Sorted. Hostel lady is still scowling.

I quite like working with partners generally, but many of them are ignorant, useless, bigoted and rude. If I behaved like that I have no doubt they would make an official complaint about me. The police tend to accept this behaviour from partners as if we are in some way deserving of it. I didn't complain about these people. Perhaps I should have?

Winsor Report - Police Shafted!

2011-03-09T09:01:00.003Z

Watch your backs, you are about to get shafted!

Well, the long awaited report is out and I have been disturbed to read that some of my colleagues think it is OK. This Government has been working the media like a puppet and putting out the most outrageously false and malicious examples of police pay and allowances to gain public and media support. Officers should not be duped by this. The media have concentrated on the financial stuff and it is true that officers might have been even worse off financially, but 40% of officers will lose around £3000, or more, a year and ALL officers will be worse off taking account of the recommended cuts, a two year pay freeze, increased pension contributions and inflation. On top of this, the pension review is yet to come and it is looking more and more likely that as well as a 3% increase in pension contributions, the benefits will be considerably reduced. There is talk of pensions being paid on the average of your whole career rather than final salary and that you may not be able to actually get your pension until aged 65.

The most worrying of the Winsor recommendations do not involve salary or allowances, but will effect officers futures dramatically. These include redundancy, expansion of Pension Regulation A19, on call and changes to shifts. I have summarised some of the key recommendations below with my personal notes on how this may effect officers in the future. Believe me we are being shafted!

Recommendation 2. Officers working between 2000 and 0600 will receive an extra 10% on pay only for those hours. (This extra pay is not pensionable. This is less than CRTP which is pensionable. Therefore less pension.)

5. The Chief Constable should only have to consult the Police Federation on shift patterns and not have to obtain agreement as they do now. (This would effectively mean Chief Officers would be able to impose any shift pattern they wish.)

6. Overtime currently incurred on a normal shift and currently paid at time and a third to be paid at flat rate. No minimum four hours, just the time you work and travelling time. (So, if you are on call and have to take a call to give firearms advice etc. You get paid 30 minutes? More about on call later.)

7. Overtime paid for rest days less than 15 all to be paid at time and a half. No double time for less than 5.

8. Officers to be paid double time for Christmas Day and seven other days of their choice. ( So no automatic payment for all Bank Holidays. This is a reduction as some years there are 11 Bank Holidays.)

11. Mutual Aid, officers to be paid only for time worked and travelling time.

12. Officers retained overnight on mutual aid etc. have to be provided with a single room and en suite. If not, they can claim £30 overnight allowance. (This is a huge change to the Hertfordshire agreement, where officers were paid 8 hours for sub standard accommodation.)

13. Officers held on reserve to be paid an on call allowance of £15. (So you hang around all day waiting for a call to go to work and all the restrictions that means for £15?)

15. No appeal to the Secretary of State for officers with business interests. (This may cause difficulties as more and more officers seek second jobs to pay the bills.)

25. Chief Officer bonus scheme to be suspended for two years. (Just so you know they are suffering too, but their £100K plus should see them through.)

26. Chief Superintendents to continue to receive posting allowance taking account of responsibilities.

27. Superintendents bonus scheme suspended for two years.

28. Higher basic pay for Metropolitan Inspectors and Chief Inspectors to be retained in the short term. (So I guess after the Olympics, don't be surprised if you are reduced to the country bumpkin levels of pay.)

29. CRTP abolished as of 31 August 2011. (This was an additional pensionable allowance for those at the top of their pay scale.) Also, there are to be no incremental pay rises for two years. (So, a two year pay freeze and no increments or CRTP to help out.

31. Team Awards of between £50 and £100 p.a. for good work.

32. ACPO and the Police Federation to establish a working group to establish a series of new National Policing Awards. (Sounds like one of these American style bashes where we all try and big each other up and forget the real world of unpaid bills.

33. Abolish SPP's as of 31st August 2011. (For some officers in my Force this means a loss of £6800!)

34. Introduce an interim Expertise and Professional Accreditation reward of £1200 per annum. (The examples in the report show it being paid to Neighbourhood Officers, Accredited detectives and PSU officers. It partly compensates some for loss of SPP but is also clearly designed as the start of a plan of pay differentials between officers performing different functions. If you move to another function you lose it and it is not pensionable.)

42. Regional Allowances to remain in the short term. (Again, I strongly suspect that after the Olympics this will be reviewed.)

43. The replacement to housing allowance will be frozen as of 31 August 2011. (Inflation will erode this allowance and again reduce officers standard of living.)

44. A national on call allowance to be introduced of £15 per day, after the officer has completed 12 days of on call. (This has major implications. At present, on call is voluntary. The introduction of the allowance may make it mandatory for all officers. It appears that you will have to do 12 days of on call for nothing each year and then only get paid from the 13th. The payment is derisory for the inconvenience of being held in reserve for a day or being woken up at 0400.)

48. Maternity pay will increase from 13 to 18 weeks. (Good, but this just puts us in line with other organisations.)

52-54 All relate to unsatisfactory performance and the suggestion that there should be a cross border cadre of ACC level experts to deal with UPP. (This tells you that the organisation wants to get a lot tougher and more professional on UPP so that they can deal more effectively with it.)

57. Expand the use of Pension Regulation A19 so that it can be used for service critical skills and performance. ( This is very worrying and would effectively mean that once you reach pensionable service you can be dispensed with for almost any reason.)

58. As soon as possible, voluntary exit terms for police officers should be implemented as per the Civil Service Compensation Scheme. (Buried almost at the rear of the report is this huge change to police officers status as officers of the crown. If implemented, this recommendation will mean that officers can be made redundant. In an organisation that Chief Officers reorganise every five minutes this is a huge risk to officers. You find your department amalgamated or moved and instead of a move to another station you could be facing redundancy.)

Sorry this is quite long, but I think it is worth airing. You can see the full report if you follow this link.

http://review.police.uk/documents/police-remun-and-conditions/first-report?view=Binary

My condolences to all fellow officers, but this is going to be a difficult few years and everyone is going to have to tighten their belts. I only hope that the Police Federation can negate some of these recommendations and do their utmost to ensure officers standards of living are maintained. When the Fed ask for action, officers must support them.

Police Pay and Conditions

2011-03-05T22:35:00.000Z

Well, next week we will see what the Winsor report has to say and recommend regarding police pay and conditions. We can have a good guess as to what might be coming after Theresa May this week announced that the police must expect cuts in pay.

It has already been announced that there will be a freeze on pay for the next two years. The cuts will almost certainly come in the form of cuts in overtime and allowances and an increase in pension contributions. It has been leaked that there will be a recommendation for an increase in pension contributions from 11% t 14%. The press are forever slating the public sector and particularly the police for their pensions. No mention that we pay through the nose for it. Currently 11%, I don't know of any other organisation that pays anything like that.

It also seems likely that allowances such as housing allowance, South East and Met allowance and Special Priority Payments will be cut or abolished. I won't explain all of these but suffice to say if they are abolished and pension contributions are increased officers could lose up to £6000 a year.

Finally, it seems likely that overtime payments will be cut. Forget what you have heard in the tabloid press. General overtime is paid at time and a third, cancelled rest days less than 15 days are paid at time and a half and cancelled rest days and bank holidays are paid at double time. For the inconvenience to officers private lives this is fair. Too much overtime is paid because of managers lack of planning. If officers private lives can be mucked around with almost no penalty to the organisation then poor planning will be encouraged and officers private lives put in even more turmoil. This will have devastating effects on morale and productivity.

I don't expect any sympathy with regard to this subject. I would merely like to state (as have other police bloggers) that the risks around this are that we will go back to the 1970's, pre the Edmund Davies review of police pay and conditions. Like MP's jobs, there will always be candidates for the role of constable, but the quality will be very poor as it was in the 70's. The consequences partly led to the riots of the early 80's. And when the next lot of protests regarding student loans and cuts takes place, don't be surprised if there is a shortage of police. When officers get a phone call at home and are expected to drop everything and go to work with no recompense, they won't answer the phone or will say sorry, been drinking cannot help.

It should also be remembered that the police by law cannot take industrial action and to incite it is a criminal offence. The police deserve to be treated with respect and rewarded for this restriction on their working conditions. It appears that the Government, having only recently suggested they would give us the right to take industrial action, have decided that they will continue to withhold that right but have no regard to it when considering pay and conditions. I wonder what would happen if every firearms officer who voluntarily holds a weapon protecting Prime Ministers, Home Secretary's and Royalty, handed in their weapons and left them to it?

Corruption Update

2011-03-03T23:25:00.001Z

Last year I ran this story regarding senior management corruption. Two senior officers had been given exemptions from fines and points by other senior officers. They were given exemptions as they claimed to be attending important meetings and were on call in case of serious incidents.

Truth was they were not attending meetings, but my question was; even if they had been, why on earth were they exempted? Is it common practice for senior police officers to exempt others from driving offences for such frivolous reasons? The two officers went to court but were acquitted. Why they weren't disciplined remains a mystery, until perhaps now.

I have it from a very good source that when the officers made a request to view undisclosed material some startling facts were uncovered. During the investigation the Force had obtained the full banking details of at least one officer and two other persons, linked to him, but not employed by the Force. It had also obtained full details of telephone usage by the officers.

So, it would appear that the Force decided to go on an unlawful fishing trip to see if they could dig up any other dirt on these officers. The DCC, having told people he was going to personally see to it that the officers were disciplined and sacked, appears to have had to back down and let them have their jobs back or face being sued, with all the embarrasment that would have brought to him and the Force.

Cyber Police

2011-02-27T00:18:00.000Z

This story appeared in a number of the national newspapers and caught my eye. A school liaison officer in Reading has engaged a 'volunteer teenager' to scour Facebook for bullying and inappropriate remarks and this could end up with the 'offenders' being sent a warning or possibly arrested. My best guess would be this officer wants to make a name for himself for some reason. I think we have better things to do.

I recall about 8 years ago one of my officers received a complaint as he declined to deal with some silly remarks on a website, I forget the name of the site but something just prior to Facebook. I went to see the complainant, who wanted the police to go and speak to a boy who was making stupid remarks about his son. They were both about 13 and at the same school. Real juvenile stuff. I suggested that he go and speak to the boys parents. He didn't want to do this as he was unsure as to what response he would get. I suggested he tried and if he got a poor response we would reconsider. No, he wanted the police to do it. I declined and ended up with a complaint too.

You will see from the article that Reading police alone receive about 240 complaints a year of online harassment or abuse on Facebook. Nationally, obviously, it is thousands of crimes. All of these have to be recorded and investigated or we will be castigated by the National Audit Office (This QUANGO is soon to be scrapped.) Add to this all the thousands of 'crimes' we have to record because of threatening and abusive e-mails and texts (that the underclass, largely, cannot avoid sending to each other) and you will understand that we are spending thousands of hours dealing with petty juvenile abuse that is inappropriate for the police and courts.

I do understand that bullying and harassment can have very tragic consequences and persistent and serious cases will still have to be dealt with by the police. I think the Government as part of the 'Big Society' needs to review whole areas of work that the police have had to take on because of shortcomings elsewhere and unrealistic expectations. There should be a clear expectation that individuals, the websites, parents and schools deal with this sort of low level antisocial behaviour and the police focus on real offenders.

Colin Hatch RIP?

2011-02-23T23:34:00.000Z

I guess like many people, when I heard of the death today of the murderer and child abuser Colin Hatch, I thought bloody good riddance. If you don't know what crimes this disgusting man was responsible for have a look at this.

I have no doubt that there will be an inquiry regarding how another inmate managed to murder him in a Yorkshire prison. I do understand that there is a duty of care towards all prisoners. Prisons cannot be allowed to become institutions where inmates kill or maim others as they see fit. Where will it end?

In the case of Hatch, I just hope they don't spend too much on an inquiry. There will be very few mourning his demise.

ACPO and the APA

2011-02-09T23:50:00.001Z

I recently wrote about ACPO regarding their handling of covert operations. I suggested that perhaps it was time their cozy funding arrangements with the Home Office and the Association of Police Authorities came to an end and we said goodbye to ACPO.

Police Authorities throughout the country are looking to save money and funding to ACPO is under review by many. ACPO is now fighting for its survival. Many Police Authorities believe that ACPO has grown too large and should be subject to the same cuts that Forces have been subjected to.

Incidentally, over the last decade or so, Police Authorities have grown large secretariats, employed chief executives etc. And members expenses are not insignificant, resulting in large increases in the running costs of Police Authorities, paid for out of the police precept. While police forces are struggling to find 20% savings on their budgets, my Authority has no plans to save anything from its own budget. I suspect other Authorities are the same.

Maybe we should welcome the new Police Commisioners in 2012 after all.

Civilian (Police Staff) Redundancies

2011-02-05T00:08:00.000Z

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been very critical of my force for the way they have managed the overall budget. Instead of focusing on front line resources, we have invested millions of pounds on spin doctors and backroom departments whose role is to convince the public we are doing a good job. In reality we have reduced the number of front line officers significantly and we con the public. For example, we have police staff whose role is to telephone the victims of crime and try and convince them we have done all we can to detect their crime. The reality is, we have done little or nothing to do so.

A year ago the force attempted to balance its budget by cutting the number of police managers. Inspectors were reduced by 30%. Chief Inspectors by 50% as were Chief Superintendent posts, reduced from 8 to 4. At the time there was little support to retain the managers other than from the mangers themselves. The senior management found it very easy to convince the public, Police Authority, councillors etc that reducing the number of senior managers was cutting fat and we could survive quite easily without these expensive resources. The reality is that officers on the ground are not being directed, supervised and supported properly. This will have adverse long term effects on the training and development officers and a risk of negative cultural issues arising. Interestingly, we reduced to 4 Chief Superintendents as planned, but have since increased to 6, including one who is acting up from Superintendent. Two of them have been given project type jobs to do until we can find them something else to do or they find themselves a job as an Assistant Chief Constable.

Another part of the grand plan was to reduce the number of police buildings. We were to sell expensive old police stations and have officers working from shops and surgery's. To date we have not sold one police building.

The Comprehensive Spending Review has meant further cuts and the force has now had to cut its police staff propaganda machine. 43 police staff managers are being made redundant. Other police managers are having their roles redefined and they are having to reapply for roles with slightly different job descriptions and lower grades and salaries.

I feel very sorry for the police staff who are losing their jobs. I know many of them and they are good people who thought they had lifetime careers with the force. They have mortgages, families etc, and the consequences for some are quite dreadful. I blame the senior management who introduced these roles in the first place when they were unnecessary. The sad truth is that when all these latest redundancies have been completed over the next few months, front line officers will not even notice. They will hope that there will be less intrusion and bureaucracy being imposed upon them. We live in hope!

Have we lost the plot?

2011-02-01T22:48:00.001Z

You're Fired!

Like all police forces, ours has become a model of political correctness. Sadly, it appears that you are more likely to get promoted for reporting a colleague for inappropriate behaviour than for being an effective police officer. How does an officer tick the box and give an example of how they have dealt with an colleagues inappropriate behaviour if they are just getting on with the job and arresting offenders?

Last week an officer faced a gross misconduct hearing for inappropriate behaviour and was sacked. I have reflected on this ever since and I feel very strongly that the officer was dealt with too harshly. Am I right or am I just an old dinosaur out of touch with the world of today?

The circumstances are very simple. A young male officer walks into a police building and sees a young female officer, who he knows, but has not seen for some time. She is on her mobile phone and facing away from him. He walks up behind her and taps her bottom with his toe. She turns around and he waves and says hello and then carries on so as not to interrupt her phone call. She believes that he patted her bottom with his hand but he has always insisted it was his toe. She cannot be sure. She reports the incident.

I fully accept that what the officer did was unacceptable and that he was wrong to do it. But did he deserve to be sacked? I feel the right course of action would have been to give a formal written warning. Then, if he was stupid enough to repeat similar behaviour, of course he must go.

I would be glad to hear the views of other officers and particularly members of the public. Am I, or are the PC police out of touch with the real world?

ACPO PLC RIP

2011-01-23T11:16:00.000Z

There has been little comment from ACPO regarding the debacle of undercover police officers going native and being outed in the press. There is a bland release on the ACPO website from the President of ACPO, Sir Hugh Orde (pictured above.) All this says is that ACPO support a reform of the current system.

ACPO PLC is not a staff association. It is largely funded by the Home Office and the Police Authorities and its main functions are to develop policy and provide advice to the Government on policing matters. ACPO also makes significant amounts of money from private enterprise. For example, they made £18 million last year from CRB checks. One has to question why ACPO were allowed to take on this money making enterprise while other loss making functions, such as Airwave, PNC etc. have been dumped on the NPIA.

It would appear that ACPO have failed dismally with the national co-ordination of specialist and high level undercover officers. The poisoned chalice is now being passed to the Met and will undoubtedly move to the National Crime Agency, when that organisation is set up from the ashes of the NPIA etc.

It will leave ACPO with the police national information and co-ordination centre, national community tension team, and the vehicle crime intelligence service known as Truckpol. I think we should have a good look at all these other functions and consider whether or not ACPO PLC is the best place for them. Moving the lot to the National Crime Agency, including the profit making CRB checks, would seem to be sensible. We can then stop the £15 million Home Office grant to ACPO and it can disappear into the ether, never to be missed.

Civilianisation at its best

2011-01-17T23:58:00.000Z

It's been a while and I have been meaning to post a few comments regarding some current issues. I may get around to it yet.

I have previously criticised police forces for the apparent ambition to attain a 50/50 balance of police officers and police staff. Some forces have exceeded 50% staff. The argument has always been that police staff are cheaper and therefore we get more for our buck. My argument has been that whenever we replace officers with staff we always have to employ more staff than officers and so there are no savings. I also argue that police staff don't understand the business of policing and cause inefficiencies because of this. I wanted to relate a couple of stories, in a light hearted way, to emphasise some of the problems. These are true stories from my force.

A former police officer, who is now running his own business, was fed up with the milk being delivered to his office being stolen. He got up early one day and waited and caught the offender. He marched them round to the police station which was only 200 yards away. The civilian at the front desk has been trained that if anyone comes to the police station to report a crime they are to be told to go to the phone in the front office put there for this purpose. The phone is a direct line to the crime recording bureau who take the details and give the victim a crime number, offer them victim support etc. The victim in this case repeatedly made the point that he wasn't just reporting a crime, he had the offender in custody. He got nowhere with the person on the desk and eventually rang the crime recording bureau. An hour after he first arrived at the police station, a police staff manager eventually realised that perhaps this was an exceptional case and a police officer would have to be dispatched to deal with the offender. The trouble was that there wasn't one at the police station and the victim had to wait another 20 minutes for a police officer to arrive from another town.

The second story is about a motorist who rang the police (rightly or wrongly) to report a problem in the road.

Motorist. "Hello, I have found a large hole in the road. It is dangerous and might cause an accident."
Operator "Hold on caller. I will put you through to someone who can help you."
The phone is transferred and answered. "Hello, lost and found property. How can I help you?"

Away with the Faries!

2010-10-21T23:07:00.000+01:00

I was hobnobbing with some of the Force hierarchy recently. For the record there wasn't an apron or set of antlers in sight. Drink was flowing and one of the ACC's made a few indiscreet comments regarding the other ACPO team. Don't trust the DCC he said. I don't. What he says to officers and what he says and does in the corridors of power are two different things. He also said that the Chief Constable was a very clever academic but 'away with the faries' when it came to the practicalities of providing an effective police Force. An interesting perspective on the senior management team.

So, how is Oberon (King of the Fairies, geddit!) proposing to deal with the CSR. There seems to be relief that we are only going to take a 20% cut in funding rather than 25%. Oberon has sent a letter to all senior managers in the force setting out his vision as to how this money is going to be saved. He is adamant that front line officer numbers will be preserved. This would be good but we have experience of how the figures can be manipulated and front line officers may be redefined if necessary. This is what he proposes. Worth noting as it will come your way too:

1. Less bureaucracy in crime recording. (This means that the police staff that record crime reports over the phone and the police staff and officers that allocate crimes for investigation will be merged and centralised.)

2. A changing culture of value for money. We have got to learn to do even more with less. (Sounds great, but what does it mean? The pot has been squeezed for years. With regard to officers, there is little if anything left.)

3. Further cuts in leadership numbers, administrative support and support services. (This is good but is unlikely to go far enough. The Force has almost trebled its police staff over the last ten years. Senior police staff have been allowed to build empires and grow their salaries and importance to ridiculous levels. To date we have seen nowhere near enough culling of these parasites who cause officers more work than they save. I have previously questioned the value of PCSO's. There are some very good ones, but the majority really deliver very little.)

4. Changes to the pay and rewards for both officers and staff. (This clearly means that the Government pay review has already decided that the rewards that officers receive for short notice shift changes, Bank Holidays and Rest Days will be changed. We may even see salaries for all officers with little or no reward for working extra hours, Bank Holidays and shift changes. This could be a disaster as officers will become unavailable when needed. There will be little incentive for managers to plan ahead and as officers are disrupted more and more for no reward, morale and productivity will fall.)

5. More collaboration with partners and other Forces. (Force collaboration and mergers are inevitable as budgets are cut. Will this provide a more effective service for less or just larger, faceless, depersonalised organisations providing a very basic one. Partners also face cuts and will withdraw services leaving the police with the gaps to fill sorting out the social problems of society that will inevitably come our way. Increased unemployment, cuts in benefits and other fiscal measures will undoubtedly mean increased crime levels and demand. And don't forget the revolving door justice system will get worse as fewer offenders than ever go to prison.)

6. Reduction in Operational Support such as intelligence, crime and incident reports. ICT improvements. (Eight years ago we had seven intelligence units and now we have four. Clearly, this is going to be centralised and reduced to one or two teams. The problem with this is that, as we found with the reductions that have already taken place, local issues such as antisocial behaviour, that are important to residents are lost and the focus becomes the traditional police functions of car crime, drugs and burglary. This is where resources get directed and this will become worse with a centralised function.)

So five out of ten for Oberon. We shall see in due course how it all unfolds.

Does Nick Herbert fill you with confidence? Reforming offenders is absolutely necessary but how is that going to be achieved with 23% cuts in spending in his department?

Does Power Tend to Corrupt?

2010-10-14T09:59:00.000+01:00

Chief Superintendent Adrian Harper and Superintendent Johnny Johncox

Sorry about the lack of recent posting. I have been busy with a few other issues and there seemed to be a lack of material to comment upon. This may well change when the Government announces its comprehensive spending review interim report and we get a better idea what damage might be done to the police service.

In July I ran this story about two Surrey senior officers who had been charged with corruption after apparently lying to avoid speeding fines and points. They were acquitted by the Courts but remained suspended from duty pending internal discipline proceedings. Everyone expected them to be sacked; especially as the Deputy Chief Constable was privately telling some people that he was going to personally see to it. Surprising then that this week both officers returned to work. The Force has sent an e-mail to everyone saying that both officers had apologised to the Chief Constable for any embarrassment they had caused and that was it.

A quick reminder that Superintendent Johnny Johncox was on his way to visit his girlfriend when he set of a speed camera. Apparently, he sent a report to his boss, Chief Superintendent Adrian Harper, saying that if he was on call and if he was travelling to HQ for an urgent meeting would he be exempted from the fine and points. Adrian Harper apparently got the report and exempted him. If this is true, Johncox never owned up to the fact that he was not going to HQ. In any case why was he exempted from speeding to attend a meeting?

Chief Superintendent Harper set off a speed camera going from his office at Reigate to Epsom. He told his boss, Assistant Chief Constable Ian Dyson, that he was the on call firearms officer and he was attending a meeting at Epsom. Ian Dyson exempted him from his fine and points. There was no meeting at Epsom that day and he added a meeting planner to his calender after the speeding offence to show to Ian Dyson. He was a regular visitor to Epsom station. He was a hands on manager and well liked by officers. He has been linked to a female officer at Epsom and so was possibly more hands on than he should have been. But whatever the truth, why was he ever exempted by the Assistant Chief Constable to attend a meeting?

Why have these officers returned to work without any discipline case? How many senior officers have been exempted from speeding fines and points to attend meetings by other senior officers? I think the public and the force deserve a full explanation.

Police Bonuses?

2010-08-17T14:18:00.001+01:00

The public sector continues to be scrutinised as the spending axe threatens pay, conditions and pensions. The police service is under particular scrutiny and will undoubtedly be hit hard when the interim review on public spending reports next month.

There was an appalling article in the Telegraph the other day hitting out at police bonuses. Readers of the article, not familiar with police pay, could be forgiven for not understanding any of it, other than the overriding authors contention we are getting extra money for nothing.

By way of explanation, let me say that it was the last Government that introduced these different payments. They were not wanted by the police service in general. The Government didn't like all officers being paid the same and introduced two payments to tackle perceived poor performance and to reward front line and specialist skilled policing.

Competence Related Threshold Payments (CTRP) were introduced as part of our salary and were to be paid to around 90% of all officers that qualify. Only those officers at the top of their pay scale qualify, so it is in fact only paid to around 40% of officers The idea was that these performing got a further pay increment and those that were not, did not, and this would encourage poor performers to improve.

Special Priority Payments were introduced to reward those officers that were working on the front line or those that had specialist skills. This was the Governments attempt at introducing pay differentials for officers. The payments are made to 40% of officers and reward those working shifts, for example, and those whose skills need to be retained. The amounts can vary from around £1000 to £2500 per anum.

I understand the aims of the Government when these rewards were introduced. They are part of the police pay package and do not represent new money being paid to officers. To suggest police are getting some extra reward for doing their job is misleading. Some officers effectively got a pay rise and others did not.

The rewards that should, in my opinion, be reviewed are those paid to the Superintending Ranks. They get performance bonuses for meeting targets. The risk here is that senior officers, who have control of significant resources, are using those resources to get their bonus. You can argue that is the idea, but if the Divisional Commander has met his anti social behaviour target for the year but is failing on burglary, he or she may decide to ignore the continuing public concern regarding anti social behaviour and focus all resources on burglary so that they get their bonus. I guess the coalition Government will decide this is another good reason to have elected police 'commisioners.'

Are These Senior Officers Corrupt?

2010-07-24T19:58:00.003+01:00

Two Surrey Police senior officers have stood trial recently for misconduct in public office. The trials were held separately at Winchester Crown Court and there was a ban on reporting. Both officers have been found not guilty and so there has been very little subsequent press coverage. A little bit here.

Superintendent Johnny Johncox was caught by a speed camera and put a report in suggesting that he was attending an important meeting at HQ. His line manager, Chief Superintendent Adrian Harper, exempted him from any fine and points. It turns out, he was actually going to see his girlfriend.

Chief Superintendent Adrian Harper was also caught going through a speed camera. He claimed he was attending an important meeting at Epsom and was late. The person he was supposedly meeting at Epsom had no record of any such meeting and the meeting was put in Mr Harper's electronic diary after the date. Assistant Chief Constable Ian Dyson exempted Mr Harper from any fine and points on the basis that he was attending this important meeting.

A Court has decided that these officers have not committed any criminal offences. They remain suspended from duty and will undoubtedly face internal discipline proceedings. They are likely to be sacked.

Dismissal is a severe punishment, but I find it very intriguing that if we assumed their original excuses for speeding were correct, why were they ever given exemptions? I can assure you that junior officers would not be given an exemption for attending a meeting. It appears that the rules are different when you reach the dizzy heights of the senior officer's dining club. Next time you get done for speeding tell the police you were attending an important meeting. I am sure they will let you off too.

Is This How we Should Treat Volunteers?

2010-07-19T22:56:00.002+01:00

I have never been the biggest fan of Specials in the police. Most are well meaning but incompetent. Some get off on the uniform and power thing. None are properly trained.

The new Government is focused on volunteering. This is seen as the way forward in all areas of society. It seems likely that in future all recruits to the police will first have to have been a Special for up to two years. I sincerely hope that along with this policy we improve the training for Specials.

I noticed this story on the web. A criminal is being chased, by police, in a stolen car. A Special sergeant is nearby and wants to get involved. Perhaps injudiciously, he does a three point turn in the road. The stolen car ploughs into the side of him seriously injuring the passenger in the police car. The IPCC supervise an investigation and the Special sergeant is prosecuted and fined, with costs, £1300 and banned from driving for 6 months.

If Mrs Miggins was manoeuvring in the road and a stolen car being driven at excessive speed crashed into her would she have been prosecuted? What happened to the driver of the stolen car? Was his punishment as severe as this? I have my doubts.

The loss of this mans licence might have cost him his paid job. If I was this Special sergeant, volunteering my services for free and doing the best I could with the training I had received and I lost my licence for 6 months and had to pay £1300, I think I would tell the police to stick their volunteering.

All Change for Targets?

2010-07-03T08:27:00.011+01:00

North Korea Celebrate Winning the World Cup

Like other bloggers, I was pleased to hear Teresa May announce that the Policing Pledge and Public Confidence and Satisfaction targets were going and we would just be measured on crime levels.

I have said before that senior managers will fiddle the figures and focus resources to get quick results rather than work properly and ethically towards achieving real results. For example, in my quite small Force, we have 35 communications officers; and that is after we have just got rid of some following a review. Their job is to take every opportunity, internally and externally, to convince the public that crime is low and we are doing a good job. We also have 57 administrators in CID and another 35 working with the Neighbourhood Teams. Part of their job is to allocate tasks but a large part is to contact victims of crime and disorder and to convince them that we are doing our best to detect their crime, even if we do just detect 22% of them.

Why do we need 35 communications officers and 92 administrators? Because the ACPO team want to increase our levels of public confidence and satisfaction to meet targets and they have introduced a propaganda machine, that the North Koreans would be proud of, in order to achieve it, rather than do the job properly and invest in front line policing.

Our Chief Constable has announced to the Force that we are going to ignore Teresa May's wish to abandon the Policing Pledge and Public Confidence and Satisfaction targets. This is very worrying because, with the budget cuts coming, the next thing I can see the Chief doing is cutting police officers and keeping his propaganda machine. What we should be doing is cutting all these back room police staff roles that actually produce nothing tangible and in fact increase the bureaucracy that infests the police officers role, and concentrate on real policing.

I am all for being measured on levels of crime, but don't measure Forces own levels of recorded crime. We can think of a hundred and one ways to keep those down. Forces should be measured using the British Crime Survey, an independent survey they cannot influence other than by doing the job we should be doing, reducing crime and disorder in the short, medium and long term.

The Drink Drive Debate

2010-06-19T20:25:00.007+01:00

Like almost all police officers I have had to deliver death messages. Some stand out, particularly the young and unexpected ones. I remember calling round a ladies house on a Saturday afternoon. She answered the door with two young children running around excitedly as a policeman was on the doorstep. Her and her children's lives fell apart after I told them their husband/father was in the mortuary having just been wiped out by a drunk driver. There are others I recall, such as the parents of the 16 year old boy knocked off his bike and smashed to bits by a drunk driver who could barely stand up.

I haven't become the virtuous non drinking driver and I will have a couple of drinks when I go out but I absolutely support the recent report recommending that the drink drive limit is reduced from 80 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood to 50.

A few years ago now I worked in custody and had the opportunity to test myself on the drink drive machine. I could drink four pints of beer in about an hour and a half before I reached the limit. There is no way that I am safe to drive after four pints and I would have been a severe risk on the road. You lose between 7 and 13 micrograms of alcohol every hour. This means I could actually drink five pints in two hours and possibly pass the test.

Over the years I have stopped and breathalysed dozens of people. I know that many of them have had six or more pints over the course of an evening. Some of these people were blowing under the limit after an evening of six or seven pints. They could not believe they were getting away with it.

I have heard some of the wailing of people done for drink driving. They go to Court and swear they only had two pints and they thought they were OK to drive. Absolute lies and deceit, unless it was two pints of spirits.

Most countries now have a limit of 50 micrograms. We should reduce our limit as soon as possible. We probably should not drink and drive at all but I do not support a zero tolerance policy. A limit of 50 will still allow people to drive after a couple of pints. Some people won't like that but it is a damn site better than the current situation and more likely to become a reality.

Bloody Sunday!

2010-06-15T22:34:00.010+01:00

So the Saville report has been published after 12 years and almost £200 million. And after all that it tells us the bleeding obvious, that leaders probably didn't make the best decision in the world deploying paratroopers in Londonderry in 1972.

It shouldn't be missed that the report also states that an IRA sniper was firing a weapon during the protest march and that Martin McGuinness, who was then the number two in Londonderry IRA, was probably carrying a sub machine gun that he fired. He has denied this.

Paras coming under fire almost certainly started firing back at where they thought the threat was coming from and there was obviously panic in this guerrilla war situation for which they were not trained. It is a tragedy that innocent civilians were killed, but it will also be a travesty if any soldiers are prosecuted.

David Cameron has leapt up and apologised on behalf of the country. The decision makers at the time might owe an apology. Martin McGuinness and his terrorist thugs probably do too; I don't feel I do.

Has this whole twelve year inquiry just been the most expensive counselling session in the history of the world for the victims families? Or does it also appease the IRA and assist the aim of handing over Northern Ireland too?

Has Civilianisation Gone Too Far?

2010-06-13T21:36:00.009+01:00

Stop reducing police officer numbers now!

At the National Police Federation Conference in May the Federation produced figures showing how the additional investment in the police service made over the last 10 years has largely been in the form of police staff rather than officers.

Nationally, since 1999 there has been an average 16% increase in police officers. This compares with an average increase of 54% in police staff. Thousands of police staff have been introduced, not only to deal with additional legislative demands and bureaucracy, but also taking on roles that have been traditionally performed by police officers.

Some Forces have taken this change of staff mix to new levels. Surrey Police has been highlighted in this regard, as in 2007 they were the first police force to have more police staff than officers. They have since been followed by Northamptonshire and Wiltshire and others are catching up. In Surrey, since 2000, police officer numbers have decreased 260 from 2100 to 1840. Over the same period, police staff numbers have tripled from 760 to 2300.

These figures are quite astounding. We keep being told that police staff are being introduced as a cheaper alternative to expensive police officers. Like all Forces investment has been made in PCSO's. Surrey has about 240 PCSO's. If we take those away from the 1540 police staff increase that still leaves 1300 police staff replacing 260 police officers. There have been no savings here. Surrey could have increased by around 850 police officers instead of 1300 police staff.

Where are these 1300 additional police staff and what are they doing? I don't think anyone has the answer to that one. What I do know is that we have created whole departments and career paths for police staff. What benefits are they bringing to front line officers or are they simply putting more demands on officers to feed the self perpetuating bureaucratic machine that they belong to?

The Police Federation is advocating that there should be a broad review and evaluation of all these changes in workforce mix. There should be some standardisation of the roles that police staff and police officers perform. Why can one force ‘civilianise’ a role whereas another deems that it is only suitable for a police officer? What value are we getting from this huge increase in police staff? The public want more police officers on the streets.

Forces that have more police staff than officers have no resilience in their response and criminal investigation departments. At times of high demand within the Force or in order to provide mutual aid to other forces neither have the capacity or resilience to provide resources in the medium to long term. Even in the short term the gaps can only be covered by overtime, which the Government is demanding must be cut by 40% with no reduction in performance. Using proactive resources and/or neighbourhoods may be impossible as these officers are not being trained in the secondary skills to provide public order units, search teams etc.

Police officers generally join for a career in the Force. Their initial training is more expensive but that needs to be balanced against the costs of training police staff who have a much higher turnover and require some expensive bespoke training for their roles.

Crime has been falling in England and Wales since 1995, long before this huge increase in police staff. There are serious threats ahead for the police service. There are going to be budget cuts, potentially serious cuts; more unemployment, cuts in benefits and threats of civil unrest are likely over the next few years with rises in crime and disorder a reality combined with a reduction in staff/officers. A staff mix of more staff than officers may not be resilient enough to deal with these potential threats or indeed some other day to day threats and demands and the 2012 Olympics, whose estimated demand is 10 to 15,000 officers per day.

We need to review the current staff mix within those forces leading these changes to ensure that there is sufficient resilience to enable officers to be available for the demands we face. The so called value for money that police staff provide needs to be reassessed when it appears we are pouring money into new police staff posts and we have little idea what additional value they bring.

We need to ensure that we have the right number of sworn officers to enable us to be able to tackle the issues we may face supported by the right mix of police staff. We are at risk of becoming a police service run by police staff where the only contact police officers have with the public is dealing with confrontation.

Police NOT responsible for killings in Cumbria

2010-06-03T23:09:00.005+01:00

I think I am getting paranoid. When I heard about the tragic murders in Cumbria and the fact that this shooting spree had gone on for two hours my heart sank. Mainly for the victims and relatives of this attack, but also because I was just waiting for the police to be blamed.

Why hadn't armed police arrived within five minutes and found and dispatched the offender?

So far not a peep of this. Apparently this time this tragedy is not our fault. Give it time and I am sure someone will decide it might be our fault after all. Let's get the IPCC to look at it. (See post below.) I am sure they will have some stupid advice for us.

Regards Inspector Gadgets call to arms on this issue, I am afraid he is sadly mistaken. Arming the police will not prevent incidents such as this occurring occasionally. Arming the police will ensure that betwen rare incidents such as Cumbria and Hungerford, dozens more people, including police officers, will be killed in firearms incidents. Arming the police will alienate us from the public. And if you gave some of my colleagues a gun I would have to resign as I know it is just a question of time before one of the idiots shoots me. Accidentally, I mean.

Police Responsible for Missing Girl Having Sex

2010-06-02T22:26:00.005+01:00

Sorry, I have been banging on about this for ages and I am sure you are getting bored with it.

I have written before about all this really useful advice we get from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC.) One minute they criticise us for not investigating a crime and tell us we need to do more and put more resource into that. The next we don't respond to someones call and we need to put more resource into that. So we move resources around in never ending circles to try and comply.

What really annoys me is that mostly it is about ensuring that everyones backside is covered rather than actually providing a better or more effective service.

This story caught my eye. A 15 year old girl is reported missing by her mother and we didn't rush around and take a report immediately. The girl turns up two days later and reveals to her mother that she has been having sex. This now turns out to be our fault as we didn't respond immediately.

To the layman this might sound harsh but every police officer knows the local teenage boys and girls who go missing on a regular basis. Most of them are sexually active, taking drugs and drinking. They go missing week in and week out and know the system very well. They also know they are vulnerable young people and we have to try and find them. Most of them think it is great laugh that the police waste thousands of hours looking for them.

What happens is the parents, children's home or sometimes hospital dial 999 and report them missing. As soon as they have done that their backside is covered and it becomes the responsibility of the police. They no longer have any responsibility for their charge. We go and fill in a huge missing person report and show them as missing on the police computer. We usually ring their mobile and often they answer it and say they are OK but they won't tell us where they are, unless they want a lift home. Our backside still isn't covered, so we phone relatives, visit friends and go round and round in circles until they decide they are ready to go home and ring us up for a lift.

I do feel really sorry for the parents of some of these children. It is really hard for them. For others it is of no surprise or consequence to them and no surprise to us that the kids are off the rails.

On this occasion we didn't rush around that night and take a report. We did so the next morning and we went round in circles trying to find the girl. She pitches up at home two days later and tells her mother she has been having sex. She won't make a statement to support a prosecution so there is nothing we can do about it, but the mother wants to blame someone and so it is now our fault as we didn't go and take a report straight away. So if we cannot answer your call for help when you are being beaten senseless and robbed it might be because we are wasting time rushing around immediately to take a report of another regular missing person as our backside needs to be covered. You can always complain to the IPCC and I am sure they will come up with more words of wisdom.

For the record I am not confusing those regular missing children with genuine missing children who are seriously vulnerable and at risk. We can spot those and deal with them appropriately.

Police Hang Woman in Phone Box

2010-05-23T14:27:00.005+01:00

Which one of you lot is feeling suicidal?

I have written before about the advice that often comes from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC.) Invariably they give advice that would be useful in an ideal world where resources are infinite. I have said before that we are not perfect and the people we deal with have high expectations. Occasionally we make mistakes and we should apologise when we do so. The sooner the better.

The IPCC look at complaints and whether it is about response, custody or investigation, invariably the advice is that we must do more. So some of our limited resources are moved around the board from one area to another until the next complaint when they get moved again.

This story caught my eye. A drunken woman with a number of issues rang the police to demand we attended to help her gain access to her sisters flat. She later rang again and during this call she said I will 'top myself' if the police did not attend. The operator missed that comment and that was a failing for which we should apologise. The article focuses on the missed comment but the advice from the IPCC made clear that the police should attend immediately any incident where someone has threatened to kill themselves.

What the IPCC decided was that the call was initially correctly graded as a 2. That means that we should attend within an hour. But as soon as the lady mentioned topping herself, it should have been graded 1 and we should have attended immediately. De facto, the police once again are responsible for killing this woman.

My problem with this is that every day the police get hundreds of calls from people under the influence of drink, drugs, mentally ill or just plain attention seeking. Operators talk to these individuals and make a judgement call as to how vulnerable they really believe they are and allocate resources appropriately. Very occasionally we may get it wrong.

If we now follow the guidance of the IPCC, (and God help you if you don't) every time anyone mentions suicide we have to rush to attend. There are consequences for this policy. Firstly, when you need urgent help from the police you may not get it because we are rushing around attending calls from those people crying wolf threatening their lives again. Secondly, most people these days call from a mobile. If we don't really think they are vulnerable, how many hours do we spend trying to locate someone? Thirdly, when the police attend what do they do? They will speak to the person and make a judgement call, just like the operator did. But one of these callers may still go on to kill themselves when the police have left. The IPCC will investigate and advice will be given that we must always attend and we must always call an ambulance, as they are the medical professionals. The ambulance crew will attend and make a judgement call, and so on and so on.

Public services cannot be held responsible for every aspect of peoples lives. We don't live in a society with infinite resources and we cannot stop everyone from harming themselves. We always need to act reasonably but we are not responsible for every problem in society. People and families need to take more responsibility for themselves.

My Values Are All Wrong

2010-05-13T18:50:00.008+01:00

As it has warmed up a little bit recently I decided to leave the confines of the office and accompany some of my team who were executing a search warrant.

The warrant was at the home of a family that are well known to us. It is a five bedroom council house occupied by mum, dad and five children. There are actually eight children but the eldest is in prison and the next two are being looked after by other relatives as the parents cannot cope with them. The remaining five are aged between 2 and 12. Neither mum or dad have worked for at least 15 years and live on benefits.

We had information that to supplement his benefits, dad deals cannabis and cocaine, largely to local teenagers. Apart from the serious risks to the users, this is undermining our reputation in the community, hence the search.

On arrival, the back door is open and we go in. There isn't a carpet anywhere. The house is filthy and absolutely stinks. There are two piles of dog faeces in the house and a recent pool of wee. The kitchen is disgusting with dirty dishes all over the place and stale food. The kids are sleeping on mattresses with a blanket or sleeping bag. Not a sheet in sight. Police officers will not think this is anything unusual and I have been in far worse houses.

Dad gets arrested with a bit of cannabis. There is not enough to consider a charge of dealing. But hopefully the message will get through to him.

I have mentioned before that I attend a regular meeting with partners where we discuss those young people that are causing problems in the community. Usually those committing crime and anti social behaviour. Two of the children of this family were on the next agenda. I felt it was appropriate to mention that we had executed a drugs warrant at the address and the state of the house. The Local Authority were very interested as they have been trying to get into the house to inspect it for over a year. Children's Services and the Youth Offending Team took a different view.

I was rebuked for judging people by my own values. Apparently, living in a filthy slum doesn't make them bad people or parents and if they choose to live like that we should not criticise their choice of lifestyle. Because I choose to live in a clean environment and wash up regularly and clean up dog poo immediately that does not make me a better person than them.

I pointed out that if the family chose to live in a filthy mess and their children were model citizens who were not being arrested almost daily and involved in local anti social behaviour. If the children attended school regularly and the parents were not drug dealing but set a good example they might have a point.

No I was told. They have just chosen a different lifestyle with different values and I must learn to understand and respect this. I was losing it at this point. They haven't chosen a lifestyle. They are lazy, idle people who have decided that a life of benefits and banging out children beats working. Setting boundaries and being a role model are vital facets of parenting. What are they teaching their children? Perhaps if these parents washed their children's clothes, they wouldn't smell and they would attend school as there would be less risk of them being ostracised by other children. Perhaps if the parents introduced a bit of order and discipline and put them to bed instead of allowing them to run around all night until they dropped they might stop committing offences and get some education and the chance of a job and a future.

I was stared at as if I was some right wing bigot for whom there was no hope. I was obviously never going to see this light that they have found. After a further brief conversation these services decided that the 'work' they were doing with this family was perfectly adequate and they didn't need to be doing any more. They are always 'working' with families. This usually means seeing them once every week or two and having a nice chat.

I hope to God that the new Government addresses the liberal (small l) cesspit that has been allowed to take over all levels of the criminal justice system and we get back to some common sense and reality as soon as possible.

Neighbourhood Priorities

2010-05-02T12:31:00.005+01:00

Good idea or just a pillock?

I have said before that I have worked in Neighbourhood Policing for many years and I am a big fan of local officers tackling the problem people and places and making neighbourhoods safer and nicer places to live and work in.

My teams clearly understand that I want the bad people arrested or prosecuted. I want them off the streets or towing the line on an ASBO or whatever it takes.

I get fed up, and quite frankly embarrassed, when I see some of the gimmicks that neighbourhood teams sometimes dream up to get a bit of publicity. Or is it someone trying to make a name for themselves when they put in for their promotion board?

Do you remember this stunt, where officers in East London were offering to follow people home from the cash point if they were worried about getting mugged. My question at the time was, if you have a mugging problem, what are you doing to catch the offenders? Why can't the neighbourhood teams be out visible deterring these offences anyway. If you don't have a mugging problem all you are doing is raising the fear of crime.

Now we have PCSO Vince Preston out on a BMX bike. He claims young people are more likely to talk to him and interact with him on a BMX rather than a normal bike. Vince, you don't know what you are talking about. I don't know who dreamt up this idea and you may just be the stooge for someone else's stupidity. You are not supposed to be regressing and becoming one of the youths that rides round on one of these things. You are supposed to be part of the police service and have the respect of the people you police. Riding around on a BMX just makes you open to ridicule and gains nothing.

Sorry to sound so negative but I wish we would just stick to the basics. In my experience the public just want us to be visible and enforce the law. That is our job, using discretion where appropriate. It is not to keep inventing ways of avoiding doing just that.

UK - A Dumping Ground for Foreign Criminals?

2010-04-22T22:12:00.006+01:00

Lord Justice Moses one of the judges who allowed 2 Tamils to remain in UK as they threatened to kill themselves if deported

'The decision defies all common sense' Immigration Minister Phil Woolas. Tough words but you have been in power 13 years. Let's have some action!

Is it me or am I reading more and more stories about illegal immigrants committing serious crimes in our country? Some are undoubtedly thrown out but many others are allowed to stay here. Our judicial system seems to be the only one in the world that takes any notice of the Human Rights Act and it appears that some seriously dangerous offenders are being allowed to stay here in case we breach their rights or they might suffer further punishment if they are returned from whence they came.

I don't think this was being considered by the authors of the legislation, or this. And this man should have have some of his body parts removed for his crimes. If you come from a culture where committing offences carries severe penalties why should you be allowed to come here and commit those offences and not be returned home to face the consequences? And if you want to kill yourself because you have been sent home is that our concern? We won't deport any illegal immigrants if they all try that little wheeze.

This country is going mad.