SURELY THIS IS COMPLETE AND UTTER MADNESS?
Police are to be forced to fully investigate every case reported to them under new Home Office rules . . .
“The new guidelines, which have the backing of police chiefs, mean officers will have to give every report their full attention and makes it far more likely that they will visit any alleged victim”.
This latest stream of DRIVEL from the Government is surely the most ill thought out nonsense yet? If it is indeed has the backing of the police chiefs, then this is truly the saddest indictment of just how out-of-touch these boys club members really are with operational policing.
In this article in The Telegraph, it explains that officers will have to give every report their full attention and makes it far more likely that they will visit any alleged victim.
If the police are forced to investigate every report, this will just exacerbate the bureaucracy mountain government have built. Clearly they have completely lost the plot. This is echoed by the common sense front line officers we speak to.
Exactly which cardboard box contains the thousands of extra officers required to investigate every nonsense call that discretionary policing would weed out?
So Mr Johnson, you propose slashing the police overtime budget by £70 million over the next six months, back office support staff by £75million, continue paying exhorbitant bonus and perks packages to Chief Constables for crime reduction statistics no one has any confidence in, decimate the manpower, smash the last morsels of morale, and create an insurmountable bureacracy mountain. Just for good measure, let's show the front liners they can't be trusted to use their common sense and discretion, we'll make them attend and investigate every fabricated and nonsense report so our backs are covered and we might just capture a few votes in the process. Absolute madness.
Chief Constables are so far from the coal face they wouldn’t recognise it, if it smacked them around the head. The higher up the tree they climb, the further from reality they slip, and yet still their voices are heard louder than the guys at the front line, with common sense and discretion waiting to be used. Only by placing our trust in their abilities and experience will the public see better policing in this country.
Simon Reids’ comments on behalf of the police federation, seem eminently sensible, and in line with the proposal to restore more discretion to front line officers : "We are going to end up investigating every incident to prove no crime has happened. We need to trust the officer's discretion. All we are doing is making the whole process more bureaucratic. Let's use our supervisors in the role they are designed to do. They should be looking at these crime reports when they come in."
Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "This Government’s reputation over its use of crime figures is so shot to pieces that frankly most people will think that Labour Ministers are engaged in yet another attempt to massage figures for their own political advantage."
All we see is Labour issuing ridiculous vote catching propaganda and senior officers, apparently without thought or awareness of the operational consequences, echoing their sentiments. With all due respect to them all, the average member of the public wants to see effective and proportional transparent policing, delivered by effective coppers on the ground, not these airy fairy concepts dreamed up from within the gated confines of senior officers highly protected environments.
Sorry to rant, but this one will really widen the rift between Government and the front line troops and kill off what little public confidence remains.
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1 comments:
This is all about meeting the needs of the victims of crime, and victims being able to see Police in person. MPS Analysts (the remaining handful/police staff cuts)can usually have a good estimate and produce figures re what this would actually mean. I have seen a previous enquiry where all victims of crime living within a ward would get a visit by the Safer Neighbourhoods Teams, for two wards in london it was worked out this was all they would be able to do, ( SNT 1 PS, 2PC and 3PCSO) without the report to hand i think most were more like 20 to 35% of their time. As it is under the LPM we will contact everyone within 24hrs, this can just mean a phone call, those who saw the police in person to report have already been contacted. Another example was a request to look at SNT/NPTofficers phoning all persons whose crime was "not for further investigation" (screened out). What would this mean a quick phone call?, Well, Before phoning you need to read the crime report so you know what you talking about ten minutes, you phone no reply 1min, they answer and we update them offer our service and they say no thank you. 2 to 3minutes. They wish to make a complaint as why was their crime not being investigated, take details and create CAD for Inspector to contact them...20++ minutes, they want to add more details to the original report etc, they want to report another crime..you get details and create new report, they want us to visit them...etc so what the SMT thought was a quick courtesy call to a few victims has now created additional work and you need to take two PC's off the streets fulltime from the SNT/NPT to deal with all the call backs. So yes these ideas can sound very good but there is normally a cost and one thing we have not got is lots of spare time and lots of cops and we have very few good analysts left who can research this work fulltime, so one of these ideas might get through without being properly tested. As it is investigating officers already have heavy case loads, but do not try to take short cuts and screen crimes out from experience you know it will go no where, but you still need to dot the i's and cross the t's as it will come back to bite you. My advice always report up your concerns re case loads, keep a record of where you have high lighted your concerns and to whom, then the problem is shared and you have asked for help. Also remember the MPS is only short of officers because we did not recruit for three years ( a secret cost saving method maybe?? we have not cut numbers, we just need to recruit more), hence why to catch up and keep up we need to recruit massively over the next few years 5,000 officers. In the mean time more for less...
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