As Christmas 2009 approaches and the Labour Government proposes slashing operational police overtime by £70million over the next six months, and plans to cut police support staff to the tune of £75million, you might find yourself asking “What the dickens is Alan Johnson playing at?”
Stronger expressions leap to mind when senior police pay scales, expenses and benefits are revealed, showing who gets paid what and what they get bonuses for. It is then that the real scandal emerges and more obvious and suitable targets for reduction jump off the page. In these desperate times for the private sector, hard-pressed taxpayers can only gasp at the lavish secret perks paid to senior police officers.
In a report published today, we will show how the crime reductions that form the basis of such payments to Chief Officers are dishonest and have been engineered by the upper echelons of policing with Government supervision and encouragement.
Click here to view the report or click the link
"TOP COPS PAY & CRIME SCANDAL" in the view our reports sidebar to the right. Police forces are using a series of tricks to manipulate crime figures to give a false picture of their performance, a
former senior detective has revealed in the press within the last week (December 2009).
So what has all this subtefuge and secret senior officer activity to do with cutting police overtime?
This report presents alarming evidence supporting a widespread belief that the manipulation of crime statistics forms part of a conspiracy to deceive the public into believing that crime is decreasing. The orchestrators of this deceit are the Government and Home Office, aided and abetted by senior police officers, who are obscenely rewarded for their part in the plot.
Front line police officers are unable to untangle this web of deceit, despite protestations by many with an informed and accurate perspective at the public facing coal face. Distortion of the figures has led to misallocation of financial and human resources, resulting in the public being deprived of the policing it deserves. The gravy train of police funds has been milked and the “con” disguised through years of bureaucracy, performance targeting and distraction techniques, making the task of basic policing more difficult to deliver.
There is plenty of evidence that there are senior officers who are paid grossly disproportionate salaries and bonuses for perpetuating the deceitful illusion of crime reduction. The honour and distinction of achieving a high rank in public service has been replaced with greed, with a convenient blindness to the immorality of their actions. A full, transparent 43 force public enquiry is needed to force the disclosure of these illicit payments and inducements. Among the most disturbing are the revelations of Heather Brooke in the Guardian, about the expenses of
Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers. The rot is clearly embedded within the “root and branch” culture of the highest ranking police officers, when the man who is charged with the responsibility of overseeing the Chief Officers in England & Wales sets such an example. ACPO, its finances and function will be analysed in detail in a later report.
If “cooking the books” of policing and crime statistics had no consequences, it would command no attention. The consequences however, are dire and plain for all to see. The victims in all of this are the tax payer, who is deprived of the police service his contributions are intended to provide, and the front line police officer who is forced into silent acceptance of a job that has become enmeshed with bureaucracy, risk averse policing and fiddled crime figures. Who could blame officers that have no faith or respect for senior officers and politicians who orchestrate a criminal deception of the highest magnitude for personal gain, and then expect the staff on the ground to do their dirty work with no resistance?
Alan Johnsons’ proposal for cutting frontline police overtime is not in the best public interest. A more appropriate target for savings surely lies within the senior officer pay structure. Our report shows that there is plenty of "fat" that should be cut from that source before even considering such an essential as operational police overtime.
We support the proposal that crime statistics should be properly independent. This would remove responsibility for compiling and publishing crime figures from the Home Office, who clearly cannot be trusted to be truthful with the electorate and not to apply their political spin. The responsibility should be placed with the Office for National Statistics which is totally independent. The pre-release access that Ministers and political advisers get to crime statistics should be abolished – so the public would be the first to get an honest account of the facts.
Politicians and Senior Police Officers may talk about resuscitating public trust. The party and individuals that demonstrates the transparency and complete honesty of their future reform intentions and follow it up with decisive action that is genuinely in the public interest, will have the best chance of achieving it.
Click here to view the report or click the link
"TOP COPS PAY & CRIME SCANDAL" in the view our reports sidebar to the right.
Related reports (click links) :-
DECREASING CRIME BY FAIR MEANS OR FOUL
FORCE OR FARCE? - RECORDED CRIME
Crime Analysis Team – Nice 1 Limited
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4 comments:
Sadly, too, the "facts" about crime statistics are also tied up within the machinations of the National Crime Recording Standard, which allows for the pre-definition of crime itself, before it even hits the public arena. A very powerful tool for the Government, who only need to tweak the system slightly and the resulting "facts" will be hunky-dory.
Michael,
Thanks for that, great point. I'll be looking at the various sectors of policing in a future report... ACPO, NCRS, APA, etc etc
It's time some closer scrutiny was paid to each of them to establish if there is any true value and merit to their existence.
Cheers
Steve B
I didn't realise ACPO had any merit for its existence? It seems a little odd to me that Chief Officers are able to form a company (I think that's what they are? I'm not too hot on trade legislation etc) which seems to be at odds with the fact that they have made claims from their respective police forces to cover costs of travel to/from ACPO meetings and conferences etc.
If ACPO is a company in its own right, why is the public paying for Chief Officers to be part of it?
Thanks for that kKop. We're looking closely at ACPO for another article
Senior Officers and Home Office civil servants and politicians have become too closely entwined. Paying senior officers grossly exorbitant bonuses in return for demonstrating crime reduction leaves the whole recorded crime and statistics issue wide open to abuse at the highest
There have been courageous gaffers in the past, who showed principled beliefs, but it seems that the system finds ways of black marking them and engineering them out of harms way. (Robo Cop up north was perhaps the best example). Presumably, they threaten to untangle the spiders web of deceit that has been woven down the years to protect the upper echelons.
No wonder Sir Hugh is screaming and kicking about the tory proposals for local authority responsibility for forces. He might also be a little nervous that his bonus and perks package will be open to public scrutiny. From a Guardian enquiry (detailed in our report linked above), his rent of a £600,000 house is paid, along with his ACPO fees. How much of a con on the tax payer is that? Officers on 150,000 + bonuses + perks join ACPO, then the local authority funds their fees, which in turn are paid by . . . the tax payer.
The jury is still out on what is the best option for force reforms, but you can bet that ACPO resist like hell any proposals that might upset their select boys club.
We downloaded a copy of the ACPO memorandum & articles and their 2008 financial report recently. It makes interesting reading. They have a massive surplus funds account that is growing each year…
Surplus Funds 2008 930,272
Surplus funds 2007 584,541
Accumulated surplus funds 2,813,167 (This is part of £15 million showing as cash in the bank at financial year end).
Comments on gadget about the status of ACPO described it as a not-for-profit organization. It is in fact a company limited by guarantee and not having share capital. This means that no share dividends are paid out in the event of a surplus.
ACPO raises serious doubts for many. Of course every force needs a leader, someone at the top to manage the big picture. However, there are many that want to question the need and function of ACPO. To all intents and purposes, it’s a “club for the boys” paid for by 44 police force contributions a Home Office grant, and in recent years something called project income(?), which is reported as declining rapidly now.
It is a rather expensive but powerful talking shop with too much of a secret political agenda and connection. We are yet to be convinced that ACPO ultimately serves the best interests of the tax paying public. Its members have become an elitist bunch of “out-of-touch” seniors, whose priorities are out of whack with public interests. Sir Hugh Ordes' comments seen to hide his own hidden agenda. ACPO is yet another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy, clouding the real issues faced by the guys at the coal face. It is their little gang of elitists, and the stakes of playing the game at their level are very high …. Knighthoods and HMI roles being up for grabs.
The original purposes for ACPO were honorable. To believe that theirs is the only correct interpretation of issues is naïve and does not provide the public interest with a balance. The federation and ACPO have always held opposing views on many subjects, reflecting the disparity between coal face viewpoints and blue sky thinking.
The shadow home secretary has already had a few run ins with Sir Hugh, who has resisted Conservatives reform suggestions, having dared to commission independent reports about ACPO and other doubtfully valuable areas of higher echelon policing. Assuming the forecasts are correct, let's hope they're are equally vociferous in Government as they seem in opposition.
It would be interesting to see what crawls out of this can of worms when the lid is finally taken off.
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