MURDER OF WPC FLETCHER - GADAFFI "SORRY?"

According to press agency Reuters, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has said "we are sorry" for the 1984 killing of a British policewoman outside the Libyan embassy in London which led Britain to suspend ties between the two countries for years.

Yvonne Fletcher died after being hit by shots fired from the embassy during a demonstration against Gaddafi.

"She is not an enemy to us, and we are sorry all the time and (offer) our sympathy, because she was on duty, she was there to protect the Libyan embassy, but this is the problem that should be solved -- but who did it?" Gaddafi said in an interview with Sky News, to be broadcast on Monday.

Britain's foreign ministry said in a statement: "We agree with him that this issue needs to be resolved.

"Libya can help in the search for answers by allowing the UK police to return to Libya to complete their investigations into the murder of WPC Fletcher."

Chairman of the police federation, Paul McKeever, met with Daniel Kawczynski MP last week, following an Early Day Motion being tabled.

The motion expressed astonishment at reports in the Daily Telegraph on 16 October 2009 that the Crown Prosecution Service believed there to be sufficient evidence two years ago to charge Matouk Mohammed Matouk and Abdulgader Mohammed Baghdadi in connection with the murder of WPC Fletcher; deploring the Libyan government's continuing obstruction of efforts to bring her killers to justice; and called on the Secretary of State for Justice to make a statement to the House immediately.


Relations with Britain were only resumed 15 years later when Libya "accepted general responsibility for the actions of those within the (embassy)...and expressed deep regret to the family" to whom it agreed to pay compensation.

Gaddafi said Britain and Libya had enjoyed good economic relations, even when diplomatic ties had been broken.

The United States in late 2003 began a process of rapprochement with Libya, after decades of estrangement, because of Tripoli's decision to abandon the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

Gaddafi also talked about the release of former Libyan agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison where he had been serving a life sentence for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing in which 270 people, mainly Britons and Americans, died.

Libya angered Britain and the United States over the warm public reception it gave to Megrahi, who was freed in August on compassionate grounds as he has terminal cancer.

Critics of the move accused the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and the devolved Scottish administration, of freeing Megrahi to win business deals with Libya.

Gaddafi brushed off the issue saying: "It is a matter of concern for the British, Scots, Americans. We are not really concerned about it."

Gadaffi sorry? - Yeah, sounds like it.

If you're really sorry, produce Matouk Mohammed Matouk and Abdulgader Mohammed Baghdadi for them to face the Justice of a British Court NOW.

10 DOWNING STREET PETITION . . . .

WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot and killed outside the libyans people bureau in 1984. Her killer was released from the bureau and returned to Libya a few days later. In view of the compassion shown by the UK to the lockerbie bomber, her killer should be returned to the UK to face justice.

A petition has been raised on the site http://www.number10.gov.uk/

To support this petition click http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/YvonneFletcher/


Deadline to sign up by: 28 December 2009 – Signatures: 9,260 (as of 25th October 2009)

Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited

FUDGING CRIME STATISTICS IS NO WAY TO RESTORE PUBLIC CONFIDENCE

WHOOPEE!! Pass the rose coloured spex, crime is on the decrease, detections are on the increase. Or so the Government would have us believe.

Whilst the production of crime statistics remain the responsibility of the Home Office, the public faith in the Criminal Justice System will not be restored.

There are now countless examples of how this Government have manipulated the numbers to portray the impression that all in the garden is rosy.

According to research by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, trust in government Ministers to tell the truth is down from 27% (2006) to 22% (2008). Polls show politicians at the bottom of the list of professionals trusted by the public. What’s gone wrong, and what can be done about it?

At the most basic level, the Home Office has relied on the British Crime Survey to argue that violent crime has come down by 40% under this government, ignoring formal warnings by Sir David Normington, that ‘levels of the most serious violence are higher than they were ten years ago’. The BCS is an obviously poor measure of violent crime. It does not count homicide offences, rape and multiple assaults. It also excludes some of the most vulnerable victims of violence, including: the homeless, elderly people in care homes, students in digs and – until this year – all children. In fact, we know that police recorded violent crime has nearly doubled since 1997.

The Home Office clearly place great importance on the British Crime Survey (BCS), as this quote from the Home Office website confirms :-

"The BCS includes crimes which are not reported to the police, so it is an important alternative to police records. The BCS is a particularly important survey because it can provide a more complete picture of crime than police recorded crime statistics alone. The BCS includes crimes which are not reported to, or recorded by, the police and is therefore unaffected by changes in recording practices. It can provide the best guide to long-term trends in crime".

Reports from front line officers, of ridiculous levels of bureaucracy and procedure confirms what many of the public already suspect, that their effectiveness is severely impaired. This results in a lack of public confidence in the system of policing in the UK. How can the public be expected to have confidence in either BCS statistics or police recorded crime, when the BCS figures for 2008 suggest that over 10 million crimes were committed, yet the police recorded numbers amount to only 4.7 million?

Again front line officers provide an answer. They tell us that so much time is consumed recording and dealing with so many minor offences that are purely for the purposes of meeting political performance targets, that the most desired objective, providing protection where it's needed most, is the most impossible target of all to hit. This Government have introduced over 3000 new offences since arriving in office.

When Gordon Brown took office, he promised ‘a different type of politics – a more open and honest dialogue: frank about problems, candid about dilemmas’. And the reality? Back in June 2008, he responded to a planted question in Prime Minister’s Questions, by claiming ‘As far as CCTV is concerned, in the most recent experiment, in central Newcastle, CCTV reduced crime by 60 per cent’. Dig below the surface, and the study relied upon was not recent at all – but published in 1995. Whilst burglaries in central Newcastle allegedly fell by 56%, the wider area showed a fall in burglary of just 2%, whilst criminal damage and theft rose by 8%. The Prime Minister ignored as inconvenient subsequent Home Office studies (2005 and 2007) showing CCTV had ‘little overall effect on crime levels’ because 80% of CCTV footage is not fit for purpose.

THE WAY POLICE RECORD CRIME

Public access to information about crime in their local area has improved. And yet the Government still have not delivered on this promise to the full extent the public deserve.

The table below illustrates the 43 police forces of England & Wales, showing the population & households each force is responsible for, and the share of the national crime each polices.

The BCS is published in July each year detailing crime that occurred in the previous year. Six months have elapsed by the time the document goes to print. The statistics are already history, so what's a bit of manipulation and fudging here and there? The public will never know the difference, so why not exploit the opportunity to sensationalise and spin with inaccurate headlines? Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary in a recent speech, said that crime statistics are the least important part of the problem. Well, he would say that when the years of manipulation have served only to diminish public confidence still further.

Only by opening the books and exposing the real picture, will there be an opportunity for reform.

Have a look at the table. Of the 43 police forces 34 subscribe to the same analytical software that the public may view for the current crime in a particular area.

The top nine forces in the table police 41% of the population & households and a massive 48% of the nations crime. Yet these same forces are permitted, perhaps even encouraged to utilise their own software that is not as easily interrogated. The question has to be asked whether this is yet another Government strategy to make the collating of national current crime less accessible. The national picture of current crime is not easily obtained. When 48% of it is made difficult and laborious to compile, there are not many who would bother. And so, once again, the Government continues its charade of falling crime.

Click the table to see full view

Beyond the Home Office, the manipulation of government information has become endemic. The government has fiddled the figures on numbers claiming Jobseekers allowance to mask the true state of unemployment. The Treasury has disguised the level of government debt. Last year, the National Audit Office criticised the government for the way it counts carbon emissions, to overstate its record by up to 12%.

This is bad for policy-making – if you cover up the problems, how can you solve them? It also erodes public trust. Government must be much more honest about the challenges facing the country, if we are to begin to tackle them. Short-term spin must give way to proper long-term strategic thinking. That is the way to restore public confidence.

We would advocate and support the proposal to make crime statistics 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 reposnsibility 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. Any politician can talk about resuscitating public trust. The party that demonstrates their intentions and follows it up with decisive action that is genuinely in the public interest, will have the best chance of achieving it.

Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited

David Cameron : We'll Put Britain Back On Her Feet

David Cameron today pledged to defend “family, community, country” as he set out his vision for “a responsible society” under the Conservatives.

Promising he had the character, temperament and judgment to lead Britain, he described “how good things could be” if Government was cut back to help “put Britain back on her feet”.

He started with "I want to get straight to the point.We all know how bad things are: massive debt, social breakdown, political disenchantment. But what I want to talk about today is how good things could be. Don't get me wrong, I have no illusions. If win this election, it is going to be tough. There will have to be cutbacks in public spending, and that will be painful. We will need to confront Britain's culture of irresponsibility and that will be hard to take for many people. And we will have to tear down Labour's big government bureaucracy, ripping up its time-wasting, money-draining, responsibility-sapping nonsense.


"Why is our society broken? Because government got too big, did too much and undermined responsibility.
Recognising that what holds society together is responsibility, and that the good society is a responsible society – that’s what I’m about, that’s what any government I lead will be about,” Mr Cameron told the Conservative party conference in Manchester.

On Law and Order . . . .

The instinct to protect the people we love is so strong. Nearly two years ago it was that instinct – that love – that drove Fiona Pilkington to do something desperate.


When I first read her story in the paper I found it difficult to finish the article – it's one of the saddest things I've ever read.

Fiona was so driven to despair by the vile thugs that bullied her and her lovely disabled daughter Francecca and by the police that didn't answer her cries for help that she could only see one way out. She put her daughter in her car, drove to a layby, and set it on fire.

If no one would protect them then by ending their lives, she was keeping them safe.

No one could hurt them anymore. Just think about what we allowed to happen here in our country. This goes deep and it's been going on for years.

It is about a breakdown of all the things that are meant to keep us safe … a complete breakdown of responsibility.

A breakdown of morality in the minds of those thugs a total absence of feeling or conscience. A breakdown in community where a neighbour is left to reach a pitch of utter misery. And a breakdown of our criminal justice system.

Every part of it, the police, the prosecution services, the prisons … is failing under the weight of big government targets and bureaucracy. The police aren't on the streets because they're busy complying with ten different inspection regimes. The police say the CPS isn't charging people because they have to hit targets to reduce the number of unsuccessful trials.

And the prisons aren't rehabilitating offenders because they're focused on meeting thirty-three different performance indicators.

This all needs to change. I'm not going to stand here and promise you a country where nothing bad ever happens. I do not underestimate how difficult it will be to deal with this problem of crime and disorder.

We cannot rebuild social responsibility from on high. But the least we can do the least we can do is pledge to all the people who are scared, who live their lives in fear and who can't protect themselves, that a Conservative government, with Chris Grayling, with Dominic Grieve, will reform the police, reform the courts, reform prisons. We will be there to protect you.


Why is our society broken? Because government got too big, did too much and undermined responsibility.


Why are our politics broken? Because government got too big, promised too much and pretended it had all the answers.

Of course it was done with the best intentions. And let's be clear: not everything Labour did was wrong.

Devolution; the minimum wage; civil partnerships, these are good things that we will we keep.

But this idea that for every problem there's a government solution for every issue an initiative, for every situation a czar …

It ends with them making you register with the government to help out your child's football team. With police officers punished for babysitting each other's children. With laws so bureaucratic and complicated even their own attorney general can't obey them.

To read the full speech transcript click here

HAGUE WARNS AGAINST TORY COMPLACENCY

William Hague delivered a powerful first day speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester today.

To download the full speech click here.

Mr Hague said Labour would run a "wholly negative" campaign characterised by smears and playing on people's fears.

He told the Conservative Party conference that if Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, won the election "the last traces of hope and optimism and confidence about our national future would drain away".

Despite the opinion poll leads and local election successes, senior Conservatives have been careful to avoid sounding as if the general election was already won.

Mr Hague, effectively the Tories' deputy leader, said: "Whatever our successes and however much the country cries out for change, we must never allow one morsel of complacency to creep in to our campaign.

"We must be conscious that the system is stacked against us - that Labour only have to draw to win a majority in the House of Commons but we have to win by some two million votes to do the same.

"We must be conscious too that this election, as we saw in Brighton last week, will bring forth from Gordon Brown's Labour a wholly negative campaign - barricaded in the Downing Street bunker they will fling any dirt, stoke any fear, spread any smear and peddle any distortion to scare people into thinking that change is dangerous, honesty frightening, and the fresh air of new leadership actually poisonous for the people of Britain.

"This campaign will have ups and downs, it will have moments of difficulty, when we will need to keep our nerve, calm our friends, and make sure that we always march in step towards the goal of a better government for our country."

After the Prime Minister's conference speech last week, in which he reeled off a list of Labour's achievements, Mr Hague gave his own version detailing the Government's failures on public finances, crime and health.

He mocked Mr Brown over the "goats" that joined - and subsequently left - the Government of All the Talents.

"The arrival of a string of ministers from outside politics - Lord Malloch-Brown, Lord Darzi, Lord Digby Jones, was hailed by Gordon Brown as showing it was a Government of All the Talents.

"It turned out they were so talented that after working with him for a short time they left, and so we now have a Government of All the Talents with all the talents taken out of it."

Mr Brown and his Government "do not possess the quality of honesty, directness, decision-making and leadership necessary to make this country great and successful again".

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, who Mr Hague said had given "new meaning to the word chumps", was singled out during an attack on the Government's lack of accountability.

"The Prime Minister nobody ever elected has been kept in office by a deputy nobody in the country had voted for at all, making up a Government with the least moral or democratic authority to govern in our lifetime."

COMMENT

Very persuasive Mr Hague. The fear the British public will have is how long the commitment to transparency and honesty will last once in office. The country will be looking for the next Government to prove by their actions that they will deliver on their plan. We have read the Conservative Plan for Social Reform (see links opposite & previous posts). The proposals for change will be challenging and require a courageous and committed team to implement them.

The priciples are sound. Should the Conservatives be successful at election time, we only hope that they will not provide the opposition and the public with the same ammunition for doubt, suspicion and ridicule that Mr
Brown and co have evidenced diring their rule.

We look forward to Chris Graylings' speech on Law & Order at 11.15am on Wednesday 7th October. We hope to see that Messrs Cameron & Grayling have a firm grasp of what is needed to fix the broken Criminal Justice System in this country and evidence that they will deliver the transparent and honest solutions so badly needed.

Over the coming weeks and months, where gaps in the Law & Order strategy seem evident, reports and communications will be posted directly to Mr Grayling from this site.

To see the full agenda for the Conservative Conference click here

The Crime Analysis Team

Nice 1 Limited

MORE SPIN FROM LABOUR ON OUR FAILING JUSTICE SYSTEM

Extracts from Labour's Home Secretary, Alan Johnson's speech to the 2009 Labour Party Annual Conference:

"Crime is the area of government policy where statistics matter the least and perception matters the most. But the fact is that we have an excellent record to defend".

COMMENT : Statistics matter the least? You would say that, considering the actual level of crime (10million incidents) is twice that reported to the police (4.7million) and the Home Office admit that the higher figure is the most reliable. To admit they matter would mean you having do accept that crime is out of control and the public have lost confidence in reporting it. Tell the victims of crime that statistics matter the least, especially the ones that the Government policing system couldn't respond to because of endemic police bureaucracy, misdirected priorities and ivory tower minority projects.

"Overall crime is down by 36% since we came to power, violent crime by 41%, domestic burglary by 54% and vehicle-related theft by 57%."

COMMENT : What you mean is, you've found better ways to manipulate and misrepresent the statistics. If you mean that fewer people report crime because they have lost confidence in the system, we agree. However, the fudging of crime statistics has caused the general public to take your statistics with a pinch of salt, as political spin. Vehicle related thefts are now swallowed up in re allocated offences, such as burglary, robbery, or simple thefts. Your headlines earlier this year announced that vehicle crime was down by 10%. Yet Jacqui Smith revealed that 18,600 vehicle thefts were not reported as such, being absorbed into other offences. When added back into the vehicle theft numbers, take into account the under reporting and vehicle crime is INCREASING not decreasing. Your numbers are flawed by a serious corruption of the numbers for political gain.

"These achievements are a tribute to our policemen and women. There are more of them than ever before, supported by 16,000 Police Community Support Officers with a budget 60% higher than we inherited in 1997".

COMMENT : Yes, the crime figures are a tribute to our police officers, who do a very difficult job, despite a corrupted criminal justice system. 16,000 PCSO's without the powers to defend themselves and the public adequately. The funding for 16,000 PCSO's would have been better spent putting 12,500 regular officers, with full powers on the streets. 142,000 police officers in England & Wales. How many of them are involved in frontline duties?? The public would be shocked to hear that Government initiatives and projects, supported and promoted by the more senior politically directed officers take the vast majority of those officers off the streets, engaged in adminstrative, office based duties. A ridiculous number of officers are engaged in wasteful activity rather than actually doing the job we need them for, protecting our community and citizens.

The fact is, the thin blue line has become so transparent it is barely visible. Go to any police station between the hours of 9am - 5pm... try and get a parking space. Then revisit the same station at 10pm. That picture tells the story of the ineffective use of police resources when on the street policing is really needed. But hey, there are some lovely flow charts and tables to look at in those offices.

How much of that 60% budget funds frontline officer resources and how many millions are wasted on Government "Wendy House" ideas and projects?? All forces have been presented with a 10% budget cut for 2010/2011, based in part on the manufactured statistics and detections devised and implemented by the Home Office you represent.

"We need to ensure that any breach of an ASBO is prosecuted. Above all, we need to make it clear that anti-social behaviour isn't a low-level nuisance to be tolerated, it's a major source of insecurity and unhappiness that has to be tackled wherever and whenever it occurs".

COMMENT : 60,000 ASBO's with over half being breached, with the Criminal Justice System a toothless tiger to deal with it. The kids are laughing at authority because adequate powers were not put in place to deal with breaches of ASBO's. The penalties for breaching ASBO's are so pathetic, more than 50% have done so repeatedly with NO repercussions. Tell the victims of their behaviour how effective ASBO's have been without the necessary follow up powers to deal with breaches.

"It was Labour that introduced specialist domestic violence courts and helped put 720 fully trained independent domestic violence advisers in place. More arrests are being made and conviction rates are rising".

COMMENT : Domestic violence is an important issue that needs effective solutions. Yet again though, the Home Office saw this as a means of manipulating statistics and detection rates. No one would dispute the benefits of the extra steps now being taken to protect vulnerable victims in these circumstances. However, look more closely at the crime figures you boast about. Ask the front line officers how many cases they have been forced to deal with where complaints are withdrawn but the offence remains on the books for the purposes of ticking the detection box, criminalising thousands more people that the victim does not want to see prosecuted. Genuine cases where vulnerable parties are victimised and want to proceed are applauded, but there remains a massive distortion of the real picture by the Home Officer and senior officers pursuing detections at all costs.

"Gordon Brown has been integral to all of these achievements and he has led the way in addressing the biggest global economic and political challenges of our age".

COMMENT : This is the same Gordon Brown that did the deal with Gadaffi, trading justice for commerce over the Lockerbie bomber and the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher? How can the British public ever trust a man who would make such a despicable trade off?

Mr Johnson, you may choose to dismiss the statistics, the British public certainly do, they carry no weight when presented by a party that has manipulated and distorted them beyong truthful recognition. You may make your promises at Conference time, when it suits your political ends. However, the front line police officers know the real truth of your falsehoods. The general public are not stupid. They know the Government have been conning them these last twelve years on crime and policing. The see the evidence in the decay of our social fabric every day on the streets of Britain. So don't feed us your spin about crime being slashed, the figures are worthless and the words and hollow promises of your party are no longer trusted.

Britain may not yet be broken, but it is deeply wounded by the lies and spin we have been fed.

The wounds can be healed with transparent reform and back to basics policing unfettered by excessive political influence.

The Government to which you have pinned your flag of loyalty, no longer inspires the confidence and support of the public.

We look forward to witnessing a better future, with a Government whose actions will speak louder than words, delivering the justice and society we seek, with honesty and transparent solutions that will go a long way to regain the trust of the public.

The Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Ltd

FIONA PILKINGTON - SOCIETY WITH A BROKEN MORAL COMPASS

The tragic story of the suicide of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter Francesca shocked the nation this week. Media attention returned to the events of that fateful day, following an inquest earlier this week when a coroners inquest ruled that police inaction had contributed to their deaths.

Years of torment from young neighbors led the despairing single mother to kill herself and her disabled daughter. Fiona Pilkington, 38, and her 18-year-old daughter, Francecca Hardwick, died when Ms Pilkington set fire to their car in Leicestershire in October 2007.

The ringleaders of a gang of children that terrorised Fiona and her daughter continue to be a menace in the area, the court heard. The children, who have virtually no parental control, are said to remain the root cause of antisocial behaviour on the street where they tormented Fiona and her severely disabled daughter, Francecca, for almost ten years. Fiona Pilkington suffered more than a decade of abuse from a gang of youths who terrorized her family by urinating on her house, taunting her developmentally challenged daughter and beating her severely dyslexic son. The family lived for more than 10 years under siege. A 16-strong gang of yobs regularly pelted Fiona’s house with eggs, they set fences on fire, pushed fireworks through the front door and taunted Francecca.

Most of us will never understand the mentality of feral yobs who stalk our streets. Though we’ve seen enough examples of lawlessness to know these knuckle-trailing neanderthals exist in increasing numbers and have utter disregard for the norms of a polite, civilised society.

Undoubtedly, the Leicestershire force will remain under the spotlight as a result of the crtiticism levelled against them. Time will reveal the degree of responsibility they must accept for the tragic events.

Superintendent Steve Harrod told the inquiry how low-level anti-social behaviour is now a local council’s responsibility. And the objective of British justice is to avoid criminalising young people.

COMMENT

Not so many years ago low-lives looking for trouble would have been hauled before courts or had the living daylights scared out of them by coppers determined to keep their beat problem-free. Now yobs tear up Asbos and mock authority. They consider the law a joke and who can blame them? While vile thugs circled Fiona’s family like wolves baying for blood her local force stand accused of doing nothing.

If the police were negligent in their duty, then those responsble should be identified and the appropriate action taken to prevent further similar occurrences involving vulnerable members of society.

The root cause of the problem though is symptomatic of policing in the UK in 2009. In exploring why the police might have failed in their duty it is essential to look beyond the front line officers who attended or dealt with calls.

The current state of the police is not the fault of good officers who want to do a proper job but are hamstrung by the burdens of paperwork and successive Government legislation, the latest being the excessive number of new offences brought in during the last twelve years by this Government.

Due to politically motivated control, bureaucracy and cost, the entire criminal justice system is corrupted from the top downwards starting with the treasury who hold the purse strings, and the Home Office who are allegedly in charge of policing.

Literally thousands of articles and posts echoing these sentiments have proliferated online forums during recent years. They can't all be wrong. There is something radically amiss with police priorities and modus operandi but, much more pertinently, they and the politicians are fully aware of it. There are plenty policemen and women imbued with moral integrity and sound motives. There are many police blogs where officers attempt to convey this very message to the public they serve.

Whichever Government is in charge, there needs to be an urgent and comprehensive review of policing in the UK and fast.

The sad case of Fiona Pilkington and her family are symptoms of a society whose moral compass is badly broken. It can be fixed but the repair work required needs to be more than the cosmetic surface level damage. A previous post from this site talked of the spoiled society, where some sectors of the younger generation are badly in need of a firm hand with a return to back to basics discipline and control. click here to read the article

If the Government are to start the task of fixing our society, then surely there is no better place to start than here. By instilling some firm handed forgotten disciplines within the "spoiled sector" of our youth, there will at least be a glimmer of hope that the UK may once again be a pleasant, less threatening place to live.


The Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited

GORDON BROWN ... LET THE POLICE GET BACK TO BASICS

Posted as a reply to a post on Inspector Gadgets site

http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/the-single-measure-of-public-confidence/

Drastic measures need to be introduced so that coppers can “get back to basics” and do the job they really want to do, lock up villains and protect the public.

All the flow chart based strategies and “flavour of the month” schemes may keep the SMT (Senior Management Teams) and they who must be obeyed at the Home Office behind their nice little desks, but they are a major distraction to the basics of what police officers join the job to do and what the public expects.

None of the blame for this state of our society lies at the door of the front line copper, who can only do their best with the tools they are given. The problem lies in the “empire building” culture from above. Politicians are the worlds worst for it and their influence is obvious as it cascades down the SMT ranks.

It’s the front line troops who end up having to face all the crap that these ideas and strategies create.

The challenge is dismantling the bureaucratic politically driven machine. If the front liners are not included in the process, the likely outcome will be an even greater more complex bureacratic machine to manage away the bureaucracy it was intended to eliminate! Let’s hope Jan Berry is possessed with enough common sense principles to stop the rot.

She has a mountain to climb in that she has the problems to solve quickly, and an interfering headline seeking Government to impede her progress.

In business, if a company takes its eye off the basics, it goes bump. Sooner or later, it is forced to address what distracts them from the core activity of generating cash and profit.

In a similar vein regarding police activity, the common thread seems to be to eliminate all distractions that keep officers away from what they do best and joined to do, to be out there on the street doing the basics. The rest is just distracting peripheral crap that adds liitle or no value.

The public don’t want to hear phoney headlines drawn from surveys, they want coppers out there, as much as possible, preventing crime and making their patch a safer place to be.

A certain amount of admin is necessary, but the duplicated effort, the pointless collection of unecessary data “just in case”, the time wasted on schemes and initiatives, and the excessive allocation of resources to non operational policing, seem to be a major distraction.

Public support will return slowly, when someone at a high level recognises the urgency of getting back to basics, stops the talking and planning, and makes it bloody well happen. When the public sees better responses, with the elimination of al the crap that gets in the way of justice being served AND seen to be served, there will be little or no need for further initiatives, surveys and the rest of the mintutae that is killing the job.

Off topic but all credit to Paul McGeever at the Federation for his letter to Gordon Brown yesterday about the Yvonne Fletcher/ Libyan trade deal debaucle. We posted support and a copy of his letter on this site where you can also see his letter to GB.

http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2009/09/police-federation-letter-to-gordon.html

Crime Analyst Team
Nice 1 Limited

POLICE FEDERATION LETTER TO GORDON BROWN RE MURDER OF WPC YVONNE FLETCHER

http://www.polfed.org/Letter_to_Rt_Hon_Gordon_Brown_RE_Yvonne_Fletcher_150909.pdf

The team at Nice 1 Ltd, would like to take this opportunity to endorse the sentiments contained in the letter by Paul McKeever, Chairman of the Police Federation, addressed to Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

The letter details the Federation dismay and disgust at the recent disclosure of the Government deal that traded justice for the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in return for commercial gain.

To see the letter in full click here or the link pasted above.

Never mind the question of public faith and confidence in its police service, only a complete reversal of this decision would go some way to restoring any remnants of confidence in Mr Brown at this stage.

Crime Analysis Team
Nice 1 Limited

GORDON BROWN SHUNS BEREAVED VICTIMS FAMILIES

It seems somewhat of a contradiction that the Government plough so much funding into committees to encourage a "Victim Focused" strategy of policing, yet fail to deliver when it comes to supporting the tragic real victims, the families that experience bereavement through criminal acts. This includes families of police officers.

The work of the National Victims Association has been repeatedly spurned by Gordon Brown and his Government that are only too ready to pose for photographs and strike scandalous deals with Mr Gadaffi and his Libyan terrorist regime.

THE NVA

The National Victims Association provide a comprehensive advocacy, advice, counselling and support service to families bereaved through murder or manslaughter, and are widely regarded by many Government Ministers, statutory agencies, Police forces and Churches as the leading Charity specialising in this field of work. Their website provides details of their ground-breaking work, campaigns on behalf of bereaved families and the fight to obtain core funding from the Government.

BROKEN PROMISES FROM THE GOVERNMENT . . .
Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker MP made public promises to murder victims' families which were subsequently broken. He assured his audience that he would both fund and attend a conference in 2009, then refused to do either.

After numerous complaints about him breaking his promises, Mr Coaker wrote to David Hines of NVA, astonishingly claiming an entirely different interpretation to that of the 100+ bereaved families present. His letter and the reply of David Hines are available and we invite anyone interested to draw their own conclusions.

The next day, following a letter to Mr Coaker from Tim Boswell MP in which Mr Coaker was asked about not delivering on his conference pledges, Mr Coaker wrote to Mr Boswell. His letter was utterly and knowingly untruthful, claiming as it did that the Government had provided substantial sums of money to fund NVA’s core activities. The truth is that since 1992, NVA has received not one penny in core funding from any Government.

What Gordon Brown says...
“Every child is precious and irreplaceable and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure.”
House of Commons, 25th Feb 2009

What Gordon Brown does...
The Prime Minister has, for over a year, resolutely refused to acknowledge multiple requests to meet several NVA parents bereaved through murder. In May 2008 and on behalf of the families of 38 homicide victims - including one triple murder and two serving police officers - NVA wrote to Prime Minister Gordon Brown requesting a meeting to discuss their plight. He refused. Read the National Victims Association first letter to Mr Brown here.

Government Funding : The Truth

Because of the Government’s consistent refusal to tell the truth about NVA funding, the charity have now published a letter sent to Justice Minister Maria Eagle MP in April 2009. We also detail below, every payment ever received from the Government.

Core Funding - Amounts Received

1999 : Nil
2000 : Nil
2001 : Nil
2002 : Nil
2003 : Nil
2004 : Nil
2005 : Nil
2006 : Nil
2007 : Nil
2008 : Nil
2009 : Nil

Conference Funding : Amounts Received

1999 : Nil
2000 : Nil
2001 : Nil
2002 : Nil
2003 : Nil
2004 : Nil
2005 : Nil
2006 : Nil
2007 : Received £10,000 (50% of total costs)
2008 : Received £10,000 (50% of total costs)
2009 : Cancelled due to lack of funding

Project Funding : Amounts Received

2007 Project Costs £48,000, Received £25,000, Shortfall £23,000
2009 Project Costs £48,725, Received £30,985, Shortfall £17,740
2009/10 Project Costs £73,000

Yet another example of this Governments true motivation.

This is political spin at it most abhorrent, where tragic families most in need of compassion and support are denied assistance, where justice for murdered police officers is traded for commercial gain, and where the words "Victim Focus" only count for something if they can be used to political advantage.

Shame on you Mr Brown.