New police scandal

[Derek Smith]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2254716/Sc...

I have to confess here that I am as guilty as anyone here.

Nice to know that there are 230,000 police officers.

The Home Office comment is a terrific one.

[Derek Smith]

Fishtigua said:

No suprises there, they do very little while at work anyway.

The thing is, of course, that the harder a PC works, the longer he spends inside completing paperwork, dealing with his prisoners, waiting in court for days on end.

The figures mean nothing of themselves. The City of London one might not take into consideration the country's biggest fraud squad as they work in the most fraudulent area of the country.

Do the figures take into account senior officers or is it just PCs?

It is just the tory press pushing their agenda.

The suggestion that there is anything wrong with police officers having a second job is a nonsense yet the papers take it up.

A farce.

[Derek Smith]

It is almost certainly a press release from the tories, possibly only to cerain outlets, with the bit about officers only spending eight minutes per hour 'available'.

[Derek Smith]

smegmore said:

Nor me, providing there is no conflict of interest with police duties.

There are limitations on what business interests a police officer can have. It is one of a number. One cannot take an active part in politics, although being a victim of party politics is no problem. You cannot live where you like. Then there is the ban on joining a trades union or being affiliated in any way. The right to strike and more.

Further, some forces impose bans on police officers doing charity or other 'big society' volunteer work, such as school boards and such.

The Federation took advice on such matters a few years ago (and then were told it was outside their remit to do so) on challengiong these restrictions. The one that seemed most open was the right to strike but those bits which were based on limiting a police officer's ability to discharge his duties impartialy or might give rise to the impression that he might not be able to discharge his duties impartialy were deemed untouchable. So no living in a pub or brothel.

[Derek Smith]

turbobloke said:

Are the numbers wrong? There seems to be no suggestion that the numbers are made up or exaggerated,

23,000 police officers with second jobs, that's 10% of the total, so yes, grossly exaggerated and made up. Whilst it doesn't really matter as only the weak minded and the totally prejudiced against the police (the same ones) would be taken in. Even the DM journos were not taken in. They were telling lies.

I feel certain that the police had nothing to do with the supply of such distorted and made up figures.

There's an additional story in the DMonline which, if you read the headlines, suggests that an 'officer' is teaching pole dancing.

But then people who are prejudiced against the police will continue to believe what they want to believe, and no doubt believe that it is somehow wrong for police officers to have a second job.

[Derek Smith]

REALIST123 said:

As the crime rate is falling, despite the cuts, then the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But then again, maybe the crime rate isn't falling?

My force had a high rate of drug crime. According to the stats we were amongst the top 15 (circa, this was some time ago) forces: not too high/low but the press got hold of it and then the TV ran a programme of the rampant drug availability on our streets. A senior police officer looked into the matter, found that most of the drug crime was self generated so disbanded the drugs squad and guess what? Yep, we were suddenly amongst the best in the country.

The reason, according to the CC's annual report, was putting those with drugs squad experience on division, to help the PCs.

We had an operation to remove drug sellers from a town centre. This was, to an extent, very effective but the problem was that the dealers went from locations where we knew thay'd be to more covert places. Given that this was at a time of cuts (nothing new under the sun) we were unable to commit units to look for them, not that I would have done as if it wasn't obvious only 'regulars' would know where they were. Once word got out we would take steps to move them on.

But if you cut police numbers, crime will drop. Of course it will. Much crime is generated from police sticking their noses into things which offenders wished didn't concern them.

[Derek Smith]

10 Pence Short said:

Are you suggesting that the figures published by HMIC are lies?

Sorry to come to this reply late but I've just seen it.

If you mean by lies, meant to confuse, bewilder, trick, misinform, muddle, mislead, not to mention deceive, then an unequivocal: Yes!

HMIC has always been a political animal, to a greater or lesser extent. Many of us thought it had reached its peak under Blair but we were doomed to disappointment. We now have a direct political appointment for the bloke in charge, a personal friend of the PM.

[Derek Smith]

Gene Vincent said:

Political or not, he is simply the head of an Inspecting team, so reporting in the first instance will need to be tightened up and if it isn't then he can send a team to get a different aspect of the quality of the policing in a particular area.

Honest reporting and the resultant change isn't always for the worst... unless there is connivance to ham-string the changes at the outset.

The latter is something that I suspect has happened in the past.

Thanks for your input. It is good that you try. I especially enjoyed the 'simply the head of an inspecting team.'

[Derek Smith]

Gene Vincent said:

Political or not, he is simply the head of an Inspecting team, so reporting in the first instance will need to be tightened up and if it isn't then he can send a team to get a different aspect of the quality of the policing in a particular area.

Honest reporting and the resultant change isn't always for the worst... unless there is connivance to ham-string the changes at the outset.

The latter is something that I suspect has happened in the past.

The problem is that you have little or no idea of the function of the HMIC. You have never sat through an inspection of a department you are a manager in when they come to call, you do not understand how they function. You do not realise what control the head of the HMIC has.

You also end by saying you suspect something but give no reason, add no evidence and display an ignorance of how the HMIC forces changes through. Care to guess on the last point? One Welsh force was highly praised for an initiative it put into practice with regards care for victims of crime. HMIC told them it wasn't something they should be doing so they had to give it up immediately.

If I was to criticise anyone for commenting on a subject they know little about then I would leave myself open to someone with enough energy to go back over my comments. However, you have no idea of the practices and tactics of the HMIC. You have never been handed a list of their 'recommendations', some of which are patently silly, costly and bewildering.

I once refused - with the backing of my super and also the CC - to use an HO system due to its high costs and instead compied one that Devon and Cornwall were going to put into practice. Saved my force a lot of money. When I mentioned my gratitude to my super for his and the CC's support he said that I'd better be prepared for the HMIC when they came down to try and screw my unit. As things turned out, they couldn't but that was due to PFI, another fundamental change in policing I went through.

Perhaps my tone was wrong but you always, but always, criticise the police and then when your criticisms are proved incorrect you criticise something else, returning to the original subject some time later as if you had proved your point. I don't know what you have against the police, and to be honest I don't really care.

I enjoy an argument but there has to be give and take. You suggest the police, rank and file etc block change. The one constant in my experience of the police, at least from the post miners' strike era, is change, year after year after year.

Whatever you do, I bet you do not get monthly bulletins giving you instructions on what you should do from the Home Office. If you fail to do so then . . . how does one know? One must.

Often the HO newsletters make demands of the police which are actually wrong in law and then someone has to tell them so but very carefully.

You don't know what constant change is like until you have worked as a department head in the police force. My super had a little unit - all civvies - in order to manage the constant change. You dreaded a phone call from the woman in charge as you knew it would hit your budget, your performance and your efficiency, but you would have to do it the way you were told. Resistance was useless.

If you move away from a speciality in the force and return after three years - my experience here so it might be as short at just the one year, or perhaps after just a couple of relevant Home Office circulars - you have to learn everything again.

So when you seem to accuse the police of being reluctant to change then you have to excuse me if I am a little abrupt.

And a small point: the HMIC makes up its own figures. It doesn't use many of those supplied by forces.

[Derek Smith]

Ozzie Osmond said:

Quite. It's called the public sector...

Hmm. I would back my hours and workload as a PC, the lowest of the low, against anyone employed in the private sector over a period of a year. I was 15 years in employment before I joined the police. After a year I really began to wonder if I had done the right thing, and not only because my pay was 40% less for nigh on twice the hours.

Easy to criticise the public sector if you read the DM of course.

[Derek Smith]

Gene Vincent said:

So, in short, what I wrote was correct.

Are you trying to goad me into patronising you again? I'm happy to if that is what you want.

Let's go through your statement, or accusations rather:

There is nothing 'just' about being head of the HMIC and it is not an inspecting team, despite its title. It directs. It works with the Home Office although up to now it is the inferior. Now Cameron's buddy is in charge one might assume the relationship will change.

The figures supplied by forces have no relationship to those that the HMIC twists, contorts and then publishes as fact. I used to think they fooled no one.

Change isn't always for the worst although the HMIC has a high level of directives which are political and these are almost always costly. If anything the HMIC blocks change. Any deviation from the norm is frowned upon as dangerous. Never, ever, use the word initiative with the HMIC. If you want to try something that might give a result you have to wrap it up in words that the HMIC used previously. This is not fantasy. This is what the HMIC does.

You suggest that the police block change but the reverse is true. They have to accept it. I am not sure how the police can refuse to follow the directives of the HMIC, even when they are rubbish.

"what I wrote was correct". No, it wasn't.

However what has 'getting the foundation of first principles' got to do with the HMIC? That is not its function. That is not what it does.

What 'man' signs off reports collated by others. The HMIC directs. You say you may or may not know nothing about the HMIC. Take a guess as to which it is. You have no idea.

As I said earlier, I don't know what put you against the police but it must have, in your mind at least, been a tremendous event.

I won't patronise. It is pointless. You do not listen.

[Derek Smith]

I don't want to turn the thread into a pontless argument between two people. I'm off.

[Derek Smith]

PugwasHDJ80 said:

I'd go with that- if you add up all the time spent in my role by all my colleagues then we average around 85-90 hours per week. Where could i fit a second career into this?

It is not a career. It is not necessarily a job. It is a business interest. The move to job is what the DM and Sun have made it.

I wrote when I was in the police. I earned a little bit from it. It was/is a hobby. Can't the police have a hobby? Don't forget that despite what you read, in the DM many times, there is virtually no overtime in the service nowadays. None. My overtime budget in 2003 was two hours per person per week and I had to run some parades at 12 hours notice and of a weekend. It has got considerably less than that.

So the police work a 40-hour week, averaged out over four weeks (or used to, it might have changed). Police have to work a certain amount of overtime unpaid. Some officers will work for free in certain circs: missing child, major incident (Lewes floods had too many officers for the duty computer to cope with yet hardly any were paid overtime), major crime - DCs will generally stay at work for the first three days in a murder/rape, that sort of thing. Whilst there might be an overtime budget, I'd like to see the look on the SIO's face if everyone submitted a claim. There'd be another major crime.

So say 45-50 hours for ranks under that of inspectors (who don't get paid overtime so are put upon). Lots of time there for another job.

I had a cousin who was a lay methodist preacher. This was supported by the job in the 70s and 80s and they allowed him three or four hours off on Sundays when they could but he had to come in for a period, then do his god bit and then start work again, so no time off.

When I started in the police I had three days off a month. I was an hour's journey by motorbike away, 90 mins by train if the bus hadn't stopped running, if it had another 40 mins. And I would try and work three or four hours overtime each shift. In my last operational post I got three days off each week. No overtime and due to BAA paying for staff, there were enough inspectors to cover. The shift was supposed to be 10 hrs but in reality it was 12. I was writing in earnest then.

So what's the problem? If the police have the time away from the job, and it does not breach the regulations, then what is it to do with the CC, or the DM come to that? Or, no offence meant, you?

(Note: things might be different in the Met but the Met is not the police force.)

[Derek Smith]

PugwasHDJ80 said:

I'd go with that- if you add up all the time spent in my role by all my colleagues then we average around 85-90 hours per week. Where could i fit a second career into this?

As an aside, I was told to run a parade by an SIO for a juvenile offender involved in a major crime. The requirement was for the parade to be run within 36 hours for a juvenile suspect. There was no reason for this other than a requirement in a Home Office circular and therefore used by the HMIC as one of the subjects to beat up forces with (oh, sorry, I said I'd leave that alone). I said to the SIO that my staff's overtime would have to come from his budget. He told me that he would let me have all his overtime entitlement. I'm not thick: I saw the flaw. He had none, yet was dealing with a major crime, one that was in the national press and TV.

I called my staff in (this was a Saturday and the parade was on the Sunday. All the staff were civvies and their overtime rates were much higher than those for police officers. My office manager would have got over twice as much 'pay' - to include time off in lieu - than I, an inspector, would have got if I'd been able to claim overtime). So three civvies (they were needed for the mechanics of segragation). None claimed time off or extra pay. When I told them I would give them a day off they refused. So each volunteer for the parade got more money than the inspector running the parade and the three support staff combined.

That was 2002. In the ten years since, funding has been slashed. God knows how I would have managed.

[Derek Smith]

turbobloke said:

In that scenario? Take money from something less fruitful to quality of life as opposed to political correctness with phone calls to people expressing legitimate opinions in radio phone-ins.

More generally, crime seems to have managed very badly with police funding slashed. Which is good!

"The rift between the Government and police is poised to deepen as crime continues to fall despite unprecedented cuts in officer numbers."

• Crime down by at least 10% in 19 of 43 force areas in England & Wales
• Crime plummets by 22% in Nottinghamshire and 18% in Northumbria

It's that nuisance Daily Mail at it again, publishing data provided by police forces via ONS.

Given that there are limited funds available, police like everybody else including the public need to realise that you can only spend what you can afford. It's no use bleating about what you could do with more money, we can all do that in any of the many spending areas.

Of course, the stats prove everything. Do you really believe that: 'More generally, crime seems to have managed very badly with police funding slashed.?'

The stats prove nothing. Do they prove that serious crime is being sleeved? That organised crime is being ignored? That endemic fraud can continue as the police have no resources to put behind it?

Let's be nice and simple. People drive cars dangerously. To prove it we have all the stats from years ago. These are the police's own stats. Let's look at the figures now when there are very few foot patrols and the lowest rate of traffic patrols since the 70s. Accident rates tumble, prosecutions for, for instance, con and use offences plummet and all because the funding of the police has been slashed. It has nothing to do with the police working harder, although one assumes they must have to.

Does it become clear now?

We can't afford to make the roads safer. Hmm. We cannot afford not to.

For once we agree: The Daily Mail is at it again. And so are the usual suspects.

[Derek Smith]

turbobloke said:

Stuff.

Why continue with this argument? You are not stupid. You must know the difference between reported crime, crime statistics and the number of crimes committed.

If the police hierachy are judged on stats do you honestly think the stats will be honest? Do you wonder if the government will care as long as they show a downward trend?

My force was in the bottom three for police accidents (although the best in the country for deaths/serious injuries in pursuits) and this was pointed out by HMIC. It was given to me, i/c driving school, to sort out as it was deemed to be my fault.

I discovered that my force, almost uniquely (although in common with the two forces below us I reckon) recorded damaged windscreen as polaccs, as we did with accidents in police car parks and off road. Criminal damage to police vehicles where there was no offender was also a polacc.

When I pointed out that all we had to do was change the reporting system to get up amongst the 'best', a quicker mind than mine decided that it should be phased in over a period of three years. Whilst I did not see the final report, I am certain that the HMIC praised my force for its determination in changing the ethos of our drivers and the skills of our instructors, as proved by the improved statistics.

No one cares about figures as long as they show the government in a good light. The HMIC will not investigate the figures as long as they show things are improving. The HMIC cares though as if the figures go down they are in trouble.

Stats are a political statement. I feel certain that you must know this. So why do you argue that it shows police being more efficient? Do you not realise it makes it look as if you are naive?

[Derek Smith]

Just to reinforce my preceding post, despite it not really requiring reinforcement: the

When I was in charge of the Brighton area control room I also had responsibility for the CCTV staff and their duties. Most were very keen and wanting to do as much as they could for the division. I tended to give them their head and then review their performance later with the intent to improve. They were the ones who were knowledgeable of the systems.

They were aware of the problem of assaults on foreign students so they decided on a little plan to follow faces around Brighton. They got quality stills of the usual suspects and focused on them.

The first I knew of how efficient they had been was when the Detective Chief Inspector came into my room and threw the quarters stats onto my desk in a temper. It seemed that robberies had more than trebled.

Unknown to me, and to most others, was that there was a significant reluctance of victims of these crimes to report to the police. This was encouraged by their supervisors. All of a sudden my CCTV staff were directing officers to the scenes of robberies, pointing out the victims as well as the offenders and hence the massive increase in robberies.

The DCI was inconsolable, and for perfectly valid reasons. This showed his department was ineffective because everybody depended on the stats. He was judged by the stats. Had I been aware of how successful the operation my CCTV guys were doing would be I could have set up a proper operation and everybody would have been praised. As it was he looked a fool, my supervision looked slack and the CCTV staff appeared to be a loose cannon.

What this shows of course is that stats are manufactured, massaged, and managed. It also showed the difference between reported robberies and the number of robberies. An initiative by CCTV staff increased the rates of robberies by nearly 3 times.

Anyone who believes the stats . . . surely nobody believes the stats. They are however a very effective weapon. They can be used to bludgeon or to praise. What they cannot be used for, and never could be used for, was to assess how effective the government or police are, except on the very limited extent of producing statistics which proved nothing.

Just to clarify my post, the error was mine. I had a great deal of respect for the DCI; he was intelligent, quick-witted and a bit of a workaholic. I regretted letting him down.

[Derek Smith]

10 Pence Short said:

How is it then possible to reliably measure the Police output?

Well, that is the problem isn't it.

The first question is what you want from your police force. We have tried with the government setting targets and this has been a total success. At least from the government's point of view because it shows that the government in setting targets is improving the efficiency of the police.

Indeed it is an effective way for the government to decide which chief constables to push into the HMIC or perhaps to make Commissioner of the Mets. If you as a person in charge of the Home Office was wondering which of three aspirants to promote as Commissioner then all you had to do was see whether or not they created any fuss with regards to targets.

We now have political appointees in charge of each individual force. One would assume that if they are inclined to do a good job then they will set the standards for their particular force. If this conflicts with government targets then the HMIC has a way of keeping them on the same hymn sheet.

There is a bigger problem though. The police needs reform. Cameron has not reformed the police, all he has done is reduce costs. Oh, and changed the conditions of service of police officers. This is not reform. He has put political appointees in charge of police forces but this too is not reform. It is a leap in the dark. No one knows what will happen with regards their input, apart from hugely increase costs of course.

I know what my form of reform would be but of course no one will ask me. The politicians will do what politicians always do and that's something political and based on self-interest.

The only way we can monitor how effective police are will require substantial reform.

There is much that is right with policing in this country. Despite the headlines, it is the envy of much of the world. However organisationally it needs major modifications.

Edited by Derek Smith on Monday 31st December 15:51

[Derek Smith]

10 Pence Short said:

So putting it simply, who should set the targets and how should performance against those targets be measured?

The main problem is that targets which are assessed statistically are inherently flawed. There is little or no objective way of finding out the crime level of even a small area. So much of it is subjective.

We could make a standard of three patrolling officers available at any one time in a particular area, two of whom should be mobile. If one is taken off the streets then they should be replaced within 30 mins. This is a target.

We have a requirement at the moment for the police to attend a certain level of emergency call within a set time. Again this is a subjective judgement.

Another way of judging the effectiveness of the police is to find out how satisfied the population is with their performance. Sounds great, but from my experience most of the public want the police to deal with dog mess, cyclists on the footway, and strange cars parking outside their house.

What level of staff should you assign to a murder? If one set targets for crimes then surely the only answer for a murder would be 100%. If one set a target of say 30% for robberies then the staff would have to come from major incidents such as rapes, armed robberies and serious assaults. So how do you judge the force that hits the target for burglaries but narrowly misses those for rapes?

Obviously, I could go on and on about the way targets are used currently. Go back to that DCI I mentioned, we called out to a murder on Palace Pier one morning and on his way to it a call came out from a PC who had attended a domestic dispute between two men at Black Rock. The PC stated that there was no cause for police action. The DCI, en route to a murder, came on the radio and demanded that it should be "resulted". That meant a tick in the box.

It was funny at the time but on reflection it is a very sad state of affairs. And that sort of sums up the way the police are judged at the moment.

For a more sensible way of deciding how effective the police are major reform is a requirement.

[Derek Smith]

Or, as you requested, put simply: I think it is impossible under the current situation.