New police scandal

[Carnage]

I've got two business interest registered. One is renting my flat out to another officer, and the other is to cover the receipt of sponsorship for my racing. The bar is set quite low as to what constitutes an interest.

[Gene Vincent]

Derek Smith said:

We now have a direct political appointment for the bloke in charge, a personal friend of the PM.

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.

[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.'

[Gene Vincent]

Derek Smith said:

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.'

It's rude to be unnecessarily condescending.

Where in my post am I wrong?

[PugwasHDJ80]

As a layperson it surprises me that anybody Ian full time job has enough time to have another job, part time or not.

[Ozzie Osmond]

PugwasHDJ80 said:

As a layperson it surprises me that anybody in a full-time job has enough time to have another job, part time or not.

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

[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.

[Gene Vincent]

So, in short, what I wrote was correct.

Your assertion that I know nothing or at best only a little of the functioning may or may not be true, but getting the foundation of first principles is the right way of going about things.

The irony of your post claiming that I move on from issues too quickly is not lost on me, I was ejected from the Mitchell debate for exactly NOT that reason.

But we move on, so this man signs off the reports collated by others, teams of others as a counter point to that issued by the forces themselves.

Is that correct?

[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.

[Gene Vincent]

Derek... accusations??? Odd, none made!

According to its remit he does in fact sign off the reports, he then and only then after agreement from the Home Office can implement a staged revision of practice in his addenda, this addenda is not his making alone but made by teams of inspectors, who for the majority of time are accompanied in their inspections by the force inspected, it doesn't sound too onerous to me.

Two further points, then the thread can move on... you mentioned that I didn't know what it was like to work under constant tinkering and micro-management, I have and all such operations have failed.

The sort of thing you rail against is almost invariably due to bad management, the very symptom you describe as your working conditions are not a reason to stop revision, they are a major motivator for thorough reform.

My second point is personal, I have no agenda, cause or chip on my shoulder, I have never been in trouble with the police, have no record whatsoever, nothing 'awful' has happened to me at the hands of the police, I pay my taxes (all of them grudgingly I admit). You and the others here who feel aggrieved that someone has the temerity to criticise their chosen work must not take such criticism as purely an anti-police agenda, it may be so for many/some/all of the others, for me it is far from the truth.

I hope you are cool with that, I am, and I will continue to criticise if something seems wrong, unjust or a failure.

Edited by Gene Vincent on Sunday 30th December 21:58

[Derek Smith]

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

[PugwasHDJ80]

Derek Smith said:

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.

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?

[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.

[turbobloke]

Derek Smith said:

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

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.

[Elroy Blue]

Wouldn't it be great if all we had to deal with is crime.
Massive mental health issues, babysitting them in hospital, finding accommodation for them, trying to get someone in the medical profession to deal with them. Being parents to feral youths , marriage guidance to the feckless , picking up the pieces of failed private company initiatives.

Apparently crime is down, so we mustn't have anything else to do.
'More with less'. Been hearing that for 20 years.
We've been cut by over 20%. But people still want the same level of response as before. When they don't get it, it's the Police's fault. Government can't lose.

[10 Pence Short]

So you're doing far more with less? You're working harder?

Good.

[turbobloke]

10 Pence Short]So you're [BiB said:

doing far more with less? You're working harder?

Good.

Absolutely, more of the same needed.

If a govermnent is ever elected that looks after the wealth creators and job providers first and foremost (because they look after everybody else, it's certainly not Labour politicians or the dinosaur Unions, or even PolFed) rather than running scared of intelligent fools in The Guardian and BBC there may be more tax-take and more to spend on all the worthy areas we could list. If governments that spend more than the country earns keep getting elected with their muddled thinking and resulting over-spending, we will remain shafted for longer and the poorest will suffer most. That's a general comment but crime fighting and police budgets are of course implicated.

[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.