Theresa May speaking at the Plod federation conference
Discussion
BlackLabel said:
Post Manchester bombing the Police Federation haven't been holding back. Are they correct in what they're saying?
Theresa May’s dramatic deployment of troops in the wake of the Manchester bombing has laid bare Tory police cuts, the leader of the Police Federation has declared.
They've also highlighted an inspectors comments to May back in 2015.
I might worry more if all these people ( the terrorists ) were complete unknowns who had never been on the radar, but they all seem to be known about. So while I may welcome 10K extra Police on the streets, I'm not sure I wouldn't expect to hear the same depressing story each time about how he was known.Theresa May’s dramatic deployment of troops in the wake of the Manchester bombing has laid bare Tory police cuts, the leader of the Police Federation has declared.
They've also highlighted an inspectors comments to May back in 2015.
a Manchester police inspector said:
‘I worked in inner-city Manchester for 15 years,’ he said. ‘I felt passionate about what I was doing.
‘In 2012 I had to leave. I couldn’t take it any more because the changes that have been imposed have caused community policing to collapse.
‘That’s the reality ma’am. Intelligence has dried up. There aren’t local officers.
‘They don’t know what’s happening. They’re all reactive. There’s no proactive policing locally.
‘We run the risk here of letting communities down, putting officers at risk and ultimately risking national security.’
http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/25/theresa-may-accused-police-of-scaremongering-over-spending-cuts-6660878/‘In 2012 I had to leave. I couldn’t take it any more because the changes that have been imposed have caused community policing to collapse.
‘That’s the reality ma’am. Intelligence has dried up. There aren’t local officers.
‘They don’t know what’s happening. They’re all reactive. There’s no proactive policing locally.
‘We run the risk here of letting communities down, putting officers at risk and ultimately risking national security.’
The real question is what can you do about someone you suspect may just get into a car one day and run a lot of people over. When it was outside terrorism you might have half a chance of stopping such people getting into the country. Kiss goodbye to that when its almost exclusively British born Muslims.
The cuts, both backroom and frontline have been savage. Our equipment doesn't get replaced. Along with the utter shambles that is the Forensic Science service privatisation, probation, interpreter services amongst others, we are on our arse. We've had both May and Cameron standing up in Parliament telling outright lies. (Along with every Police Minister since the Tories came to power).
Every misdemeanour in the last couple of centuries has been used to slur current Officers. The usual suspects on here liked to say we were making it all up. As was said when May accused the Fed of crying wolf, the wolf actually ate the boy. Every warning May was given at that conference has come true. Hopefully people are coming to realise the extent of the damage done.
May can thank the lord she's facing Corbyn. Otherwise there are 119000 Officers who'd gladly kick her in the arse.
Every misdemeanour in the last couple of centuries has been used to slur current Officers. The usual suspects on here liked to say we were making it all up. As was said when May accused the Fed of crying wolf, the wolf actually ate the boy. Every warning May was given at that conference has come true. Hopefully people are coming to realise the extent of the damage done.
May can thank the lord she's facing Corbyn. Otherwise there are 119000 Officers who'd gladly kick her in the arse.
The results of the research are unarguable. The lone, plodding police officer is of little use in stopping crime. At the most one might displace or delay an offence. You can't argue with the stats.
However, you can argue with what is defined as useful. All the research ignores the intelligence that comes from a regular on a beat. Previous to the slashing of the police budget, an SIO in charge of, for instance, a murder would get the LBO to the incident room. He would man the remote station. The collator would be asked to do research on various matters.
Without an LBO there is no information of the internals of a location. Without an LBO no local information goes to a collator.
As anyone who has door-to-doored on an incident in, for instance, an estate will tell you, it is often difficult to get doors to open, let alone answers to questions. An LBO will salt the battlefield. It's a lot easier when you can suggest to a local that 'Alan, your local bobby, said that you might help with a few questions.'
PCSOs were introduced when the cost of a patrolling officer and funding problems (or at least what was considered a problem in those days) made LBOs a frequent target for other jobs and one that had half his time on the beat was a rarity. I actually supported their introduction despite realising their limitations, or at least some of them. Best of a bad job sort of thing. My thought was that LBOs would dry and these would become their replacements, immune from being taken off beat for other roles. OK, so I believed what I was told.
The reality fell way short of the promises. Funding was cut and their potential has not yet been realised.
We need foot patrols to do all the things that LBOs used to do. Something more or less identical to an LBO in fact. Then intelligence would increase and information would be available. Specific communities would benefit and so would the rest of us.
Policing on the cheap; good idea you think?
However, you can argue with what is defined as useful. All the research ignores the intelligence that comes from a regular on a beat. Previous to the slashing of the police budget, an SIO in charge of, for instance, a murder would get the LBO to the incident room. He would man the remote station. The collator would be asked to do research on various matters.
Without an LBO there is no information of the internals of a location. Without an LBO no local information goes to a collator.
As anyone who has door-to-doored on an incident in, for instance, an estate will tell you, it is often difficult to get doors to open, let alone answers to questions. An LBO will salt the battlefield. It's a lot easier when you can suggest to a local that 'Alan, your local bobby, said that you might help with a few questions.'
PCSOs were introduced when the cost of a patrolling officer and funding problems (or at least what was considered a problem in those days) made LBOs a frequent target for other jobs and one that had half his time on the beat was a rarity. I actually supported their introduction despite realising their limitations, or at least some of them. Best of a bad job sort of thing. My thought was that LBOs would dry and these would become their replacements, immune from being taken off beat for other roles. OK, so I believed what I was told.
The reality fell way short of the promises. Funding was cut and their potential has not yet been realised.
We need foot patrols to do all the things that LBOs used to do. Something more or less identical to an LBO in fact. Then intelligence would increase and information would be available. Specific communities would benefit and so would the rest of us.
Policing on the cheap; good idea you think?
Derek Smith said:
The results of the research are unarguable. The lone, plodding police officer is of little use in stopping crime. At the most one might displace or delay an offence. You can't argue with the stats.
However, you can argue with what is defined as useful. All the research ignores the intelligence that comes from a regular on a beat. Previous to the slashing of the police budget, an SIO in charge of, for instance, a murder would get the LBO to the incident room. He would man the remote station. The collator would be asked to do research on various matters.
Without an LBO there is no information of the internals of a location. Without an LBO no local information goes to a collator.
As anyone who has door-to-doored on an incident in, for instance, an estate will tell you, it is often difficult to get doors to open, let alone answers to questions. An LBO will salt the battlefield. It's a lot easier when you can suggest to a local that 'Alan, your local bobby, said that you might help with a few questions.'
PCSOs were introduced when the cost of a patrolling officer and funding problems (or at least what was considered a problem in those days) made LBOs a frequent target for other jobs and one that had half his time on the beat was a rarity. I actually supported their introduction despite realising their limitations, or at least some of them. Best of a bad job sort of thing. My thought was that LBOs would dry and these would become their replacements, immune from being taken off beat for other roles. OK, so I believed what I was told.
The reality fell way short of the promises. Funding was cut and their potential has not yet been realised.
We need foot patrols to do all the things that LBOs used to do. Something more or less identical to an LBO in fact. Then intelligence would increase and information would be available. Specific communities would benefit and so would the rest of us.
Policing on the cheap; good idea you think?
What about all the stats showing a reduction in crime, despite the reduction in officers - Can we argue with those?However, you can argue with what is defined as useful. All the research ignores the intelligence that comes from a regular on a beat. Previous to the slashing of the police budget, an SIO in charge of, for instance, a murder would get the LBO to the incident room. He would man the remote station. The collator would be asked to do research on various matters.
Without an LBO there is no information of the internals of a location. Without an LBO no local information goes to a collator.
As anyone who has door-to-doored on an incident in, for instance, an estate will tell you, it is often difficult to get doors to open, let alone answers to questions. An LBO will salt the battlefield. It's a lot easier when you can suggest to a local that 'Alan, your local bobby, said that you might help with a few questions.'
PCSOs were introduced when the cost of a patrolling officer and funding problems (or at least what was considered a problem in those days) made LBOs a frequent target for other jobs and one that had half his time on the beat was a rarity. I actually supported their introduction despite realising their limitations, or at least some of them. Best of a bad job sort of thing. My thought was that LBOs would dry and these would become their replacements, immune from being taken off beat for other roles. OK, so I believed what I was told.
The reality fell way short of the promises. Funding was cut and their potential has not yet been realised.
We need foot patrols to do all the things that LBOs used to do. Something more or less identical to an LBO in fact. Then intelligence would increase and information would be available. Specific communities would benefit and so would the rest of us.
Policing on the cheap; good idea you think?
sidicks said:
What about all the stats showing a reduction in crime, despite the reduction in officers - Can we argue with those?
That's not relevant.Those statistics are only used to support how good the police are, not how bad the government is; they have no place in this topic.Do I have to tell you everything?
Rovinghawk said:
sidicks said:
What about all the stats showing a reduction in crime, despite the reduction in officers - Can we argue with those?
That's not relevant.Those statistics are only used to support how good the police are, not how bad the government is; they have no place in this topic.Do I have to tell you everything?
sidicks said:
What about all the stats showing a reduction in crime, despite the reduction in officers - Can we argue with those?
You must have missed the many explanations of what the crime stats show. However, you are in luck. If you search via Google you can find lots and lots of research on the subject.Some figures are going up. Overall they are going down. The figures for general crime are dropping across Europe. There are many reasons put forward for this so you can take your choice.
Further, if you research you will see that the reduction in officers has not been a steady decline. It is probable that the effects of the cuts will only just be coming on line. Your suggestion is like a bloke, falling from a skyscraper, thinking that he's alright when he passes the 12th floor. Most of the reductions in this country, although not in Europe, came about before the reductions began to hit. Have a little look at the most recent figures.
Further, and most importantly, your comments have nothing to do with my post, so it seems very odd that you should have quoted it. I was talking about LBOs and information and intelligence that they provide. I actually said in it that LBOs have little crime prevention function. It wasn't hidden so I wonder how or why it didn't register.
What are your views on LBOs?
Derek Smith said:
You must have missed the many explanations of what the crime stats show. However, you are in luck. If you search via Google you can find lots and lots of research on the subject.
'Reality Check' seemed to suggest that "The Crime Survey is generally considered a good measure of crime experienced by individuals because it is not affected by changes to how crime is recorded.""Some figures are going up. Overall they are going down.
Derek Smith said:
Further, if you research you will see that the reduction in officers has not been a steady decline. It is probable that the effects of the cuts will only just be coming on line.
Possible.Derek Smith said:
Your suggestion is like a bloke, falling from a skyscraper, thinking that he's alright when he passes the 12th floor. Most of the reductions in this country, although not in Europe, came about before the reductions began to hit. Have a little look at the most recent figures.
As ever, false analogy, Elroy Blue said:
The cuts, both backroom and frontline have been savage. Our equipment doesn't get replaced. Along with the utter shambles that is the Forensic Science service privatisation, probation, interpreter services amongst others, we are on our arse. We've had both May and Cameron standing up in Parliament telling outright lies. (Along with every Police Minister since the Tories came to power).
Every misdemeanour in the last couple of centuries has been used to slur current Officers. The usual suspects on here liked to say we were making it all up. As was said when May accused the Fed of crying wolf, the wolf actually ate the boy. Every warning May was given at that conference has come true. Hopefully people are coming to realise the extent of the damage done.
May can thank the lord she's facing Corbyn. Otherwise there are 119000 Officers who'd gladly kick her in the arse.
I'm not a plod, but I distinctly remember Cameron at the dispatch box in PMQs saying to Miliband 'No cuts to fronline Police'......and I believed him. What a mug.Every misdemeanour in the last couple of centuries has been used to slur current Officers. The usual suspects on here liked to say we were making it all up. As was said when May accused the Fed of crying wolf, the wolf actually ate the boy. Every warning May was given at that conference has come true. Hopefully people are coming to realise the extent of the damage done.
May can thank the lord she's facing Corbyn. Otherwise there are 119000 Officers who'd gladly kick her in the arse.
And the move to privatise the forensic labs was just ridiculous. If ever there was a department that needed keeping in house, that was it.
As for May, couldn't help thinking her menstrual cycles returned that day at the conference. What the hell was her problem....?
sidicks said:
Derek Smith said:
You must have missed the many explanations of what the crime stats show. However, you are in luck. If you search via Google you can find lots and lots of research on the subject.
'Reality Check' seemed to suggest that "The Crime Survey is generally considered a good measure of crime experienced by individuals because it is not affected by changes to how crime is recorded.""Some figures are going up. Overall they are going down.
Derek Smith said:
Further, if you research you will see that the reduction in officers has not been a steady decline. It is probable that the effects of the cuts will only just be coming on line.
Possible.Derek Smith said:
Your suggestion is like a bloke, falling from a skyscraper, thinking that he's alright when he passes the 12th floor. Most of the reductions in this country, although not in Europe, came about before the reductions began to hit. Have a little look at the most recent figures.
As ever, false analogy, Derek Smith said:
As ever, you change the subject and produce no comments on the subject of my post. Somehow I'm not surprised.
I've commented on the reduction in crime despite the reduction in police officers. That was the subject under discussion at one point. I'm sorry if that particular topic is inconvenient for you!As a reminder, you claimed:
Derek Smith said:
If anyone thinks that the English/Welsh police can suffer a 20%+ cut over 5 years without performance suffering, well they should not be trusted with a credit card
HTHsidicks said:
What about all the stats showing a reduction in crime, despite the reduction in officers - Can we argue with those?
"Crime is down and Police reform is working"Latest crime stats showed:
697 homicides recorded, up 21% from 576 in 2015. These included 96 cases of manslaughter from the 1989 Hillsborough disaster recorded by a coroner last April
32,448 knife crimes recorded - an increase of 14% on the previous year
39,355 rapes recorded, up 13%
5,864 firearms offences, up by 13% largely due to a rise in crimes involving handguns
55,824 robberies, a rise of 10%
92,868 car thefts - 16% more than in 2015
Then there's the fraud epidemic, which doesn't even get included.
Still, if you keep repeating 'crime is down often enough', someone might believe you.
Elroy Blue said:
"Crime is down and Police reform is working"
Latest crime stats showed:
Latest crime stats showed:
Reality Check said:
Only an estimated 42% of all crimes recorded in the Crime Survey are reported to the police.
The Crime Survey is generally considered a good measure of crime experienced by individuals because it is not affected by changes to how crime is recorded."
"Some figures are going up. Overall they are going down.
The Crime Survey is generally considered a good measure of crime experienced by individuals because it is not affected by changes to how crime is recorded."
"Some figures are going up. Overall they are going down.
Elroy Blue said:
Still, if you keep repeating 'crime is down often enough', someone might believe you.
If you only want to look at a proportion of total crime then no wonder you get the 'wrong' (biased) answer!
sidicks said:
What about all the stats showing a reduction in crime, despite the reduction in officers - Can we argue with those?
Surprisingly, most calls to the police and most policing demand isn't crime so it's not a significant way to judge demand. 83% of calls to the police call centres / control room are non-crime.
Even so, within crime data one would need to explore shifting demand and focus. Unsurprisingly, sexual offending has received a lot more focus due to major failings like Rotherham. Forces are placing significant resources into the 'public protection' area of policing. Ok, there may be fewer thefts from cars because people don't have stick-on Sat Navs, but those crimes didn't take much policing time up. In contrast investigating a historic sexual offence that previously wouldn't have been recorded / investigated is worth 50 car break-ins in terms of time and resourcing.
I was speaking to a senor detective recently and her concern was the quality of major investigations for homicide being compromised due to the shortage in detectives (identified by HMIC as a national crisis) and the numbers of serious cases each detective is carrying. It won't show up in the data but when there are fewer detectives with greater workloads then it puts pressure on the quality of the investigations.
Two examples of 'hidden' demand from the many that could be cited the non-crime area.
1) Missing people (one reported every two minutes to the police) has had a shift in risk-assessment, especially where young people are involved who amount to a large % of missing people. You may have similar numbers of people reported missing, but the level of resourcing to find them has increased.
2) Forces are reporting significant increases in mental health work. The NHS has fewer resources for MH-related matters so they're passed on to the police.
3) Mutual aid has increased i.e. one force sending officers to another force for things like protests. This is both expensive and impactful in terms of offering officers time back and causing disruption to the force's whom are sending officers out of force.
What policing has stripped down to is fundamentally responding to 999 calls and dealing with prisoners whom are arrested i.e. the two base functions of poling. Much else e.g. pro-active work, proper neighbourhood visible policing has disappeared in a lot of forces. I was speaking to someone in another force and they were forced to disband their specialist search teams to prop-up the front line. The recovery of weapons has decreased significantly since this has occurred. That won't be captured on any obvious data but it's clearly not a development anyone wants.
The issue in the UK is we have a low police to population ratio to start with. When you start to reduce that further it has a greater impact.
I've never known demand so high and the police only able to offer such a narrow service. If we just want and need the police to be reactive and pick up the pieces then we're pretty much there for most areas. If we want a capacity to prevent problems and harm then we've greatly reduced that capacity over the past few years.
The rational thing for the Home Office / Government to have done when reducing officer numbers would have been to reduce what the police are expected to do. Instead May decided to tell the public that 'there'd be no impact to the frontline' when it was overtly clear this wasn't going to the case. Politics trumped a genuine opportunity for reform and the opportunity to minimise the impact on the public.
La Liga said:
Surprisingly, most calls to the police and most policing demand isn't crime so it's not a significant way to judge demand.
83% of calls to the police call centres / control room are non-crime.
Even so, within crime data one would need to explore shifting demand and focus. Unsurprisingly, sexual offending has received a lot more focus due to major failings like Rotherham. Forces are placing significant resources into the 'public protection' area of policing. Ok, there may be fewer thefts from cars because people don't have stick-on Sat Navs, but those crimes didn't take much policing time up. In contrast investigating a historic sexual offence that previously wouldn't have been recorded / investigated is worth 50 car break-ins in terms of time and resourcing.
I was speaking to a senor detective recently and her concern was the quality of major investigations for homicide being compromised due to the shortage in detectives (identified by HMIC as a national crisis) and the numbers of serious cases each detective is carrying. It won't show up in the data but when there are fewer detectives with greater workloads then it puts pressure on the quality of the investigations.
Two examples of 'hidden' demand from the many that could be cited the non-crime area.
1) Missing people (one reported every two minutes to the police) has had a shift in risk-assessment, especially where young people are involved who amount to a large % of missing people. You may have similar numbers of people reported missing, but the level of resourcing to find them has increased.
2) Forces are reporting significant increases in mental health work. The NHS has fewer resources for MH-related matters so they're passed on to the police.
What policing has stripped down to is fundamentally responding to 999 calls and dealing with prisoners whom are arrested i.e. the two base functions of poling. Much else e.g. pro-active work, proper neighbourhood visible policing has disappeared in a lot of forces. I was speaking to someone in another force and they were forced to disband their specialist search teams to prop-up the front line. The recovery of weapons has decreased significantly since this has occurred. That won't be captured on any obvious data but it's clearly not a development anyone wants.
The issue in the UK is we have a low police to population ratio to start with. When you start to reduce that further it has a greater impact.
I've never known demand so high and the police only able to offer such a narrow service. If we just want and need the police to be reactive and pick up the pieces then we're pretty much there for most areas. If we want a capacity to prevent problems and harm then we've greatly reduced that capacity over the past few years.
The rational thing for the Home Office / Government to have done when reducing officer numbers would have been to reduce what the police are expected to do. Instead May decided to tell the public that 'there'd be no impact to the frontline' when it was overtly clear this wasn't going to the case.
You make some excellent points.83% of calls to the police call centres / control room are non-crime.
Even so, within crime data one would need to explore shifting demand and focus. Unsurprisingly, sexual offending has received a lot more focus due to major failings like Rotherham. Forces are placing significant resources into the 'public protection' area of policing. Ok, there may be fewer thefts from cars because people don't have stick-on Sat Navs, but those crimes didn't take much policing time up. In contrast investigating a historic sexual offence that previously wouldn't have been recorded / investigated is worth 50 car break-ins in terms of time and resourcing.
I was speaking to a senor detective recently and her concern was the quality of major investigations for homicide being compromised due to the shortage in detectives (identified by HMIC as a national crisis) and the numbers of serious cases each detective is carrying. It won't show up in the data but when there are fewer detectives with greater workloads then it puts pressure on the quality of the investigations.
Two examples of 'hidden' demand from the many that could be cited the non-crime area.
1) Missing people (one reported every two minutes to the police) has had a shift in risk-assessment, especially where young people are involved who amount to a large % of missing people. You may have similar numbers of people reported missing, but the level of resourcing to find them has increased.
2) Forces are reporting significant increases in mental health work. The NHS has fewer resources for MH-related matters so they're passed on to the police.
What policing has stripped down to is fundamentally responding to 999 calls and dealing with prisoners whom are arrested i.e. the two base functions of poling. Much else e.g. pro-active work, proper neighbourhood visible policing has disappeared in a lot of forces. I was speaking to someone in another force and they were forced to disband their specialist search teams to prop-up the front line. The recovery of weapons has decreased significantly since this has occurred. That won't be captured on any obvious data but it's clearly not a development anyone wants.
The issue in the UK is we have a low police to population ratio to start with. When you start to reduce that further it has a greater impact.
I've never known demand so high and the police only able to offer such a narrow service. If we just want and need the police to be reactive and pick up the pieces then we're pretty much there for most areas. If we want a capacity to prevent problems and harm then we've greatly reduced that capacity over the past few years.
The rational thing for the Home Office / Government to have done when reducing officer numbers would have been to reduce what the police are expected to do. Instead May decided to tell the public that 'there'd be no impact to the frontline' when it was overtly clear this wasn't going to the case.
La Liga said:
Politics trumped a genuine opportunity for reform and the opportunity to minimise the impact on the public.
I think that history has shown that, when 'reform' is managed within the public sector, the focus is often on improving their own terms and conditions, rather than introduce change that will improve the service to the public!sidicks said:
If you only want to look at a proportion of total crime then no wonder you get the 'wrong' (biased) answer!
Or you can pick and choose only figures that are going down. Of course, you don't mention the rampant fraud figures that aren't recorded.
Crime is down. Crime is down. Keep saying it. Anybody involved in the criminal justice system will tell you otherwise.
Now let's talk about the 90% of our time doing other agencies that doesn't involve crime at all.
Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff