Met rape unit discourages complainants, fakes crime stats.
Discussion
Plods persuade women to withdraw rape complaints so that plods can claim good crime clean up rate. Target driven policing? Of course not....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-215867...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-215867...
Wasn't this supposed to have been stamped out in the early 80's after a fly-on-the-wall documentary showed a detective giving a rape victim a rough time?
Not a great surprise really I suppose. As you say if you give people targets to hit they'll hit the targets whether by leaving patients in parked ambulances, withdrawing borderline pupils from GCSEs or whatever.
Not a great surprise really I suppose. As you say if you give people targets to hit they'll hit the targets whether by leaving patients in parked ambulances, withdrawing borderline pupils from GCSEs or whatever.
It must be very irritating for those officers who have spent years forming working relationships with rape crisis and similar groups to ensure that women do complain if they are raped or sexually assaulted. Something happens in the MPD and all the papers suggest it is a police-wide problem. My experience is that it is not.
Certainly in Sussex we had (and I would assume still have) a number of victim suites set up at considerable expense in order to encourage rape victims, and all vulnerable victims, to come forward.
There is a low conviction rate but that is the nature of the offence. One has to prove lack of consent and it often comes down to one person's word against another's. The most difficult of problems to overcome.
If one victim is put off reporting a rape by these reports then it is a tragedy. I've never had anything to do with the MPD's rape units but I do know that such behaviour would have been discovered in my old force, and I would assume others, and rectified immediately. We have, or used to have, checks on checks for such crimes. One would hope that the swingeing cuts would not have affected them.
It really is too bad. Sussex made real progress in my time in the force. I would ensure that the victim was asked if he or she wanted to view the ID suite a few days - if there was time - before the parade just to settle them. It was available to anyone but the OIC would have to ask. We had highly trained, and highly dedicated enquiry officers and FLOs. We had special doctors to call so that the examination procedure, really obscenely invasive, was completed by someone experienced who had a good bedside manner.
It really pisses me off to find there are still such officers, still systems, in place in the MPD. With their resources they should be leading the country's forces instead of betraying them.
What must victims think? It's bad enough after going through the offence without worries about how they'll be treated.
Rape teams have had letters of thanks, cards and such from victims after the cases. I had a visit from one victim, with her parents, to thank my unit for the way she'd been treated, and this was after a NG finding.
All that effort and these f
king idiots put everything back years.
Certainly in Sussex we had (and I would assume still have) a number of victim suites set up at considerable expense in order to encourage rape victims, and all vulnerable victims, to come forward.
There is a low conviction rate but that is the nature of the offence. One has to prove lack of consent and it often comes down to one person's word against another's. The most difficult of problems to overcome.
If one victim is put off reporting a rape by these reports then it is a tragedy. I've never had anything to do with the MPD's rape units but I do know that such behaviour would have been discovered in my old force, and I would assume others, and rectified immediately. We have, or used to have, checks on checks for such crimes. One would hope that the swingeing cuts would not have affected them.
It really is too bad. Sussex made real progress in my time in the force. I would ensure that the victim was asked if he or she wanted to view the ID suite a few days - if there was time - before the parade just to settle them. It was available to anyone but the OIC would have to ask. We had highly trained, and highly dedicated enquiry officers and FLOs. We had special doctors to call so that the examination procedure, really obscenely invasive, was completed by someone experienced who had a good bedside manner.
It really pisses me off to find there are still such officers, still systems, in place in the MPD. With their resources they should be leading the country's forces instead of betraying them.
What must victims think? It's bad enough after going through the offence without worries about how they'll be treated.
Rape teams have had letters of thanks, cards and such from victims after the cases. I had a visit from one victim, with her parents, to thank my unit for the way she'd been treated, and this was after a NG finding.
All that effort and these f
king idiots put everything back years.This sort of thing is rather widespread (but obviously not everywhere). Usually down to indididual officers (though occasionally they are under orders from above).
The philosophy involved seems to be a major skewing from "how can I fight crime and enforce the law", to more like "what can I do to make my job easier (at detriment to what I should be doing)."
The philosophy involved seems to be a major skewing from "how can I fight crime and enforce the law", to more like "what can I do to make my job easier (at detriment to what I should be doing)."
XCP said:
Used to be the norm 30 years ago. Not just rape but other serious crime as well. I must say I thought this sort of thing had died out somewhat.
Seems to be the way things go with the police, this is the kind of thing that used to happen in the past but it doesn't happen anymore.Breadvan72 said:
As noted above, if you gIve people doing public service jobs targets, they will aim to hit those targets, and will use whatever means they can to do so. Governments should have realised this by now, but they haven't. Modern Government measures everything, but evaluates nothing.
This all happened under Labour - I didn't realise they were so into police targets.30 years ago there were no targets but, for some reason, there was a culture which gave rise to rape not being viewed as serious, especially in CID.
Autre temps and all that, but after the war police were recruited from ex military and there was a distinct difference between their mores and those of the younger recruit. The attitude of the police was more similar to that reflected on some of the threads on rape on PH. This is because of a misunderstanding of the nature of rape and rapists, brought about I think by the fact that the police wasn't so much dominated by males as was all male.
From around the 80s attitudes were changing. Some suggest this was because there were women regulars, others, and I'm inclined this way, it was with the increase in more educated recruits with the increase in pay. When the TVP TV program was shown police officers in my area were as shocked at the general public, if not more so. Attitudes had changed, although not from the depths the TV program suggested.
The program was discussed in a lesson at the district police training centre I was at and almost all recruits were highly critical of the TVP chap.
Targets cannot be used as an 'excuse' for the pre-80s attitude.
I'm not so sure that targets are the reason these three cases were binned either. There's little point. If you are on a rape unit then if you bin one job, what's going to come along next? Seems illogical to me. Further, unless there were directions from above as to how to deal with such matters then then whole unit would not be doing it.
There might be some iffy reporting on this, or something we are not being told.
There can be 'canteen culture' built up in units where two or three officers go their own way and feed off one-another but if that is what happened here then this is a massive failure of supervision.
Targets is being used as an excuse here for behaviour which is reprehensible and without excuse.
As to fake crime stats, all such stats are 'fake' as such. They are a nonsense. Everyone knows they are. They prove nothing. Any police officer with a bit of sense can massage them without risk of being at risk if found out. I once turned around my force's police accident record. We were third from bottom when the CC told my boss things had to change and he told me the same thing. Within 6 weeks I'd moved us up to the top 10. Although we didn't go at once. It took three years (I think, I'd moved on by then). All I did was change the reporting methods.
It goes on all the time. No one cares. A new HomSec with 'discover' some anomaly, splash it across the papers, police forces will change their methods, the HomSec will then be able to show how clever she or he is by lowering the new figure as forces become familiar with the new system so everyone is happy.
I don't think the attitude of these officers was anything to do with targets.
Autre temps and all that, but after the war police were recruited from ex military and there was a distinct difference between their mores and those of the younger recruit. The attitude of the police was more similar to that reflected on some of the threads on rape on PH. This is because of a misunderstanding of the nature of rape and rapists, brought about I think by the fact that the police wasn't so much dominated by males as was all male.
From around the 80s attitudes were changing. Some suggest this was because there were women regulars, others, and I'm inclined this way, it was with the increase in more educated recruits with the increase in pay. When the TVP TV program was shown police officers in my area were as shocked at the general public, if not more so. Attitudes had changed, although not from the depths the TV program suggested.
The program was discussed in a lesson at the district police training centre I was at and almost all recruits were highly critical of the TVP chap.
Targets cannot be used as an 'excuse' for the pre-80s attitude.
I'm not so sure that targets are the reason these three cases were binned either. There's little point. If you are on a rape unit then if you bin one job, what's going to come along next? Seems illogical to me. Further, unless there were directions from above as to how to deal with such matters then then whole unit would not be doing it.
There might be some iffy reporting on this, or something we are not being told.
There can be 'canteen culture' built up in units where two or three officers go their own way and feed off one-another but if that is what happened here then this is a massive failure of supervision.
Targets is being used as an excuse here for behaviour which is reprehensible and without excuse.
As to fake crime stats, all such stats are 'fake' as such. They are a nonsense. Everyone knows they are. They prove nothing. Any police officer with a bit of sense can massage them without risk of being at risk if found out. I once turned around my force's police accident record. We were third from bottom when the CC told my boss things had to change and he told me the same thing. Within 6 weeks I'd moved us up to the top 10. Although we didn't go at once. It took three years (I think, I'd moved on by then). All I did was change the reporting methods.
It goes on all the time. No one cares. A new HomSec with 'discover' some anomaly, splash it across the papers, police forces will change their methods, the HomSec will then be able to show how clever she or he is by lowering the new figure as forces become familiar with the new system so everyone is happy.
I don't think the attitude of these officers was anything to do with targets.
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