PC Plod and their objectives...

[davem]

Just talking to someone about speed cameras etc and he told me the following that he had heard from a PC:

Police officers are now given weekly targets e.g. number of speeding, defective vehicles, muggings etc that they should achieve during that week. The keen young cops, wanting to make a good impression are therefore now tending to turn a blind eye to some crimes as the time spent upon sorting these out means that they might not have time left to achieve their set objectives!

Is this true? Has anyone else heard this? Worrying if it is!

DaveM

[AlexH]

Prioritizing crimes to boost detection rates is nothing new and will probably be going on for a while longer, not just for speeding offences. It will always be very tempting to all levels from chief constables down to avoid investigating/avoid recording/re-classify offences that they are extremely unlikely to have a hope in hell of solving - and I have a certain amount of sympathy for them in some cases. Catching speeders to boost overall detection rates is another matter though!

[tonyrec]

No, its not accurate.
When a 'new' PC joins the unit, he/she will obviously be working qutie hard to get some figures to prove that they are capable of doing the job.

Up until recently, most of us were taken off Traffic duties for about 3 months at a time to combat streetcrime.

Not much speeding process done during that time.

[davem]

tonyrec said:

No, its not accurate....Up until recently, most of us were taken off Traffic duties for about 3 months at a time to combat streetcrime

Glad to hear that. I wonder if the PC's who gave my mate the info know it as well!!