Reassurance

First of all apologies for the lack of posts over the last few months. Unfortunately, my personal life has been through a lot of turmoil and I had more important things to concentrate on. However, I'm back now!!!

The latest buzz word amongst ACPO ranks is reassurance. According to them, the public's fear of crime is far greater than the reality of crime and they therefore need reassuring that everything is wonderful and safe.

How do they go about doing this? Well, for starters, we have thousands of PCSO's patrolling the streets reassuring people. The public see them and therefore know they are safe, apparently. The only problem is, that every member of the public I've spoken to, does not feel re-assured when they see a group of yobs giving the PCSO's a verbal battering, only to see that the PCSO can't do anything about it.

The other way of reassuring the public is through crime figures. Now, most sensible people know the saying, lies, damned lies and statistics. So they are not fooled by crime statistics.

So what is the only other option. Getting more Police Officer's out of their offices and out onto the streets. Old fashioned I know, but a proven way of reassuring.

Just a thought....

I was wondering if anyone else noticed the correlation between the fact that recorded crime is at its lowest for years, yet the prison population is at a record high?

So Prison doesn't work eh?

Knife Crime

So we are about to get another knee jerk reaction to the recent knife incidents in London.

No doubt it will involve some new laws. You know the type of thing, an offence to carry anything pointy, with so many exceptions, that it means nothing.

I'd love to say there was a simple answer to the problem, like mandatory prison sentences, for those found carrying. Unfortunately, I don't think prison alone, will work. This problem has been brewing for a number of years. This govt has brought up a generation of people who accept no responsibility for their actions. Just look at the telly adverts ("I was drilling a hole in a wall, using a rickety old ladder, which was the wrong type, when I fell off. My boss should have given me the right ladder." No, you should have secured your ladder properly, you burk!).

So we have people bringing up kids, that expect everyone else to teach them life skills. Whilst schools do an awful lot, it is still parents responsibility to 'bring their kids up'. Unfortunately, a lot of inner city kids are not getting this grooming. Instead, they are joining street gangs and follow their code of conduct. We only have to look at the Gang problem in the US to realise that this is a problem that cannot be fixed overnight.

In my honest opinion, the govt need to have a serious look at the welfare state. Stop encouraging the under classes to breed like rabbits. By all means, stop children being brought up in poverty, but if needs be, put them into decent care (not the current system, where the kids run riot in their care homes, because legislation prevents their carers from physical contact). Bring back some proper discipline and a sense of right or wrong, with proper consequences, not silly CPO's or ASBO's!

At the moment, the kids who are committing these offences, have no decent morals. Until we instill some, we are fighting a losing battle.

Car Tax

I know this is nothing to do with the Police, but it does make my blood boil. Gordon Brown wants to discourage people from using high polluting vehicles. So, from later on this year, the vast majority of us will have to pay more vehicle excise duty (car tax).

Now, I drive a 8 year old diesel estate car, which apparently, is a fairly 'high' polluter. The car is in quite good condition, but is not worth very much. I cannot afford to replace it, with a less polluting car, of a similar size and condition. If I could, I would have done so already.

This, policy sounds very good to environmentalists. Unfortunately, when you scratch away at the surface, you soon realise it is just another revenue generator. Let's face it. Many people are going to be in the same boat as me, and not be able to afford to change their cars. So, these cars are still going to be driven around, until they fall to pieces. Meanwhile, the driver's will still be paying more fuel duty to the government.

I can understand the sentiment behind the idea for getting us to stop driving high polluting cars. However, this should start with brand new cars, so you know what you've got to pay, up front. It hardly seems fair, to move the goalposts, once a car has been purchased.

All I can see this policy achieving, is more untaxed vehicles on the road, and you know who has to deal with them!

Supervision

HMIC have announced that Sergeants are not doing their job properly! Too much time is being spent on auditing and checking and not enough time supervising.

Well hello, this is not exactly a startling discovery. Lets face it, Pc's are spending far too much time doing paperwork, so in the bureaucratic Police Service, it's inevitable that the Ps's are going to have to 'check' all that paperwork.
My poor skipper, has to not only check all files that are complete, but also has to regularly check my ongoing investigations and add 'helpful' comments in the log, to prove that he has done so.

Now, in every walk of life, you get good and bad. A good skipper, will do the minimum of paperwork and get out on the street and supervise his/her troops. A bad skipper, will be tied to their desk and never see the light of day. Unfortunately, we seem to be promoting a lot more of the latter.

In my humble opinion, the Sergeants job, is probably the hardest in the whole service. They get sh1t from both ends and nowadays, have very little authority. I am aware of Sgt's trying to discipline Pc's, but getting no backing from those higher up the chain of command.

The fact of the matter is that there is no discipline anymore. When I joined in the 80's, there was two Sgt's and an Inspector on every shift. Nowadays, there is just one sergeant, (who is normally just acting up) and one inspector to cover the whole division. In reality, it means Pc's get no supervision. Most of the time we don't need any, however, there are always some who will take the pi55 out of the system.

I would love to go back to the old days of a disciplined service, but it isn't going to happen. Not unless, Chief Constables start to promote a lot more of the right sort of people!

Shortage

So, there is a shortage of handcuffs.

I can't see that myself. Well, if forces are struggling to kit out new recruits, they just need to re-distribute old stock. Let's face it, there must be thousands of pairs of handcuffs, languishing in lockers up and down the country, that belong to the 9-5 squad members. I suspect, most will need refurbishing, because they are probably jammed solid through lack of use.

Well Done Civitas...

Civitas (not sure who/what they are) say that the Police are targetting trivial crime.

At last, someone has seen the light. The only problem is, most people are going to think it is the officers on the ground, who are leading this charge. There might be some, but all I can say, is that the vast majority of us, would much rather be doing some 'proper' police work, instead of investigating trivial nonesense.

There are two sets of people to blame for this. Firstly, the modern generation, who will report all manner of trivial nonesense to the police. I have a cunning plan to put a stop to this. All citizens, should be entitled to 3 free call outs in any one year. After that, they should have to pay for the police/ambulance/fire/doctor/social services time. In the Police's case, if the person's call results in the conviction at court of an individual, then they will be entitled to a refund, otherwise £60 a call out and £30 for every half hour spent dealing/investigating. That would stop most of our regulars wasting our time!

The other set of people are the government and ACPO. Since this govt, introduced the ethical crime recording standards, in it's relentless quest for meaningless statistics, then the police are duty bound to record all the trivial nonsense that the first group report. The problem then arises, with ACPO. They too, love statistics, the most important of which, is the detection rate. They don't like having undetected crimes on their books. So, if you have to record trivial nonsense, then you will need to investigate and 'detect' it. Hence, why it appears that the bobby on the beat, is chasing easy detections.

I don't think we can do much about the first group, well, not in the short term anyway. However, we can do something about the second. Either, scrap 'ethical crime recording' and go back to allowing officers to decide if a crime has been committed; or, record the trivial nonsense, but in a different category to 'proper' crime, and don't waste time investigating and trying to detect it.

NEW LABOUR - Tough on crime figures, tough on the users of common sense!