My understanding is only the Home secretary can make the decision for an officer to lose their pension.
Its v complex-there are instances I know of where an officer is sacked and loses their benefits but receives back their contributions.
I have commented on here numerous times re police.
This case is abhorrent and incredulous and upsets me terribly.
The wider issues are huge.
I hear politicians on all sides criticising the police and in many cases they are right but nobody can ignore what successive governments have done to the service:
Swathes of brutal cuts, 20,000 officers cut, thousands of support staff, 600 stations closed, plus massive cuts to cps and hundreds of courts closed; with other cuts to probation and social services.
Pensions hammered; contributions increasing by almost 20% a year and pay approx 20% lower than a decade ago.
This inevitably has consequences to vetting, recruitment, training and retention-and therefore quality of officers and service.
How does an older person say 30, with a partner and a family, join the police on 20-23k a year? After tax and pension contributions its only just over a minimum wage job-and includes times when you will risk your neck for it.
Experienced officers are leaving in their droves at the earliest opportunity because its just not worth it. So what you end up with is kids joining; no life experience, poorly vetted, and willing to accept poor pay and conditions and no desire or motivation to do the full term.
Vetting is ad-hoc and lacks real scrutiny-and time and time again we hear the same failures-that must sit with politicians, pcc and ACPO ranks for failing to address this. When I joined police visited my family-now the recruit may get a phone call at best.
Professional Standards in my force do a v good job to weed out those that are guilty of gross misconduct, but as a supervisor challenging anyone for performance issues, minor misconduct matters, you are often met with zero support from senior management and a reciprocal complaint from the officer you are tackling-that seriously puts you off tackling anybody! Above that the IOPC are crap.
Personally I worked with some officers who I'd describe as idiots-mainly some who you wondered how on earth they got through selection, but they typically didn't last long. I didn't work with any significant number who were 'bent'-although I did ensure 2 were sacked. I cannot speak for everyone but the overwhelming majority are the most decent people you could meet;doing an incredibly difficult, relentless and often thankless job.
That said I did experience institutional bullying from v senior officers who were all in the same club. I reached Inspector rank quickly and then released how naive I'd been. Many senior officers in my force were corrupt-I could name them and link to articles and I could name a very senior former officer who is often used as a talking head when these headlines break-when her back story is extremely murky.
So in conclusion Police leaders and politicians have to do better:
Pay/conditions; vetting, training, misconduct and in particular support for middle managers to tackle minor issues before they escalate. A greater scrutiny of ACPO ranks who hold all the power-both to implement change but also must bear responsibility for failures.
Recruitment/retention-its estimated that we need an extra 40-50,000 officers to get back to performance levels of 2010.
Police are unable to strike. Its incumbant on politicians to ensure the service is properly supported otherwise we all end up with a crap service.
