Where have all the police gone?

Chippy_boy said:
Thanks for taking the time to post that mate. Very enlightening, if actually not really very surprising.

Incidentally though, you may know (I guess you will?) that police recruitment is actually rising and numbers have gone up over the past year by about 10,000 with another committed 10,000 to go. So half-way towards the government's 20k target.
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You have fell for the cunty Govt propaganda........they are not adding,simply replacing.
 
I'm With Stupid said:
As he says, what gets measured gets done. It's much easier to prove that you've solved a crime than it is to show that a crime didn't happen because you were out on the street. And presumably, it's much easier to solve a Twitter-based crime with a full electronic record than it is to get someone's stolen phone back. I'd be interested to know how they measure police performance and whether it has an impact in how they decide what to give resources to.
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Of course you can be overburdened with reporting. But on the other hand, "people respect what you inspect, not what you expect". In other words, people have a tendency to take the piss unless you keep an eye on them. Which absolutely WAS happening in education and why a lot of the performance metrics were brought in. Maybe (probably) they went too far, but it has to be a balance. With no inspection, there's no accountability and standards go through the floor.
 
bert38 said:
Ignoring the usual rubbish, lets look at what has actually happened.

I try to ignore these type of conversations nowadays because its not particularly good for me and those who already have their 'views' won't change them.

Nonetheless, I served for 25 years, 17 of which was as a response Inspector and then custody Inspector. I worked with some of the bravest, hardest working people you could ever meet. A tiny minority were poor-and the majority of those weeded out quickly.

I also saw things you dont forget and met some of the most violent people you could imagine.

Policing though is in crisis.

When I joined in 95 my force was bouyant-we had strong, experienced response teams, teams of detectives who were skilled and experienced and a command team that did their thing. It was a tough job to get into to; pay and conditions were decent and the pension very worthwhile.

Late 90s saw huge investment, the development of Neighbourhood policing and the advent of 'intelligence led policing'. Computers replaced typewriters which increased efficiency but slowly reduced time on the streets in order to complete paperwork. Admin/Civilian staff proliferated around this time too. In general morale was high. However, with the computers came an obsession with stats, targets and performance indicators-command officers/home office who were blissfully ignorant of performance now had the tools to monitor and often micro manage. But overall things were still good and the job worked.

From 2010 onwards the the policing landscape changed. Cuts were savage, year on year. Pay was frozen for a decade (real terms 20% cut over that period). Pension contributions increased by almost 20% and the actual pension for many was crippled; so much so that many questioned whether it was worth 30 years of grief to get to that point. Simply put you could now earn more from flipping burgers without the agro. In addition 'A19' meant that officers with 30 years+ service were all pensioned off-all that experience binned.

Neighbourhood policing disappeared-so too did vital links to the community, intellience led policing no longer functioning. Hundreds of police stations and contact points sold off. Officers withdrawn to cities, towns and hubs.

Cuts have consequence. Recruitment suffered-instead of people older with life experience, it became kids who would accept 19k a year and crap terms. Vetting was cut. Training cut back. More and more online-officers tied to computers.

Meanwhile a half of all courts have closed. Huge cuts to cps. It can take years to get to court.

In the community cuts to other services (NHS, social care) and the proliferation of drug use and mental health have meant that around half of all police time is taken up by mental health, missing persons, concerns for safety, 'baby sitting' vulnerable people at hospital, sitting with them in custody. In the last few years the law changed so that a police station (and therefore a cell) was no longer deemed a place of safety for a s136 mental health patient. Try to have that discussion with a local NHS bed manager at 4 in the morning when you have somebody who needs help and is locked in one of your cells? Do you simply release them? After all its illegal to keep them there but NHS are saying they have no beds in the entire country-yet that person has committed no crime...that was a weekly occurrence for me. And that would be one detainee among 50-80-the overwhelming majority with mental health issues, drug induced problems, self harm issues-so that those detainees would take officers from the streets to watch them in the cells-and many others sat outside hospitals with other people. Lines of police vehicles sat outside A&E's waiting to be seen.

As others have alluded to, new technology; 'internet crime', mobile phones etc have brought their own challenges in terms of the ability to deal with these 'crimes' and the amount of time it conusmes.

Now I haven't mentioned political parties* but its very convenient that the media is happy to portray the image of a handful of officers at pride events or similar-what is so wrong with that? What is so bad about promoting inclusion and diversity? Moreover, its a very convenient way of distracting the public from the real problems facing the service.

The job like many public services needs huge investment. You cannot expect to pay somebody 19k and attract quality, and then expect them to give 30+ years service, to work nights for decades, get assaulted regularly, spat at, treated like shit, threatened-lose almost every xmas/new year, most weekends...why would you?

But equally investment in the service-a return to high standards, recruitment-(I would estimate it would need 40,000 new police to recover from the cuts, resignations and retirement of the last decade), vetting, training-standards of appearance, uniform, discipline. A return to neighbourhood policing models. Investment in promotion and leadership.

None of this can happen though without huge investment in the NHS, social care, mental health, education, drug diversion etc etc. Because the officer you need to see isn't dealing with 'crime' they are dealing with all manner of things unrelated to that and nothing will change unless that changes.

*tories are c*nts.
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fantastic post Bert and a great insight to reality for today's plod.

I suspect however, the long term damage is done and the decline in investment into the force has given the scum an entry point into a life of crime knowing the likelihood of capture and sentencing is poor. As a result, respect for the law of the land has gone now, and I'm not sure whether it will ever recover
 
Chippy_boy said:
The police have it entirely in their power what they choose to investigate and what they do not. And the CPS has it in their power as to what they want to prosecute after the investigation. The judge has fuck all to do with any of that.

I do wonder if the police - for whatever reason - are focused on the wrong things. Or at least, their priorities are not aligned with what most of us - I think - would expect, i.e. trying to catch criminals doing things which matter to most people, like burglaries, assaults, car theft etc. You get your car nicked these days and they genuinely do absolutely NOTHING about it.
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I'd agree with that
 
I'm With Stupid said:
Not just a problem with police. Most of the teachers' hugely increased workload was caused by this obsession with everything having to be measurable and provable. Teachers spending their time collecting data to show that they're doing their job, and head teachers using their data to show that they're doing theirs. And it's not just in the public sector either. This talk is 7 years old now, but everything still applies:



As he says, what gets measured gets done. It's much easier to prove that you've solved a crime than it is to show that a crime didn't happen because you were out on the street. And presumably, it's much easier to solve a Twitter-based crime with a full electronic record than it is to get someone's stolen phone back. I'd be interested to know how they measure police performance and whether it has an impact in how they decide what to give resources to.
Click to expand...

All very true-everything was measured simply because with the advent of technology it could be measured. Its worthy of much greater discussion but for a period the job disappeared up its own backside with performance data and targets.

Endless, pointless management meetings discussing pointless data..oh the joy.

Police want to be tackling crime, arresting criminals and locking them up-but that is secondary to the other overwhelming demands. Coupled with that, crime prevention has disappeared with the erosion of neighbourhood policing which became seen as a luxury by govt/home office (as you said, harder to quantify).
 
Chippy_boy said:
The police have it entirely in their power what they choose to investigate and what they do not. And the CPS has it in their power as to what they want to prosecute after the investigation. The judge has fuck all to do with any of that.

I do wonder if the police - for whatever reason - are focused on the wrong things. Or at least, their priorities are not aligned with what most of us - I think - would expect, i.e. trying to catch criminals doing things which matter to most people, like burglaries, assaults, car theft etc. You get your car nicked these days and they genuinely do absolutely NOTHING about it.
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My mate had his phone nicked in a nightclub a few years back and as the phone was trackable on my phone I went with him to the station to report it. Even though the phone could be tracked and it was at someone's house they said they wouldn't be able to recover it however they gave him a crime reference number for the insurance....

I suppose this kind of thing is down to resources but is it? Not having enough resources right now is one thing but refusing flatly to investigate or do anything at all is a bit different.
 
Chippy_boy said:
The police have it entirely in their power what they choose to investigate and what they do not. And the CPS has it in their power as to what they want to prosecute after the investigation. The judge has fuck all to do with any of that.

I do wonder if the police - for whatever reason - are focused on the wrong things. Or at least, their priorities are not aligned with what most of us - I think - would expect, i.e. trying to catch criminals doing things which matter to most people, like burglaries, assaults, car theft etc. You get your car nicked these days and they genuinely do absolutely NOTHING about it.
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Read my post. Edit-i note you did..

How do frontline officers respond to burglaries, thefts etc if those same officers are committed with mental health patients, missing persons (see mental health), suicidal people (see mental health), vulnerable prisoners (see mental health) and all the other stuff that in a fully invested public service other providers would pick up or stop from reaching that point in the first place.

There isn't a never ending pot of officers. I think you'd be alarmed at the number of officers covering your area on a busy afters or nights shift.

Patel calling for police to return to basics conveniently removes herself from the actual problem. They are the cause of this. I can assure you police want to deal with crime.
 
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inbetween said:
My mate had his phone nicked in a nightclub a few years back and as the phone was trackable on my phone I went with him to the station to report it. Even though the phone could be tracked and it was at someone's house they said they wouldn't be able to recover it however they gave him a crime reference number for the insurance....

I suppose this kind of thing is down to resources but is it? Not having enough resources right now is one thing but refusing flatly to investigate or do anything at all is a bit different.
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You answered your own question-its entirely down to resources and simply what is possible with what we have.
 
Chippy_boy said:
Of course you can be overburdened with reporting. But on the other hand, "people respect what you inspect, not what you expect". In other words, people have a tendency to take the piss unless you keep an eye on them. Which absolutely WAS happening in education and why a lot of the performance metrics were brought in. Maybe (probably) they went too far, but it has to be a balance. With no inspection, there's no accountability and standards go through the floor.
Click to expand...
The issue isn't inspecting people's work, it's making the people who do the work do the inspecting and collect the data for you. Teachers having to send electronic versions of lesson plans to people who will never read them, for example. Imagine if you worked in an Amazon warehouse and to help management measure productivity, you had to fill in a form every time you fulfilled an order. Well you'd have a great record of everything that happened, but what happened would be about half as much.
 
Chippy_boy said:
Thanks for taking the time to post that mate. Very enlightening, if actually not really very surprising.

Incidentally though, you may know (I guess you will?) that police recruitment is actually rising and numbers have gone up over the past year by about 10,000 with another committed 10,000 to go. So half-way towards the government's 20k target.

But I am sure it's not all about numbers. For me, it's about focussing the police on the right things. My suspicion (although I really don't know) is that 160,000 is probably enough, if we can get rid of much of the red tape and stop wasting time on politically correct nonsense crimes (which yes in an ideal world we would chase, but it's not an ideal world and when stretched we must focus on what really matters.)
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Recruitment has risen mate-but a 20k target would take us back to 2010? It needs so much more-a quarter of a million isn't enough unless we can let police concentrate on what people's priorites and expectations rightly are. Police simply don't have enough time to deal with 'crime' any more. Its such a complex issue but politicians blaming the police is a cheap shot.

As I have alluded to-pay, conditions, training all need a complete overhaul coupled with investment elsewhere.

I don't deny that its a crisis. The public rightly deserve better.
 
bert38 said:
Ignoring the usual rubbish, lets look at what has actually happened.

I try to ignore these type of conversations nowadays because its not particularly good for me and those who already have their 'views' won't change them.

Nonetheless, I served for 25 years, 17 of which was as a response Inspector and then custody Inspector. I worked with some of the bravest, hardest working people you could ever meet. A tiny minority were poor-and the majority of those weeded out quickly.

I also saw things you dont forget and met some of the most violent people you could imagine.

Policing though is in crisis.

When I joined in 95 my force was bouyant-we had strong, experienced response teams, teams of detectives who were skilled and experienced and a command team that did their thing. It was a tough job to get into to; pay and conditions were decent and the pension very worthwhile.

Late 90s saw huge investment, the development of Neighbourhood policing and the advent of 'intelligence led policing'. Computers replaced typewriters which increased efficiency but slowly reduced time on the streets in order to complete paperwork. Admin/Civilian staff proliferated around this time too. In general morale was high. However, with the computers came an obsession with stats, targets and performance indicators-command officers/home office who were blissfully ignorant of performance now had the tools to monitor and often micro manage. But overall things were still good and the job worked.

From 2010 onwards the the policing landscape changed. Cuts were savage, year on year. Pay was frozen for a decade (real terms 20% cut over that period). Pension contributions increased by almost 20% and the actual pension for many was crippled; so much so that many questioned whether it was worth 30 years of grief to get to that point. Simply put you could now earn more from flipping burgers without the agro. In addition 'A19' meant that officers with 30 years+ service were all pensioned off-all that experience binned.

Neighbourhood policing disappeared-so too did vital links to the community, intellience led policing no longer functioning. Hundreds of police stations and contact points sold off. Officers withdrawn to cities, towns and hubs.

Cuts have consequence. Recruitment suffered-instead of people older with life experience, it became kids who would accept 19k a year and crap terms. Vetting was cut. Training cut back. More and more online-officers tied to computers.

Meanwhile a half of all courts have closed. Huge cuts to cps. It can take years to get to court.

In the community cuts to other services (NHS, social care) and the proliferation of drug use and mental health have meant that around half of all police time is taken up by mental health, missing persons, concerns for safety, 'baby sitting' vulnerable people at hospital, sitting with them in custody. In the last few years the law changed so that a police station (and therefore a cell) was no longer deemed a place of safety for a s136 mental health patient. Try to have that discussion with a local NHS bed manager at 4 in the morning when you have somebody who needs help and is locked in one of your cells? Do you simply release them? After all its illegal to keep them there but NHS are saying they have no beds in the entire country-yet that person has committed no crime...that was a weekly occurrence for me. And that would be one detainee among 50-80-the overwhelming majority with mental health issues, drug induced problems, self harm issues-so that those detainees would take officers from the streets to watch them in the cells-and many others sat outside hospitals with other people. Lines of police vehicles sat outside A&E's waiting to be seen.

As others have alluded to, new technology; 'internet crime', mobile phones etc have brought their own challenges in terms of the ability to deal with these 'crimes' and the amount of time it conusmes.

Now I haven't mentioned political parties* but its very convenient that the media is happy to portray the image of a handful of officers at pride events or similar-what is so wrong with that? What is so bad about promoting inclusion and diversity? Moreover, its a very convenient way of distracting the public from the real problems facing the service.

The job like many public services needs huge investment. You cannot expect to pay somebody 19k and attract quality, and then expect them to give 30+ years service, to work nights for decades, get assaulted regularly, spat at, treated like shit, threatened-lose almost every xmas/new year, most weekends...why would you?

But equally investment in the service-a return to high standards, recruitment-(I would estimate it would need 40,000 new police to recover from the cuts, resignations and retirement of the last decade), vetting, training-standards of appearance, uniform, discipline. A return to neighbourhood policing models. Investment in promotion and leadership.

None of this can happen though without huge investment in the NHS, social care, mental health, education, drug diversion etc etc. Because the officer you need to see isn't dealing with 'crime' they are dealing with all manner of things unrelated to that and nothing will change unless that changes.

*tories are c*nts.
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absolutely spot on, post of the day, from someone who was there and witnessed how the cuts have decimated the police
 
bert38 said:
No burger flipping for me.

Mine was very personal. I was promoted quickly to Insp rank through graft and sacrifice-then in 2006 an officer on my team was shot (she lived, but never worked again), a few days later another officer took their life at work and a few weeks afterwards somebody I attempted to discpline accused me of touching her..I was met with years of bullying and my career ruined. It was an awful time. I lost my career, relationship, friends..

In 2011 the force 're-organised' and I got moved to custody. I actually loved it in custody away from the bosses who had made the job a daily hell, but its a very harsh environment, 12 hour shifts with no daylight dealing with violence and people in complete crisis. But I knew I'd leave at the earliest point I could and claim a reduced pension-and under the old regs that was over 50 and 25 years service.

I am still v passionate about the job, mainly because I do know the reality-its far from perfect-but the image portrayed to the public is not something I recognise.
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Thanks for replying, you really didn't have to with so much detail but glad you did, doff your transparency.

We don't really get to hear the inside spill on these kind of things.

Must have been some hell of a mind fuck to of navigated your way through such trauma at close hand n then deal with all the fuckaries that then followed...
 
Great post from Bert about why the poiice don't respond now.

I do watch these dicks doing so called AUDITS (winding cops up) of police stations though and wonder how police arrive mob handed for dickheads filming a station then arrest said dick for terrorism.

Looks bad ....
 
Maintainin said:
Thanks for replying, you really didn't have to with so much detail but glad you did, doff your transparency.

We don't really get to hear the inside spill on these kind of things.

Must have been some hell of a mind fuck to of navigated your way through such trauma at close hand n then deal with all the fuckaries that then followed...
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I think you deal with it at the time, retirment has left time to reflect-which is not always a good thing.

Nonetheless, it is more to give evidence of what people go through-like in many occupations; people want to do a good job. It often feels like a thankless job though-I've seen so many colleagues go through terrible experiences and you do wonder what the point was.

The solutions are there though-but it needs huge investment to undo the damage done by the last decade.

You have young officers on the frontline with 20/30 crimes to investigate, and still need to respond to calls every shift-the time simply does not exist to provide a quality service.

In my own force people are leaving in their droves.
 
mancityvstoke said:
Great post from Bert about why the poiice don't respond now.

I do watch these dicks doing so called AUDITS (winding cops up) of police stations though and wonder how police arrive mob handed for dickheads filming a station then arrest said dick for terrorism.

Looks bad ....
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There was a chap outside our nick filming our own private cars going in and out and publishing it on social media-I just think that's rather sad.
 
bert38 said:
There was a chap outside our nick filming our own private cars going in and out and publishing it on social media-I just think that's rather sad.
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Just wish the dibble ignored these nobs instead of the over the top response then saying they have no resources.

I'd know in 3 seconds flat that they were not "terrorists"
 
Ask Boris fucked off with all the nurses,doctors,fruit pickers,drivers welcome to Brexit.But still you can always wave the butcher's apron (union jack) if that what makes you happy.
 
mancityvstoke said:
Just wish the dibble ignored these nobs instead of the over the top response then saying they have no resources.

I'd know in 3 seconds flat that they were not "terrorists"
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I don't know the examples you are referring to but not everybody likes the police-so publishing details of private vehicles etc on line isn't something you can ignore..they aren't terrorists-and as a former custody inspector I'd be less than impressed if they were nicked for TACT offences (because I would need to quickly get my books out to revise what to do-because the detention law is totally different!)...
 
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