Saturday 3 July 2010

All Change for Targets?

North Korea Celebrate Winning the World Cup

Like other bloggers, I was pleased to hear Teresa May announce that the Policing Pledge and Public Confidence and Satisfaction targets were going and we would just be measured on crime levels.

I have said before that senior managers will fiddle the figures and focus resources to get quick results rather than work properly and ethically towards achieving real results. For example, in my quite small Force, we have 35 communications officers; and that is after we have just got rid of some following a review. Their job is to take every opportunity, internally and externally, to convince the public that crime is low and we are doing a good job. We also have 57 administrators in CID and another 35 working with the Neighbourhood Teams. Part of their job is to allocate tasks but a large part is to contact victims of crime and disorder and to convince them that we are doing our best to detect their crime, even if we do just detect 22% of them.
Why do we need 35 communications officers and 92 administrators? Because the ACPO team want to increase our levels of public confidence and satisfaction to meet targets and they have introduced a propaganda machine, that the North Koreans would be proud of, in order to achieve it, rather than do the job properly and invest in front line policing.

Our Chief Constable has announced to the Force that we are going to ignore Teresa May's wish to abandon the Policing Pledge and Public Confidence and Satisfaction targets. This is very worrying because, with the budget cuts coming, the next thing I can see the Chief doing is cutting police officers and keeping his propaganda machine. What we should be doing is cutting all these back room police staff roles that actually produce nothing tangible and in fact increase the bureaucracy that infests the police officers role, and concentrate on real policing.

I am all for being measured on levels of crime, but don't measure Forces own levels of recorded crime. We can think of a hundred and one ways to keep those down. Forces should be measured using the British Crime Survey, an independent survey they cannot influence other than by doing the job we should be doing, reducing crime and disorder in the short, medium and long term.






18 comments:

  1. How much does a police officer in the UK get paid?

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  2. Good idea. Keep the corporate ego massagers and genital length exaggerators and fire all the DI Regan's. Yep that should help the crime rate.......massively increase!

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  3. Incidentally the BCS is a poor standard. The methodology keeps changing and most crime is ignored by the BCS. Making year on year trending..meaningless.

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  4. Even if we could prove beyond all doubt that crime was zero across the board, there would still be the huge problem of public perception, as you've already mentioned. Perhaps we'll end up with something being put into the water supply to make us all feel cosy. Come to think of it, that appears to be exactly what your CC is trying to do.

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  5. The Welsh Assembly Government is currently running a TV and poster campaign in Wales that seeks to challenge attitudes that can lead to violence against women. Namely, we’re seeking to address the behaviours, often seen as ‘harmless banter’, that often leave a woman feeling intimidated and scared.
    The campaign has received international endorsement and acclaim from individuals and organisations in and associated with the sector (including the 4 Police forces in Wales) and from leading academics. On our campaign site http://www.onesteptoofar.org we explain how these behaviours fall on a continuum of harm. The campaign seeks to get both men and women thinking about the consequences on society of accepting these behaviours as the norm, and leaving them unchallenged.
    Is there a way in which you could promote, feature or mention this campaign in your communication with supporters? We hope to launch another campaign phase later in the year, and plan to work closely with the 4 forces in Wales on this next phase. Happy to discuss further if you would like to know more. Many thanks for your time in reading this, Anna Henderson

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  6. I see the long shadow of Harriet Harman and Imbecile Labour is still splurging our cash freely in Wales.

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  7. Whilst I am a civvy and therefore tend to see the police as a necessary institution but at the same time , mostly my enemy.
    I do however respect most Police officers and wonder how the hell you can keep up your moral when you are led by moronic imbeciles that frustrate any hope of fighting REAL crime in an effective manner. I think this new Government should be courageous and have a mass clear-out of senior Police that have proved themselves to be self interested Politically correct careerists.

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  8. In addition to chopping targets, Cameron and May must immediately end the culture of bonuses for civil servants - especially the police.

    Not until chief constables stop receiving fat bonuses for 'meeting targets' set by dickhead social engineers and propagandists, will senior police officers consider doing their jobs properly.........i.e. make it much easier for good coppers to do their jobs properly.........i.e. nick people who make honest peoples' lives a misery.

    I am appalled by what the British police have become. It is all the fault of careerist knobs who allowed themselves to be politicised and manipulated by Labour.

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  10. Hey Lex, what do you think of the situation with former police officer Mehserle in Oakland, CA?

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  11. Thanks srmsoft but I already sent all my money to a needy chap, nephew of a former dictator. So that he can wire 9,111 TRILLION GREAT POUNDS BRITISH to me. For my £50K I can keep 40% so I'm paying off the deficit and keeping a few trillion for myself.
    More cash than your scam mate.

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  12. Anonymous 1 - Police pay scales are freely available on the internet. A constable starts on £22680 and will be on £35610 after ten years.

    Ethan - I agree the BCS will need beefing up. It does not survey enough people nor young people, who are the most prevalent victims of crime.

    srmsoft - no finacial scams please. I don't like deleting comments but will if I have to.

    Anon 2 - ref officer Mehserle; I don't like commenting on the American police really as policing in the States is very different to here. I have seen some of the comments and video clips. It seems like the police were dealing with a difficult situation but I cannot see how the use of a gun was justified or how the officer thought it was his taser. I have said here that I am against all police in the UK being armed. Primarily because I think it will change the way we police but also because we have not selected officers to carry guns. Giving all officers guns, no matter how good the training you give to some officers, there will always be some that will use them inappropriately and are a danger to the public and colleagues.

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  13. Maybe they ought to expand the public relations unit to include designated huggers. They can induce warm, fuzzy feelings by giving citizens hugs to reassure them that everything will be okay.

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  14. Recent events reveal the deep hostility of a minority towards Gestapo methods. Successive governments have shamefully allowed the proliferation of bullies within public services, notably police. We have shamefully stood by, tutting here and there.

    There will be no formal announcement of the inevitable police cleansing. The Chief Constable shielding Gadget will name the traitor before David Cameron has no alternative but to skewer both. Either way, it will begin closure of the UK's maverick police blogs and herald the creation of the working relationship between police and public, expected within a democracy.

    Every rogue police officer who abused position in any way, or assisted corrupt colleagues to evade justice, or stirred hatred anonymously, will be identified. UK Citizens have the moral right to this information and every moral right to reject by any means if necessary, a State Police growing ever more maniacal.

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  15. Anonymous 17th July - I assume you are from Zogg because you are not on the same planet as 99.99999999999% of the population here on Earth.

    Recent events have not revealed anything. We are very well aware that around 2% of the population are lifelong criminals and will jump on any bandwagon, such as Moat, to express their hatred of the police. This is good and healthy. If these recidivists start actually supporting us it will show that we have fallen to the inept level of the rest of the criminal justice system.

    Why on earth (perhaps it is different on Zogg?) you think police bloggers are some sort of treachorous subversives is laughable. Police bloggers are just giving a few views about life in the job and the problems we perceive. We cannot do it openly as we would be disciplined and sanctioned. Police officers are not allowed to freely express themselves publicly. Perhaps you could concentrate your mind and efforts in that area? You don't have to agree with anything we write and it is hardly causing a revolution. If you don't like it, don't read it.

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  16. This is slightly tangential but when did "detecting" crime take the place of solving it? Is this another example of calling a spade a soil inverting horticultural implement or does the definition of "detect" allow for some crimes to be technically cleared up without having actually been solved? Not saying anything, just asking.

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  17. The enticing promise of thoughtful content on this site always proves distractingly comic.

    Please accept my apologies for my inadvertent posting yesterday which could only have added to your customary state of bewilderment.

    MTG

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