A Meeting of Minds

Inspector Gadget has posted about the SMT meetings he has to put up with in his role as mini-echelon of the senior ranks.

I once "shadowed" my sergeant into The Morning Briefing. (It was something to do with my development.) These meetings take place every day and it's where the local commander can find out how many detections his/her troops have generated and pass on messages of encouragement via the duty sergeant.

I was extremely impressed by The Briefing. Not only was there a member of the Domestic Violence Unit there HOLDING A PEN, but the Superintendent actually knew my name.

The format was a bit like a Committee Meeting of the local Ladies Pingpong Club. Everyone said their ten cents and then the duty sergeant was given a list of things to-do, which included:

1. Reclassifying a number of last week's robberies as thefts. (Thefts aren't a "violent crime" and there aren't articles in The Times about them.)
2. Making sure some police officers attended the racist incident that had been "open" for a week. To which my sergeant rudely retorted that he had no units available and anyway the victim of the racism was away in Spain for two weeks. The response was to send someone anyway, and to make sure the paperwork was forwarded immediately to the Race Crime officer who would be sitting at his desk upstairs awaiting it.
3. Squeezing just a few more detections out of the troops. The key to this would be only attending incidents where the victim already knew who had done it and had provided his or her name.

As you can see, The Morning Briefing is vital in Blandmore. Without it, the Superintendent would have no way of finding out what policing in his town is like, nor doing anything about it.

Note: The above link to the story about West Mercia's Chief on foot patrol has gone down. It's a sad effect of my linking to any official page, I'm afraid. You can read more about CC Paul West and his many-bowed string here, if you're desperate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright of PC Bloggs.