Know Your Place
You hear a lot these days about the loss of the Village Bobby. The Bobby Knew His Patch. He Knew the Criminals. The sense is that this mythical bobby used to snap his fingers and solve burglaries, robberies and vandalism without ever breaking his pen out of his pencil case.
I work on a team of 6-8 (depending on the time of year) response officers covering a town of 80-100,000 (depending on who's in charge of counting) residents. Our "Patch" is Blandmore and its surrounding villages. Admittedly, we don't walk down each street and catch people in the act of burgling all too often. But we most certainly DO know the local baddies. After about a year in any area, most response officers will know who the villains are. They'll probably even know which of them has done a particular crime.
The problem is, where the old finger-snapping used to be enough to haul Billy Burglar before the courts, now there are these pesky obstructions known as "evidence-gathering" and "the Codes of Practice" which get in the way of popping round to Billy's house and dragging him by the ear in front of a magistrate.
Despite this, the general consensus is that Bringing Back the Bobby is the way forwards. To this end, Blandshire Constabulary have "rolled out" Neighbourhood Policing across most of the force area. In understanding what this means, you should think of Blandshire's uniformed PCs as a kind of ball of dough. We are gradually being "rolled out" to cover every inch of our several counties.
The only trouble is, the dough is getting thinner and thinner in the process.
Ellie's not keen on the roll-out idea.
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Copyright of PC Bloggs.
I work on a team of 6-8 (depending on the time of year) response officers covering a town of 80-100,000 (depending on who's in charge of counting) residents. Our "Patch" is Blandmore and its surrounding villages. Admittedly, we don't walk down each street and catch people in the act of burgling all too often. But we most certainly DO know the local baddies. After about a year in any area, most response officers will know who the villains are. They'll probably even know which of them has done a particular crime.
The problem is, where the old finger-snapping used to be enough to haul Billy Burglar before the courts, now there are these pesky obstructions known as "evidence-gathering" and "the Codes of Practice" which get in the way of popping round to Billy's house and dragging him by the ear in front of a magistrate.
Despite this, the general consensus is that Bringing Back the Bobby is the way forwards. To this end, Blandshire Constabulary have "rolled out" Neighbourhood Policing across most of the force area. In understanding what this means, you should think of Blandshire's uniformed PCs as a kind of ball of dough. We are gradually being "rolled out" to cover every inch of our several counties.
The only trouble is, the dough is getting thinner and thinner in the process.
Ellie's not keen on the roll-out idea.
---------------------------------------------------------
Copyright of PC Bloggs.
posted by PC Bloggs at 18:17
13 Comments:
Constable Ellie;
You are absolutely correct. Community based policing is a "flavor of the day" police strategy from the dream palace of police academics.
It redeploys resources that you don't have and breaks up effective operations for the sake of a feel good press release.
The only way you guys are going to take back the streets is for your political leadership to order your police leadership to take some risks and let you kick-ass, no non-sense cops loose on the populace that cause the problems. Every good street cop will have their names and where they hang out in their little black book.
Someone needs to say: go get'em! Only then will there be peace in the valley.
28 November, 2007 00:33
Dear PC Bloggs,
I think this is on-topic because your latest post seems to relate in part to the broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this morning of You and Yours.
You probably have heard the broadcast. Indeed, you were most likely consulted about it because the introduction consisted of an extract from (I guess) your book, read out (I guess) by an actress with (I guess) a Blandmore accent.
In any case, well done for making it onto this comparitively high profile programme.
I shall try to summarise my impressions of the programme, in case others who may have heard it may wish to forward their comments.
And to be as brief as possible, without omitting anything of note.
You were distinctly introduced as "PC Ellie Bloggs."
Your extract covered the extensive paper-trail described in an earlier post, i.e. the bureaucracy.
Two prominent guests on the programme, the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police and a distinguished Professor of Criminology, were asked about your extract.
They agreed it was authentic - or at least the CC did. He said that he "recognised the territory," apart from "some cynicism and rhetoric." (Well, you are an author.)
Near the start of the programme, the view of politicians was reported that crime is falling.
(This is not true according to Home Office figures. Maybe the politicians use a different set of figures, or manipulate British Crime Survey figures.)
The guests did make the point that the police were thinly spread, in spite of government insistence that 143,000 extra police have been deployed in recent years. The reporter asked, "Where are they all?" and the Professor said that more and more police were working on "major issues," e.g. (I think) foiling potential terrorist threats etc.
The police were therefore "less visible" and what was needed was "a means of rebuilding trust" but it wasn't clear how this would be accomplished.
One suggestion was that the bureaucracy could be centralised (somehow). Apparently, all 43 forces in the country (or many of them) have different IT systems, which seems incredible but that is clearly a big hindrance to this kind of centralisation.
Police have also had "critical responsibilities" taken away from them and these need to be restored (somehow).
It was also suggested that more civilian staff could be employed for roles that didn't require police training, e.g. for the paper-trail and victim support but also making house-to-house enquiries and for certain security positions (provided they aren't filled by more illegal immigrants, I suppose).
Unfortunately, the Professor pointed out that this might not be the way forward because people were reluctant to volunteer for these sorts of posts.
PCSOs were discussed, of course. It appears they are to have their powers extended (to deal with under-18s(?) - not sure on this point).
(One strange thing I found out from the police surgery I attended was that a PCSO can't directly transfer to the force. He/she has to resign and then go the usual route as a probationer. This seems inefficient to me.)
Calls from the public were taken and emails were read out.
Regrettably, they were mostly negative - although we can't know how the BBC edited these contributions.
However, one woman from Andover had nothing but praise for her local force in the way that they tackled nuisance under-age drinkers in her area.
And another emailer spoke in favour of the extensive paper-trail, which might have averted the Soham murders if it had been efficiently maintained.
But another woman reported being harassed by ten youths when her motor bike broke down and a slow police response, yielding an unsatisfactory outcome, i.e the yobs weren't caught.
Callers/emailers from as far apart as Somerset (Frome) and North Yorkshire reported a severely reduced police presence, which was worrying.
So public perceptions (as reported by the BBC) don't harmonise with those of the politicians.
The aspiration of policing, nevertheless, was still there.
The Professor (I think) referred to an early episode of The Bill, where a senior police officer says to a young recruit (words to this effect), "Five percent of the population are rubbish. It is our job to keep them from giving grief to the other ninety-five percent."
I wish you and your colleagues every success in this respect. As indicated, at least the matter has not been allowed to die down and neither should it be.
P.S. I found out today from a separate source why you all wear stab-proof vests at all times, even when addressing a Brownie pack (which the PCSO did while we were speaking with the PC at the surgery). You aren't covered by insurance, otherwise. I think this is useful for other MOPs to know.
28 November, 2007 00:41
Community based policing is a concept that was introducted in the US over the past decade. It comes with all sorts of "buzz" words and Federal funds. It hasn't stopped one bit of crime. Go to any American Police Department website and in the "Message from the Chief" you'll read how their community is actively involved in this community policing crap.
As the prior poster said, its the "Flavor of the Day".
What we need today is "Gitmo" enforcement techniques. Since most gov'ts sanction these rather brutal interrogation methods, why not bring it down to the street cop level. Hell, it was that way before the '60s.
28 November, 2007 00:43
Policing is really quite simple, but we appear to have made it very complicated.
When I joined 20 yrs ago we had large reliefs (i.e teams of officers) of about 25 to 30 in number for each 8hr shift.
These teams were run and I mean run by an Inspector and a couple of Sgts. Once all the response cars were manned the remaining officers were posted walking to specific beats or were deployed to police specific tasks highlighted by intelligence.
This intelligence usually came from the permenant beat officers (2officers per ward)whose job was mainly 9-5 walking the neighbourhoods and who were known by everybody. They gained the trust of the locals who were confident that the information given would be acted upon.
It worked.
Now we have Neighbourhood policing - which is a con. PCSO's are policing on the cheap and the thin end of the wedge. The gov't has found a way of putting uniforms on the street to give the impression that there are loads of us out there. (Is it just a coincidence that PCSO uniforms differ minutely from regular officers?).
On my division we have a 'bike team', a 'problem solving team' a 'task force team'. All these teams work mainly weekdays/evenings and are taken from uniform response teams. The Chief Supt refers to them as his 'detection teams' i.e it seems they exist to get as many S5's or cannabis warnings as they can in order to make the division appear it is doing really, really well.
In the meantime the stripped response teams are doing all the work the public want them to be doing i.e. responding to calls taken on the 999 system which the above mentioned 'teams' manage to ignore.
Last week I responded to a call at 2am on a Sun morning. The caller was being harrassed by local youths every night. He was tired of it and after I had referred him to his 'Local Neighbourhood Officer' he looked at me, shrugged, and said "What's the point of that, they are never out at 2am on the weekend"
28 November, 2007 13:21
When the bobby on the beat used to work they lived within the community in a Police house and everyone knew who they were. Now officers live where they can afford and travel, this therefore devalues the impact of neighbourhood policing as when off duty in my area no one covers. Therefore after 4 rest days back to a stack of e-mails about anti-social behaviour that i haven't got a cat in hells chance of sorting out 99% of the time. The principle may seem reasonable it's just that the model doesn't work.
28 November, 2007 14:13
6 - 8 officers on a team? have you got the entire uniformed frontline strength for the Division on your team then? eh, eh?
28 November, 2007 17:49
For info:
Re: team
Our ward of about 3,000 houses, i.e. about 6,000+ inhabitants, has a police team of two - a veteran PC of 27 years' service and a PCSO (a solidly good lad, as far as I can tell).
We are nearly all well-behaved, middle-class professional folks in our ward (with a good percentage of middle-aged to elderly folks), who care about their children and invest in them (according to our veteran PC - with whom the local villains are known to exchange pleasantries on the high street, apparently, or were once).
i.e. we don't kick off like the M****m rioters in Paris and our kids are not inveterate binge drinkers (in public, anyway).
Maybe for these reasons, the police resources in our ward are not going to increase (according to our veteran PC).
Overall, our town, of 20,000+ inhabitants, has a team of three PCs and three PCSOs and is overseen by an Inspector and a Sergeant.
Some parts are more volatile than our area but not much, by and large. So our team on the whole seems about average, from the above comments.
Though it's certainly better than the situation that PC Dave/Stu was faced with on his first day on the job, when he was one out of four officers available to police the entire town of Burton-on-Trent with 60,000 inhabitants.
It would therefore be good if the extra 143,000 officers now available, according to impeccable sources, could be deployed a bit more widely.
Some areas do seem to be a bit thin on the ground, w.r.t. police resources.
28 November, 2007 19:47
Man treated after chemical blast
A man was taken to hospital in Swindon after a chemical explosion at his home on Wednesday.
Fire crews were called to Earl's Close in Middleaze after the man had an accident with chemicals, including caustic soda, in his shed.
He suffered slight burns to his face, and several residents were briefly removed from their homes.
Swindon police said there was no indication that any criminal offence took place. An inquiry is under way.
It was thought the man was trying to produce bio-diesel when the explosion occurred.
The man, who did not want to be named, told BBC News: "I'm seriously thinking of packing it up because of all the fuss that I have seen.
"I have never seen people with chemical masks - I have only seen them in films. Now I've seen them by my house - that tells me that no, I'm not doing it."
28 November, 2007 21:19
How lucky are we?
In our area of approximately 140000, we have response teams with around 23 officers and three sergeants. In addition, we have the Neighbourhood Teams. Plus the Special Constabulary and PCSOs.
We're spoiled - but you're not having any of them in Blandmore.
30 November, 2007 15:37
Once upon a time, when I was growing up we had a copper (who I knew as Mr Dodds) who lived in a Police House and covered the four local villages. I don't know how effective Mr Dodds was, but we were a community where everyone knew one another and Mr Doods was part of that community. If you had a problem, you would see Mr Dodds and if he discovered a problem, then woe betide you, as he would definately see you, plus you had the shame if the 'news' became common knowledge in the community!
Thirty years later, that's all gone, we've had the destruction of our communities with Thacherism, now ten years of bugger all with bLAIR, we're all 'mops' and you're all 'pigs'. Community Policing is 'right on' crap, but it's a start.
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