What, you really mean "all" crime?
All-Crime has been coming to Blandshire for some months now.
I first heard about All-Crime Attendance on a Quality of Service input (part of the proces of turning me from a pretend-sergent into a real one some day). "Soon," intoned the trainer, "Blandshire Constabulary will be sending police officers to attend reports of every crime."
It turned out that by "soon", he meant next year it will be piloted in a couple of areas. By "police officers" he meant PCSOs or civilian investigators. And by "every", he meant criminal damage.
Now Alan Johnson, crime fighter extraordinaire- er I mean Home Secretary- thinks it would be jolly nice, in principle, if we tootled off to every report of a bally old crime, what.
I think it would be jolly nice if we had marked police cars with the fluoerescent stickers not peeling off, hats that don't make us look like German strippers and enough blankets in custody to comply with common human decency in housing prisoners. If money were no issue, no doubt the Senior Managers would like us to have all that too.
So my questions to Alan Johnson are:
1) If he would like the police to attend all victims of crime, what would he like us NOT to do instead?
2) On exactly which planet is the Home Office based?
There's also the small matter that not everyone who thinks they are a victim of crime actually is one. And at the moment we spend more time visiting people who were looked at funny in the street or sent racist Bebo messages, than we do commiserating with the owners of smashed up cars and ransacked houses. And we still don't have time to get through them all.
Don't get me wrong, Alan Johnson has not yet made this "gut reaction" of his into a mandatory requirement to be measured with a brand new mandatory key performance indicator. But it's jolly nice that he had the idea.
Now perhaps Mr Johnson could get some gut feelings about violent thieving thugs going to prison for just two or three years, or police forces parading more than the bare minimum of officers required to stay alive from day to day.
I first heard about All-Crime Attendance on a Quality of Service input (part of the proces of turning me from a pretend-sergent into a real one some day). "Soon," intoned the trainer, "Blandshire Constabulary will be sending police officers to attend reports of every crime."
It turned out that by "soon", he meant next year it will be piloted in a couple of areas. By "police officers" he meant PCSOs or civilian investigators. And by "every", he meant criminal damage.
Now Alan Johnson, crime fighter extraordinaire- er I mean Home Secretary- thinks it would be jolly nice, in principle, if we tootled off to every report of a bally old crime, what.
I think it would be jolly nice if we had marked police cars with the fluoerescent stickers not peeling off, hats that don't make us look like German strippers and enough blankets in custody to comply with common human decency in housing prisoners. If money were no issue, no doubt the Senior Managers would like us to have all that too.
So my questions to Alan Johnson are:
1) If he would like the police to attend all victims of crime, what would he like us NOT to do instead?
2) On exactly which planet is the Home Office based?
There's also the small matter that not everyone who thinks they are a victim of crime actually is one. And at the moment we spend more time visiting people who were looked at funny in the street or sent racist Bebo messages, than we do commiserating with the owners of smashed up cars and ransacked houses. And we still don't have time to get through them all.
Don't get me wrong, Alan Johnson has not yet made this "gut reaction" of his into a mandatory requirement to be measured with a brand new mandatory key performance indicator. But it's jolly nice that he had the idea.
Now perhaps Mr Johnson could get some gut feelings about violent thieving thugs going to prison for just two or three years, or police forces parading more than the bare minimum of officers required to stay alive from day to day.
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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
posted by PC Bloggs at 17:57
20 Comments:
Yes, we are soon to have this nonsense in Ruralshire. Being as our victims are usually also suspects for other things, we can kill two birds with one stone. Bonkers.
21 November, 2009 21:21
We've had this for a couple of years now in our Farce.
It took ages to sort out and there was a lot of pissed off mops who wondered why Cops were turning up to their broken window 36 hours later when it had already been fixed in order to take details and be told there was nothing we could do, when they could have passed the same details over the phone.
It was solved by taking 1 cop off each shift and making diary appointments where a cop can come to your home or work and take details off you at a time that suits you.
The same details that could be taken over the phone and making not one jot of difference to the outcome of the investigation and stretching the 24/7 shifts further.
I suggested this was a great way to positively utilise the PCSO's. NO. I was told only a PC can make the judgement that a crime has occurred.
So we can dress them like Cops, make them walk the streets pretending to be Cops, talk to people who may believe they are Cops. But we cannot trust them to tell if a broken window is Criminal fucking Damage???. To add insult to injury due to NCRS if the victim percieves that a crime has occurred it HAS to be recorded as a crime anyway!!!!.
To quote IG- You could not make it up.
PC A HUNN
22 November, 2009 14:13
quite funny- since civvie telephone operators on the call desk can crime things over the 'phone...
why not PCSOs?
mmm... I think I have a couple of reasons why...
1. if they were doing the same job as Police officers- they may want to be paid the same...
2. if they were doing the same job as Police officers-noone would see them because they would be bogged down with rubbish like we are...
lol...
22 November, 2009 14:49
I am paid the same as a probationer PC.
I am interested by PC A HUNN's remarks, as we do the 'victim of crime' visits... police officers are positively discouraged from doing this on top of their existing workload.
I have 'crimed' plenty of things, I don't see why this would be different elsewhere.
I'd be interested to know what Force you work for.
22 November, 2009 17:07
ahh... but you dont have the training or the equipment...
nothing personal... but pcsos are nothing more than a gimmick...
22 November, 2009 18:07
we are paid - on average- full PC pay - twice as much as a PCSO- thing is... they tend to go around in twos- so no real net gain!
22 November, 2009 20:03
re the above comments..
1. Crime desk???. Far too sensible. We did away with ours ages ago. In order to help "improve" our service so that all jobs HAVE to be attended by an officer.
The Civvies and sick, lame and lazy (PC's) who used to work in the crime desk were given new hats and are now the NCRS Nazi's / service satisfaction checkers.
2. Our PCSO's do do crime visits / follow ups but a PC has to go to the initial job to ensure it is a crime. They even go and do Burglary follow ups.. I remember when that was done by a DC!.
3. Don't get me started on PCSO's pay / working double crewed / being a HUGE waste of money. I tend to into a rant and its off topic.
PC A HUNN
23 November, 2009 12:47
GO HUNN!!!!
RANT !!
RANT!!!!
23 November, 2009 13:05
I'm the 22 November, 2009 17:07 poster.
My take-home pay is £1,360 after pension, tax, NI and student loan.
I rarely work double crewed except on friday/saturday after dark, which are our busiest times. I work sun-thurs lates single-crewed regardless of the hours and all my daytime shifts and earlies on my tod. This is the policy force-wide as far as i'm aware... I would see no reason to be single-crewed 95% of the time
I still don't understand why some forces would have a policy that a PC has to ensure a job is a crime?
And the training or equipment to do what exactly? Go and look at a broken wing mirror and classify it as criminal damage? Your argument makes little sense.
As for criming...
In my force PCSOs can do this, civvies at the force enquiry centre can do this, civvies at the VCRU can do this, civvies at the FCR can do this etc. etc. etc. etc.
We do not do burglary follow-ups... they are either dealt with exclusively by TPT (shift) or TPT and the burglary squad in tangent. No aspect of SNT (beats) get involved with burglary.
Our force does have an equivalent of the crime desk.. operates slightly differently than it did historically.
The comment about PCSOs being a gimmick is facile, but I offer the author an opportunity to come out on patrol with me as an observer sometime.
23 November, 2009 23:22
My above comment should have read "I see no reason NOT to be single-crewed 95% of the time"
23 November, 2009 23:23
no thanks... re patrol...
i do my shopping outside of work hours...
24 November, 2009 05:42
Seems to depend on the quality of the recording process and who is ultimately responsible for the decision to attend (or otherwise)at ground level.
Experienced front line officers would be eminently capable of applying common sense priorities and should be granted the discretion to make decision. They'll be right the majority of the time.
Until the trivia is eliminated, officers are allowed to prioritise activity in the best interests of the public and all the other nonsense obstructions to “doing the job” are removed, this will remain a thorny issue.
Scrap endless form filling, box ticking bureaucracy, misguided performance targeting and politically correct motivated processes and coppers will be freed up to do the job they’d all rather be doing.
Leave the common sense copper to make the decision. Common sense should determine the seriousness of the incident, the likelihood of a resolution and the appropriate level of prioritised response.
Alan Johnson must be on a different planet or some parallel universe with his 'Every victim will be visited' dream. Years of accumulated obfuscation would have to be wiped before that one comes to fruition.
Out of curiosity, just looked up 'obfuscation' - "to make something obscure or unclear, especially by making it unnecessarily complicated". Seems like an apt description of the obstacles facing police officers in 2009.
24 November, 2009 05:54
In Blandshire, members of the public do most of the criming. That's why we're rated so high when it comes to complying with NCRS. Shame about the crime rate, but you can't have everything...
24 November, 2009 10:11
Marvellous twist of logic. We aren't allowed to crime anything until we've asked a Sergeant if it really is a crime. (pass ther massage oil) So we get to visit everyone whether there's a crime or not. Just as well we weren't busy before.
24 November, 2009 12:19
Seems its going to be like the job I joined in 1964, everyone gets a visit, and if she tasty, perhaps two.
24 November, 2009 21:54
"Enough blankets for custody"??? I sense a nice, liberal arse-licking promotion move. I'm surprised it's not "enough rooms at the Hilton".
Admit it! You're patently obviously an officially sanctioned (and appointed?) Police blogger. You've been on the radio, (in front of interviewers, middle-class liberals, spiky-haired recording crew and others with whom you have nothing in common whatsoever), in papers (where absolutely nobody can be trusted to keep a secret) and so on. Never outed! Yeah, right, sure.
Nightjack, with far less exposure, was taken pretty quickly for a little ride in the country. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it turned out you had a hand in it.
Genuine police bloggers beware - don't touch her(?) with a barge pole!
Warning to other Officers who might be impressed by Bloggs's teflon-coated ability to retain anonymity: finding the source of posts to Blogger is not rocket science. If someone wants to, they can employ the same methods used to track internet nonces. And the queue can be jumped, when it's an internal matter considered important by the CC.
24 November, 2009 21:56
Anonymous at 05:42... Slightly childish response there. Daily mail reader are we?
25 November, 2009 10:42
“Today they have been brought to justice and the judge’s sentences will serve to protect the community for years to come.”
oh yer.
dungbeetle
26 November, 2009 03:34
anon-21.56...
take more water with it...
26 November, 2009 21:13
This just in...
Four police officers in America gunned down in a coffee shop while catching up on their paperwork, on laptops. You can't help thinking they'd have had more of a chance if they'd been out doing their job...
30 November, 2009 02:01
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