Top Down Management

Following on from yesterday's Ali Dizaei news, I have been pondering the poor officers who became embroiled in the original incident where their Commander arrested a man with whom he had an ongoing dispute.  In the face of a further internal tribunal and re-trial, they must be wishing they had not been on duty that day.  

It's bad enough when the Area Commander decides to venture out of his office in Blandmore to attend the report writing room, let alone if he were to wander out of the station and start making arrests. In fact, our Area Commander did threaten some time ago to materialise on the streets of Blandmore, but luckily last month's Performance Group Analysis Meeting has kept him indoors ever since.

That said, I would be entertained to see my superintendent attending a bog standard Blandmore domestic.  I wonder how he would cope with the following daily experiences of response officers on my team:

• A ten page risk assessment to fill in.
• An hour on hold to the civilian call centre to generate the crime report.
• Having no transit available to transport the violent prisoner.
• No space in the nearest custody due to the "cell alert" system going down.
• The next closest custody suite hurling abuse on his arrival (they don't like Blandmore prisoners).
• Having to mount a seven hour cell watch on the prisoner following attempts to strangle himself with his trousers, T-shirt and boxers.
• Returning to take victim statements to find the victim has moved up north permanently.
  
• Domestic Abuse Unit having no resources to have any involvement whatsoever in the job.
• Three hours on the phone to the Crown Prosecution Service to be told the case is to be dropped and the prisoner released.
• Having to take the prisoner home because it might abuse his human rights to release him without a jacket.
• Coming back to work the next day to find an email from his boss, asking why the case has not resulted in an immediate conviction at Crown Court.
• Finding a further email from the Domestic Abuse Unit, detailing how they would have done things differently, if only they'd had resources to help.

 ... Back in the real world, I'm lucky if I can even locate the superintendent to sign off on an urgent authorisation.  The chances of him experiencing any actual policing some time soon are remote.

Which is all anyone really needs to know about the reasons for the state of policing today.


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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Look into my Dizaeis....

The embarrassing saga of sacked, reinstated, sacked, reinstated Met Commander goes on.

Yet Ali Dizaei is not in the clear on the charges of corruption for which he was sent to prison in February. He faces a re-trial, because despite the main witness in that case being proved to be a benefit fraudster, it's still possible a jury may convict Mr Dizaei based on other evidence.

How this will all pan out is still a mystery.  We should probably expect to see Ali Dizaei retiring honourable from the Met, receiving a knighthood, before taking over from Lord Stevens as the face-man for Labour's latest independent police review.

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

All Hail the Independent Review

You know the Opposition has run out of ideas when the only policy they can put forwards is an independent review of the police.

It is not exactly clear what Labour hopes to achieve by this review, nor what it will actually be reviewing, but it does align closely with Police Federation calls for a Royal Commission that was dismissed by the Government earlier this year.  And, true to form, the head of the Federation has immediately backed the idea.

Perhaps Paul McKeever should point out that Labour has had twelve years of Government in which to hold this supposedly independent review.  And that instead they simply spent over a decade imposing more and more bureaucratic police targets and restrictions, whilst contributing to a culture of mistrust and resentment of the police.

Perhaps Paul McKeever should point out that it is the height of hypocrisy for Labour, of all people, to declare that the Prime Minister "should be backing, not sacking the police", after twelve years of total disdain shown by their party towards uniformed officers.  And to hark back to "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", when their government's sentencing policies have led to the kind of scenes in Tottenham and other areas in August, where 75% of those caught had prior criminal convictions.

As a front-line officer who has been assaulted twice in the last 3 months out on the streets of Blandmore, and who has gone through three cans of PAVA spray this year alone, I am not reassured or excited by the prospect of a review - royal or otherwise.

The truth is that the London riots have done more to help the cause of the front-line officer than any government minister ever will.  As someone who joined up to lock up people who perpetrate that sort of violence, that's a pretty sad indictment.

PS In case you're wondering about the long absence, I was catching up on my work emails following a few days off.  The advantage of being off for more than one week is that you can safely delete anything over 10 days old, knowing that the emails that have come the next week will have reversed whatever instructions the original ones contained.

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Visibility, Schmisibility

Sorry for the absence. I've been on holiday.  Luckily, I took my uniform with me, and a lot of British tourists at the resort were highly reassured to see me sunbathing in half-blues.

The totally utterly independent think tank The Policy Exchange has come up with a number of genius suggestions this week that by amazing coincidence and vindication of the Government, coincide exactly with what ministers have been saying: 

Apparently, a lot of uniformed police are doing back office roles and money could be saved by giving these jobs to civilians.  The Policy Exchange does not suggest how many of them might be on restricted duties and therefore needing stints away from the front-line.  Nor does The Policy Exchange talk about how many civilians are currently doing front-line roles such as PCSOs, designated investigators, and statement-takers.  Engaging civilian staff has nothing to do with protecting the front-line. 

The next suggestion: police should wear uniform on the way to work.  This would equate to 1200 extra police officers "on the streets".  I must say, there is certainly nothing more reassuring than looking over as you wait in traffic for your daily commute, and seeing that the person waiting next to you is a uniformed police officer.

The Government, as usual, has "welcomed" The Policy Exchange's report, which is another way of saying it was already due to be absorbed into the next police reform paper and they quickly needed an independent body to back them up.

Whichever high-flying Conservative Oxbridge graduate at The Policy Exchange came up with this genius idea, and actually thought it was doable, I'd like to meet him/her.  They'd get on like a house on fire with my Area Commander.

On another note - what does The Policy Exchange think we wear to work currently?  I personally like to travel in dressed in a full red latex gimp suit, just so I'm totally unable to respond should I happen across a crime whilst queueing on the slip-road of my town's bypass.

 

"Help officer, I've had my bike stolen!"

"Don't look at us, we're just waiting to get into the club on a night out."
  




You couldn't make it up.  Except that somebody did.

 

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

 Inciting a riot that never happened: four years.

Attacking someone in a gang attack with a metal ratchet, leaving broken bones: £500 fine.

Which sentence would make YOU think twice before committing the same offence?

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Dropped. Penny. No?

April 2011: "Kettling" ruled unlawful.

May 2011: PC Simon Harwood charged with manslaughter over the death of Ian Tomlinson.

August 2011: Nationwide surprise that the police were loath to use full-on confrontational riot tactics in dealing with mass public disorder.

Perhaps something good will come of all this after all, but it's a shame so many people had to lose their homes and their livelihoods to demonstrate to the country just what the police are facing.

 


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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

London's Not So Burning

The famous lone woman takes on the crowds:

Clapham Junction: onlookers cheer as police make an arrest surrounded by hostile crowds:

And applaud spontaneously (er, I presume), as police drive by in the morning:

Riot Clean-up:

Hundreds of arrests have been made around the UK.  A few youths tried to riot in Blandmore, but ran away when they realised no one had noticed.

Let's watch the courts closely and see what kind of sentences get meted out for those charged.

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.