SRSport

No it's not. I dont wish for my comments to be unfairly judged by what my profession is, hence sidestepping your question.

SRSport

Thats the issue. People criticise the police for following orders but that is exactly what they have to do. I for one sleep much easier knowing that we live in a country where the police follow orders from the government as they should and do not presume to do or start petitioning for anything else - that is not their job. We vote for the government and the decisions come from them.

As Ditchmyster said,
"The general public need to get with the program and realise that the powers that be are the problem, you can't expect the police to do a good job when one is tied to a desk and the other is sent out with one boot and an arm tied behind his back and all the government are interested in is massaging the crime figures and reducing the budget."

I dont know whether refusal to get with the program stems from being lazy and just blaming the police because its easier or whether they just dont have the capability of understanding that the police themselves are not necessarily the cause of their issues. I suspect when we still have comments such as "how thick can the police be", and "when you get the answer, ask yourself if it's easier to sit in a warm cop-shop munching donuts and slurping coffee while filling in forms, or getting out there on a cold wet night and dealing with burglars, robbers, rapists etc", it is the latter.

The officers I know signed up to get out in the night dealing with burglars etc and feel incredibly frustrated being stuck in the 'cop-shop'. To think that they are all doing the job to stay indoors eating doughnuts is, to coin the too often spouted phrase, 'deluding yourself'.

Felix.

I've read you're earlier post and can't see that you posed that question - unless it was cryptic?????

And i can see that you think all our efforts are going on speeding - when response, CID, drugs unit and neighborhoods (amongst others) never touch it.

If you have a community meeting of residents of a housing estate and one of their main concerns is speeding on the estates - do you think its acceptable that we ignore this as it might makes us look bad. Or do we listen to them and do something about it. You mentioned that you were not impressed by an officer on his bike deployed for speeders as (i assume) would be a waste of resources, but you don't want GATZOS either. Both methods by the way wont effect you at all if you don't speed in the first place.

And, i've never said that i speak for all officers and have regularly said that there are good and bad in every organisation and when things are clearly wrong, then complain.

Where have i said that my time is wasted filling in forms, in fact i think i explained that it is an important part of the job that can't be ignored and needs doing. Whether this is filling in paper forms or computer simulated forms, the time taken to do this is the same; these are important and need to be done right.

And we do feedback things to ACPO and beyond to change the way we do things so that we believe we are more efficient etc etc. ACPO do listen to us as we are the ones with the experience on policing.

By the way- you did not answer my question posed, what would you do to change things??? Or what changes would you make

shytorque

Kin do one then you blarrrt.


Its actually anti "lazy bast***" for me.

shytorque

Im sure it is a good number if some ****** answers.
It just cut off each time I tried to phone it !!!

shytorque

Correct and well said

shytorque

[QUOTE=SRSport;11351575]They're not really though are they? They make up nonsense about crime stats and offer, among other things, silly suggestive questions which again they really have no idea about.

You calling me a liar "chimp D*ck"

What the **** would I make it up for ?

Felix.

There's a big difference in being 'lazy' and being 'overstretched'

SRSport

I applaud your commitment in helping such people grasp reality but in this case I feel as though your efforts are completely wasted.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Sorry, no time yesterday.

What would I do?

I'd start off by removing all targets.......just ignore them if government try and insist.

Make the CC and the Police Commisioner answerable to LOCAL people only, NOT central government.

THEN find out what local people want, their responses can then be used to allocate your budget and resources.

TBH, since Thatcher got the police onside for her shameful battle with the miners, you have allowed yourselves to become more and more simply the bully-boys, enforcers and auxilliary tax gatherers of whichever government pays you.

yet have they treated you well for it??????

Time to take back the reins. Stop whining about "obeying orders" and not having public support. Do it RIGHT and win back public support.

I'm serious: I am smack in the middle of that part of society which used to be SOLIDLY behind the police. No more!
And sadly, I don't know of even ONE of my friends who properly supports them now...even one who used to be in a VERY responsible position.

Felix.

What government targets do you think we have been given...?

Our priorities for this year are:
Protecting vulnerable people
Protection of life
Serious and organised crime
Burglary of people's homes
Antisocial behaviour

Are you wanting us to ignore these.....??

And in any case, none of these 'targets' are suggesting - you must arrest 10 burglars per week; merely reduce crime, more crime prevention and support etc etc. And if the occurrences do go up there is no great issues so long as we have tried our best to reduce it.

The Police Commissioner was voted in by the local public based on his policies and visions and can hold the CC accountable (and dismiss if necessary) if they are not followed. There are regular local community meetings on each estate organised for the public to discuss current problems in the area and these are used to update the policing priories for the next week/month or whatever. So we do listen to the local people and move budgets & resources to best suit their needs.

But resources have to be made available for the 'unplanned incidents' which wont be mentioned at these meetings such as sudden deaths, missing from homes, public order, domestics, drugs, frauds etc etc Or do we just ignore these if the public have not mentioned them...???

You also have to be realistic - every area will want a police officer on their street corner day and night and more foot patrolling, but there just isn't enough of us and we will not be able to respond to any emergencies if we all do this.

I really don't understand how i am a 'bully boy' and 'tax gather' - i know you will mention speeding tickets, but no one on our shift deals with this and we are solely based on crime and emergency response - the same can be said for CID, drugs unit, organised crime unit etc etc

I have never whined about obeying orders (and i'm not sure about what orders you think i have to obey). The only orders i follow form part of a job description and are based on responding to the needs of the public and the policing plan - no one tells me to dish out x number of tickets per shift for example. We also have good public support in our area. What parts are we doing wrong which you think we can turn around and do right? - baring in mind, we don't touch traffic incidents and the number of officers is finite.

And i assume that all of your friends have had some sort of dealing with police..? What are there stories that's turned them against the police..??

stipete75

Orders are orders and you must obey theses orders no matter what!
Listen, these police debates on forums bring controversy etc from all parties because of the subject matter...the police and how we are policed.
Do the police serve and protect us as they should??
Is revenue gain a big part of policing??
Are policing powers getting out of control??
Are police officers above the law??
Is corruption evident in the policing system??
Reasonable force or police brutality?? Etc etc.
Without a police force we would all be in a world of despaire, so of course we need policing.
An independent police force is a crucial ingredient of a healthy democracy. A police force in the hands of politicians is something we associate more with authoritarian states than modern democracies.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Felix: So the big thing about targets is a press lie, then? The stories circulating about it being more likely you'll get a ticket and not just told off near the end of a month? The MANY stories about figures being fiddled? Why have figures if there are no targets? And why fiddle them, because fiddled they are!

You strike me as an intelligent, committed person...surely you cannot be that naive?

Bully-boy: miners' strike, handling of demonstrations, kettling etc???

Tax gatherer: speeding fines. And face it, the fine isn't important, because you get a second punishment too. And if you have to, or choose to go to court, you get a third and fourth...and that's before the extra for insurance kicks in.
Speeding is THE most heavily punished "crime" in the UK. Yet who is hurt?
Might be...yes, but 99.99999% of the time, the answer is, "no-one".


To explain why the people I mix with no longer have time for the police would take far too long.And bore everyone. And that's before the usual suspects call me a liar.

I could start you off with: 17 year old lad assaulted and threatened with a knife DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE GOVERNMENT'S CAMPAIGN TO GET KNIVES OFF THE STREETS. Police informed within thirty minutes, and told where the three offenders still were, (Maccy D's carpark). NO-ONE attended either to the lad, or to pick them up .

FIVE DAYS LATER, on being arrested, they said, of course, "Knife? What knife???" Next time, I'll deal with it myself.

A good mate who is very high up as an engineer for an insurance company was at an evening "do". He happened to be sitting next to that area's chief constable, a VERY well-known man. That worthy remarked to my friend that one of his major headaches is the present lack of public support. He put it down DIRECTLY to the fact that most of the population's only contact, or first contact, with the police is when the letter drops though the letterbox demanding money with menaces. He fervently wished the government would drop it...but what was he actually doing about it? I'd bet MY pension he'd not even mentioned it to ministers...in order to protect HIS pension.
What's that saying about, "for evil to happen....."?

Seriously, Felix, you can't have it both ways. IS speeding so important?

They try and tell us it saves lives, yet do not mention the effects of better tyres, better suspension, better brakes, better crash-worthiness, seatbelts, airbags, and even road improvements. ALL the improvement in deaths/injuries is attributed to speeding.

Meanwhile, the guy with the camera, the camera van, the fixed camera, THEY can catch people driving carelessly, on phones, eating at the wheel, not paying attention, reading a paper etc etc , can't they? Of course not, yet they HAVE replaced the traffic officer.

I'm unsure which force you work for, but I doubt they are as useless and inept as Dumberside Police!

I could bore for England on the ineptitude of THAT force, but above is a bit to be going on with.

Felix.

I'll answer the above later (off to work soon), but in the mean time:

http://www.derbyshire.police.uk/My-L...ton-Rural.aspx

Are you for or against this then...

Local people raise concerns over speeding and so it becomes a local policing priority. Or do you not want us to deal with speeding at all as its not important and hence ignore the local people.

Maz

iTrader: (34)

The motorist has always been an easy target. I would wager a sizeable amount that if you asked a hundred people where they would like police resources to be applied, most wouldn't say speeding motorists. I personally think a more visible foot presence akin to the beat bobby would be prudent.

shytorque

So what about my concerns about the five ******* in my mothers garden???
Come on don't insult me again saying they were busy else where!!!
Please get the message we want real crime dealing with. And this is from someone who has not had a speeding ticket in 20 years ,so its not like I have a beef about being caught myself .There is real crime being ignored.
Please don't take this personally because its not about you as an individual but all you coppers together and the policies that you are ruled by.

shytorque

Here , here !!!!
Visibility is what we are after.
And some action where it matters.

Felix.

So, what do we do with the concern raised by the public at Derby about speeding cars - just ignore these and tell them that the motorist is too easy a target...???

How would you apply 'police resources' then to best suit the public.

Foot beat is all well and good, but does nothing for responding to emergencies, drug unit, CID, etc etc. Besides, all forces do have neighbourhood police teams which will do foot patrol - but i can't effectively operate on foot, being several miles from an incident and have to carry with me tons of paperwork, evidence bags, first aid kits, door enforces, throw lines, knife tubes etc etc

Felix.

I don't understand why you can't see the possibility that all the units are currently tied up with other incidents - and what has a speeding ticket go to do with it...???? (not having a go, it just this thread has turned into a speeding ticket thread somehow.)

We fielded 14 officers yesterday to cover a large town area of about 25 sq miles and about 400,000 people. From the start we had 2 missing from homes, 1 sudden death, 2 dwelling burglaries, 4 arrested for retail theft, 2 for domestics and about 2 handovers from the previous shift. So that then left us with 2 free units - both of which were sent to the most serious event at the top of the queue - any subsequent emergencies were dealt with by dogs and traffic (which we had 3 cars, but 2 were tied up with a smash on the motorway)

So any other jobs which come in just have to go onto a queue system for as and when the next until becomes free - or do you think its acceptable for us to direct a unit away from the burglary - have the officer say "I'm sorry your house has been burgled, i'm here to deal but there's something more important i'm off to now" and never end up getting back to it.

And bare in mind this is all on top of other jobs and emergencies coming in all the time. And this is just responses queue - neighbourhoods will have the same set of circumstances and CID, drugs will be tied up with there incidents.

So, how would you do things different that would make units available all the time..?

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Bloody hell, 14 officers to cover almost half a million people, **** me it's no wonder the criminals are having a field day.

I'm in the wrong business, seems like crime is the game to be in because with only 2 units available each night there is no chance you'll ever catch anybody.

Glad i'm not in the UK it's a free for all for criminals.

Felix.

What, the press making things up to sell papers.... what are you suggesting..??

Of course it is, what targets do you think i'm set other than the policing plan - which is reduce crime and the fear of crime, protect the vulnerable, reduce burglary. If you think i'm given a target of arresting so many a month, or stop searching so many, or seizing a certain quantity of drugs - then your thinking is wrong.

The figures are released to show how a crime is being reduced or increased in a certain area - this will then form then next policing priority encompassing all parts of the police (intelligence, source unit, response, neighbourhoods etc) - but will never be answered by dishing out more tickets to motorists. If you know of a better way of analyzing crime figures and apportioning the correct response to it - then i'm all ears (as ever) and would be genuinely interested in you thoughts (as ever)

Bully boys - not being part of the riot squad i cant be a bully boy then. I would say though that most of the these 'riots and demonstrations' are attended by people who just want to cause public order as apposed to a peaceful demonstration - the person who dropped the fire extinguisher off the building at police - i suggest he was not there for a peaceful protest; and all the buildings, banks, shops which were trashed in the London riots - are you expecting the police just to stand back and watch?

Speeding is not a crime, no crime reports are put in and it doesn't figure on any crime figures. Going on people's police records i would suggest the most heavily punished 'crime' per head of population would be theft, followed by theft and fraud, assault, public orders which do make up the bulk of incidents we deal with. Like i said before i (and the guys on our shift) don't do speeding. But i do acknowledge that it is a problem for a lot of residents (as posted earlier in Derby) and as i said before do you think its acceptable for us to ignore this if the public raised the concern. No one is hurt in shop thefts - but do you want us to ignore these? And i can't accept the fact that speed plays no part in a persons injuries - a pedestrian/child hit at 10mph will have more chance of no injuries than one hit at 60-70mph. If this was one of you loved ones who was hit by a 60mph car on a 20mph road would you be happy that the police ruled out speed as a contributory factor to the injuries and just looked at a careless drive offence?

I would suggest speeding is important (for safety and as being antisocial), but it is not the everything as you rightly point out, but it is something that we can try and enforce. You have to understand as well that not every motorist will listen to 'words of advice' and after they have been warned a dozen times - what will the next stage be? - to many it will be to fine them and give them a financial penalty as everything else hasn't worked. If we do nothing, then the law abiding citizen will feel very aggrieved that people are getting away with it.

We usually have about 4 traffic cars out to cover the whole county, and they are usually tied up with accidents and their follow up enquiries, so speeding does not form part of their main focus. Emergency response pandas etc can't enforce speeding in any case as they do not have the equipment on board. I would suggest that you appear transfixed on speeding be the main concern to police - but this is not the case.

The knife incident - i refer to the above post as to why units might not have been available at the time, however if the male was later arrested then he can be identified and the victims statement and injuries will be enough to pursue a prosecution. Was a statement obtained or was this more of a robbery? If nothing was done was there a complaint made and if so what was said. As i was not at the scene i can't answer - what i would say though is that our force regards knife crime as serious and it will have been pursued to the Nth degree

sean999

felix, im with you all of the way. however this debate and other similar threads can go on for ever. "you're never going to please all the people all of the time"
there will always be members of the public who cant wait to point the finger and complain about their experience with the police.
we've all heard of the term "thin blue line" well I think its almost see through now!
I work an area that used to be 3 separate sections before it was merged together to save on costs. when it was 3 separate sections there was 3 sgts and 8-9 cops per shift, so in essence there would be a good 25 or so cops covering the 3 sections. this has now reduced to 2 sgts ( 1 does office duties, while the other is reactive) and on paper there are 12 cops per shift, then take out people on courses, people on leave, staff dealing with prisoners etc and available staff numbers drop even further.
a couple of weeks ago on a 12 hr Saturday late shift, after every job was handed out it left just me as a single crewed response to cover everything that came in.

I don't know about your force area but we used to operate an "observer scheme" where members of the public were allowed to come out on shift (anything dangerous they had to stay sat in the car) so they could get an insight of what exactly cops do, and how time consuming things can be.
I think if more people had this opportunity there would be far less moaning and groaning.

stipete75

The problem is only getting worse, with incidents like plebgate, duggan etc
The general public are loosing faith in "our" police force.

http://police-brutality-uk.co.uk/pub...-is-a-problem/

I understand how tough being a policeman can be,can't be nice not being liked by the public you work for,as well as the tougher policing duties obviously.
Things do need to change to stop the problem escalating.

neil-h

Plebgate has done the police no favours but the Duggan case is a different kettle of fish. The majority of people that hold the Duggan case against the police will almost always have some sort of issue with them, even if they hadn't shot Duggan.

stipete75

Ok, I won't go into all the details over duggan, it's in another thread.
But I will say there is some truth in what you say and I won't argue.
There is no doubt duggan was a wrong-un and at best should of been behind bars.
Whether he was a wrong-un or not isn't really the case I was implying.

Felix.

i am liked by the people i deal with and get thanked for the work i do as i try my best for them. Even the people i do arrest and deal with i treat with respect and talk to them as if they are humans.

You will always get bad apples in every organisation - but you can't tar everyone with the same brush and allow this to stain the good work which the rest of us do.

What changes would you make then..?

neil-h

Fair enough. It is a reasonable example of events which polarise opinions on the police however like I say, the sort of people who use it to justify negative opinions are those who tend to already harbour them.

stipete75

Sorry didn't mean personally Felix, I meant in general.
Looking through your posts and what you have written above you do seem a descent guy, I believe you do treat the general public with the respect they deserve

What changes would I make..........
The main change would be an independent police force!!
I think it's a crucial ingredient of a healthy democracy.
A police force in the hands of politicians is something we associate more with authoritarian states than modern democracies that asks for trouble.
Also the "bad apples" need to be brought to justice and made a clear example of.
Simon harwood needs to be serving life in prison, not getting away with murder(clear cut murder)

Felix.

Who would control the independent police force though..? And will they be able to set laws as they see fit..? How will an 'independent police fore work' - i am genuinely interested.

Was't Simon Harwood acquitted at court? So, he has been trialed and acquitted - why should he now be serving time?

stipete75

I'm not sure how it would work or who who run them.
Policing should be governed by the need to keep our streets safe, protect the vulnerable and uphold the law of the land. There is no room for political point scoring.
Her majesty's police force do a grand job in general, with regards to big crime, ie... Murder, rape, fraud, robberies etc,, breaking the laws of the land,then the police force is invaluable.

It gets more tricky when the police get involved in acts and statutes.
acts and statutes are not Law.
They are rules invented by the Govt to further restrict our freedoms, which are 'protected' under Law.
Many of these powers were introduced under the guise of countering terrorism, but in reality they have been used to interfere with the work of journalists, stifle peaceful protest, prevent free expression, and discriminate against people from ethnic minorities.

The Law is there to protect and guarantee our rights, everyone is equal and nobody is above the law.

This is why they constantly pass 'acts' and 'statutes'.
To restrict our freedom and then they use the police to enforce theses acts then the local bobby gets abuse.

It could go to far the other way though with private( profit making) company's like G4S getting more and more powers over the public, it's crazy!!!