Good afternoon people, this is the first blog post I have made in this capacity
so I will probably make it quite short. I just want to explain why I
have created this and the reasons behind it.
I am a Police
Constable, I have been in my current role for just over 4 years now however I
have almost 10 years of experience in the Police service as a whole,
encompassing roles as a PC, Police staff and also volunteering as a
Special Constable (same warranted powers as a PC however not paid and
duties vary vastly from force to force. Some don't take statements, some
do not get trained in response driving, some do not take on
investigations.)
I am currently working in a response team based
in a large town in the South of England, a team that should be 20 strong
according to minimum number requirements however it is a team that
regularly parade with between 8-12 officers. The team covers a vast area
including urban towns as well as large rural areas surrounding the
towns, almost totaling 20-25 miles squared. We are by no means unique as
colleagues up and down the country are left covering vast areas with
less and less officers.
I have been in 'the force' throughout many
times of operational change including working more and more with mental
health, taking on responsibility in which I am being asked to make assessments
about people's mental state and on occasions taking action in a split
second. I see myself taking more and more of a parental role for some people,
fetching children who are reported missing, some under quite concerning
circumstances putting themselves in really vulnerable positions. In this situation, it is my role to interject, put myself in between the child and harms way, a lot of the time, the person I am trying to help either doesn't understand, doesn't feel they need my help and at times hates that I am trying to help. I find myself
teaching parents how to parent as well as dealing with the aftermath of
more and more people drinking to excess and not being able to control
themselves. There is also the shift in criminality from the more
'traditional offences' towards a more cyber/digital trend and to combat this we are expected to 'manage.' We are investigators, so we should know what to do. We just have had to deal with it as best we can with no meaningful focused
training. After all if we can't who else will.
I have, however noticed one main trend that has remained
throughout all of this change
...The constant reduction of staff and
funding. The days of numerous specialist teams of officers in suitable
numbers each covering specific aspects of policing have gone, most of
these specialist teams have been disbanded and it has reverted back to th
e 'standard response officer' to cover this work. Whilst this does
make for a more rounded, more experienced Police officer what it does
mean is a build up of work for that officer who is then also expected to focus on
responding to the calls to service that come in as a matter of prority.
All of these conditions lead to a build up of sometimes, some extremely complex and protracted investigations being put to the back burner, meaning it doesn't get the attention it requires. This
could carry on for weeks or months. What do you choose to spend your time doing? Do you place yourself out
of action to respond to urgent jobs whilst you concentrate on investigating complex matters, something where you potentially have to link in with various different agencies, companies, people, some of whom have completely different policies and procedures, some who's risk assessment of the investigation is lower than yours meaning it is lower down their list of priorities so it takes them longer to give you what you need. Do you seek help from a more experienced officer because this is the first time you have investigated a fraud of £20-30K on your own? What form do you have to fill in a and where do you send it to if you need someone's medical records or bank account details? What level of security protection does it need?
All this leads to a build up of officers being
stuck in an office, behind a computer screen working on admin tasks. It leads up to thousands of Police not being able to do what they so desperately want to do, protect people, to bring the criminals to justice, to stop they who do bad things to good people, to hold people who prey on vulnerable people to account, to deny the criminals who want to just take the money out of people's hands who have worked for it and value it, without working for theirs themselves. We can see the general public getting frustrated, we read the same comment sections on websites and chat forums as everyone else, we see it when the public steps in themselves when they shouldn't have to, we understand it when people say that they don't see Police officers in their towns anymore. We so desperately want to give you answers, to explain our situation so you understand, to shout as loudly as we can "we are trying" but how many times can you say we don't have the numbers, we are single crewed all the time so it looks like there are more cars out at one time, how long before it sounds like just another soundbyte, just another excuse.
This all leads to a build up of
stress and a build up of time of due to sickness all of this leads to a
build up of officers wanting to leave the service. This in turn makes
for a decline in morale, a decline in officers volunteering to train in
specialist duties where all that will mean is their already coveted rest days get cancelled at short notice because there is not enough trained officers for a certain operation to go ahead, a decline in skill sharing which, ultimately leads to
a decline in service to the public.
This of course varies
from force to force and all forces keep some of the more traditional
specialist departments most people would be aware of such as the
criminal investigation department (CID) The majority of home office
forces however are being forced to share departments with other forces
to save money which is being dictated by Government. Examples of this
are roads policing teams, firearms teams leading to smaller teams of
officers covering larger areas. A minority of the larger forces are in a
position to still own vast amount of specialist departments (such as
burglary teams, gang teams, vehicle crime teams, drug teams, prisoner
investigation teams etc) this is generally down to the geographical area
or higher density in population covered by the force which obviously
brings with it more complexity in investigations needing larger number
of officers or staff and so they are given larger budgets to be able to
cover this.
From humble beginnings when the then Home Secretary
Sir Robert Peel saw into statute the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829. This
effectively made way for the first full-time professional police service
in the UK. Nicknamed 'The Peelers' they initially covered the Greater
London area, this band of motley men eventually paved the way for what
would eventually become the world renowned and revered British 'Bobby.' Over
the years the British Police have been seen by other countries as a
truly impressive force, never really surpassed in my opinion by any
other country, a huge reason being that, despite the many changes,
pressures and public outcries it has faced the standard British Police
Officer still does not routinely carry firearms.
Policing has been subject to
vast change, some making way for real and tangible improvements, making
it better and more accountable. The Police have been given many
overarching powers and with that being said, I don't think I know of anyone who
would argue that they shouldn't be held to account, I do however, believe
that with such an important and ever increasing responsibility being placed on it that the Police budgets and resource numbers should not be arbitrarily cut to bare 'manageable' numbers.
I want to add
that in my experience almost all the people that I have worked with or
come into contact with during my time in Policing are some of the most
hard working, professional, dedicated people I know. The times I have
shared with my colleagues are some of the most harrowing, funny, boring,
frustrating, scary, exciting and any other adjective you could conjure
up. The sights and scenes I have seen that, due to the job I have chosen to do have
hardened me, it has made me into a more rounded individual, I understand
the value of life and how lucky I am to have the things and people that
I do in my life. I have come into some people's lives when they are at their
absolute lowest and I have seen horrific misery. I have, however seen
that I can actually make a tangible difference to people. The
obvious consequence of this though is that I have lost part of myself,
the part that I didn't realise I had, the part
that people who don't do this job still have and take for granted, not knowing they could loose, I am talking about ignorance. I'm not talking about what people shout at someone as an insult, when someone doesn't agree with you you call them ignorant. Im talking about what all people should be, the
ignorance of what goes on behind closed doors, the ignorance of how some
people live their lives, the ignorance of what happens to some of the best of people by some of the worst of society whilst they are
going about their daily lives. The ignorance of the badness that goes on
within their own communities. This is by no means a dig and I don't
want people to lose this ignorance, this is a large reason of why I do my job, the
reason why there is and always will be the need for a Police Service.
Everything that I have just described will not only be felt by me, but
by every one of my (ever decreasing) 123,000 colleagues.
This is why you might see this little thing when you next speak to a copper, take a look.
No it's not a statement about being from the UK, its not there to signify a concerning racist agenda that has become more prevalent recently, we not commenting on any political policy that is trending that day. Yes we do work for the good of our country, yes we do work in the UK and yes that is our flag... But do you see that little blue line running through the middle of the flag, that is us, that is all of us, me, my partner, my other colleagues on my rota, everyone else who works on the front line, the officers, the PCSOs who take up the strain, the staff who work in the front counters who do some of the jobs that we would have to do if they weren't there, that is those who help us out in the control rooms, who we share a laugh and a joke with one minute then who have to send us in to harms way and worry about us, wonder if they have done the right thing, wonder if they could have done more to protect us. That badge that we PROUDLY wear on our front is our family, it shows people who we are, we are the thin blue line. So please don't get offended, don't take it as a personal slight against something you think it means. *** Most importantly don't tell us to take it off! ***
According to a
Government report released in July 2017 named 'Wage growth in Pay Review
Body Occupations' written by University College London (UCL) and
National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) which
explored wage growth amongst different occupations and compare the
differences in public sector and non-public sector occupations. This
report shows in black and white that when it comes to real terms wage
increases and incorporating inflation (the general increase in prices
and the fall in the purchasing value of money) that over the last decade
Police Officers have seen their average pay fall by £2 per hour in real
terms. There has recently been an announcement from the government and
Home Secretary that they are finally going to cut the 1% pay increase
cap for Police Officers and therefore gifting them a 2% pay rise. This
sounds incredible doesn't it, since in the private sector you'd be lucky
to get a guaranteed pay rise each year, right? Well yes that is correct
and PC's don't have to go through University (edit: yes they do now! 😑) The only difference is that they don't have to worry about the debt that comes
with studying at University. We also get a generous pension
contribution by the employer compared to some private sector workers
(this has reduced year on year and officers that have started since
April 2015 no longer benefit from final salary pensions, they have less
contributions paid in by the employer and pay a larger percentage of
their wage.) UK inflation has been set at 2.9% which straight away means
that the pay doesn't rise as much as inflation (in real terms this means we are still getting a pay cut).
In policing there is less and less
avenues for progression, the specialist departments that used to offer a
wider breadth of progression, experience and expertise have shrunk, taking on less
and less officers and are often shared by multiple forces,
therefore increasing the number of applicants. The candidates for
positions are usually 'earmarked' by the time they are posted and
generally you will have to wait for someone to retire or leave prior to
applying.
Due to the shrinking of numbers, officers are routinely single
crewed most shifts, this brings with it obvious safety issues, not to
mention being unable to investigate incidents properly. Ask yourself how
would you deal with a scene of 5-10 people with victims, suspects,
witnesses and potential evidence in situ on your own.
*** What would you do
first? What would you be feeling? What would you be thinking about? What
would be your priorities? What would you communicate to control? What
assistance would you ask for? ***
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I
stand by everything that I have written about above and I manage it all
because I am working a job that I love, I have worked so hard to get
where I am and I am incredibly proud to be doing what I'm doing and cannot think of anything I
would rather be doing. It is interesting, varied and most of all
important. I am making a difference and I know most of my colleagues
would say the same.
What I can't stand is the constant erosion of
the Police in the media and from the Government. 'Cutting the fat' is
one thing, reducing the service into something that is unworkable,
unmanageable simply by working with numbers and statistics is dangerous.
You are risking people's safety, both the officers and the public. I am
still proud of UK Police Service and I still believe we are one of the
best in the World. I do think, however we need to seriously think about
what we want the Police to look like in the future, the way we are going
I can't see that it will be as effective or professional as it is now.
Okay that wasn't short was it, sorry!
Until next time folks...
-TFBM...
*** comment below and subscribe to the blog to be notified when the next post comes out... I'm hoping for this to be a regular thing, let me know what you want to talk about or what you want to hear ***
