A title like the above was too good to waste.

I had also considered “Step Away From The Crayons and Put The Reforming Legislation Down”

So look at us now, 15 years ago my protective equipment was a wooden stick and some floppy cuffs. I had a black gortex anorak with a police badge and a big hat. Boots were black Docs, everyone wore them. For public order I had riot kit and for football matches a yellow visi- tabard

Then came quikcuffs and a side handled baton with a blue NATO jumper covered in chequerboard pattern strips.

Then they gave me CS Spray and replaced that with PAVA

I got a stabbie as well.

If I went back on the streets today, I would have a metal ASP, quikcuffs, bright yellow stab vest, PAVA Spray, maybe a Taser and the kind of boots worn by members of the SAS with bullet proof soles. All this offensive kit is on the outside, on show wheras my old truncheon and cuffs were away out of sight but handy if I needed them.

Compare and contrast the following pictures

I think they tell a story about how far we have come in the last 15 years or so. The top picture has some sense of discipline and unity, the bottom picture has more in common with Reservoir Dogs or dawn patrol in Vietnam.

Some of this change has been good and necessary I think. We are more diverse now than we were. We are certainly better equipped in terms of personal safety. We have world class HR and Health and Safety. It is easier to be black, female and / or LGBT in the cops than it ever used to be. Canteen culture is alive and well but my canteen now serves lattes and baguettes rather than a brew with the the teabag still in it and a bacon butty.

On the other hand, we have lost a lot of the old walk and talk, know your beat culture. We are hemmed by targets, limited by risk assessment and challenged by accountability and well…..all the stuff you have heard whinged about here and elsewhere. The accountability is to who exactly? I keep getting told I have to be more accountable but nobody tells me who I am accountable to. Is it a committee of citizens? Maybe its my line supervision or maybe it’s society as a whole as represented by it’s elected representatives. Anyhow, if it’s you drop me an e-mail and tell me what you want, why you want it and how you came by the authority.

These are times of big society changing movements in the way we police. I see massive tranches of civilianisation, recurring pressure towards forming large regional units, very prescriptive ways of working set at a national level with little if any room for adopting local or idiosynchratic approaches. I also see cost efficiency / bang for bucks as the new Golden Calf. This fresh focus on Neighbourhoods and Citizen Focus seem to me to be an attempt to return us to that pre Z Cars style of working. Sadly experience tells us that another piece of commoditised research with another whizzy name and a high level training program will catch eyes at the Home Office and we will be marched up another hill before we even get near the summit of the current one. Also, I don’t know a current recruit who wants to walk their 30 or any appreciable part of it on a single beat. They must exist but the lights seem brighter just about everywhere else. Foot patrol used to be an unofficial punishment posting. There was a good reason for that.

Having gone truncheons to tasers in a generation, I also have to wonder what purpose the current Police Service has been built for. We are told that we need to engage more with the public and neighbourhoods. Unfortunately we now have a response wing that looks just like the old ARV used to except without the guns and the CBT / PCSO’s look like the response used to but with flak jackets. It looks like we have been built to violently confront and overcome people. I am not saying that is our mindset, but it is without doubt what we are equipped to do. Once people get over the quasi military kit, we are mostly approachable and pleasant people, it’s just that we dress like Imperial Stormtroopers.

This arrived in my inbox from TheBinarySurfer

The across-board incompetence and undermining of the public services demonstrated by the government in the last 4-5 years, deliberate or accidental in your opinion?

If you’re wondering how this theory came about, I was  thinking about all these public sector changes and where they’re heading with them all (i.e. what the “big plan” was) in the long run. What’s your thoughts on the above; A bit too much of a stretch, or a decent theory?

I think its a decent theory. I 100% agree with the underlying mechanics but I think the purpose is probably re-casting us as a European style hierachy of forces. I also think we are being nudged root and branch to a whole European Criminal Justice System.  More of that another time

NJ

Back in the days when I wore the blue suit of truth on a daily basis, I used to drive a battered old liveried short wheel based Landrover with 150,000+ on the clock. I loved that car. I had a prisoner cage in the back, loads of room for kit behind the seats, four wheel drive, boson lights on the roof, blues but no twos and no requirement for going  anywhere in a hurry. I remember the local Social Worker from one estate saying to me “PC Jack, don’t you think that the Landrover is a bit militaristic, a bit confrontational?” I told her my requests for bomb skirts had been turned down. The local kids loved it though, I would turn up to a Primary School with this lovable brick of a motor and they would climb all over it, get locked in the back, turn on the blues, laugh and smile with me, but I digress.

One balmy summer Friday night I was out in the Landrover in company with Special Constable Judith, I had not worked with her before.  She was a modest RE Teacher sort of person who talked about putting something into the community and helping make things better. Married with children nearly left home, she had decided to make a difference by parading on for Friday nights. I was covering the outlying beats which in terms of the Night Time Economy (c. Ch Supt Jim Webster) are generally victim rich and offender / offending poor. I had my doubts about Judith, she seemed to me to be a bit quiet and perhaps not up to the sharper end of policing. Still we chatted pleasantly, reported a burglary, attended a disturbed attempt theft of / from motor vehicle and drove around with the windows down.

Early Saturday morning came the shout you don’t want to hear, a constable in Smallmarket, voice loud and very stressed, “Urgent assistance Bus Station Smallmarket, officer injured.” Then Comms desperately shouting up for the officer and getting no reply. I was going before the call “All available units to Smallmarket bus station” came over the PR. So were a lot of us. I was 3 miles out and I didn’t raise my right foot once all the way. I arrived at the scene first and saw one PC down with a broken arm and the radio caller stood over him, baton drawn, standing off a circling aggressive crowd of about a dozen deadheads. They had boiled out of the local pizza house to stop their mate being arrested on a warrant. With one cop already downed and hurt, their blood was up and they were closing on the lad with the baton. He was being brave, looking after his mate, probably suspecting that a kicking was coming his way but still standing his ground. None of the deadheads had quite got up the nerve to charge him and his baton but a few had their shirts off and were giving it the full Travis Bickell. Judith and I bailed out, I clicked my baton to open and shouldered it for a strike. Two enemy detached themselves and came for us. I twitched my baton and ran at mine. He checked, turned and ran as the reality of running into a baton strike from the big angry looking cop out of the Landrover sank in. I looked across to check Judith just in time to see her execute a perfect chest push on her attacker. He did the staggery off balance backwards run at a rate of knots and landed in a heap when his point of balance got too far behind his heels. We were over and past him running towards the crowd, shouting and then the fighting spirit left them and the crowd were gone running for safety in the night. A big blue riot van had screeched in behind me, lights strobing and sirens on. Half a dozen robust looking lantern jawed street cops were fanning out from it looking for prey. In the moment I hadn’t noticed the son et lumiere that is the high impact Support Unit arrival at all but the crowd had. We chased them, locked up a few for affray and someone captured warrant boy as well.

As the dust settled an ambulance and some supervision arrived and then the “Patrol Car That Died of Shame” appeared from the yard at Smallmarket Station having dashed the 400 yards from station to scene in around 15 minutes. The occupier did not get out and work, just parked and stood by the car being ignored. Nobody went to speak to that officer. I couldn’t look that officer in the face or take their horrible, squirming and unbelieved  explanation about looking for keys. I walked off leaving things in mid sentence.  That sole occupant was transferred to “far far away where nobody knows your shame” within a week.

It’s a quirk of this job that no matter how well you know a colleague, regardless of how funny they are or what a good mate they might be, you never feel you really know them until you have seen how they deal with themselves in a fight. If it came to “hey boys hey” and Judith rolls over the hill I would now be happy. The tiny blonde probationer that shouted with a huge grin over the pub fight as she struggled with a drunk banshee “Jack, Jack chuck us your spare cuffs, I need to lock up this one as well” she gets my vote as well. As for the officer that sat in the station 400 yards away as colleagues called out for urgent help waiting for the fright to go away,  that’s not a cop.

Because It Also Makes Me Smile

Thanks to the Daily Torygraph for this little gem which seems to be all about a prisoner who escaped and then turned up back at the door 3 days later begging to be let back in because jail life was cushier than being “on the out.”

This is obviously another thing that can’t be true because when the Prison Officers Association said something quite similar, the government said it wasn’t so.

OK we have made them comfortable enough for people to want to stay in. They’ll have Lenny Henry knocking on the door before they know it? Prison as comfortable containment, good, now lets lob some money into proper detox facilities in the prisons.

It’s a quiet night and so I am flipping through the websites when I see this about these people. Surely not I thought, no way can the Sentencing Guidelines Council be suggesting that burglars and thieves could plead for a walk out sentence on the grounds that they are smack heads.

Stupid me. Of course they can.

Right now, the success rates for community drug rehabilitation are pitiful. Really, really, put a peg on your nose, the fish is dead, bad. We know this because the Home Office published the stats on DTTO’s and it ain’t good. 70% drop out rate, 80% reconvicted within 2 years, the treatment wasn’t timely or appropriate. The executive summary reads like the failure that the DTTO currently is and yet the great and the good don’t seem to know. It sounds like nobody told them that the old grey goose is dead. They may infact believe that there is an effective vibrant drugs rehabilitation service out there ready to offer meaningful non custodial sentencing options. If only, I really do wish there was because if there was, well we wouldn’t need as many prisons.

As it is, my best guess is that the whole drugs rehab system is about as well funded and resourced as the Probation Service or the Prisons. Unless there is some secret stash of cash to radically upgrade the service or some miracle cure for heroin / crack addiction being kept in the wings that no-one has told me about, I just cannot see the sense in expanding the use of treatment orders.

Take it from me Panel Members, the criminals have a name for anything that doesn’t result in a Prison Sentence. They call it a “walk out.” It is generally perceived not as an opportunity to go straight but as a lucky escape and a license to go out and do more bad stuff.

Save society the pain and send people to Prison to give us a rest from them. If you are so desperate to treat them, spend the money in Prison rather than send them back out the court doors to celebrate with their mates over some scorched tinfoil or a glass trombone. Yes it’s not too hard to get drugs in Prison but it is at least a bit harder than walking out of court and calling your dealer.

So Sentencing Guidelines Panel, please stop pretending that there is an effective solution out there that we have all somehow overlooked. There is no magic key to reform. If there was, we would have found it by now. We haven’t and you wont. This is tinkering and it will not end well. Please, please stop.

Are you also dazzled by the charisma?

Mud sticks and there can be few organisations that have had so much mud flung in their direction as the Police. Cometh the well publicised and successful appeal against conviction, cometh the j’accuse finger of blame pointing towards the blue serge ranks.

Sadly, many miscarriages of justice come all too readily to mind. Without thinking too hard, I recall Stefan Kiszco, Sally Clarke, The Birmingham Six, The Cardiff Three, Ernest Saunders, Nicholas Van Hoogenstraten and poor misunderstood Abu Qatada. All have been dragged through the courts and had their good reputations sullied by an unsafe conviction. How could these miscarriages of justice have happened?

As a society, we try so hard to have scrupulously fair trials based on reliable evidence. We have a system where the right to free independent legal advice and representation is universal and the Police have no role whatsoever in deciding who is going to run the defence. Suspect interviews are tape recorded in the presence of the solicitor. Evidence gained unfairly or by oppression can be excluded by the judge. PACE sets out in detail and with force what the Police have to do in gathering evidence and dealing with suspects. The trial system is adversarial and the defence is afforded every opportunity to test and dispute the evidence against the suspect. Forensic and Medical expert reports are always open to challenge by an expert instructed by the defence. Witnesses are available to be cross examined. A jury of one’s peers is generally available to decide on the evidence. The bar to be overcome by the prosecution is “beyond doubt” so the prosecution must convince the jury of the suspect’s guilt beyond doubt.  For those convicted, there is then a system allowing appeals right up to the House of Lords and beyond so that the convict can challenge the evidence again and again and sometimes even again. I would contend that although our criminal justice system is not perfect, is is currently a model of fairness and equity in respect of the rights to suspects.

It is a plain fact that our Criminal Justice System is set up so that guilty people go free to minimise the risk of the innocent being imprisoned.

You can read a lot about historical miscarriages of justice and they range from truly horrendous fit ups to scraped off on a technicality. It is also fair to say that in the overall scheme of things, they are rare as hen’s teeth. Where the Police are clearly to blame the fault seems to stem from two failures.

Firstly there has been failure to disclose statements or evidence to the defence that would undermine the prosecution case or support the defence. This was plain wrong, how can a jury decide on less than the full evidence? Things have changed with the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996.  I have to say that the defence teams of the world have been alive to this issue for many years now. They are assiduous in examining every item on the unused schedule and assertive in demanding anything that they think might assist or undermine. Also a Police Officer and a CPS Lawyer have to sign off on the unused schedules that there is nothing in the material for the defence, it is well reviewed these days. As an aside, I have noted a defence keenness these days to also go after the disciplinary record of the investigating officers. As an officer with a clean record, this causes me no personal worries, however, not all of my colleagues are so lucky.

The second police failing is obtaining unreliable confessions. I am sure that we have previously sweated confessions out of innocent people, it must be so because the appeals say it is. All I can say is that we are now acutely aware that a dodgy confession isn’t worth the candle.  As an example of how much things have changed in this area, I was recently in the position of forcing a suspect to have a solicitor to represent them in interview and to advise them following disclosure. He didn’t want the solicitor but it was a serious matter and he needed the advice. I will also summon an appropriate adult if it appears to me that an adult suspect has any sort of learning difficulty. This is not rare or unusual behaviour for a police interviewer, we are trying to sharpen up our game all the time.

In many of the other cases, the miscarriage has been exposed by a questioning of expert evidence in the light of fresh expert evidence or evidence discrediting an expert or the science. There are also a number where the judge has erred in his summing up and misdirected the jury and a very few where the jury has made a perverse verdict. There isn’t a lot that the Police can do about these matters.

The glib accusations of bent convictions will continue to be bandied about by those who choose to believe that every officer was a crooked cop intent on fitting up every suspect. The evidence however is against them. There will always be people running the justiceforwhoever.org websites who struggle to believe that their Mum / Dad/ Brother / Friend whoever could have done the evil deed. It is easy to say that “The Police must have fitted them up.” The unpalatable truth is that it is actually very bloody hard to do, pointless and career ending if exposed so I don’t do it and I don’t think there are many that do.

If I hear the mouthpiece rattle out the tired old saw of client remorse in mitigation just one more time, I am going to puke.

“My client feels genuine shame and remorse”

No, he doesn’t at all. He is sat in the dock in his best 3 stripe hoping that you suckers will buy the brief’s act one more time. He can’t be bothered to do the acting himself so he sits there grinning at his mates waiting for another walk out so he can get back to the business of utterly wasting his life.

“My client has a terrible history of alcohol and drug abuse but this time he is determined to change his life”

The client is sat there reeking of ale and itching for the next shot. He is determined to try and avoid any consequences for being an obnoxious git who blames the booze / drugs / whatever.

“Mr Burston would like it said that this conclusion seems to indicate that the malice he harboured was not towards the boy.”He feels no ill will at all towards the boy. His remorse is genuine.”

Mr Burston was convicted of slitting the boys throat after the defence of the hooded stranger did it and ran away.

“My client has expressed remorse for what has happened, and empathy toward his victim. He is the son of a successful musician, but has never himself been able to break into the music industry – he feels as though he was walking in the shadows of his father. Like many people who have not achieved their dreams it is fair to say my client has suffered a significant level of disappointment. He has seen a psychiatrist and taken anti-depressants.”

See, what it boils down to is that this guy ground a glass out in a strangers face because Daddy doesn’t love him enough and he’s not very good at music. Did the mouthpiece have no shame?

Everybody has a story and everybody has a reason in the dock. Nobody is ever bad or unrepentant or to blame for their own actions these days and in the Court Room, nobody except the Cops and the victims care when the pretty lying words are tripped out once again.

No? Really? I can hardly believe it

Rearranging the deck chairs time again with drugs classification policy. Apparently dropping cannabis to class C has sent the wrong message. From 2009 Mistress Jacqui wants us to go for the following

More robust enforcement against cannabis supply and possession - those repeatedly caught with the drug will not just receive cannabis warnings.

• Please. Words fail me. Same stuff we already have and they haven’t even bothered changing the bottle

A new strategic and targeted approach to tackling cannabis farms and the organised criminals who run them.

• May I recommend a strategic and targeted approach to our visible Vietnamese community as last time I looked, they had darned near cornered the market in cannabis farms. This will be a tricky one and somewhere along the way the Vietnamese Refugee Support Collectives are going to scream blue murder. Imagine the targeted intelligence drive that has “noticed any suspicious oriental looking people moving in next door…..” This one could end up going very Prince Phillip.

The introduction of additional aggravating sentencing factors for those caught supplying cannabis near further and higher educational establishments, mental health institutions and prisons.

• Very cool, and how near is near? Sounds a lot like another vague and unenforceable piece of sentencing guidance that sounds great but does nothing. Maybe someone has thought it out and we will all have to submit cannabis dealing / production files with a map showing the location and crows fly distance to schools, prisons etc. Schools will be a nightmare, they are everywhere.

Possible changes to legislation and powers used to curtail the sale and promotion of cannabis paraphernalia

• Another potential nightmare. Please , please , please make this a Trading Standards responsibility.

Here’s a thought, we already have the legislation in place. Stay your hand and just reclassify under the old legislation as class B. Let us get on with the job as before and we will do the best we can, given that it’s some way underneath Class A , violent crime and dishonesty stuff. Lets have a bit of perspective. It’s cannabis, it messes with your head and it is not a good thing in terms of mental health. All that being said, it is not one of the “big & nasty” problems that we have to deal with and there are a lot of other things we would be better off spending our time on.

The New Big Priority

Alec is not a technical genius but he has definitely hit on a winner with computer based Social Networking sites. He is in his 40’s, married, small(ish) children, a failing salesman with a rack of Next suits gone dusty on the shoulders and a hangar full of bright silk ties all shut away in the wardrobe and hung over a layer of barely worn shiny shoes. Every night, you can find him on his computer sorting his way through the network sites and spotting young girls aged 12 to 14 that he can pass his message of “hope” on to.

The message is always along the lines of “I represent XYZ Modelling Agency and wondered if you would be interested in doing some test shots for us?” Alec is always open to the parents coming along to keep an eye. Alec has an honest face and balls of steel. E-mail follows e-mail, Alec will even talk to the parents on the phone, Alec has an honest voice and the patience of a world class groomer. Alec will have a hotel room hired at a nice hotel, something at least 4 star with the cameras and lights all set up for some test shots. Alec has an honest manner and a big credit card bill. Wherever possible, he will try to avoid the parents being there, he will even pick the girls up from outside school. There is always mention of an agency chaperone but whenever a young girl is delivered by unsuspecting parents or picked up by Alec, the chaperone has sadly let him down. He can’t understand it, she is usually so reliable. Alec is only in the area today, he won’t be back for ages. Unless the girl is happy to go on without one, well Alec isn’t sure when the next chance will come. No pressure but you could blow your big chance to enter Alec’s world of glamour and riches if you turn away now.

A surprising number of girls go ahead, each one hoping to become the new Kate Moss, each a nascent Lisa Snowden. Of course Alec has various items of underwear and swimsuits for modelling, nothing nude, well not this time. Alec also has to take their measurements and he is so apologetic if it all gets a bit touchy feely but we’re all professionals here in modelling aren’t we? If all goes according to his plan and you don’t kick off when he grabs your boobs or your bum, Alec will wave the girls goodbye and wait for a week or so before hiring another hotel room and re-contacting. No photo work for you yet, but the agency has a market research contract and we will pay you to test out some products. The products turn out to be chocolate body lotion, femidoms, bust firming lotions, personal lubricants and various buzzing battery powered items. Alec is paying a whole £15 to spend half an hour or so degrading and humiliating you before sending you away again feeling used and dirty. Of course, if he can Alec will also have sex with you, that’s the industry baby, give to get, next time a magazine shot, Alec promises.

When we caught up with Alec (left used condoms in the hotel bin, staff suspicious at the number of girls in school uniforms with him) he was busy moving a 9 year old girl into position to do her harm. Obviously, the thrill of teenagers was starting to pass.

Are you ready for your closeup?

For my first four years in the job I policed the town where I live and I continue to live there. I am one or two streets away from quite a few people I have locked up. Policing your own town seems to be a bit of a rarity these days judging from a random straw poll of officers working at Smallmarket at the moment. So my thoughts turn to Neighbourhood Policing and how much better it might be if it was done by officers from the relevant neighbourhoods.

I have posted before on the days of the redoubtable Station Duty Officer who knew the town inside out. When I joined at Smallmarket we also had what were called Permanent Beat officers Eddie and Trevor who walked Town Centre North and Town Centre South beats. Local and known by everyone in town, old fashioned and slow paced by todays standards, they were still the visible daily face of local policing.

Now we have Neighbourhood Teams who seem to arrive on the car park at 8.50 am and clock off at 5pm to drive back to somewhere that is definitely not where they police. Whereas the policing we hark back to was, by and large carried out by local residents within their own communities. These days, it sometimes feels a bit like the posh kids have arrived to do some good works amongst the poor before wafting back home to the Gucci Hamlets. Policing at the sharp end has become another graduate occupation and the days of the rough handed career constables who were happy(ish) to put in their 30 in the same role in the same community have long gone.

We now have apparently smarter and better qualified cops who demand an exciting career path and the days of Eddie and Trevor are gone forever. I’m not saying we can’t deliver Neighbourhood Policing, far from it, just that we used to deliver it effortlessly by being of the Neighbourhoods we policed. Now we aren’t from round here anymore.

The Smallmarket NPT go forth to engage the community