250 chief ranks in police according to home office. Wtf do they all do one asks? Seek a roundabout of getting under wing of someone two ranks up, do multitude of projects and fuckwittery, jump when that mentor jumps, each rises taking their disciples along with them. Why does Cambs have its own force but ox doesn't? Why does Yorkshire have 3 forces? Why does Cleveland have its own force? Its all utterly irretrievably and completely broken.
An excellent article. I returned to Borough just before retiring, and was in the BIU tasking assets to service output from our local source unit... Wanky jobspeak for find people to do a simple search warrant or set up an OP, or surveillance, based on A1 'For Action' Intel. All the hard work of identifying who was at it, when they were busy, and where they kept their gear had already been done, it was low hanging fruit for the Met. However, other than some of the simplest search warrants, I struggled with finding people or people with skills on Borough to take on these kind of jobs. We had a small 'uniform' tasking unit who would (on paper) be the go-to, but they were often used to make up numbers on response or Aid so could only take on a fraction of the jobs, and even then only the 'quick time' ones. Most jobs sat between Borough and Squads terms of reference, interest and capability. There was nothing like the old Area Crime Squads to hand off decent targets to. Intel would sit on the system until it withered into 'historic'. Targets and drugs/stolen property were untroubled by Police action. I eventually skipped the chain of command and spoke to the Borough Chief Super about it. Oh I felt so stupid when she pointed out the simplicity of it, I just needed to 'work smarter' and 'do more with less'.
We should have crime squads on Borough and cross Borough, able to take on output from local source units. However, that kind of work and the 'temptations' involved would need some grown up support/supervision. Op Sumaq springs to mind. Not sure the risk/reward works for the current crop of managers.
'Designed to roll the Winsor turd in glitter'... Oh bravo sir, bravo. Accuracy, brevity, speed.
Some of the jobs I've seen DSUs try to pass onto ops teams beggared belief, extremely dangerous situations which the boroughs had no idea how to deal with. And that was 10 years ago. Then a borough commander famously disbanded all of his proactive teams as they were negatively impacting on his stats. The criminals aren't stupid. They know the score. I was never a 'NIMbecile', I saw it as a management tool designed to round problems up or down. It gets too many people off the hook. Crime is crime, NIM is useful as a guide but it shouldn't be holy writ. Which of course it is now.
Churn is merely an excuse to justify the enormous waste when an officer leaves. Training and equipping an individual costs a fortune, their colleagues lose a valuable resource, and the public investment is siphoned off often into private profit.
Policing used to be a job for 30 years where you could give a wedge of service in exchange for a decent pension and the opportunity to either continue as a civilian, take your expertise into another occupation, or retire and enjoy the benefits.
That seems to have been turned on its head now with longer service demanded for a lesser pension, making it much more attractive to leave early and use your talents and expensive training in the private sector. Time to restore the balance.
Great read and your recommendations make a lot of sense. The statement on churn made me shake my head in disbelief. Of course new blood is great for reforming the toxic elements of police culture and bringing in specialist skills like fraud or technology but what about what's lost. I know a mid service DS who has worked a range of jobs in the MPS including casing jobs on 15 and MIT who has had enough and resigned. How do the NPCC view this churn? How many years will it take to build up the capability to case a job that gets a guilty verdict at the Bailey? TJF has never rung so true and unless the NPCC start speaking truth to power and the public it's only going to get worse.
The phrase ‘speaking truth to power’ appears a lot these days. I’m not sure it fits with the NPCC who actually have power by the KPM load. I think ‘turkeys don’t vote for Christmas’ suits better. They have far more interest in maintaining their cushy project roles than contributing to significant reform.
The trouble with churn is that generally, except in a small number of cases, military usually, we don’t recruit cops with skills. We recruit people who then need long and expensive training. To then lose that trained ability a few years later is a huge false economy. Pay people better, have more staff that want to stay and I don’t think it would cost much more in the grand scheme. And as you say people who have had a few years of Policing don’t want to come back if they do leave. They have seen the reality, the short numbers on shift, the lack of support, the public derision, etc etc.
Does 'churn' affect NPCC ranks, or even down to Superintendent? I cannot recall any NPCC rank leave (not a secondment and excluding NPCC roles) and return - presumably having gained extra skills. Perhaps, the NPCC can have a scorecard for their diagram? Somehow I doubt there would be evidence!
As ever, spot on. The dog in the manger is in fact the CC in his office, unlikely to say anything against the system that put him there in the first place. Until, of course, he has retired, taken on an exceedingly lucrative sinecure with some obscure quango and is in desperate need of some publicity.
I would never be so naive as to offer you a coffee. Adam and Eve sometime?
Just as I pressed send got an email from ACC asking who wants a move at the next Strategic Planning Day. The Star Wars reference ‘It’s a trap!!’ comes to mind.
Great read Dom. Some of the other issues in Policing are that we tend to give people jobs that don't suit them. My experience at the minute. 22 year uniform cop, patrol, NPT, Firearms and CT who managed to get promoted to Chief Insp. Postings are decided and I get given a project that means I am stuck in a so called ivory tower that I am desperately trying to escape from to get back to some 'policing' Why do we put police officers in non-police positions? They could save half my wage employing some project specialist that could run rings around me. Save police for policing.
We have a service in crisis with too few resources to carry out pro-active policing, remember that phrase? We have chief officers who are completely unable to lead, partly because of their Police and Crime Commissioners with political agendas. Chief constables who claim their force/service can no longer deal with every mental health concern, about time too!
Direct entry detectives, who will build a CV and leave for a ‘proper job’ with more pay.
A small amount of churn might be a good thing, a complete loss of experienced officers in favour of those who are afraid to go out in the dark or attend sudden deaths can be defined as an organisational disaster.
A complete review of policing, roles, ranks, pay, structure and most importantly... LEADERSHIP!
Apologies for shouting.
I did warm to Jared though, as an ex Royal Engineer we could share a beer or two, or even a cup of tea Dom?
Sure! As for my old colleague the ex-sapper, he'd retired as a WO2 and was an instructor down at Chatham. I don't think he was very impressed by some of the pygmies on his new division telling him he couldn't do POLSA. He ended up there eventually.
Great piece causing actual out loud laughter. The figures this week indicate that the ‘churn’ is at the highest rate since it was first recorded. Once the new legislation on Police Pensions is enacted in October this year, the attrition rate will accelerate exponentially. I’m expecting ‘Police exodus causes Christmas crisis’ headlines.
A mutual aid pact with France would be more likely to happen than your common sense laden suggestions.
250 chief ranks in police according to home office. Wtf do they all do one asks? Seek a roundabout of getting under wing of someone two ranks up, do multitude of projects and fuckwittery, jump when that mentor jumps, each rises taking their disciples along with them. Why does Cambs have its own force but ox doesn't? Why does Yorkshire have 3 forces? Why does Cleveland have its own force? Its all utterly irretrievably and completely broken.
An excellent article. I returned to Borough just before retiring, and was in the BIU tasking assets to service output from our local source unit... Wanky jobspeak for find people to do a simple search warrant or set up an OP, or surveillance, based on A1 'For Action' Intel. All the hard work of identifying who was at it, when they were busy, and where they kept their gear had already been done, it was low hanging fruit for the Met. However, other than some of the simplest search warrants, I struggled with finding people or people with skills on Borough to take on these kind of jobs. We had a small 'uniform' tasking unit who would (on paper) be the go-to, but they were often used to make up numbers on response or Aid so could only take on a fraction of the jobs, and even then only the 'quick time' ones. Most jobs sat between Borough and Squads terms of reference, interest and capability. There was nothing like the old Area Crime Squads to hand off decent targets to. Intel would sit on the system until it withered into 'historic'. Targets and drugs/stolen property were untroubled by Police action. I eventually skipped the chain of command and spoke to the Borough Chief Super about it. Oh I felt so stupid when she pointed out the simplicity of it, I just needed to 'work smarter' and 'do more with less'.
We should have crime squads on Borough and cross Borough, able to take on output from local source units. However, that kind of work and the 'temptations' involved would need some grown up support/supervision. Op Sumaq springs to mind. Not sure the risk/reward works for the current crop of managers.
'Designed to roll the Winsor turd in glitter'... Oh bravo sir, bravo. Accuracy, brevity, speed.
Some of the jobs I've seen DSUs try to pass onto ops teams beggared belief, extremely dangerous situations which the boroughs had no idea how to deal with. And that was 10 years ago. Then a borough commander famously disbanded all of his proactive teams as they were negatively impacting on his stats. The criminals aren't stupid. They know the score. I was never a 'NIMbecile', I saw it as a management tool designed to round problems up or down. It gets too many people off the hook. Crime is crime, NIM is useful as a guide but it shouldn't be holy writ. Which of course it is now.
Churn is merely an excuse to justify the enormous waste when an officer leaves. Training and equipping an individual costs a fortune, their colleagues lose a valuable resource, and the public investment is siphoned off often into private profit.
Policing used to be a job for 30 years where you could give a wedge of service in exchange for a decent pension and the opportunity to either continue as a civilian, take your expertise into another occupation, or retire and enjoy the benefits.
That seems to have been turned on its head now with longer service demanded for a lesser pension, making it much more attractive to leave early and use your talents and expensive training in the private sector. Time to restore the balance.
Great read and your recommendations make a lot of sense. The statement on churn made me shake my head in disbelief. Of course new blood is great for reforming the toxic elements of police culture and bringing in specialist skills like fraud or technology but what about what's lost. I know a mid service DS who has worked a range of jobs in the MPS including casing jobs on 15 and MIT who has had enough and resigned. How do the NPCC view this churn? How many years will it take to build up the capability to case a job that gets a guilty verdict at the Bailey? TJF has never rung so true and unless the NPCC start speaking truth to power and the public it's only going to get worse.
The phrase ‘speaking truth to power’ appears a lot these days. I’m not sure it fits with the NPCC who actually have power by the KPM load. I think ‘turkeys don’t vote for Christmas’ suits better. They have far more interest in maintaining their cushy project roles than contributing to significant reform.
The trouble with churn is that generally, except in a small number of cases, military usually, we don’t recruit cops with skills. We recruit people who then need long and expensive training. To then lose that trained ability a few years later is a huge false economy. Pay people better, have more staff that want to stay and I don’t think it would cost much more in the grand scheme. And as you say people who have had a few years of Policing don’t want to come back if they do leave. They have seen the reality, the short numbers on shift, the lack of support, the public derision, etc etc.
Does 'churn' affect NPCC ranks, or even down to Superintendent? I cannot recall any NPCC rank leave (not a secondment and excluding NPCC roles) and return - presumably having gained extra skills. Perhaps, the NPCC can have a scorecard for their diagram? Somehow I doubt there would be evidence!
As ever, spot on. The dog in the manger is in fact the CC in his office, unlikely to say anything against the system that put him there in the first place. Until, of course, he has retired, taken on an exceedingly lucrative sinecure with some obscure quango and is in desperate need of some publicity.
I would never be so naive as to offer you a coffee. Adam and Eve sometime?
R5 Geoff, R5
Just as I pressed send got an email from ACC asking who wants a move at the next Strategic Planning Day. The Star Wars reference ‘It’s a trap!!’ comes to mind.
Ha ha they've got that spyware thing on your workstation.
Great read Dom. Some of the other issues in Policing are that we tend to give people jobs that don't suit them. My experience at the minute. 22 year uniform cop, patrol, NPT, Firearms and CT who managed to get promoted to Chief Insp. Postings are decided and I get given a project that means I am stuck in a so called ivory tower that I am desperately trying to escape from to get back to some 'policing' Why do we put police officers in non-police positions? They could save half my wage employing some project specialist that could run rings around me. Save police for policing.
It's like the Hotel California, project work, isn't it?
As usual an interesting article, with a lot of great observations within.
In my old Force we had so many different schemes set to cleanse the various departments of those who'd been there for years .
Great idea, but they weren't replaced by others with a similar skill set, so the service level of those departments inevitably dropped.
The movement of the Senior ranks didn't come within these schemes, so they remained entrenched for years in their ivory towers.
We have a service in crisis with too few resources to carry out pro-active policing, remember that phrase? We have chief officers who are completely unable to lead, partly because of their Police and Crime Commissioners with political agendas. Chief constables who claim their force/service can no longer deal with every mental health concern, about time too!
Direct entry detectives, who will build a CV and leave for a ‘proper job’ with more pay.
A small amount of churn might be a good thing, a complete loss of experienced officers in favour of those who are afraid to go out in the dark or attend sudden deaths can be defined as an organisational disaster.
A complete review of policing, roles, ranks, pay, structure and most importantly... LEADERSHIP!
Apologies for shouting.
I did warm to Jared though, as an ex Royal Engineer we could share a beer or two, or even a cup of tea Dom?
Sure! As for my old colleague the ex-sapper, he'd retired as a WO2 and was an instructor down at Chatham. I don't think he was very impressed by some of the pygmies on his new division telling him he couldn't do POLSA. He ended up there eventually.
I can imagine!
Keep up the good work.
Great piece causing actual out loud laughter. The figures this week indicate that the ‘churn’ is at the highest rate since it was first recorded. Once the new legislation on Police Pensions is enacted in October this year, the attrition rate will accelerate exponentially. I’m expecting ‘Police exodus causes Christmas crisis’ headlines.
A mutual aid pact with France would be more likely to happen than your common sense laden suggestions.
Dominic, Thankyou for another good article, spot on.
A fantastic piece. Right up there as one of your best. In my dreams, one day we’d be nattering over a coffee, or a glass…
I don't drink coffee, Peter, but alternatives are acceptable.