I led the Financial Intelligence gathering on Overt from the NTFIU. In fact it was me that bought the matter to NSY from BSS. I was in the Thames House ops room on a daily basis, looking at a TF group associated AAA and his merry band of murderous bastards. Each day, more stuff came out from wiretap about it, but nowt was going to NSY. It took me 3 weeks to convince the management to appoint an SIO and start the ball rolling. Still waiting for my QPM/OBE/Knighthood!
Regarding RIPA, that came into force while I was at CIB2. Our team were looking at a group of young cops who were dealing and using MDMA at clubs in S.London. A surveillance op. was needed regarding these miscreants, so RIPA application forms were required. Nobody had done one, so Perry, my DI, told me to write one and he would sign it. I did a bit of mugging up, and produced a reasonable effort. Perry duly signed it, and passed it up the food chain to the Director of Professional Standards, DAC Andy Hayman, a loudmouth Essex wide boy, who Norman Stanley Fletcher would have called a "charmless nerk". He, of course, didn't know one end of a RIPA form from the other, so confidently presented it to the Surveillance Commissioner.
Now, what Perry, and at that time I, didn't know, was that there were 2 different application forms, very similar, but for different purposes. Someone who did know, unfortunately, was the Surveillance Commissioner, who proceeded to mightily embarrass our leader by pointing it out! He then descended on Perry like the wolf on the fold, and publicy ripped him a new arsehole. The poor bloke was left a gibbering wreck, but he had to take it as he had signed the form. I was left unscathed. Hayman was an unpleasant bully, and got his comeuppance when CC of Norfolk, but that's another story!
Gethin was the best of all his contemporaries. And thoroughly decent bloke too. Interezting career pre plod, and last heard still fighting the good fight.
It’s interesting the amount of criticism directed in these blogs at the Superintending ranks and above plus the belief that the lower ranks could do a better job. Purely to balance the picture a little, and not as case specific as your blog, I ask for the right of reply as a former Super.
Yes, there are inadequate leaders at those levels, but so there are at PC/DC, Sergeant and inspecting ranks. Why this is tolerated is a question that probably needs a whole blog or ten to answer. Poor leadership is not unique to the police service either; since retiring I have had cause to intimately observe the leadership qualities and skills of a range of other organisations including the much-vaunted British military and the railways. I can confidently state that from where I sat in my worms-eye view there’s very little that recommends itself, to me at least! Incompetence, lack of interest, ego and ignorance thrive amongst managers everywhere. I was particularly disappointed at what I saw in the Commissioned ranks in the Army. There were some good leaders but they shone out of a fog of mediocrity and arrogance. Admittedly I only saw a part of the whole over five years but I doubt there’s much better. Likewise private industry.
Those who take promotion in ‘The Job’ are often accused of careerism and being “out for themselves”. Elements of that are true in some cases, but is there any difference in wanting promotion to wanting to be a Detective or a specialist? Unless one stays a Pc on a team for thirty plus years, there has to be an element of ambition? I spent ten years as a Pc on foot patrol doing shifts. Was I being careerist going eventually to SB and then climbing the ranks? The biggest motivator for the latter for me was to provide for my young and growing family, not because I wanted to Lord it over my colleagues.
A friend of mine who was an SME in the Bwanch genuinely told me recently in the context of another organisation that getting to the top of any service isn’t difficult. You merely say the right things, go along with stuff, don’t rock the boat, and the ranks will come. He absolutely believed that. Only someone who never tried to take promotion could say that. It’s hard. It’s boring at times. It’s frustrating. It takes a lot from you. And in the famous expression “the further up the pole a monkey goes, the more you see if it’s bum!” Nobody sees the hours senior management have to put in. There is a culture of working long days - 12 hours was a short one for me. There are meetings in the morning and meetings in the evening. If there’s an incident there are ‘Gold Groups’ to attend. ‘Crimefighters’ thought up by BHH and Burns created a whole industry to deal with it. It was meant to be an imitation of the NYPD’s famous ‘Compstat’ meeting but was nothing like it. On borough one needed to have to support of a whole team to address the issues in the paperwork that came out. It was a bureaucratic nightmare and gave rise to a bullying culture where superintending ranks were figuratively torn to pieces. Those able to perform in that arena and culture thrived. Others went under. It did nothing to actually deal with performance. It’s style percolated down to lower levels too as individuals found their inner management thug released. I remember being really torn apart by a Chief Super from some leafy suburb about not knowing the full details of a single crime that occurred in our local hospital, on a crime wracked large borough in SE London, and being dressed down afterwards in private by him. I actually did know the details but I didn’t function and never have been able to in that kind of environment. I had been on at 7am and I left NSY at 6pm (on a Friday). I felt awful all weekend. Really awful. During the 2011 Great Mutant Uprising I was sleeping in the office for a few days. I received a warning about breaching European Working Time Directives at one point. There were public order events to Bronze and Silver. As I didn’t earn overtime, I was probably on the lowest hourly rate in the whole station! No wonder my marriage suffered!
I do not say this for sympathy: I chose promotion and if you can’t take a joke don’t join the Job. However, it’s very easy to think the guy or girl upstairs does nothing except create barriers. EVERYTIME something happened in London, the UK or indeed the World, (and I doubt this has changed!) someone higher up the food chain wanted a ‘Community Response Report’. Often two or three ACPO/NPCC would want different reports, plus a conference call. And these were done by ME or my colleagues, not the paygrades beneath. Generally, others were unaware of the stuff we stopped filtering down to bother the troops.
Anyway, I am a big boy and got big-boy pay for this, I know, but when you talk of RIPA authorities etc, this was one small part of the whole. And you can delegate everything EXCEPT responsibility. Then there was the training -or lack of it! I was a Bwanch Detective, a Sergeant and an Inspector. That was from 1998 to 2003. How much training did I get for any of those times do you think? NONE. Absolutely zip, nada, rien, nothing. You were expected somehow to ‘just know’ and learn by osmosis. Hopefully that has changed now! After 20 years I became an overnight success and got myself into the High Potential Development Scheme(HPDS). That DID give high quality useful and insightful training at Bramshill. Although it’s common to decry the place, it made up with 8 week modular residential management training what the Met had failed to do. I am glad I did it. Naturally, it also got me labelled, perhaps not so much as some as I already was well on my way to getting my gong by then, but still labelled by line managers and peers. It seems everyone has somebody else they can look down their noses at!
Traditionally, of course, all leaders in the police had come up through the ranks. The same people who criticise direct entry officers will almost in the same breath then criticise those who made it the normal way as being ‘out-of-touch’. Police leaders need to develop a sense of strategy and remember they have a role to play directing the service, but the tone of the service is set by society, via its elected representatives. Individual Supers and above did not introduce the ECHR but have to obey it. And yes, showing one understood and implemented stuff was a means to impressing those above. NIM was a useful tool when planning and I don’t recognise the usages and abuses you report above, personally, but I was not in anything specialist after I get my pips so bow to your knowledge. A DS can be very good at running an operation -and often is - but someone above that rank will carry the can and be answerable for it, perhaps criminally.
I don’t necessarily dispute what you say and please don’t think that’s my argument here, but I did want to defend those of us who wore the crowns (for ill or good) and put a case for the defence here!
Another great read and explains a lot of why things go wrong. Sadly leadership is not leadership anymore and it’s risk management rather than management in the general sense but mainly about their own careers and not whats good for the public. Experience is hard to come by at the best of times but nowadays is rarer then rocking horse poo.
A great read which humorously highlights the reduction in leadership amongst senior officers and an increase in management of risk and blame. Firstly risk to their own careers and potentially their own freedom. There are many reasons for the change, a critical media, an increase in political interference resulting in a lack of courage to do what’s right.
I was a firearms silver commander and had to evaluate risk and make difficult decisions involving potentially injury or death for the ‘suspect’ and prosecution for me or my AFO’s. Certain gold commanders were supportive and trusted, sadly not all. This resulted a lack of trust of done senior officers.
This appears to have got worse over the past 14 years….., perhaps it’s time to reward people who will take a reasonable risk? Bring back chief officers with a backbone, the old style sergeant and DS!
PS. I agree, Dick Gethin was a superstar, but I thought he was on Theseus, 7/7. I seem to recall Jon Boutcher headed Overt, but I may be wrong, it's happened before!😁
I led the Financial Intelligence gathering on Overt from the NTFIU. In fact it was me that bought the matter to NSY from BSS. I was in the Thames House ops room on a daily basis, looking at a TF group associated AAA and his merry band of murderous bastards. Each day, more stuff came out from wiretap about it, but nowt was going to NSY. It took me 3 weeks to convince the management to appoint an SIO and start the ball rolling. Still waiting for my QPM/OBE/Knighthood!
Regarding RIPA, that came into force while I was at CIB2. Our team were looking at a group of young cops who were dealing and using MDMA at clubs in S.London. A surveillance op. was needed regarding these miscreants, so RIPA application forms were required. Nobody had done one, so Perry, my DI, told me to write one and he would sign it. I did a bit of mugging up, and produced a reasonable effort. Perry duly signed it, and passed it up the food chain to the Director of Professional Standards, DAC Andy Hayman, a loudmouth Essex wide boy, who Norman Stanley Fletcher would have called a "charmless nerk". He, of course, didn't know one end of a RIPA form from the other, so confidently presented it to the Surveillance Commissioner.
Now, what Perry, and at that time I, didn't know, was that there were 2 different application forms, very similar, but for different purposes. Someone who did know, unfortunately, was the Surveillance Commissioner, who proceeded to mightily embarrass our leader by pointing it out! He then descended on Perry like the wolf on the fold, and publicy ripped him a new arsehole. The poor bloke was left a gibbering wreck, but he had to take it as he had signed the form. I was left unscathed. Hayman was an unpleasant bully, and got his comeuppance when CC of Norfolk, but that's another story!
Gethin was the best of all his contemporaries. And thoroughly decent bloke too. Interezting career pre plod, and last heard still fighting the good fight.
Sagacious comment !
Another provocative article, Dom.
It’s interesting the amount of criticism directed in these blogs at the Superintending ranks and above plus the belief that the lower ranks could do a better job. Purely to balance the picture a little, and not as case specific as your blog, I ask for the right of reply as a former Super.
Yes, there are inadequate leaders at those levels, but so there are at PC/DC, Sergeant and inspecting ranks. Why this is tolerated is a question that probably needs a whole blog or ten to answer. Poor leadership is not unique to the police service either; since retiring I have had cause to intimately observe the leadership qualities and skills of a range of other organisations including the much-vaunted British military and the railways. I can confidently state that from where I sat in my worms-eye view there’s very little that recommends itself, to me at least! Incompetence, lack of interest, ego and ignorance thrive amongst managers everywhere. I was particularly disappointed at what I saw in the Commissioned ranks in the Army. There were some good leaders but they shone out of a fog of mediocrity and arrogance. Admittedly I only saw a part of the whole over five years but I doubt there’s much better. Likewise private industry.
Those who take promotion in ‘The Job’ are often accused of careerism and being “out for themselves”. Elements of that are true in some cases, but is there any difference in wanting promotion to wanting to be a Detective or a specialist? Unless one stays a Pc on a team for thirty plus years, there has to be an element of ambition? I spent ten years as a Pc on foot patrol doing shifts. Was I being careerist going eventually to SB and then climbing the ranks? The biggest motivator for the latter for me was to provide for my young and growing family, not because I wanted to Lord it over my colleagues.
A friend of mine who was an SME in the Bwanch genuinely told me recently in the context of another organisation that getting to the top of any service isn’t difficult. You merely say the right things, go along with stuff, don’t rock the boat, and the ranks will come. He absolutely believed that. Only someone who never tried to take promotion could say that. It’s hard. It’s boring at times. It’s frustrating. It takes a lot from you. And in the famous expression “the further up the pole a monkey goes, the more you see if it’s bum!” Nobody sees the hours senior management have to put in. There is a culture of working long days - 12 hours was a short one for me. There are meetings in the morning and meetings in the evening. If there’s an incident there are ‘Gold Groups’ to attend. ‘Crimefighters’ thought up by BHH and Burns created a whole industry to deal with it. It was meant to be an imitation of the NYPD’s famous ‘Compstat’ meeting but was nothing like it. On borough one needed to have to support of a whole team to address the issues in the paperwork that came out. It was a bureaucratic nightmare and gave rise to a bullying culture where superintending ranks were figuratively torn to pieces. Those able to perform in that arena and culture thrived. Others went under. It did nothing to actually deal with performance. It’s style percolated down to lower levels too as individuals found their inner management thug released. I remember being really torn apart by a Chief Super from some leafy suburb about not knowing the full details of a single crime that occurred in our local hospital, on a crime wracked large borough in SE London, and being dressed down afterwards in private by him. I actually did know the details but I didn’t function and never have been able to in that kind of environment. I had been on at 7am and I left NSY at 6pm (on a Friday). I felt awful all weekend. Really awful. During the 2011 Great Mutant Uprising I was sleeping in the office for a few days. I received a warning about breaching European Working Time Directives at one point. There were public order events to Bronze and Silver. As I didn’t earn overtime, I was probably on the lowest hourly rate in the whole station! No wonder my marriage suffered!
I do not say this for sympathy: I chose promotion and if you can’t take a joke don’t join the Job. However, it’s very easy to think the guy or girl upstairs does nothing except create barriers. EVERYTIME something happened in London, the UK or indeed the World, (and I doubt this has changed!) someone higher up the food chain wanted a ‘Community Response Report’. Often two or three ACPO/NPCC would want different reports, plus a conference call. And these were done by ME or my colleagues, not the paygrades beneath. Generally, others were unaware of the stuff we stopped filtering down to bother the troops.
Anyway, I am a big boy and got big-boy pay for this, I know, but when you talk of RIPA authorities etc, this was one small part of the whole. And you can delegate everything EXCEPT responsibility. Then there was the training -or lack of it! I was a Bwanch Detective, a Sergeant and an Inspector. That was from 1998 to 2003. How much training did I get for any of those times do you think? NONE. Absolutely zip, nada, rien, nothing. You were expected somehow to ‘just know’ and learn by osmosis. Hopefully that has changed now! After 20 years I became an overnight success and got myself into the High Potential Development Scheme(HPDS). That DID give high quality useful and insightful training at Bramshill. Although it’s common to decry the place, it made up with 8 week modular residential management training what the Met had failed to do. I am glad I did it. Naturally, it also got me labelled, perhaps not so much as some as I already was well on my way to getting my gong by then, but still labelled by line managers and peers. It seems everyone has somebody else they can look down their noses at!
Traditionally, of course, all leaders in the police had come up through the ranks. The same people who criticise direct entry officers will almost in the same breath then criticise those who made it the normal way as being ‘out-of-touch’. Police leaders need to develop a sense of strategy and remember they have a role to play directing the service, but the tone of the service is set by society, via its elected representatives. Individual Supers and above did not introduce the ECHR but have to obey it. And yes, showing one understood and implemented stuff was a means to impressing those above. NIM was a useful tool when planning and I don’t recognise the usages and abuses you report above, personally, but I was not in anything specialist after I get my pips so bow to your knowledge. A DS can be very good at running an operation -and often is - but someone above that rank will carry the can and be answerable for it, perhaps criminally.
I don’t necessarily dispute what you say and please don’t think that’s my argument here, but I did want to defend those of us who wore the crowns (for ill or good) and put a case for the defence here!
Thank you Dom, I shall get back in my box now!
Superb piece as always, quite a few very well observed memories there!
Another great read and explains a lot of why things go wrong. Sadly leadership is not leadership anymore and it’s risk management rather than management in the general sense but mainly about their own careers and not whats good for the public. Experience is hard to come by at the best of times but nowadays is rarer then rocking horse poo.
A great read which humorously highlights the reduction in leadership amongst senior officers and an increase in management of risk and blame. Firstly risk to their own careers and potentially their own freedom. There are many reasons for the change, a critical media, an increase in political interference resulting in a lack of courage to do what’s right.
I was a firearms silver commander and had to evaluate risk and make difficult decisions involving potentially injury or death for the ‘suspect’ and prosecution for me or my AFO’s. Certain gold commanders were supportive and trusted, sadly not all. This resulted a lack of trust of done senior officers.
This appears to have got worse over the past 14 years….., perhaps it’s time to reward people who will take a reasonable risk? Bring back chief officers with a backbone, the old style sergeant and DS!
Thanks Dom.
PS. I agree, Dick Gethin was a superstar, but I thought he was on Theseus, 7/7. I seem to recall Jon Boutcher headed Overt, but I may be wrong, it's happened before!😁
👍
Who led Theseus, then? Huge amounts of pharmaceuticals have dulled my recollection.