Real Policing

Earlier on this week, I learned that another of my former Sussex colleagues had resigned.  I’ve heard it said of this particular officer that he had never raised his voice when dealing with an incident as he never felt the need to.  His judgement, instincts and ability to communicate effectively with the public represented a culmination of character, skills and experience.  Clearly, some aspects of policing can be taught in a classroom whilst other aspects cannot.  Sadly, the younger serving officers on his team will not enjoy the benefit of his experience in order to develop their own style.  Inexperienced, unseasoned and unsure, they are left to find their own way, whilst to the taxpayer, the loss of their investment in the experienced officer is demonstrable.

Without doubt, one of the first concerns a fledgling officer signed off for independent patrol will face during their two-year probation is a general lack of experienced colleagues to guide, support and reassure.  Whilst they are not without the supervision of their sergeants when completing paperwork and investigation plans, it is out on the street where officers who are young in age and/or service need the most guidance.  More often than not their initial means of support is a colleague with marginally more service than they who is also learning to find his/her feet.  The only other recourse for a probationer constable is a frantic phone call to the sergeant asking for reassurance and direction.  In situations where a quick attendance and even quicker response is required, such uncertainty can be both stressful and a hinderance.  The theoretical understanding of the law is but one component of competent and confident policing whilst the practical application is the other.  

Indeed, academia simply cannot teach interpretation, discretion and judgement.  The role of the experienced officer is pivotal in the development of those who are young in service.  Without particular guidance in the early stages, officers learn by trial and error and quickly develop an ability to blag or fudge their way through an incident.  Such artifices often belie a lack of confidence and will only become evident to the public in the event that something goes wrong.  Depending on necessity, novice officers can expect before long to find themselves on a driving course to become proficient to drive at high speeds in order to attend incidents requiring an immediate response.  Once they have passed their course and are back at their stations, they can often find themselves alone, (known as being single-crewed), unseasoned and en route to an incident of which they may have had little or no previous experience.  It is not atypical on a busy shift for there to be only one or two response drivers covering a large area and who can expect to be mercilessly pulled from pillar to post.  It is also not uncommon for there to be no response drivers available at all.  For the public, the latent consequences of unresourced immediate incidents does not bear thinking about.  For response officers, such a high level of intensity cannot be indefinitely sustained.

In lieu of a more efficient structure, the day-to-day experiences of rank and file officers are often as fraught, strenuous and frustrating as the demands placed upon them are conflicting.  Due to a sense of self-preservation, officers who are barely out of their probation look to move on to other departments to escape the relentless grind of response.  As a consequence, they create a dearth of experienced officers from whom the skills of effective policing can be learned.  Ask any rank and file officer what the average length of service is on their team and what proportion of it consists of probationer constables.  Excessive paperwork, relentless radio calls, target driven policing, a lack of resources, a lack of response drivers, arrest quotas, detection quotas, stop & search form submission quotas, intelligence submission quotas, live investigations to complete, demands from the CPS, inordinate amounts of time spent processing prisoners and a self analysis portfolio (known as PDP or PDR) are just a small measure of how uniform officers are torn from pillar to post.  The often competing demands placed upon them are considerable and their effects cumulative.  Experienced constables are driven out of the role and in some cases out of the job.  The quality of service given to the public suffers.  Not for nothing is the thin blue line so called and one which cannot endure much more before, as a result of being mismanaged, overworked and under-resourced, it inevitably breaks.                   

The subject of this blog was in the offing long before saturday night.  Truly, it began in late 2003, when the Government announced plans to downgrade the classification of cannabis.  What prompted me to write it today was George Michael’s appearance on ITV’s Parkinson on 19th May.  During his interview, George spoke candidly whilst admitting that cannabis is his drug of choice.  To Michael Parkinson he stated the following: 

“We could sit here with any number of policemen and doctors and they would all tell you if everybody who had a dependence on alcohol changed their mind and had a dependence on weed, the world would be a much easier place to live in.  Nobody ever came home stoned and beat up their wife,” he said.

By the very nature of their work and witnessing quite a different side of life when habitual use of drugs or alcohol becomes addiction, I doubt very much whether many police officers or doctors would agree with George.  

George’s comments cause some difficulty in two areas.  The first is the assumption that cannabis is a relaxant to anyone who takes it.  This may or may not be so in any number of cases but where it may reduce someone’s capacity for violence it gives rise to a tendency to recklessness and also considerably impairs judgement.  Any police officer who has ever stopped a vehicle being driven erratically only to find the driver comatose and reeking of cannabis will tell you that drug induced recklessness is not a preferable substitute for alcohol induced violence.  One can be just as destructive as the other. 

The second issue it raises is that of committing crime, acquisitive or otherwise, in order to fund addiction.  As with any addiction, where there are a lack of funds to pay for it, is a likelihood that crime will be committed in order to feed it.  Be it dependence or addiction, it not only affects the life of the individual but also the lives of his or her family and friends and those who become victims of crime as a result.  Some may say that cannabis is not addictive.  Having spoken to many habitual users of cannabis they have explained that whilst they do not feel physically addicted to cannabis it “chills them out” and makes them feel mentally relaxed, suggesting perhaps a psychological desire for regular use if not a physical one.  Some have also admitted committing crime in order to satisfy such a desire.  However, a whole new dimension was added to the issue, which made the downgrading of cannabis all the more lamentable, with the introduction of a highly concentrated form of the drug known as ’skunk.’  Current scientific tests have concluded that prolonged use of this highly concentrated and addictive form of cannabis can, in some cases, induce schizophrenia or other such psychotic illnesses.

Whilst I am aware of the tendency to generalise based on my own experiences, I can also draw from those of my former colleagues.  The preponderance of skunk cannabis use is such that officers deal with the possession of it on a consistent basis.  Due to its potency, the effects of skunk on the user are more startling and certainly more apparent.  Indeed, in two particular cases where I was the investigating officer, one man committed suicide at home as a result of prolonged abuse, only to be discovered by his mother the next day, while the other barricaded himself and his mother in her bedroom and would not let her leave until she promised to take him to a cash machine to draw out money to purchase his daily intake.  He blithely assaulted an officer who had arrived to arrest him by banging the officer’s head against the hallway wall and front door.  So single-minded was he in his pursuit for his next fix and so seriously diminshed was his ability to reason, as I would come to realise during interview.

Moreover, the blanket downgrading of cannabis failed to take into account the effects of more concentrated forms of the drug.  It also had the opposite effect to that which was intended.  The widespread confusion as to whether or not it was legal to possess and use cannabis in public meant the police were dealing with it all the more.  Even officers themselves were confused as to how the law ought to be interpreted.  Instead of creating more time to deal with class ‘A’ drugs it created less time and manifestly legitimised potentially psychosis inducing skunk cannabis.  It was unnecessary to downgrade cannabis in order to free up time to deal with stronger substances.  Freeing officers from the constraints of paperwork and targets to properly police our streets would have sufficed.  Yet another example of an idea that was ill-conceived and misguided in theory and in practice proved absolutely disasterous.  Please visit the news links below to read more.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6606931.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3100854.stm

Over the past two months I have received several e-mails from officers and members of the public expressing concern over what they consider to be the criminalising of children.  One particular e-mail from a media researcher asked me to help explain why in the last four years the number of youths being brought into custody has increased by 26 percent.  I replied by saying that there must have been grounds for an arrest otherwise there would have been no justification for it.  I was then asked why it is necessary to arrest rather than deal with an incident by other means and also whether I thought children were being criminalised in order to meet arrest and detection targets.     

Although procedures regarding youth crime vary from one force to another, when an offence is committed an arrest is not always necessary.  In regards to how the incident is resolved (known as disposal, which could be issuing a verbal reprimand or final warning), the system of recording the offence (NCRS) and the target driven detection culture are less forgiving.  For less serious offences, officers have the option of taking a youngster and an appropriate adult (usually a relative or guardian) to the police station for interview under caution without the need for arrest.  This is known as a contemporaneous interview.  There is also the option to “contemp interview” the juvenile at their home.  However, there are circumstances where particular gravity factors exist which justify arrest, such as in the case of a violent assault or robbery, where the preservation of evidence is paramount.  In respect of lower level offences, such as playground assaults and minor theft or criminal damage, restrictions and consequences arise for both police and the young offender.  For rank and file officers there is no discretion regarding recording, investigating or detecting the offence and the pressure to produce detections prevails.  In certain cases, perhaps unecessarily and prematurely, the juvenile is brought into the justice system as a result of the levelling effect of detection targets which observe no such distinction based on gravity.  It is the securing of a detection which becomes the primary objective, not addressing the offending behaviour of the child.   

Indeed, lower level youth crime, which was formerly dealt with by way of wise words to the juvenile and his or her parents, has fallen victim to performance criteria.  No regard can afford to be shown to individual circumstances or what ought to be done in the best interests of the child to prevent further offending behaviour.  Whilst unlimited chances to offend with impunity due to age cannot be supported, an argument is emerging as to whether implementing intervention measures at the first offence stage to discourage re-offending is being overlooked in order to generate another tick in the detection box.  It has also been suggested that bringing a youth into the justice system unecessarily may, in certain circumstances, have the counter-productive effect of encouraging re-offending behaviour.  Conjecture abounds in lieu of scrutinising crime data based upon youth re-offending rates.  Even then it would be difficult to conclude in just how many cases re-offending was due, either solely or in part, to being brought into the justice system prematurely.  Importantly, there are also those who, by the very nature of their offending or re-offending, are necessarily within the justice system and from whom the public need to be protected. 

The causes of youth crime, its effects and how society (not just the police, whose responsibility is not to parent errant youths) must act to control and overcome it are complex issues indeed.  The perceived criminalising of youths provides another dimension to the issue which merits considerable debate and the answer to which, it would seem, lies once again in prevention rather than detection.                       

Following on from my last two blog entries, the articles in the links below appeared today on the front pages of both the BBC news and Skynews website.  The articles speak for themselves and accurately reflect the experiences of many serving and former rank and file officers.  Their contents bring to public prominence the negative effects of target driven policing and also explain precisely what kind of police force the public’s taxes are paying for.  Perhaps now those who need to listen will do just that.   The Home Office must decide whether they want quantity or quality.  They can’t have both.  

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6650000/newsid_6658200/6658243.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6656411.stm

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1265711,00.html   

In the last few months, I have heard a number of quotes from the Home Office regarding detections, such as “We don’t reward detections for detections sake,” and “Yes, we need to look at detections.”  In addition, on Tuesday 6th March, 2007, Home Secretary John Reid MP wrote to all chief constables and chairs of police authorities setting out common values for the police service of England and Wales.  On page two of his missive, the Home Secretary stated:  

“…I commit myself and government more generally to delivering…fewer targets and mandates from the centre.  We want more flexibility and fewer burdens on the police service, but transparency about how well forces and Basic Command Units (BCUs) are doing.“ 

By contrast, the Home Office told Police Review magazine this week:

‘We do not actually have a target…Rather there is an overall desire to bring around a quarter of offenders to justice.’ 

It should be noted that each individual force’s success at bringing 25% of offenders to justice is measured in annual league tables. 

Initially, my curiosity and confusion as to exactly who sets the targets was roused during my interview last week on BBC Radio Five Live with Richard Bacon.  Shortly before the conclusion of the interview, a serving officer by the name of Lisa phoned in regarding the issue of paperwork.  Lisa also stated that she had written a letter to police minister Tony McNulty in which she criticised, amongst other things, detection targets.  Lisa revealed that Mr. McNulty explained the issue of targets as a matter of misinterpretation by chief constables as to exactly what the Government’s requirements of the 43 forces were.  If this is so, precisely when was Mr. McNulty going to clarify the misunderstanding regarding detection targets he must have been made aware of by the police federation, senior officers, or in any case by a television interviewer who brought it to his attention on the Tonight Show with Trevor McDonald on which he appeared in December, 2006?

Therefore, pertinent questions regarding detection targets have emerged.  Are detection targets centrally imposed?  If so, do such targets require (or desire) each of the 43 forces to detect a proportionate amount of crime per month or per annum?  Do such targets make requirements of officers or teams of officers to meet both individual and team targets?  If detection targets are not centrally set, to which targets does the Home Secretary refer on page two of his letter of March 6th, 2007?  Furthermore, why are chief constables filtering down through to rank and file officers a monthly quota of detections which are purportedly centrally set and must be attained in order for officers to be considered productive?  Exactly when did the Home Office plan to act in order to bring an end to the two-tier system created as a result of target driven policing, if indeed detection targets are not centrally set?  Exactly what conclusions regarding effective practical policing can be drawn from league tables? Such tables set targets by default as no force wants to languish at the bottom of the pile even though the tables themselves merely reflect quantity and not quality.  Such is the perversity of the current system of performance measurement.

Tomorrow begins the Police Federation conference in Blackpool.  The need and opportunity to hold the Home Office to account for the miasma of the detection culture should be seized upon.  Members of Parliament who have never policed the streets of our country ought to be left in no doubt that target driven policing wasn’t even a great idea in theory.  In practice it has proved disasterous.               

Please click on the below link for the Home Secretary’s letter to chief constables.

http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/news-and-publications/publication/police-reform/policing-values-letter?view=Binary  

“Right.  Now.  I want five detections out of each of you this month.  If you get your five detections, I’ll leave you alone.  If I leave you alone that means they’re leaving me alone.” 

Words enough to motivate anyone you’d think?  Not so for rank and file police officers.  Nothing can engender feelings of disillusionment and frustration more or undermine morale so decisively.  Officers are only too aware of all other aspects of their job such as attending a traffic collision, taking a missing person report, dealing with a drink driver (death on wheels), taking a child into police protection and sectioning under the Mental Health Act, all of which are part of their role that will not earn them a tick in the detection box.  Then there’s the live investigations officers may be carrying out at any time which can number as little as one or two or as many as twenty or twenty-five.  Investigations have to be conducted thoroughly before being filed detected or undetected and can involve the taking of many statements, submitting evidence for forensic examination and carrying out several arrests and interviews.  The completion of case file papers and demands from the CPS for more evidence are no small consideration.  Let’s not forget answering calls via the radio on a daily basis which can vary greatly depending on the volume received and also the resources available to deal with them.  Court duty, training and sickness also reduce the time left to seek quick and easy detections before any preventative policing can take place. 

Until officers reach their monthly quota, policing according to targets will be their taskmaster.  Such an uncompromising requirement for detections delivered by the shift sergeant in morning briefing at the beginning of each month has an indoctrinating effect.  Officers are lead to believe that seeking detections is their primary role and that they or their team will have under-performed if they haven’t gathered their monthly quota.  Such thoughts resonate in every job they attend as to whether or not a detection exists.  Discretion to deal with an incident by way of wise words is unthinkable, whether or not it provides the most effective resolution. 

The quick and easy detection by far is the street caution for possession of cannabis or an £80 fixed penalty notice for a public order offence (if the offender isn’t taken into custody) and both are eagerly sought.  Under such circumstances, some would question whether an offender has indeed been brought to justice.  Nonetheless, a tier system of policing has emerged and few officers would not police according to targets as, statistically, their performance is based on very little else (other than similar performance indicators such as arrests, intelligence and stop & search form submissions).  Whether by accident or design, the reclassification of cannabis, in the same way as the introduction of the fixed penalty notice, has lent itself commodiously to the target driven detection culture. 

There is clearly a difference between measuring productivity and imposing targets.  The influence of targets on practical policing methods is also decidedly different and its effects profound.  For what reason, other than political kudos, can imposing such dangerous targets be at all necessary in public services?  It certainly hasn’t led to more effective policing and in the process has undermined practical policing methods by comprehensively decimating police officers’ discretion .  Measuring performance based on detections would be simpler to justify if that were an officer’s specific function.  It is utterly unjustifiable to impose detection targets so long as an officer is expected to remain proactive, investigative, reactive and responsive to their community’s demands and expectations.  A fairer, more balanced system for officers and one which has any meaning, importance and consequence for the public must prevail.  After all, not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.     

Today I was interviewed by Richard Bacon as part of his phone-in show on BBC Radio Five Live.  The topic specifically under discussion was police paperwork.  Among my initial comments was the need for the police to remain accountable and for an accurate record of police actions to be kept.  That is not in doubt.  The question itself is really three-fold.  Firstly, which forms should be the responsiblility of a police officer to complete in order to ensure accountability and maintain a paper trail?  Next, is it necessary for rank and file police officers to be responsible for completing paperwork which requires duplication and repetition of information they have already entered on several other forms, which does not comprise the audit trail, and exists merely to satisfy Government statistics?  Lastly, considering that the primary function of a police officer is to prevent crime and disorder, wouldn’t they be better placed to protect and serve the public on the street if those aspects of paperwork which require duplication and repetition were completed by civilian staff or designated others?  I completely agree that the officer who attends an incident, makes an arrest or gathers intelligence is best placed to complete the relevant forms.  However, what an officer must complete to ensure accountability should be in no way confused with the unecessary repetition and duplication of paperwork which could reasonably be completed by a designated other in possession of the required information initially provided by the officer.  Police paperwork can be justified on the grounds of accountability.  Needless repetition and duplication of police paperwork cannot.    

Further, the question was raised regarding a more efficient IT system.  The current system in many forces of entering the same information into multiple programs is both time consuming and redundant.  This is an area ripe for considerable improvement where a complete overhaul of the IT system could lead to less time consuming duplication, more effective practices and an improvement of the service given to the public by creating more opportunities for street policing.  The issue will still remain, however, regarding the taking of witness statements and time consuming case file preparation (court files) which could reasonably be completed by trained investigators and is an area of concern which an IT overhaul does not address.  Please take a look at the below links if you remain in any way unsure. 

I would like to thank Richard Bacon and the team at BBC Radio Five Live for the opportunity to speak.  Of course it proved difficult to do more than scratch the surface in the time allowed.  Paperwork, the target driven detection culture, safer neighbourhoods and police numbers are among the key issues which require significant public discussion.  Many thanks to the listeners who contributed to today’s programme.  I look forward to other opportunities to take the debate and our campaign forward.  All the best.  I shall be back with you again soon.

Johnno.      

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=449456&in_page_id=1770

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/02/ntape02.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/04/npolice304.xml

I wish to offer my sincere condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of PC Ricky Gray.  His devastating loss under such senseless and tragic circumstances is surely heartbreaking.   There are not words enough which can soothe or temper such unimaginable pain and despair.  Please find a measure of comfort and consolation in the knowledge that the thoughts and prayers of many people across our country are with you.   

Most sincerely,

Johnno.        

A retired Surrey and Essex police officer recently contacted me offering his support for the real policing campaign.  With proactive fervour, Mr. Dunning declared his intention to gather petition signatures within his local community.  In addition, he contacted his former colleagues and national television and also wrote an impassioned reader’s letter, entitled ‘Law and Disorder,’ for publication in the National Association of Retired Police Officers May 2007 publication, NARPO news.  The letter itself compared the lawlessness prior to Sir Robert Peel’s founding of the police force in 1829 to relative lawlessness in modern society courtesy of excessive red tape, form filling and target driven policing.  Mr. Dunning also took the opportunity in his letter to publicise the realpolicing campaign.  

The efforts of Mr. Dunning and the views of the retired officers who have signed the petition are particularly welcomed and highly significant.  There is much sense and practical insight to be drawn from former officers who have policed the streets of our country in recent decades.  Who would know better the value and benefit of community based policing, high visibility foot and mobile patrols and community based intelligence gathering, operating within a framework unburdened by excessive paperwork and detection drives?  Who is better placed to proffer an opinion regarding the reasons for the comprehensive withdrawal of our officers from our streets?  Almost without exception, former officers attribute the degeneration of the modern police force to a lack of visibility and community contact, excessive paperwork which successive Home Secretary’s promised to reduce yet failed to deliver and also the current culture of running public services like a business.  It is regrettable that any number of retired officers are so ashamed of what has become of modern British policing that they choose not to reveal their former association.

Undeniably, new policing challenges merit a suitable approach.  Old-fashioned methods which have worked in the past may no longer be as effective as perhaps they once were.  However, no matter how sophisticated or violent it has become, the nature of modern crime, particularly street crime and anti-social behaviour, is such that it still requires the opportunity in which to take place.  In that respect modern crime remains unchanged.  It is no longer satisfactory to argue against releasing officers back to the streets or actively failing to do so citing a change in the nature of modern crime and asserting how community based policing is not a suitable response.  The current proliferation of robbery and vandalism would tend to suggest otherwise.  The cost of maintaining the status quo and its consequences for the public and rank and file officers is far too great a price to pay.

Many thanks to those of you who have shown your support for our campaign and who continue to do so.  I have found the lack of support and interest from certain sections of the media disappointing and wish to re-emphasise the need for grass roots efforts to ensure the success of our campaign.  Please continue to show your support by taking petitions into your community and encouraging as many people to sign as possible.  I shall be back with you again soon.  All the best.

Johnno.