Real Policing

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to rouse my deepest passions it’s favouritism.  Generally speaking, those who deserve to be treated differently are the ones who don’t pull their weight.  I’ve asked myself whether jealousy is the reason why I vehemently disapprove of favouritism but I can’t say so.  It has more to do with fairness and respect than jealousy.  Good work should always be rewarded, or at the very least, acknowledged.  During my service I never sought to impugn the efforts of my colleagues when my own good work went unnoticed.  We all did the same job and worked hard to manage paperwork and reach personal detection quotas.  However, some had to work harder than others and team detection targets gave rise to two rather unsettling and ongoing incidents of favouritism in order to achieve a monthly quota.  Team detection targets were intended to compare team performance and measure productivity but with particular consequences for officer development and morale.

In August, 2003, I had the misfortune to be working alongside the one officer who I would remotely consider a bully.  As is characteristic of most bullies, this officer chose his recipients among those who were less likely to defend themselves.  Prolific in terms of detections, he specifically targeted town centre car parks for cannabis users.  On an evening or night shift he self-effaced with alarming regularity.  When radio control called him up for a job he excused himself by stating he was busy stop-checking a vehicle.  He returned to the station several hours later with numerous evidence bags containing the spoils of his night’s work.  The productivity of this officer was easily measured in terms of detections and such that the sergeants left him to his own devices.  His contribution enhanced monthly team performance figures in a manner that those who spent time attending non-crime domestic incidents, searching for missing persons, arresting and processing drink drivers and attending traffic collisions or sudden deaths did not.  However, the latter would still be expected to reach their personal quota in addition to attending the aforementioned incidents which, by their very nature, had nothing on the end of them in terms of a detection.

Similarly, another sergeant under whom I served operated a system of favourites which allowed two experienced officers dispensation to actively seek detections at the expense of the rest of the team.  Both officers were spared the relentless allocation of live investigations and were designated on a daily basis as the immediate response car.  Their remit was to attend immediate response calls which were fewer in number than the more routine calls but were generally more likely to result in a detection.  These officers were free to roam and fulfill both their personal target and, consequently, the team target.  The remaining officers played a supporting role by attending the more routine calls where a detection was less likely whilst having to investigate their own allocated cases.  They too were still expected to reach their own personal monthly target.  The justification for the favoured officers’ tenure as the immediate car was that they were the most productive whilst in it.  That is hardly surprising when they were the least encumbered by live investigations and with a remit to attend only immediate response incidents which lend themselves commodiously to detections whilst creating an opportunity between calls to actively seek them.  The contribution of the two officers to the division’s performance figures was not inconsiderable and their efforts were recognised with the divisional commander’s commendation.

Regrettably, the above examples had particular consequences for both morale and officer development.  A popular criticism among supervisors is that less experienced officers lack both the instinct and the practical skills for proactive policing.  That is an unfair criticism as long as they are denied the equal opportunity (when paperwork allows) to develop sound street policing skills.  Fledgling officers will continue to develop at a much slower rate as long as they play a supportive role to those colleagues favoured to generate detections in order to meet team performance targets.  For every inspector or chief inspector who presides over a system of target driven favouritism, your complicity deserves censure and ensures the gradual, rather than rapid, development of your less experienced officers who are already restricted by an inefficient system of paperwork and reactive policing.  With regards to officer morale, the effects of detection driven favouritism on those who joined to disrupt the activities of hardened criminals but are frustrated in their efforts to do so ought to be neither dismissed nor downplayed.  Impeding development for the sake of performance figures merely serves to reinforce manifest inefficiency and also the disillusioned mindset of those who are once again prevented from doing the job they joined to do.