Real Policing

Johnno,

I work within one of the country’s busiest Prisoner Processing Units.  The post is such that, due to the intensity of our workload, most officers move elsewhere after a year or so.  The majority of vacancies left by those who have chosen to move on have remained unfilled.  As with a great majority of frontline positions we simply manage with the numbers who remain.  This places enormous pressures on those of us left to deal with those detained in custody on a day to day basis.  Our unit recently experienced one of the busiest weekend periods ever, which resulted in several overnight detainees.  We were assisted by our area’s CID without whom we would have simply struggled to cope.  We are forced to return many prisoners back to our uniform colleagues who are already working with little or no staff.

I understand that my particular force is barely recruiting any regular officers, whilst the intake of PCSOs remains an immediate priority, as they fill positions on Community Safer Neighbourhood Teams.  Whilst this may look good on paper it leaves those officers within posts such as mine overwhelmed with work.  We are fast approaching 2008, and as I see it our workload has almost doubled, and yet our staffing levels have fallen.  Something simply doesn’t add up.  Those of us who are employed on units such as mine are operating at saturation point. Something has to change and I for one admire a couple of Chief Constables who have recently spoken out.  Any with an ounce of common sense would realise that the ‘Thin Blue Line’ is at Saturation Point!

On an entirely separate note my force now operates a new clocking in system.  It only allows a tolerance of 15 minutes, in other words if your tour of duty is 08.00 until 18.00 hours and you decide to start at, say, 07.30, one ends up losing out.  It will simply not allow a member of staff to clock in at 07.30.  I have witnessed staff waiting to Clock in at 07.45 hours.  Like many police officers I choose to start work earlier than my duty time of 08.00, however with the inflexibility that this system operates it gives the employee little or no options.  One has to feel for those officers who regularly relieve their previous shift, say, half an hour early.  As I see it those officers probably come in for work early, say, 07.30, but are unable to clock in due to the lack of tolerance within the system.  Just to add insult to injury, try clocking out at 17.30 hours!  The system comes up with an exception/error.  It’s almost as if we are no longer trusted to perform our duty as police officers.

For whatever reason the ‘powers that be’ seem to amend, change or alter the way we operate as police officers, in doing so they also erode the goodwill that the majority of us provide the service in order to make it work!

An Anon officer