Another entry in my Scum of the Week awards appeared in the mirror in glorious technicolor captured on a police-fitted CCTV system.
Unusually, this week’s Pondlife is a female. Step forward 37-year-old druggie Claire Taylor. She befriended 90-year-old dementia sufferer Margarete Kileen in Hampshire &Â used to scrounge cash from her for drugs. When Mrs Kileen’s daughter found out she put a stop to it informed police who installed a camera at the lady’s home.
Taylor was captured on video breaking in & threatening the 90-year-old, who was dressed in only a towel, with a knife before stealing jewellery & cash & tying her victim to a wardrobe.
She was jailed for an indeterminate sentence at Portsmouth Crown Court this week &Â must serve at least three years 265 days.
So the Inspector of Constabulary has come out with this year’s police league tables. Chief officers up & down the country will be either slapping each other on the back & toasting the performance-related bonuses or looking for who to blame for their force’s poor performance (hint, it won’t be the chief officers who are at fault).
The forces regarded as performing well will have met the target set by the government. Unfortunately, those targets don’t appears to be aimed at actually doing what the public want, i.e. sorting out the anti-social chavs & getting to their burglary in the same century. But at least we’ll have knocked on thousands of criminals doors to arrest them (who are out) & will have crimed loads of teenagers calling each other slags on Facebook.
As a victim of ant-social behaviour myself, IÂ have experience of the way the local police deal with it, as a controller in a police control room not sending officers to such reports, I have my own part to play, but in my defence, it’s not because I don’t think anti-social behaviour is important, it’s because the only officers tasked by the chief to be able to actually attend such reports can’t because they are too busy making sure the force meets its targets.
It will be interesting to see whether all the furore today about police not dealing with anti-social behaviour results in some new policies to attend these all such reports say, within 30 mins, & what other assignments they decide we need not deal with any more.
Talking, as I was yesterday, of people using the latest technology for their own anti-social or illegal purposes, news today of two people arrested for one of the latest crazes for people without a brain.
Laser pens are generally sold for people to use in displays, they are the modern equivalent of the old school stick (what are they called)? used by teachers to point out items on the blackboard. Now you can shine a laser at the board to point out items of interest or importance. They are pretty powerful beams of light & don’t just stop at the classroom wall. Astronomers use them to point out items of interest in the sky. You can buy one off eBay for a few quid.
Idiots have discovered a new sport, shining them in the eyes of other people. It is, apparently, even more fun if you shine it in the eyes of someone who is in charge of a mode of transport, preferably with lots of people on board to cause maximum danger. So we get people in their bedrooms shining them in the eyes of motorists as they drive down the street, people targeting train drivers & even aeroplanes.
Police helicopters are targeted. The pilots risk becoming distracted at best & temporarily blinded at worst.
Two people were arrested this week for shining a laser at the Bedfordshire Police helicopter as it flew over Luton. They have been released on bail.
Oh dear, Facebook are in the news again. It seems the world is starting to realise what we in the police have known for a few years, that people will use whatever modern technology or innovations they can to get their own little seedy way.
As I posted recently, complaints about behaviour posted on Facebook makes up for a significantly disproportionate amount of police time. Two stories emerege this week of Facebook being a significant factor in two murders. In the first, Peter Chapman, 33, was jailed for a minimum of 35 years on Monday after confessing to the kidnap, rape and murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall. He targeted the female via Facebook while pretending to be a teenage lad interested in meeting her.
In the other case Paul Bristol, 25, murdered Camille Mathurasingh, 27 after seeing her photos on Facebook with another male.
Police are criticising Facebook for failing to add a ‘panic’ button to its site where children can alert the authorities to suspected cases of grooming, despite many other social networking sites adopting the policy.
A quick trawl thrugh recent Facebook-related problems in the news this week comes up with:
A bogus Vicoria Police (Australia) Facebook page used for gay sex-trawling & racist thuggery.
A Facebook page set up to accuse an innocent man of being Jamie Bulger’s child-killer, John Venables.
Australian Schools calling for police to deal with cyber-bullies who often use Facebook to bully their victims.
The arrest of a 23-year-old teaching assistant alleged to have have sex with a 12-year-old pupil after he posted messages about it on Facebook.
Riot police being called to deal with gatecrashers after a teenager’s party was adveryised on Facebook, again.
These are just the stories which reach the national news, there are thousands of complaints about Facebook-related behaviour every day.
Notwithstanding that many Facebook-related complainants probably actually just need to ignore it & get on with their lives, there are lots of more serious matters. I’ve not had to investigate any complaints so I don’t know how receptive & quick they are to assist. Perhaps some of my readers could update me as to how they generally get on. But I can’t help thinking that Facebook really doesn’t do enough to stamp down on unacceptable, dangerous or illegal behaviour.
A story grabbed my eye today, particularly because I posted a related article recently.
The Telegraph reports “Fat police could put World Cup fans ‘at risk“, which talks about the level of obesity in the South African police, specifically at Port Elizabeth which is due to host England fans during the World cup this summer.
A study of Metro officer at Port Elizabeth has found that 54% of them are ‘medically obese’. ‘Experts’ are concerned that the local old bill won’t be able to cope with any potential violence, won’t be able to chase criminals or react quickly in a crisis. I wonder how much of their worry is based on the fact that it is England fans & therefore are they expecteing a higher chance of trouble, per chance?
World Cup organisers have faith in the South African Police’s ability to keep order. Meanwhile, a Port Elizabeth councillor sums the whole thing up quite succinctly, “The solution is simple – the police should eat less and do more exercise.”
When you blog every single day for more than two years it can sometimes be a real problem coming up with material. Occasionally, in a period of creativity, I might write up a couple of entries & save one for another time, but 95% of the time I write the entry on the day it gets posted, often at around quarter to midnight. I have used the same procedure for my Christmas shopping for many years; I leave it until Christmas Eve because if I do it earlier, I know I don’t have to actually buy anything as there’s always another day, if I leave it until the day before Christmas I know I have to get a present.
Today I’m making this entry at 9.30pm, I know I really have another two & a half hours to come up with something. I’ve spent 15 minutes checking out the news headlines for the day, this is where I get a fair proportion of my inspiration, & nothing has struck me as particularly worthy of comment. I’ve looked so far down the entries at Google that I’m back to yesterday’s story.
I’ve dipped back into the memory banks for a story to tell but my mind’s a blank.
I can’t even recount much from work, believe it or not, despite stories to the contrary recently, we had a really quiet day, boy did it drag, which is probably just as well as we were so short staffed out on division we had to get a couple of officers from a neighbouring division to come over for the shift. They only ended up going to 2 jobs & one of those was in yet another division because they were so short they asked us to attend one of their immediate assignments.
The day really dragged.
I got into my chair around 15 minutes before the shift started & didn’t get up for my first wee until 4 hours later, not because I couldn’t, because I was so lethargic through inaction.
It was one of those days you look forward to for a break, but when it happens you just spend the day moaning how quiet it is because it drags so much, you can’t win. Of course, you can’t say the ‘Q’ word lest you have to buy everyone donuts. Any mention of the ‘Q’ word is a sure-fire forerunner to a fully laden Jumbo jet crashing into a petro-chemical plant next to the biggest school in the area.
Regular readers will know I’ve not been the biggest fan of senior officers. There have been only a few I have had deep, honest respect for, ones who I know I could have relied on to back me up in a tight spot & ones who I honestly believed weren’t in it for their own benfit.
Embarassing news for Thames Valley Police this week as one of their Chief Superintendents has been arrested on suspicion of arson, fraud & perverting the course of justice.
The case stems over an incident where Chief Superintendent Jim Trotman reported that his police hire car had been set alight. He was arrested at work at Chad Valley’s (in-joke) HQ when he arrived for work last month. He reported he had been the victim of an arson attack & named a barrister who he alleged was having an affair with his wife as the main suspect. The investigation centred over an insurance claim he made in relation to the ‘arson’.
It will be interesting to see how this one pans out.
It seems it’s not just in the UK that police chiefs don’t want their officers having freedom of speech in their private lives.
I have posted several times about my views on the legalisation of drugs & support the aims – and link to – LEAP; Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Canadian cop, David Bratzer, is instrumental in that organisation. He speaks on the subject in Canada & has testfied as a Senate Committee in Ottawa.
He has been gagged this week by the Victoria Police chief who has stopped him speaking at a harm reduction meeting in Victoria. They say the public would be ‘confused’ by his private views & would not be able to tell the difference between his personal views & those of the police department.
The British Columbia Civil Rights Association has filed a complaint against the department accusing them of gagging free speech. What a pity no such organisation has come out in support of UK cops’ free speech & freedom to belong to any legal political party, for instance.
There is a petition supporting cops’ freedom of speech at the LEAP website.
So the Yorkshire Ripper is up at court trying to find out a date when he will be elligible for parole & subsequent release.
Back in May 2008, I reported that Peter Sutcliffe would be seeking his release once he had served 30 years. Sutcliffe, the country’s third most prolific serial killer of the 20th century, was given TWENTY life sentences for 13 murders & 7 attempted murders back in 1981.
I can remember, as a young probationer, like everyone else in the country, devouring information in the daily papers on the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. We used to share papers around the canteen as we chomped our egg, bacon, sausage, mushroom, tomato, peas & chips on an early turn in the days when every nick had a canteen.
Sutcliffe’s legal team are pushing to get a parole date, doubtless the ‘Human Rights’ words will be used. It seems strange that even in the most humane of societies that anyone can believe someone who savagely murders 13 people could ever again be considered for release. If ever there was a case where life should mena life, surely this is it?
Richard Ford, of the Times, isn’t convinced Sutcliffe is any nearer to release, opining that he has several barriers in his way, not least of which is convincing a mental health tribunal that he is no longer ‘mental’. It would be hard to believe that someone who is driven to murder or try to murder 20 people could ever be ‘right in the head’. And then he will have to convince the parole board that he is no longer a risk to the public. Given the amount of people they have found to be ‘of no further risk’ who they’ve released only to see them murder again, I’m not convinced this one will pose such a difficult barrier.
I suspect there is more news to come on this story. I, for one, hope Mr Ford is correct.
So here I am on another busy late shift. I have one double-crewed car which should be there for the immediate jobs that come in, the 999 people being beaten up (usually domestic-related), crimes in progress (druggies who have stolen another pack of meat from Asda), & 4 single-crewed cars.
There are 25 ‘jobs on the box’ meaning these are jobs which we either haven’t managed to attend yet or the caller has reported something & wants to see police but then isn’t available to actually see the police.
I go through the jobs to try & work out a kind of importance level to see which to send someone to first.
The first phone call of the day is from an officer saying they and one of the other cars won’t be available as they have to do reports from one of the jobs they attended yesterday because, if they don’t get their report in, they’ll get in trouble with the department which checks reports are in on time.
So we’re down to 1 double-crewed unit & 2 single-crewed.
The early shift still have several officers at a cannabis factory in a rented semi, they’ve been there a few hours & aren’t anywhere near finished their search. The liklihood is that the early turn inspector will be after late turn resources to take over, so that’ll be good.
The first immediate of the day comes in & involves a ‘violent’ shoplifter who is playing security staff up at the local shopping precinct. He gets nicked & his accomplice makes off. Units are sent out to search for the ‘getaway’ car while my only double-crewed unit make their way back to the nick with ‘one on board’.
Great, down to 2 single crewed units & still none of the jobs on the box sorted.
Trouble is, while the immediate is being dealt with the 2 single-crewed units are teeing up arrest enquiries. These are usually attempts to show someone in an office that we are trying to fulfill arrest quotas by endlessly knocking on people’s doors to arrest them for failing to appear at court. Hang on sarge, we’ve got 25 jobs on the box, including 2 dwelling burglaries (high priority) who have been waiting several hours already, plus a couple of domestics one of which looks quite nasty (high priority), you say to the late turn patrol sergeant, and you’re organising arrest enquiries?
Ah, he says back, we’ll get our nuts chewed off by divisional management if we don’t meet our arrest quotas. The fact that I’ll get my nuts chewed off by providing a piss-poor service to the public falls on deaf ears.
So we’re down to no units, 25 jobs on the box, make that 29 ‘cos 4 more came in in the last 30 mins. The neighbourhood officers all seem to be on rest day, courses or invisible apart from PC Evans, who takes a couple of jobs off you that are not on his patch but he’s in the area (he’s like that, bless him), and a hand ful of PCSOs who are mostly keen as mustard but can only deal with a limited amount of jobs. Thankfully, if any anti-social youth or parking problems come in, you know you’ll have that covered.
The 2 units on arrest enquiries tee up their enquiry but don’t actually go to it for ages. If you tell them to go to a job in the meantime they’re always ‘just about to carry out an arrest enquiry’. Eventually, after about 90 minutes and another 6 jobs which have come in, they leave the nick & head off for the arrest enquiry.
The double-crewed car is still in custody, they’ve only just got their prisoner booked in because other prisoners have being queueing ahead of them, so you know they’re out of the game for a while.
Mr Nobby calls in, he’s disgusted about the way police are treating him, he’s been waiting 2 hours for someone to sort out his bloody neighbours, if someone doesn’t arrive in 30 minutes he’s going to the national papers. I envisage myself on the front of the Sun “Police Controller fails to send officer to stop neighbour calling man a twat, nobody dies“. He demands to speak to the Chief Constable, we offer the local sergeant & pass the call on to the local sergeant. Whether the local sergeant calls him back I have no idea but the job is still on the box when I finish work.
The cannabis farm is still being dealt with & although a couple of hours into the shift the early turn inspector hasn’t asked the late turn to take over, not that we have anyone to take over.
We’re still on the phone to several of the people still waiting for attendence from the morning. CSI have managed to cover both the burglaries, so although they haven’t had a police officer yet, at least they’ve had some kind of response, so perhaps we can put them behind the woman who is expecting her violent ex to turn up at any time, even though if he does we’ll probably have to send a dog vehicle from the other side of the county or persuade traffic that they are police officers first & traffic officers second & can they take a domestic, please?
The diversity unit inspector from HQ rings & asks us what we’re doing about the Jewish man who has had grafitti on his garage wall. We’re not doing anything at the moment because all our officers are tied up. But it’s a racist incident & force policy says we should get someone there within the hour & it’s been 5 hours already. Force policy also says I should get someone to my burglary victims within an hour not to mention my vulnerable domestic victims so who trumps whom? The diversity inspector harrumphs & says to get someone there ASAP. I guess he has little boxes he needs to tick as well.
Another double-crewed unit books on, good news. They are tasked for specific patrols under an operation to reduce community fear of burglary & increase detection rates. This means they have to drive round the estates not catching burglars. They give it an operational name which means an inspector in charge of local operations can tick some boxes for his PDR & show he is doing something to increase community satisfaction, it also means that unless someone is being murdered, we can’t use those two officers, even to go & see our burglary victims, bad news.
We’re now over 3 hours into the shift. The 2 single-crewed units doing urgent reports are ‘just about to finish’ when a missing person from another police area is located & an immediate domestic comes in. They get turfed out of the office to the domesic & end up arresting a bloke for smacking his wife in the face & pushing her over.
We have to send PC Evans from neighbourhood to babysit the ‘misper’. Between the three of us – 2 controllers & him, we spend about 2 hours on the phone over the course of the evening trying to get someone from the care home in another police area to come & collect him, failing that – it does fail – we try to arrange to meet the other force on the county border to hand him over to them so they can return him, that also fails, in the end we stick him in a police car & PC Evans drives 50 miles to the care home, but that isn’t until much later.
So, where are we, oh yeah, 34 jobs on the box, 1 double-crewed car in custody with a violent shoplifter, 2 single-crewed cars in custody with a violent wife-beater, 2 single-crewed cars just come free from 2 arrest enquiries (they snuck another one in) both of which were negative (they weren’t at home, like they’re not at home at 90% of arrest enquiries). They are now free so I task one to go to a burglary that came in about 6 or 7 hours previously, and the other to go & reassure the woman who has pushed her kitchen table against her door in case her ex actually carries out his text threats to firebomb her house.
The call-takers keep sending messages from the other force & the care home who still haven’t sorted out the misper yet, this just interrupts our flow of work & is unproductive for us as we keep having to stop what we’re doing (sending PCSOs to everything) & you sometimes just want to tell them to go & bother someone else.
The late turn inspector, who is now at the cannabis factory, decides to close it up & finish off the search/siezures in daylight hours the next day, this will require 2 officers to scene-guard. We suggest the double-crewed spec ops unit, but we need the inspector’s authority because they are on ‘protected’ duties, driving round estates. It’s fine so we send them. In the mean time & unbeknown to us the two units who are on their way to our burglary victims & domestic victims are scarfed off by the sergeant to do the scene guard & the burglary patrol is told to resume their patrols.
Twenty minutes later one of our single-crewed units arrives at the crack house & reveals the new plan to us. Great. We then have to ring up the lady with the table against her door, who we have spoken to 3 times already, the last to say an officer would be arriving soon, & tell her back to plan B – we have no idea when an officer will get to her, the most we can realistically do, is tell her to stick a couple of sacks of coal on top of the table (we don’t, but it feels like that sometimes).
It’s 2 hours until the end of the shift, amazingly, largely due to PCSOs we have reduced the jobs on the box down to around 24 but we have a new missing person report & an allegation of a sexual assault. We consult with the sexual assault department who advise us to send a unit we haven’t got to take the initial report & pass it on to them later. It’s a historical assault i.e. it didn’t happen today so it’s not quite as bad as it sounds but will be another job to pass on to the night shift.
Another burglary comes in. We persuade the burglary patrol to take it but on the way they stop a car & breath test the driver. Another successful burglary patrol have a prisoner & another victim to pass on to night turn. We have had a couple of immediates in the mix but fortunately, a firearms unit was in the next town & took one of them & a traffic unit took another; they didn’t result in any arrests.
It’s getting towards night shift so we need to go through the jobs to determine which ones we think night shift should go to & which ones can be put off until tomorrow. We make 13 phone calls advising people (some for the second or third day running) that we won’t attend tonight & will put them on the list for tomorrow. We ask 5 people how long they are prepared to wait up & end up keeping 2 of those jobs open & pushing 3 back to tomorrow. We leave 6 other jobs open for night shift.
When I go off duty PC Evans is still on his way back from another force having taken little Jonny back to his care home. Our double-crewed emergency response car is still dealing with their shoplifter. The burglary car is doing reports on their drink-driver who blew 85 (limit 35). Two single-crewed units will wait another 90 minutes before being relieved by night shift. The other two are still dealing with their domestic assault.
I wonder how many of the jobs from today will still be ‘on the box’ when I come in tomorrow.
I’ve mentioned many times about the levels of stress in the control room. I dont want to over- dramatise it as I guess most jobs have their own very different stresses, but it is there.
One of the indicators is often the sound of a headset or telephone being slammed down swiftly followed by the sound of rapid footsteps as the controller heads for the door. This can be for periods ranging from a few minutes to the whole of the rest of the shift.
Tears & tantrums aren’t strangers to the control room although regarding the tears it’s usually the females who exhibit their over-stresses in that way. I don’t know whether the women are more easily affected by stress or whether the blokes just hide it more. I suspect that men just aren’t comfortable admitting that they have the same vulnerabilities.
I’m generally quite a laid back type of bloke. People I work with describe me as calm & unruffled &Â think I’m the last one to get stressed. I put this down to the swan effect; all calm & serene on the surface but under the water the legs are paddling like fuck.
So it was interesting to see people’s reactions when the following happened in the same week:
We were on a busy late shift. Amanda was working one of the busy towns. She’d had to deal with lots of jobs with not lots of people to sort them & had to make a couple of phone calls which, judging by her raised abrupt tones, didn’t go too smoothly. It actually did culminate in a slamming down of a phone & a dash out of the room. When this happens most people know about it, if they don’t see or hear it direct they soon catch on to the comments “did you see Amanda?”, “what’s wrong with Amanda?”
She is followed out of the room by one of her mates & a supervisor. They offer comfort, support & sympathy. Amanda cools down for 40 minutes before coming back into the room & over the next hour she gets visits from other members of the team asking her how she is with consolling hands on shoulders or gently friendly rubs of the arm. She gets told that if she needs a break to let someone know & they’ll sort it.
The very next day I’m on a busy shift. I have calls coming from inside & out which I can’t service. An off-duty officer calls in asking for police attendance. I have nobody to send, he is following someone in his own car. He calls back a few minutes later, I still have nobody to send.
He calls back a few more minutes later & unhappy that there is nobody to send – he is presumably more important than everyone else who wants to see an officer – he asks to be put through to the control room inspector.
A few minutes later the inspector comes over & asks what I’m doing about Pc Bloggs. I reply something along the lines of nothing, I dont have anyone to send. I am busy trying to deal with a major RTC. The inspector suggests I need to send someone to Pc Bloggs. I say something about why should Pc Bloggs – off duty – have a better service than anyone else over a suspected traffic offence anyway I still don’t have anyone to send. I am quite stressed by now, quite short & dismissive of the inspector who is interrupting urgent work I need to be doing. No more is said & the inspector walks off.
Nobody gets sent to Pc Bloggs. For all I know Pc Bloggs might still be following the car who’s rear lights might still not be working.
The next day I get called in to the office by the control room inspector. I have a good relationship with him. I have a good relationship with everyone on the shift, which can’t be said for several shift members. I think its because I am easy-going & don’t hold grudges.
The inspector gives me a bollocking for the way I spoke to him. He openly admits that after the incident, two (female) supervisors who had overheard, come up to him later & say the way I spoke go him was out of order, they say ‘are you going to let him get away with it?’ On reflection he agrees saying that although it is out of character it is unacceptable &Â he has to be seen not to tolerate that kind of behaviour on the shift.
I find it strange that he knows how out of character it is, yet fails to ask if there was any reason for it.
I take the bollocking & walk out, only to spend the next couple of hours stewing.
During the second half of the shift I ask to see the inspector in the office. I tell him the reason I was unusually short is because prior to coming to work I am told a close family member has an incurable disease &Â has just months to live.
I make the observation that if one of the girls on the shift exhibits stress they get taken out of the room, offered support & comfort & time to de-stress but if one of the blokes does it, he gets a bollocking.
He has no real answer.
My relative dies 5 weeks later. The time from diagnosis until death is just 2 months.
The t-shirts have been produced in response to Scotland failing to make the world cup while England are through &Â show the words “ABE / Anyone But England / South Africa / 2010. The shirts were produced in the context of the historic rivalry between English & Scottish football fans.
An officer visited the store & pointed out that the shop display showcasing the t-shirts, which have been on sale for 3 months, could cause offence & may be ‘inapropriate’ suggesting the store might like to consider removing them.
A spokesman for the company – Slanj – said: “We have been selling this T-shirt for the past three months and we’ve had a great response. Even the English people who come into the store think it’s a laugh and just a bit of tongue-in-cheek football banter. We’re certainly not being racist. We are the same race as the English. It’s just daft to say it’s offensive.”
A spokesman for Grampian Police said: “The primary role of any police force is to preserve the peace and we would be failing in our duty if we did not make people aware of the potential for disturbance such a window display could cause. The Grampian area, in common with the rest of the country, has recorded incidents relating to nationality and we have a responsibility to do our best to ensure that incidents of this nature are kept to a minimum.
“The public expect no less of us.”
Hmmm, I’m not sure the public actually do really expect the police to be dealing with such issues, attending their burglaries the same day & moving on the drunken & abusive chavs from outside their houses might have a priority far higher up the list from a jokey t-shirt, especially as it transpired that the police had not received one single complaint over the t-shirts.
I suspect there won’t be many people in the circles that inhabit the pages of this blog who will be particularly upset about one of the headlines in today’s news.
There can’t be much worse, as an inmate of her majesty’s finest, than being a former police or prison officer amongst all the other lags. But then most people in this situation are masters of their own destiny & probably deserve little sympathy.
So I don’t have much for former Met Commander Ali Dizaei who was was assaulted this week in a attack at Edmunds Hill Prison by an inmate who poured a bucket of excrement over his head & then punched him unconscious.
Violence is rarely right, certainly, unprovoked violence but I can’t help having a grudging admiration for the phrase, ‘what goes around comes around’.
I see the Met still hasn’t sacked him from the police force, I wonder what the delay is.
I remember back in the day being taken for self-defence training by Sgt Manning. He had a wonderful turn of phrase.
Two or three times a year we had to attend a day’s self-defence training. This variously involved baton, kwikcuff, CS spray &Â unarmed defensive tactics. Some basic fitness was sometimes thrown into the mix.
Sgt Manning would stand in front of the assembled group& spout forth a mini lecture of the day on various related topics. His voice was strong & direct. I heard he was a regimental sergeant major in a previous life, I dont knowhow true it was but he certainly had that type of air about him.
On this particular occasion he was waxing lyrical on the benefits of a good warm up.
“I can’t stress highly enough the benefits of a good warm-up. To that end I rely on my three S’s. I suggest you do the same. In this job you may need to go from a’ hands off cocks’ to an ‘on socks’ state of readiness at a moment’s notice & this is where your three S’s will stand you in good stead.”
He paused for effect before continuing. “Your three S’s will look after you whether you’re chasing a great train robber, arresting a teenage tearaway or battling an escaped tiger. Whatever you do, always have your three S’s in the back of your mind, especially important in today’s training.”
He walks up to a pile of flexible plastic practice batons that we can attack each other with without breaking bones, picks up one & strikes his open palm, planting both feet a yard apart as if to reinforce his next remarks.
“Your three S’s, remember them &Â remember them well.., Speed… Skill… and Flexibility.”
It seems that some detectives are annoyed about the happy-go-lucky show, Eastenders. They fear that the public will think that solving murders is as easy as chatting to the regulars of the Queen Vic for a few minutes a week, and that taking bribes & chasing innocent victims off roofs is par for the course.
I refer, of course, to the murder (fictional) of Archie Mitchell which reached its climax last week when the show put out a live episode, the follow up of which has led to the local Old Bill closing the case believing (wrongly) that the murderer has met his death in a swallow dive onto the fruit & veg stall in Albert Square.
Detective Inspector Alan Kalbfell of City of London Police, is a spokesman for the National Detectives Forum, he said: “It is frustrating to see our trade portrayed in such a bad manner. EastEnders is watched by a broad range of people, from young to old, and they will think this is how detectives operate. It’s not.
“There is no doubt this is damaging to our profession. There is no way that 99.9 per cent of people doing our job would dream off discussing an ongoing case with people on the street if it could prove detrimental to the case. Yet EastEnders have no problem showing this. It makes us look unprofessional.”
I suspect a TV soap making us look unprofessional is the least of our worries, we tend to do a good job of that ourselves, sometimes.
A spokeswoman for the Police Federation said: “We just hope that EastEnders viewers realise the show is completely fictional because real detectives do not act like this.”
I sometimes despair of the supervisors in the control room. I often wonder if they actually have a clue about how their staff perform.
What happens on the control room is a 999 call comes in & goes to one of a group of people tasked to answer the phones. They are responsible for taking all the information from the caller, sorting out what’s important what’s irrelevant, condensing it all onto a computer log & sending it over to a controller. The controller’s job is to decide who to send & to provide them with as much information as possible to assist the police units in dealing effectively with whatever the job is.
As a controller you can only present what information is in front of you. This is when you have to rely on the call-taker doing a good job by actually asking the right questions & typing it into the log.
You’d have thought that a suitable period sitting with an experienced call-taker learning the ropes & several months of taking calls for between 8 & 12 hours a day you’d learn what is important what isn’t.
Sadly, this is quite often not the case. There are certain members of staff who, when you see their number on log you instantly know it will be what we in the trade call a ‘crap log’.
A crap log usually fails to contain pretty vital information. Often this includes, but is not limited to, the exact location of the job – in a road that might be 5 miles or more long “London Road” isn’t particularly helpful; details of the offender – it’s amazing how many times basic details like sex, colour or age are missed off when someone is reporting watching someone in the act of a criminal offence or suspicious behaviour, and when they make off, their direction of travel. All details fundamental to trying to catch someone;Â vehicle details – ‘offender made off in a vehicle’ isn’t the most helpful of comments, was it an artic, a car or a quad bike?
It all makes my job more difficult than it could be. We often send a little electonic note to the calltaker asking for a description for instance. Quite often you get a reply ‘informant couldn’t give a description’, this is often code for ‘I forgot to ask’ because when you, as a controller, stop what you’re doing to ring the informant back direct, it’s amazine how much detail they can provide, if only they are asked. I often ring people back when I should be concentrating on sorting the job out because one thing in life is a given, no matter how many times you announce on the radio that there is no further information available, some police officer will always call up asking for more information.
So we get the same people sending the same crap logs. We’ve been told not to approach the staff directly about it in case they take it the wrong way so we flag it up for the supervisors, who, judging by the lack of improvement over periods of time, appear to do fuck all.
Worse, the people who are crap at taking logs get promoted, so how the hell the management expect them to spot a crap log much less deal with it is beyond me. We had a new intake of staff into the control room recently, it was down-heartening, if not suprising to see that some of the people training them are the worst offenders.
