How do you tell the difference between a British Police Officer , an Australian Police Officer and an American Police Officer?
Answer:
You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly, a dangerous looking man with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, raises the knife, and charges. You are carrying a Glock 9mm, and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family.
What do you do?
UK POLICE OFFICERS Answer :
Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question!
Does the man look poor or oppressed?
Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?
Could we run away?
What does my wife think?
What about the kids?
Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?
What does the law say about this situation?
Does the Glock have appropriate safety built into it?
Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children?
Is it possible he’d be happy with just killing me?
Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?
If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me?
Should I call 999?
Why is this street so deserted? We need to raise taxes, have a paint and weed day and make this a happier, healthier street that would discourage such behaviour.
If I raise my gun and he turns and runs away, Do I get blamed when he falls over running away, knocks his head and kills himself? .
If I shoot him, and lose the court case. Does he have the opportunity to sue me, cost me my job, my credibility and I will lose my family home?
AUSTRALIAN OFFICERS Answer:
BANG!
AMERICAN OFFICERS Answer:
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
click….(sounds of reloading)
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
click.
Daughter: ‘Nice grouping, Dad! Were those the Winchester Silver Tips?’
I’m glad to see Inspector Gadget has resumed posting, no word about his brief ‘disappearance’, still, seems to have prompted some more book sales. I have to confess, on seeing that his book had been published I ordered a copy from the good folk at Amazon.
I have PC Copperfield’s book & PC Bloggs, but I’ve read neither of them. I’ll have to see if I can start Gadget’s book on my next set of rest days, if they’re not cancelled again.
Meanwhile, isn’t it grand that everything the police do in America is filmed?
Here are two incidents involving members of the public with guns, each has a different oucome.
In our dealings with society, we encounter many different groups & individuals. All diferent sections & sects, religions & ethnic groups, the weird, the wonderful, the dangerous & the downright strange.
Few groups get as much attention as travellers. Travellers get special attention when they come to the notice of the police.
Suppose someone steals your lawnmower, you follow them to a neighbour’s house. You would rightly expect the police to turn up & at least knock on the door, enquire as the whereabouts of the lawnmower & hopefully arrest the culprit.
If the thief is followed back to a traveller’s site, the chances are that the police won’t go on the site, not without significant backup, by which time the lawnmower has been stripped down, repainted & sold on three times.
If a group of kids are standing at the side of the road chucking bricks at cars, you might expect robust dealings from the old bill. You wouldn’t be too chuffed if a copper turned up & declined to go onto the site to find the little brats because the nearest backup was in custody dealing with a domestic arrest & nobody else can attend.
The fact is that when it comes to going onto travellers’ sites to deal with allegations of crime or disorder, we don’t do it unless there are several of us & possibly mob-handed. It works both ways though. When a traveller calls up from his site saying other travellers from another site have come round & are trashing his home, we don’t go on site until there are sufficient units to secure our own safety, so if they are getting a good kicking, that kicking is going to last a bit longer than they might like; you make your bed, etc, etc.
Why is this? It’s because of our dealings with incidents on travellers’ sites & with traveller individuals suggests that there is a very high liklihood of violence & disorder towards us. It’s not a pleasant experience trying to stop a group of travellers who’ve just raided a petrol station shop & getting a shotgun pointed at you.
Is this health ‘n’ safety or is it racisim?
I don’t know, but it is acceptable to those who run the police.
If I was sent to write down the number plates of all the cars owned by black people on the Ridgewell Estate, did intelligence checks on them & stuck them on an intelligence database, people might be horrified that I could do this & it would be an acceptable tool in the fight against crime. Yet it’s perfectly acceptable to drive round a travellers’ site at 3 in the morning writing down all the number plates & doing checks on the vehicles; it’s about intelligence led policing & is a useful method of tracking criminals.
If I approached you with the expectation that you were going to punch me, I might give off an entriely different vibe that I would if I thought you were going to invite me in for a cup of tea, but it’s OK to believe that if you’re a traveller.
I have no idea what proportion of travellers have criminal records as compared to the average chap on the Ridgwell Estate. I have an idea but if I express it that makes me racist against travellers because I’m going to say that I believe there is a higher percentage of violent criminals amongst that group than most others, yet I’ve only ever dealt with a couple of thousand individuals out of a population of many thousands.
On one of our diversity training days we had to stand in the middle of the room. The trainer read out certain comments & we had to stand in the room according to how much we agreed with the statement. If you agreed strongly you stood by the wall, if you disagreed strongly you stood by the windows, if you agreed a bit you stood somewhere near the middle.
One of the questions was ‘Travellers are more likelty to nick stuff than the average citizen’, or words to that effect. Most people hovered around the middle of the room, there were a few by the ‘disgaree wall’ but only 1 by the windows. When we discussed it away from the trainer over lunch, most people said they thought the correct answer was by the window but they didn’t want to stand there for fear of being labelled as a racist.
I’d really like to find out the figures, it would be nice to know whether I’m a racist or a realist. I wouldn’t mind knowing whether my bosses who sanction or even demand this special treatment are racist too.
Following on from my previous post in May regarding the sneaky way some road safety cash generating departments are fielding speed cameras, comes the latest wheeze from Derbyshire Road Safety Partnership who are extending the use of ‘undercover’ speed detectors.
A camera van mocked up as a scruffy blue worman’s van has been used in the area since March to trap, er catch speeders in the Peak District. The council is doubling the amount of unmarked camera vans (OK, done for effect as doubling sounds more impressive than increasing by one).
They state that they want to give motorists the idea that any vehicle out in the area could be a speed detector & thus deter more motorists from speeding. The fact that this is an area with a very large percentage of visitor & holiday traffic most of whom won’t have a clue that undercover speed detector vans are even legal, (leaving aside that they are against Dept of Transport & ACPO guidelines which say they should be clearly marked & the roads they’re used on clearly signed) seems immaterial to the Partnership. I’m not sure, under the circumstances that it will deter a great many people from speeding, but am bloody sure the revenue will increase.
Of course, it will be the police who cop the flack on this again.
Maybe a greater deterrent would be to have more traffic patrols on the roads of the Peak District as a visible deterrent & a reminder that you may get stopped, not only for speeding, but all the other numpty-ways of (dangerous) driving which speed cameras do nothing to detect.
Just a little statistic I noticed in arecent edition of Police Review, it came from a question put in the Houses of Parliament by MP David Taylor who wanted to know how many violent crimes were recorded in England in 1987, 1997 & 2007.
Vernon Coaker, parliamentary under-secretary for the Home Department said, “The figures are not directly comparable as there have been major changes in the way violent crime is recorded. The term “violence against the person” is now used rather than “violent crime”.
There were 132,947 offences recorded by the police in England in 1987, 233,441 offences in 1997 & 967,638 offences in 2006/2006.
Is that really an increase in over 300% in just 10 years? Britain becoming a more violent place, who’d have thought it?
I don’t get a newspaper at home; I don’t have to since there are usually papers lying around the Control Room or the ‘rest room’ which I can dip into if I have time. (not always possible on a late shift but usually OK on nights). I may have to read them when they are a few days old but they do serve as a source for items for my blog quite often.
One story I don’t recall reading recently was about the police awards for bravery ceremony.
Sixty four officers throughout the country attended the Dorchester Hotel in London to receive their awards.
PC Ricky Gray received a posthumous award for going to the aid of unarmed colleagues who were being held at gunpoint. He was shot & killed. His partner, PC Mat Crisp, also received an award.
Other awards went to PC Philip Quirk of Merseyside Police, who saved the life of a colleague during a knife attack; PC Mark Thompson of Humberside Police; PC Mick Booth Nottinghamshire & PC Paul Davies of Thames Valley Police.
PCs Stephen Porter, Jane Smith & PS David Thompson received awards for preventing a man plunging to his death.
PC Keith Seagrim of Gwent Police spent 2 hours in ice cold water to save the life of a drowning woman. PC Tony Fitzpatrick & DC Neil Fearn of the Met pursued an armed man despite being unarmed themselves & repeatedly being shot at.
It’s such a shame that stories like this don’t get the airing they deserve. The event was sponsored by one of the National Daily papers & that’s the only one I’ve seen it in. I can only assume that a) the others don’t want to mention one of their rivals by reporting the story & b) tales about how the police cock-up or are afraid to offend anyone seem to sell more papers.
Those that have read this blog for any time will know that I’ve never been afraid of espousing an unpopular view, you just need to take a look at my thoughts on the legalisation of drugs if proof were required.
I feel that this post won’t be the most popular amongst serving officers, at least not judging by the opinions I’ve heard over the years.
The DNA Database, hmmm.
There is an argument for the collection of DNA from every resident in the country. It comes from certain quarters in the government & law enforcement. There is no doubt that if everyone’s DNA was on record we would solve an awful lot more crimes. The question is whether it is acceptable for the government/police to hold our DNA for purely speculative searching.
Currently, anyone processed for an arrestable offence is liable to have their DNA taken. If they are subsequently released without charge or found innocent at court, they have no rights to have their DNA samples destroyed. There are cases of completely innocent people having their DNA taken, enquries have revealed, for instance, a case of mistaken identity, and they have been released but their DNA remains on file, for ever.
When the DNA database was first set up, the police were required to destroy samples of anyone found to be innocent, much like fingerprint records. An audit around this time found that 80,000 samples were never destroyed & held illegally. This was changed by legislation and now nobody has the right to have their sample destroyed.
A recent case which appeared in the dailies at the beginning of August featured a Tory MP, Greg Hands, who provided a DNA sample to the pokice after his uncle was murdered; he was eliminated from suspicion but has failed to get the police to destory his sample. He said: “It seems to me that the Home Office and police are building up a national, universal DNA database by stealth. They are trying to get all 60million of us on it by hook or by crook. Parliament has never approved a universal DNA database.”
Supporters of a universal system say that if you have done nothing wrong, what have you got to worry about. But they miss the deeper, ethical issues. DNA is not only a record of my identity, it is a complete code which reveals much more than will be of use in a murder trial. My genetic makeup can reveal details of my ethnicity, of family connections & of my propensity for certain diseases.
It is worng to discriminate on the basis of genetic heritage yet we already see insurance companies having access to genetic information & refusing to insure people based potential medical conditions.
There have already been cases of the police carrying out medical tests on genetic material without the knowledge of thye subject. In one case a witness in court found out he was HIV positive because a sample he had provided in an unrelated matter for which he was not charged, was tested & a lawyer let the cat out of the bag.
With the goverment’s willingness to either ‘lose’ extremely personal information or give it to foreign countries (USA), or their willingness to flaunt legislation (the 80,000 samples held illegally) who can trust them to keep your genetic information a secret between you & them?
There is a balance to be had between the need to be able to solve crime & the rights & privacies of the individual. I think the collection & preservation of DNA from people who are completely innocent tips the balance the wrong way.
I wanted to share an email I received this week. I must be very popular because I get emails like this all the time.
Dear Beloved in Christ,
(oh bloody hell, here comes another rip-off scam email)
It is by the grace of God that I received Christ, having known the truth, I had no choice than to do what is lawful and just in the sight of God for eternal life and in the sight of man for witness of God & is Mercies and glory upon my life.
(What? I take it English isn’t your first language, did they not teach you grammar in con-school?)
I am Mrs. Sarah Baxter, the wife of Mr ricky Baxter, (yes, and I’m the late Jehosephat B Fuckwit the Third) my husband worked with the Chevron/Texaco in Jordan for twenty years before he died in the year 2005. We were married for ten years without a child. (damn, then you won’t have anyone to inherit any legacy, if such a legacy were to exist) My Husband died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. (blimey, that was a brief illness) Before his death we both got born again and dedicated christians. (yep, if you’re going to be born again, doing it before you die is often best, I find)
Since his death I decided not to re-marry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Bible is strongly against. (I suspect not having a child outside the matrimonial home is more to do with the fact that you’re a bloke in a shack somewhere outside Nairobi, you cretin) When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of US$7.5 Million. (Seven Million Five Hundred Thousand U.S.Dollars) with a Bank in Europe. (Funnily enough I know what $7.5Million is without you having to spell it out)
Presently, this money is still with the Bank and the management just wrote me as the beneficiary that our account has been DORMANT and if I, as the beneficairy of the funds, do not re-activate the account; the funds will be CONFISCATED (that’s a bit harsh, making the account dormant after just 5 years, you should switch to the Halifax; I’ve had £11.55 in there for 15 years & they’ve never threatened to make it dormant) or I rather issue a letter of authorization to somebody to receive it on my behalf (note that you need to activate this account) (hmm, so it’s your husband’s account of which you are the beneficiary & you can’t ‘reactivate it’? Don’t you guys have solicitors over there?) as I cannot come over. (over where, your husband worked in Jordan for 20 years, you’re in Jordan still, WTF’s the account?) Presently, I’m in a hospital in Jordan where I have been undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer. (nothing trivial I hope)
I have since lost my ability to talk (ah, that might come in handy later) and my doctors have told me that I have only a few weeks to live. (going for the sympathy angle then, eh?) It is my last wish to see this money distributed to charity organizations anywhere in the World. (you’re so kind) Because relatives and friends have plundered so much of my wealth since my illness, I cannot live with the agony of entrusting this huge responsibility to any of them. (but your quite happy to entrust US$7.5Million to some total stranger you’ve never even met?)
Please, I beg you in the name of God to help me Stand-in as the beneficiary and collect the Funds from the Bank. (It’s possibly going to be simpler & far less trouble to just get them to transfer the money to your local HSBC) I want a person that is God-fearing who will use this money to fund churches, orphanages and widows propagating the word of God and to ensure that the house of God is maintained. (you’ve got the wrong bloke then, I’d probably just keep it & spend it on cheap whores & donuts)
The Bible made us to understand that blessed is the hand that giveth. (yep & if I ever see you my hand will giveth you a fucking good smack in the mouth) I took this decision because I don’t have any child that will inherit this money and my husband’s relatives are not Christians and I don’t want my husband’s hard earned money to be misused by unbelievers. I don’t want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly manner. Hence the reason for taking this bold decision. (nothing to do with all the fuckwits who think they’re getting something for nothing & willingly give total strangers access to their bank accounts because they are greedy & brainless)
I am not afraid of death since I know where I am going to. (yep, so do I & it ain’t heaven) I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. {Exodus14 VS14}says that the lord WILL fight my case and I shall hold my peace. (The Bible also says “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” – Revelation 21:8 and you are a sayer of big porkies.)
I don’t need any telephone communication in this regard because of my soundless voice (I thought losing your speech might come in handy, I won’t be able to ring you to confirm the details then?) and presence of my husband’s relatives around me always. I don’t want them to know about this development. (no, because if they have an ounce of morality they’ll cart you off to the local jail, you naughty man)
With God all things are possible. (well even with God’s help you aint gonna get your hands on my bank account details “to facilitate” the transfer of these non existent funds)
If you are interested in help me fullfill this dream, you can email to my personal email: sbaxter36@rocketmail.com (US$7.5Million in the bank & you’ve still got a poxy rocketmail email address)
Another new piece of legislation came into force recently. This one might actually contain something useful & workable, if the guidelines are followed.
The Criminal Justice & Immigration Act 2008 promises to support victims of crime who use ‘reasonable force’ to defend themselves.
It would be nice to think that the public can take encouragement from the news that provided they act within the law, there will be no chance of them being arrested for getting involved.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw said, “The government supports the right of people to defend themselves, their families & property with reasonable force. We do not want to encourage vigilantism but there can be no justice in a system which makes the victim the criminal.”
Let’s hope this is one law which actually night make a difference for a change.
After my recent blog about the dangers of working on the streets, it was nice to see a little-reported story about Prince Charles visiting Flint House, the police convalescent home.
Flint House enablesinjured or ill officers to have a break & receive some medical treatment in the form of physiotherapy. It is paid for from monthly contributions by serving officers. I’ve been paying towards it for 30 nearly years. The time I had cause to use it I didn’t because I felt guilty about swanning off for two weeks leaving my wife & child at home. From the reports of mates who have availed themselves of the services available, I have regretted turning down the opportunity ever since.
The Prince acknowledged during his visit that the police are facing ‘alarming’ levels of violence on the streets. 90% of officers will receive some form of injury due to violence during their career. More than 3000 officers were admitted to Flint House last year & it has running costs of some £3.8 million a year, none of which comes from public funds.
The Prince visited patients & staff at the centre during his visit. He said, “The threat so many officers are facing in the streets day in day out, is really quite remarkable & often alarming, especially with the kind of violence they are having to put up with & the kind of injuries they are receiving in the line of duty.
“I know quite a large number suffer depression. The fact that there are wonderful staff here to put them back together again, even in a fortnight, is one of the great elements of this centre. It emphasises how much we owe to all our policemen & women in all our towns & cities. They are the thin blue line.”
Nothing to do with policing really, other thyan a general comment about society, but I happened to like the following item which I came across on the Internet the other day & I think says a lot about today’s younger generation.
Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the phrase “It’s not fair” 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule No. 1.
Rule No. 2: The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it’s not fair. (See Rule No. 1)
Rule No. 3: Sorry, you won’t make $40,000 a year right out of high school. And you won’t be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn’t have a Gap label.
Rule No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait ’til you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you feel about it.
Rule No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren’t embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.
Rule No. 6: It’s not your parents’ fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of “It’s my life,” and “You’re not the boss of me,” and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it’s on your dime. Don’t whine about it, or you’ll sound like a baby boomer.
Rule No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.
Rule No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn’t. In some schools, they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. Failing grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone’s feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life. (See Rule No. 1, Rule No. 2 and Rule No. 4.)
Rule No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don’t get summers off. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don’t get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we’re at it, very few jobs are interested in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization. (See Rules No. 1 and No. 2.)
Rule No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.
Rule No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
Rule No. 12: Smoking (or drug use) does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you’re out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That’s what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for “expressing yourself” with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven’t seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.
Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You’re welcome.
I have no idea who this chap is but a quick look on Google revealed he is a writer & broadcaster for some American radio station in Wisconsin.
No, neither did I, but apparently it showed the PCSO scheme in quite a favourable light.
Media regulator Ofcom has announced that it is to investigate as the programme was commissioned by none other than the Home Office who provided £800,000 towards the costs of producing the series.
Leo McKinstry, writing in the Daily Excess said: “Such behaviour by the state belong to totalitarianist socialism, not a supposed democracy. It is hard to imagine a more outrageous misuse of public funds.”
I don’t agree, I think the list of outrageous misuse of public funds is very long indeed, but that’s another story.
Not had a vid in a little while so I thought I’d post a quick one, so to speak.
This links to a nice little bit of kit, perhaps this is how we should deal with knife crime. I’m sure after a few of these the little ****s would be thinking twice about taking out a knife in public.
I’ve had sight of the new forumla for working out my pension commutation.
I don’t know how widespread the ability to commute your pension is, maybe you can do this in every job, I have no idea. Basically, what it means is that when you retire & your pension is due, you get a set amount of money in the form of the pension. You can convert part of the pension to a cash lump sum but get a reduced pension.
There’s a forumla where you can work out what your pension will be if you convert varying amounts of it to the lump sum & what the lump sum is likely to be. It’s based on your age at retirment.
The Federation had a little Exell spreadsheet in which you could enter your rank & age & it would give you a pension forcast.
Unfortunately, it became defunct when the Home Secretary announced the pension changes a couple of months ago. As far as I’m aware, a new calculator thingy hasn’t been released yet.
There’s some new charts floating around at work. You can look up a calculation figure based on your age, rank, inside leg measurement double it, add 27, half it and divide by the amount of complaints received in the last five years.
The calculator on my mobile almost caused my sim card to fry but after a few beeps, squeaks and some smoke it finally came out with a figure, which is over twenty grand more than it would have been prior to the change.
I made the mistake of informing Mrs Weeks of the new-found joy. Ever since I keep finding little post-it notes around the house; “needs replacing” is appearing on all the kitchen appliances, bedroom furniture & bathroom suite items.
I have a feeling that whatever I do when I retire, DIY will form an increasing part of it.
I came across the below set of figures recently. Just have a quick scan through & see if you can guess what the figures represent. Notice that most forces’ figure has risen in the last 10 years (that figures were available) while only a small number have gone down.
Force
1997
2006
Avon & Somerset
£291,760
£3,156,360
Bedfordshire
£348,000
£2,904,420
Cambridgeshire
£593,480
£1,230,120
Cheshire
£431,400
£1,714,200
Cleveland
£129,560
£1,142,640
Cumbria
£195,280
£1,921,380
Derbyshire
£697,520
1,187,840
Devon & Cornwall
£2,446,000
£2,549,220
Dorset
£446,880
£3,095,940
Durham
£128,520
£169,020
Essex
£1,844,920
£3,642,300
Gloucestershire
£250,400
£804,360
Greater Manchester
£2,195,760
£3,616,920
Hampshire
£1,098,400
£2,964,240
Hertfordshire
£704,160
£4,908,300
Humberside
£389,400
£2,203,080
Kent
£1,148,240
£2,830,740
Lancashire
£952,520
£3,471,480
Leicestershire
£232,480
£1,476,360
Lincolnshire
£263,520
£1,545,000
City of London
£20,800
£365,340
Merseyside
£472,320
£1,982,400
Metropolitan
£1,807,520
£6,148,920
Norfolk
£192,200
£1,499,100
Northamptonshire
£148,880
£2,534,520
Northumbria
£1,024,120
£3,112,800
North Yorkshire
£475,160
£375,480
Nottinghamshire
£185,000
£2,574,960
South Yorkshire
£1,562,480
£3,088,920
Staffordshire
£902,080
£3,049,380
Suffolk
£290,840
£2,066,520
Surrey
£213,600
£2,371,200
Sussex
£1,004.960
£2,881,620
Thames Valley
£2,131,400
£8,238,720
Warwickshire
£74,280
£1,818,960
West Mercia
£615,680
£2,772,780
West Midlands
£375,120
£2,669,820
West Yorkshire
£964,120
£2,791,680
Wiltshire
££453,200
£3,087,480
Dyfed Powys
£268,320
£63,240
Gwent
£210,520
£31,860
North Wales
£365,840
£3,569,460
South Wales
£889,080
£1,992,480
Total
£28,510,120
£106,404,720
I suppose a lot of you have you guessed & it won’t be surprise to those who didn’t that the figures represent the amount of income generated by speed cameras.
Note that some ‘incomes’ have gone up by ten times or more. Only North Yorkshire, Dyfed Powys & Gwent have gone down.
This is all grist to the mill of those who criticise speed cameras. i.e. most motorists. The debate continues on how much use speed cameras are for increasing safety & reducing road deaths.
I remain smug in the knowledge that I’ve not contributed a single penny to the above coffers (in direct fines, I accept that my taxes go to provide & maintain the equipment & adminsitrative staff & processes to run the things).
One thing is sure, whether you think it’s good or bad that so much money is now being raised through speed fines, it’s the police who will get the rough end of the criticism stick. “Haven’t you got anything better to do,?” “picking on the motorist again”, despite the fact that the police officers have little or nothing to do with speed cameras, the people who maintain & administrate them just happen to live in the same building.
If I get some time I’ll try & find out how many people have been saved & not injured because we are fining more motorists. It might make a good project for a winter’s evening some time.
We’re not very popular in the press this week, again. People don’t like it that some of us are getting extra cash.
The payments come in the form of three types of additional ‘bonuses’. One of these is for carrying out duties whi are, for instance, particularly gruesome. We used to get an extra allowance for fingerprinting dead bodies - to try & ID them - this, along with several other allowances was the taken away when the government wanted to save a bit of cash.
Payments range from £50 to £500. It was introduced for a wider range of duties & the payment amounts are at the discretion of the chief.
Then came Special Priority Payments. This was in the form of an annual grant to each force of a set amount of extra cash. The chief could use it to top of the wage of a limited percentage of its officers. That percentage is fixed by the government & restricts payments to less than 50% of the force. The chief decides how to split this amount up & what amount to give to each individual department or specialism. It’s typically used in role which are either hard to fill, dangerous or onerous, or where staff are disappearing to other forces, for instance the Met, who can offer a higher salary due to the London allowances.
It’s a very divisive payment & there is a lot of anger & argument from departments which feel they ought to receive it but don’t. It often goes to firearms officers, senior detectives, CID & not usually to front line 24-hour shift officers.
The third payment scheme is Competency Related Pay & is for officers over a certain amount of service who are at the top of their pay scale. It’s a payment you can claim if you evidence the fact that you are good at your job. This basically means copying someone else’s report saying how good you are & changing the name to your own.
I’m not that certain about the validity or requirement reasons for these payments, to be honest. I only get the third one which amounts, I think, to an extra amount of about £80 (taxable) per month.
Mike Craik, chief constable of Northumbria is more forthright. He described the payments as “an inapropriate way of rewarding public services” but went on to say he’d prefer to see a better pay scale. He criticised the bonus payment scheme by saying “I have seen the most grisly things you could ever come across, but that is the job I signed up to”.
His criticism of the payments didn’t stop him trousering a share of a £47,000 bonus payment to him & 4 of his senior staff.
So Hampshire Police & Portsmouth City Council have come up with a radical way to get down with the kids; they’ve released a set of Top Trumps featuring members of the local policing team. The cards have a photo of the officer/PCSO together with facts & figures with which kids can play the Top Trumps game, measuring, for instance, pedal power, agility, problem solving & strength against other cards.
I’m not sure who was first but Merseyside Police also have a set featuring the Mounted Section.
West Yorkshire Police clearly don’t feel photos of their own officers will go down quite so well so they offer a set of Top Trumps on their website which feature local Rugby stars.
Amazingly innovative, these cards, except we were doing them maybe 20 years ago. They came in sets & all the local schools were encouraged to approach officers to ask for the cards to complete their sets. We were encouraged to patrol near schools at chucking out time so that the kids would speak to us. We handed them out during school visits. I must see if I can find a set, I’m sure there must be a set or two in the loft.
It had to happen; with people selling their second cars, hauliers going out of business left, right & centre & me walking twenty miles to work in order ti earn enough cash in a day to pay for a teaspoon of petrol (that last bit was a lie, I actually use a 3litre turbo to get to work). The police are being told to cut down on fuel bills.
Apparently, the Met’s fuel bill has gone up £1.5million to £12.2million. It’s 6,500 vehicles cover 63million miles a year.
Devon & Cornwall’s fuel bill has risen by £500,000.
Some forces are advising officers of ways to use less fuel. Driving at 50mph rather than 70, turning the engine off at traffic lights - which reminds me of a chap who was also low on fuel, rather than turn his engine off at the traffic lights, he turned it off on a hill, so he could coast down the hill into town. Sadly he forgot that by doing so, the hill was on a bend, he managed to engage the steering lock & the 3p he saved in fuel costs was somewhat wiped out by the £3,000 repair bill for his car & the £6,000 his insurance had to fork out for a lady’s rebuolt wall.
What else was there, oh yes, to turn the air conditioning off. Air conditioning? I never had air conditioning in my police cars.
In fairness, these new guidelines, which apparently will form part of the new police driving manuals, are not designed to restrict going like a bat-out-of-hell on emergency shouts.
I remember in the early 80s we had restrictions on petrol. The panda cars were restricted to 30 miles a shift, traffic cars had a bit extra. Woe betide anyone who went over their limit per shift. There were inspectors whose job it was to go through the vehicle log books each day just to check nobosy had done more than 30 miles. There were apocryphal tales of people jacking the rear axle up & sticking the car in reverese for an hour or so to wind the clock back.
Being a police officer, I find it very satisfying to hear about different sections of society advancing equality with us white, heterosexual males.
It was with great pleasure that I embraced the news that females are doing their bit to catch up with us blokes.
To show how much deserved progress they are making one needs only to check out the figures for violent attacks which shows that those done by females have doubled in 5 years.
Last year, 87,200 women & girls were arrested for violent attacks, about 240 a day, way to go girls!
Critics say that there are clear links between an increase in females attacking & increased drinking opportunities which they say has been fuelled by 24 hour drinking (if there ever was such a thing).
I have my doubts that the relaxed licensing laws have anything to do with it really. I mean, let’s look at the stats;
2002/03 - 42,200 females arrested
2003/04 - 53,500 an increase of 11,300
2004/05 - 66,800 an increase of 13,300
2005/06 - 78.900 an increase of 12,100, this is the year the new drinking laws came in
2006/07 - 87,200 an increase of 8,300.
I’m no statistician but the increase year on year was not so great after the law changed as it was before.
Perhaps if pubs really were open 24 hours instead of a few extra hours in some of the pubs then we might follow the pattern and even get a decrease in the amount of female violence. But what would that do to embrace equality?
Following on from my 
