Plod hut up for sale

[Nicepix 5,650]

1 hour ago, ChrisJones said:

Private sector too but they tend to get sh*t-canned instead of promoted. I've dealt with pretty much everything you've outlined and we're just a small satellite office in an international corporation. The sentiment that rank holds knowledge has always cost them money but for some reason they all refuse to listen to the people that actually have to do the job.

The police as an organisation is a complicated animal and very few people actually understand the issues involved. But, back in 1993 there was a TV program, Troubleshooter, where Sir John Harvey-Jones who had run the multi-national giant ICI was asked to look into the workings of my force and make recommendations. One of them was the amount of time front line police officers were spending typing 14 or 15 pages of reports to make a file for prosecution, much of the content of some pages was repeated over and over again. Each page had the offender's name, date of birth CRO number, address, date and time of offence(s), etc, etc. Sir John argued that a simple computer program could be set up that filled in all that information on each page so only the things that were different needed to be typed. It took them 18 years to implement that simple tine saving measure.

But the truth is that the police lost control of their destiny in the early 1990's with the advent of the mobile phone. All of a sudden the amount of calls coming in multiplied and continued to multiply year on year. Everyone got a mobile phone and because of the contracts they called the police on 999 not at their own expense. The amount of trivia that had to be investigated was phenomenal. If someone saw something remotely suspicious, whereas before they had to wait until they got home or find a phone box, all of a sudden they could make a call immediately. The gaffers never predicted this and from that time on the police lost control of the Incident Queue.

This was compounded by closing down all the Divisional call handing and centralising it. Instead of an old, seasoned bobby picking up the phone and applying a liberal does of common sense calls were processed by naive civilians with no police knowledge, no local knowledge and reliant on a menu to ask the caller questions. Again, all kinds of dross got through the filter and they ran out of bobbies to go to jobs.

Then you can add the Hate Crime and Crime Recording Guidelines implemented by Government. Whereas before if a bobby thought someone was telling porkies or that the offence was not a police matter it would be 'cuffed' or sidelined. Now, a drunk gets lawfully evicted from a nightclub, calls police on his mobile reporting an assault, by the time Plod gets to where he said he was he has gone to the kebab shop, got  taxi and gone home without answering the phone calls from the operator. Next day he doesn't want to pursue the allegation but won't meet a police officer. So the police have an incident that has to be reported as an assault until they can get the bloke to sign a statement otherwise. Hours and hours are wasted on this every day. In t'Olden Days he would have been told to report to the police station when convenient and no crime would have been reported if he hadn't bothered to come. The stupid thing is that the Law states that you cannot take a statement off a drunk, but you can record a crime from a drunk's allegations  

They lost the plot in the early 90's and due to criminal mismanagement and short sighted Government policies it has got worse and worse.  

[ChrisJones 7,975]

25 minutes ago, Nicepix said:

The police as an organisation is a complicated animal and very few people actually understand the issues involved.

Understood, mate. I certainly can't make any comparisons on policy as we're connected to vastly different organisations. I've spent the last 11 years with my company and I've watched many of the movers and shakers come and go. Policy is as fluid as you'd expect but the old mantras of 'The Only Guarantee Is Change' and 'Even Your Best Gear Is Made By The Cheapest Bidder' play out on a daily basis.

While we've certainly had to adapt to political changes over the years I can't imagine, or would even want to imagine, how that works on an enforcement level in LE. I only know that in the last decade we've changed security procedures based on the advise of retired LE, military, and government for the better. The next change mandates that we were doing it wrong, previously, and after more than a decade we're now doing it the same way we were in 2009 because that's the current definition of correct. It's cost thousands to millions on an international scale and the result has been the same.

To see that level of investment in the public sector without removing the obstacles from previous policy is truly depressing. It's a mountain that, thankfully, I won't have to climb!

[.357shooter 1,225]

On 23/05/2020 at 22:48, Meece said:

In the news Kent plod HQ is up for sale.!!!  They are being moved out to different stations.  Maidstone is the central county town of Kent.  Ashford used to be a big station but it is virtually non existent now.  It doesn't seem many years ago that villages had police houses and the local plod used to come out for fac/Sgt inspections.  There were local stations ....with cells and their own petrol pumps.  All gone.  Then the bigger stations like Ashford were reduced to basically a counter. Now the HQ ??  Could the pushbike be the new patrol vehicle for the future.? Will the plod have to supply their own trouser clips though.? The other year there was an incident near me where a woman was being threatened and it took plod about an hour just to turn up.  They didn't do anything for another hour until another unit turned up and eventually the bloke got bored of it all and surrendered. .  It could take several days now. There was a car accident and eventually plod was wandering about sort of lost. A local informed them that the ambulance had been and gone with the casualties.  The recovery had taken the motors away and the brigade had swept the Glass up.! All gone.

cheltenham hq went last year now replaced with flats.nearest station open on a saturday i think is worcester so good luck if you need to go see them.plenty of police about at the moment though giving out fines for hardened criminals who are not observing social distancing laws.