Find Maddie

It's not often you'll find me chirping about a particular current affair, but this is one that has rightly touched the country. Despite I think her parents need their head read for leaving her alone in the first place, if you have any information that may help Find Maddie, contact the above telephone number or your local police service.

Custody Ping Pong

Centralised PFI custody centres (police cells to the uninitiated) seemed like a great idea at the time. Modern, fresh, large open spaces and every modern convenience you can imagine. Before they came along, every station had 5 or 6 cells in the basement and a custody sergeant. Get a local prisoner, go to the local nick. Worse case scenario you had to drive 4 or 5 miles to the next one if it happened to be full.

Then, 4 years ago, they all shut. In place of 30 local cell blocks, they opened 6 'custody centres'. Each is about 35-40 miles from the next, but have capacity of approximately 35 cells a piece. Some prisoners can be doubled-up, so you can squeeze in possibly 50 prisoners at a time. This wastes immeasurable amounts of officer time traveling with their prisoners, then waiting in holding cells while the 1 custody sergeant books in 5 others from around the local area. But never before was so much time wasted as last night...

I arrested a bloke for ABH at 2227, but because of his injuries he had to go to hospital. After an hours wait in the local A&E, he was treated and put 'on-watch' for 3 hours. Because he was a prisoner, I had to wait with him to make sure he didn't do a runner. Eventually they discharge him, and behold! My nearest custody centre is beyond full. "There is space at the next nearest one" the radio says helpfully. So we get in the van and begin the painful trip in the pissing rain. 35 miles later we arrive only to be told "Sorry chum, we're full now".

After some muted abuse to the sergeant, I ask him to suggest where he'd like us to go. "Abbots Wood has room!", he suggests. "Sarge. That's 90 miles away from here, and 120 miles away from my station!" I protest. But he's not concerned. He is full, and that is that.

I go and confer with my colleagues in the van. I ask comms to phone around and see if I can be squeezed anywhere slightly closer. A few minutes later, they say "Home station has room now, they will accept". So we trundle back the 35 miles we've just driven, to be back to where we started.

It was 5am at that point, and I lost the will to live. But, it's progress, right?

Force Funding

Our Force intranet has lots of bleak content about the troubles we face in the coming years due to lack of Government funding and council tax precept caps of 5%. But why is our force one of the lowest centrally-funded entities out of all of them? I am all for efficiency gains and reducing carbon footprints, but I'm troubled by the prediction we will by 2011 be almost £20,000,000 short of funding. We're not talking sofa-change here. That's an incredible amount of money.

When it's not busy at night, I'll wander around our station turning off tens, or even hundreds of computers that are not being used. I'll turn off lights, close fire doors that have been wedged open, shut windows and turn down or off air conditioning and heating systems. When I think of the amount of waste just in electricity of our force, when you multiply the number of actions I take, over our entire county with the probably, 40 or 50 buildings we own, it makes me wonder if the funding gap isn't of our own doing. Yet, the likes of the 'big forces' (MPD, GMP etc) get what seems like an unlimited pit of money just thrown at them. Why should they be special when ultimately we all do the same thing, but we have to do it on a shoestring with no guarantees of no redundancies?

Speaking of reducing carbon footprints, I think I'll walk to the next job.

Modern Policing

It occurred to me the other night that we've got this whole gig back to front, thanks in no small part to New Labour's insistence that everything be measurable. It's fair to say that 95% of the law-abiding public would rather see police officers on the streets, engaging the local community, relieving Mrs Jones of the odd cup of tea, and preventing crime by presence. Not tearing around on blue lights from one job to the next, only stopping to speak to someone not involved in an incident to say "any idea where the High Street is, love?".

You see, New Labour loves statistics. "Violent crime is down!", "Domestic burglaries are down!", and "<insert offence here> crimes are down!" they bleat from the roof-tops. The thing is, yes, statistically, crime is coming down. But that doesn't necessarily mean less crime is happening. Was it Disraeli that said "Lies, damn lies and statistics"? If anything it is fair to say that there is the same amount, if not more violent crime occurring today than when I first joined the service 5 years ago. It's all about the recording ...

Surely policing is about preventing crime from taking place. I do not wish to spend my life chasing ticks in boxes. "Congratulations, PC Disillusioned" my skipper says. "You have the 2nd highest number of sanctioned detections this month on section". Great, and did any of those prevent a crime taking place? No. They were all after the fact. Of course, if we were out engaging our local community, giving little Johnny a clip round the ear as necessary, perhaps crimes wouldn't be committed in the first place.

Ah, but that is a false economy. You cannot measure prevention.

Must dash, I'm off to my next grade 1.

Another Coppers' Blog?

It's not as if there aren't enough of them about already, is it? Most of us even rant about the same things. But, perhaps there is a reason for that. I've been reading a fair few blogs over the years; they're entertaining, informative, and best of all permit us ("the silenced") to speak out, anonymously, about issues the public should know about. My thanks go out to David Copperfield and his wonderful blog for keeping me entertained and sane the last few years, he is one of the few people out there who let me know that I'm not alone in the way I feel about policing in this country.

I refer in example to a recently departed colleague, DC Johnno Hills. He chose to speak out about insane practices, statistic chasing and 'so much paperwork if you could, you'd drown in it'. What he said was correct. His only mistake was signing his name at the end of the article in a national newspaper (oh, and perhaps having his photo taken, too).

It was quite disturbing to watch from the side-lines in another force, just how the force handled this incident. From my Sussex sources they say at first, an email came round 'supporting our right to free speech'. "We don't agree with what he said, but he has a right to say it." or words to that effect. Then, a few days later, another email came round reminding officers what they could and could not say. Then a few days after that, we learn DC Hills has been suspended (and that he subsequently resigned).

It doesn't pay to be honest and open with the public in our job. Is it any bloody wonder overall support for the police is dropping?