Too many police chiefs? - A review of police strength and costs in England & Wales 2010
INSPECTOR GADGET
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com
Lots of the stories and views in here are controversial; you won’t find members of the Association of Chief Police Officers queuing up to agree with me. It’s my thoughts and experiences, from my perspective. I don’t trust official crime figures or press releases personally, but to get the full, unbiased picture you probably need to read that sort of stuff too, and be aware that there are others who see things differently from me.
A NUMBERS GAME
THE other Friday, someone said to me, ‘In my day, there was an Inspector, two Sergeants and 16 PCs at my nick.’ I said, ‘We haven’t got that many on duty in the whole division tonight.’
It’s tough to provide people with what I would regard as a decent service with the strength we have on paper – with the strength we have in reality, it’s near enough impossible.
I think most really senior police officers don’t appreciate how few people we have physically out there every night, and I’m sure the media and politicians are equally unaware. I do think the public are starting to cotton on, but who cares about them?
Part of the problem, I think, is that the majority of officers of Superintendent rank and above come from a time when a much bigger proportion of the total police strength actually was on the ground, doing the job. Even if they’re told that we’re stretched, they look at the number of staff the force employs and it just doesn’t make sense to them. So they don’t believe it.
As PC Copperfield always said, there may well be enough police – there may well be more than there ever have been – it’s just that a huge number of them are working 9-5, Monday to Friday on Neighborhood Policing or in offices, auditing and managing. We need them out on the streets, at night, at weekends, able to respond when crime actually happens.
I sit in our morning meetings, and I listen to the tactical plans being discussed, and I think, where are they getting the bodies from for all this?
You can quite often find yourself on your own policing a sizeable town. You will start with your team on a Saturday night, and you’re immediately nicking people for criminal damage, smashing shop windows, drink driving, fighting.
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