Too many police chiefs? - A review of police strength and costs in England & Wales 2010
INSPECTOR GADGET
http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com
There is *Late Turn, yes, which overlaps until the early hours, but these guys have been taking emergency calls, solid, since the afternoon. They are in custody with prisoners, or waiting for solicitors or interpreters or appropriate adults, or interviewing, or calling CPS Direct**, or writing, photocopying and faxing reams of paperwork, or transporting people to mental hospitals, or at cordons at road crashes, or at people’s houses taking statements, or trying to get something to eat. They may have gone off duty sick or injured, or they may be up at the hospital getting details from a road crash victim or waiting with another ‘overdoser’, or they may be doing breathalysers, but the one thing they are not doing is waiting for me to click my fingers so they can come running.
Trust me, they are fully soaked up. We get 3,000 calls a day in my force, spread across a number of divisions. In my patch, I have a dozen or fewer people to cover our end of it; I don’t care what the stats say, or anyone says, that is reality, that is the bottom line
*Late Turn is one of our three shifts. Early Turn runs from breakfast time to mid-afternoon. Late turn is mid-afternoon until the middle of the night. Nights is the middle of the evening until breakfast time. There’s an overlap of about two hours between Late Turn and Nights.
**CPS Direct is part of the Crown Prosecution Service.
I have never seen the Area Commander, or anyone from ‘Human Resources’ or the Press Office or Training, down on the streets with me on a Saturday night, physically counting heads (or cracking them). They have no idea at all what it is like.
You do, occasionally, see an ACPO rank out. But when a Chief comes down on the street there are more uniformed police out than there would be for England vs Germany in the World Cup final.
Neighbourhood are out, Specials are out, anyone with arms, legs and a functioning pelvis is out; why the Chiefs can’t see what’s going on I do not know, because it must have happened in their day. But apparently they can’t – they walk around, nodding and grinning and surrounded by blue serge tunics and hi-vis jackets, and they think it’s all hunky dory.
In the Army, an infantry battalion of 500 men will consist of 75% front line soldiers – people with rifles, there to deal with the enemy– and 25% in HQ support roles. In the police, 10% are on the frontline and everyone else is back at base, drinking tea and making plans. It’s quite mad”.
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