“I can announce today that I am scrapping the confidence target and the policing pledge with immediate effect”
Home Secretary Theresa May
ACPO Annual Conference, 28th June 2010
The Pledge and Confidence agendas still exist, and are still damaging our ability to deliver crime fighting policing instead of PR driven policing. As front-line police, we know that Pledge and Confidence targets mean that officers are diverted from crime fighting teams to units set up to implement, audit and monitor ‘performance’.
The ‘Scrap The Pledge Now’ awareness bands are your chance to register your objection to this state of affairs. These wristbands are new, large size and made in black and white to show your diversity credentials. Profits will go towards the cost of sending a free wristband to all 43 Chief Constables in Britain.
Gadget Note: The incident with Sgt Mark Andrews from Wiltshire Police clearly shows that Policing Pledges have no effect with the bad guys in any case. No doubt we will get our share of trolls on this subject; perhaps we should remember that the main prosecution witness was PC Rachel Webb, who witnessed what happened and made an immediate complaint.
First?
2nd?! … damn it!
Wahay that’s twice now. ‘Guv what size do you think fits best around a pocketbook? Will order this weekend.
The new ‘one size fits all’ are the only ones left.
pledge, just useful for keeping walnuted desks shiny, not for scruffy bottoms.
First
Damn
Scrap the crap and sort out response! Controversial?
Love the idea but can’t help but think it will attract unwanted attention.
I wore my blue one and no one even batted an eyelid. Bah. Willwear it to morning prayers next week.
The Superintendent’s Prayer:
Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed by thy stats and targets,
Thy kindgom come,
Reduction WILL be done,
On my BCU as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily detections,
And forgive us our common-sense discretion,
As we forgive those other BCUs who steal our disposals,
Lead us not into public-service
And deliver us from thinking.
For MINE is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
for ever and until the next promotion.
Amen.
Sir,
Pure class – I doff my (top) hat to you!
Here is some interesting graphs and charts …
about why graphs charts and statistics are bad for the public service…. (how ironic)
http://www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk/index.php?pg=18&backto=1&utwkstoryid=187
A perusal and forwarding to others could..
(1) Impress them into thinking you are intelligent and well read
(2) Provide useful ammunition to fend off the avalanche of edicts, missives and emithers from the beancounters and C/Inspectors in charge of performance management etc etc etc…
(3) Reassure yourself that you are right and the whole system is at fault.
Manchester:
Excellent idea. The way out of today’s mess is not only by saying “It’s crap”, it requres identifying a better way of doing things. Spread the word !
For someone that going burn in hell that’s not half bad!
Class!!!! Shame about your eternal damnation….. :-p
Fantastic x
Amen.
Ta ever so
So, so buying one of those.
14th! woohoo!
I’m gonna get me one of them.
Completely off topic but here’s a joke I heard that made me laugh –
What’s got two legs and bleeds a lot?
Half a dog.
Sick puppy.
Well it would be…..
2 ordered, me and my large wrists will bear it with pride as wil my housemate. Love the Supers prayer, would be interested to see any versions of the coppers prayer.
There is no solution other than to disband ACPO. It will fester otherwise. Sack all involved. Politically no-one will give a toss about them and they need to be gone and pensionless too.
It was good of ACPO to suggest that we might like to work for time and a half on PHs rather than double time.
I notice they didn’t feel they had to offer up their company car perks (worth £20k a year) to help tackle Government debt.
Of course – only the little people have to pay out of their own pocket to get to work.
If fully analyzed, half the budget I am guessing be for top 10% of the staff, real estate i.e. top floor and the support structures.
How much of the budget actually goes to policing of the high street and algae on the ponds??
Civ. can you dig that up and restructure it to show the real disposal of the funds allocated to policing. Monies, wages, bonuses, perks, drivers , offices as quids per square foot of office space , personnel computers, uniform allowance and other expense items like attending meetings in Oshkosh for One hour meeting , advertising , and other monies to help the proverbial wife’s ne’er do well brother have a good life and other management methods of spending monies i.e. supers and up.
A policeman’s prayer
Our section, who art on duty,
hallowed be our crewings.
Thy duty begun,
thy pdr be done,
on time as it is due in
Give us this day our daily taskings.
And forgive us our discretion,
as we arrest those who atempt to decieve us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the SMT.
For thine is the area,
the calls and complaints,
for ten more hours and again tomorrow.
Doughnuts
Bought from France,
Delivered to England,
To be worn (again) in MetroCity.
Boss,
What’s you email address at the publishers? Got something you may (or may not!) be interested in!!
email us here: info@mondaybooks.com
Email en route!
My deep cover agent in the Worst Mudlands Police Farce, tells me they are having fun with a new system called ‘Gateway’…
Its a new ‘smart’ warrant card that allows access into any Worst Mudlands station with your own PIN and access to computer systems etc…
Of course it also means that you can see when staff come and go from the station, how long they spend there etc… No, sir… not big brother, more like THX-1138… or Logans Run… (I’m told that’s another in force nickname for the job – as since the Worse Mudlands have served the ol’ 30-years and you are out card- its now just like the movie…
Thing is… they forgot its a government IT system so…
It don’t work very well… apart from the obvious problem that if gateway crashes you cant get into the station… you cant get out either…
As a group of officers found out the other day when they were dispatched to a backup call and they couldn’t open the doors to get out…
They had to climb over the front office counter…
YCMIU…
Unfortunately a certain Garden of England farce has had a similar system for the past three years. This also has gone on to a key cabinet for vehicles being run off the same system and administered by 9-5 civvies in the higher floor offices. Many a time it has been broken into as the access given is limited. One particular instance comes to mind, told to me by an advanced driver who is qualified to drive anything the farce has. A shout for assistance with a van went out and the officer ran to the cabinet and entered his PIN, aware of the danger his colleagues were in. He had had the van keys from it not the day before but today the fickle system had decided to disallow his access without reason. Following a shout over the air and three different PINS later the keys were finally wrestled from the sodding machine. There is also the arbitrary system of access to vehicles determined by a Business manager and not by the DM, Sergeant or individual officer qualified to drive said vehicles.
Another good joke is the that over the winter period due to the heavy snow said farce removed its 4×4 permit restriction (not off road) so all could drive them in the snow. Upon the cold snap dissipating the rule was reintroduced and those without the permit to drive the 4×4 were again not allowed to do so. This farce have shown that they will bend the rules and let officers drive in the worst conditions without obtaining said permit but will not then do the sensible thing and issue the permit to those who have been driving in the 4 x 4′s for four weeks in the worst conditions possible. As you say, YCMIU…
We have the ‘pin code key cabinet’ too…
A colleague tells me of a backup shout that was heading towards ‘assistance’ officers couldn’t get the cabinet open so…
They smashed the glass and got the keys out…
How much trouble were they in for that? Mega…
Threatened with arrest etc… the chap eventually paid for the damage himself.
This is the kind of bullshit we deal with on a daily basis… if only the public knew…
opps… they do now…
Best one is when the whole system area wide goes down on a friday night and the 9-5er is off. Our guv and sarge may have figured a way to get the rolling front of the cabinet open so the keys could be liberated and put back on the hooks that are still on the wall from the original system so all officers were able to use vehicles and not be stuck on foot. Like you say trouble wasn’t far away on that one until that is a MOP found out about it and rang in with a complaint to the area panderer and he brushed the whole thing aside. Business manager was furious and said that the officers should be disciplined and she would see to it that they were. She got subtlely reminded she did not hold the queens warrant and to wind her neck in.
Someone accidentally broke a photocopier and were threatened with arrest!
I kid you not..
“”Threatened with arrest etc… the chap eventually paid for the damage himself.”
I think I would have called their bluff over that one.
It would be great to turn it around on an interview and claim that you “honestly believed that the Organisation would have approved of the minor damage rather than having Police Officers potentially injured” – a defence to criminal damage.
Ask them to put in writing that they value the glass above Police Officers safety…
Watch major backpedalling by the BLT sorry SLT
The Federation would be mightly interested in this..
Besides which – I would suggest that the Officer is himself entitled to consent to the damage and act as the aggrieved.
When a police van is damaged or some idiot scratches the cell walls – we do not need a complainant statement off the Chief or the Divisional Commander.
A probie will do and can act as the owner/custodian of the property. Ergo the officer who justifiably smashed the glass can claim to have the right as owner/custodian to do it.
I would have thought that the locked cabinet fiasco was the sort of event to generate a near-miss report. Or some anonymous communication to the person at the top, or both.
But then I’m just an MoP who’s worked at a different sharp end, and is naive enough to expect a CC to take an interest.
Just the kind of shit stirring that doesn’t help really!
I suppose you never moaned about having to remember a dozen different passwords for all of the different systems that needed changing every few weeks?!
Using your card to access the station is by no way means of checking up on you. That can be done with CCTV anyway if they need to. There is nothing stopping you from following colleagues in and out of the doors without swiping your card.
How many times have all the door codes accross numerous stations had to be changed because some dickhead let a scummbag see the code he was typing in?!
As for 30 years and your out….. GOOD
Everyone I know on 30+ scheme is a waste of space. Just milking it for the money thinking the world owes ‘em something.
Since PARAGON (for those of you who know), morale has been lower than a snakes belly but you’re just spreading melifluous vibrations!!!
Rant over…..
Was that the premise behind Logan’s Run as well? I thought it was Soylent Green where you got bumped off and turned into pellets when you hit 30.
I think Solent Green was just processing corpses rather than enforcing an age limit?
Logan’s Run was the one that pioneered the ‘oldies must die’ technique.
It`s one thing using a smart card to save having to remember lots of passwords for computers systems, another thing entirely to also hook it up to the doors.
Still, ‘Gateway’ has locked some doors. Out through a Window? Kick-in one the locked doors? Maybe a skylight?
No, over the counter Bodie and Doyle stylee.
Who said there was no discretion in the job these days?
Liking the prayers.
Liking the prayers. A lot.
I must admit these computer systems sound a bit like SkyNet. They seem to be self aware. Like photocopiers that ‘know’ when you are in a hurry.
I am glad the Met don’t have systems like them. All the security doors have swipe card things that rarely work so we prop them open with those big red metal things full of water. I think if I was stuck in a nick when someone had shouted for help I would go for a full on remodeling with an enforcer. Take the whole frame out of the wall. It would take weeks to get mended.
Also loving the prayers. Nice work!
We had some civvie manager decide that he didn’t like the fact that officers were using his office at night so he put a Yale lock on the door in addition to the keycode. Problem was the office he worked in was the warrants office. One night we were told someone off patch was nicked who was W/M for attempted murder, went to the office to get the paperwork to blat it over to them and it was locked. Big red key was used and problem solved. He went fucking ballistic the following Monday to find an obliterated door so he had it fixed and the lock installed, out went lots of hissyfit style emails and threats of crim damage reports etc. Next set of nights same thing happened (W/M for GBH W/intent this time) so we mullered the door open to get our jobs done. He got the hint after that but still complained about us using the computers every other week.
Quality!
Or a special units car keys, car was blocking access to the PSU store. They went mental
I have seen this done to get access to a non molestation order. Quality.
First!
Area, you rock dude.
Matt Damon!
Gadget I’m not sure about your Farce but in ours there is a weekday farce wide performance meeting (in addition to daily prayers) which looks at I graded calls attendance performance across all command units. During which a a quality and assurance phlegm dodging 9-5 Insp gets beaten up over our failure to meet target times introduced by the ‘Pledge’ and a suggestion that we are not meeting the targets due to Officers on the ground not embracing the targets.
Thankfully what matters is that my team fail to meet a stupid target there is a dame good reason for doing so and my Insp will support us. Clearly he will never progress. Well hopefully the cull of senior ranks will knock this agenda on the head as it looks like there will be no future promotions so no portfolios to fill. In addtion to the the leak to the press that in my farce the budget restrictions may result in 1000 civvy posts and 500 Officer Posts. Will we be rid of Office staff completing pie charts no it will be the jailers, drivers, front counter and others who directly support the front line. Thankfull the Chief has pointed out that we wont be able to do certain things anymore when the cuts hit. Now what will it be. Crime or picking up the failings of Social Services, the mental health teams or dealing
‘our failure to meet target times introduced by the ‘Pledge’ and a suggestion that we are not meeting the targets due to Officers on the ground not embracing the targets’
HTF can you fail to meet targets which have been abolished?
Whichever non-job in your SMT is in charge of this nonsense needs to realise that they are not going to make Supt. now anyway (with the cuts) grow some, and stop trying to play with the big lads by being the best in the class.
Sounds like you are in serious need of some wristbands.
Gadget I’m not sure about your Farce but in ours there is a weekday farce wide performance meeting (in addition to daily prayers) which looks at I graded calls attendance performance across all command units. During which a a quality and assurance phlegm dodging 9-5 Insp gets beaten up over our failure to meet target times introduced by the ‘Pledge’ and a suggestion that we are not meeting the targets due to Officers on the ground not embracing the targets.
Thankfully what matters is that my team fail to meet a stupid target there is a dame good reason for doing so and my Insp will support us. Clearly he will never progress. Well hopefully the cull of senior ranks will knock this agenda on the head as it looks like there will be no future promotions so no portfolios to fill. In addtion to the the leak to the press that in my farce the budget restrictions may result in 1000 civvy posts and 500 Officer Posts. Will we be rid of Office staff completing pie charts no it will be the jailers, drivers, front counter and others who directly support the front line. Thankfull the Chief has pointed out that we wont be able to do certain things anymore when the cuts hit. Now what will it be. Crime or picking up the failings of Social Services, the mental health teams or dealing with housing association issues where the swamp dwellers want us to help them move. Oh what I would give for a shift to be taken up with Burglary, theft and violence, opposed to babysitting a child under a PPO as Social services have shafted us. Sat at the local mental health unit for the 20th time with the same nutter and listening to someone moaning about their neighbours fence.
As a chippy Jock may I point out that there are in fact 51 Chief Constables in ‘Britain’ (43 in England and Wales, 8 in Scotland) and even more if you throw in the Chiefs of the BTP and CNC etc.
You needn’t worry about having to find a few more bawbees to supply bands for the Scottish Chiefs though – we’ve always been blissfully unaffected by all this ‘Pledge’ bollocks.
I can send deep fried wristbands north of the border if required?
Oooh, changed that comment on us, there!
The original one was too harsh, we are all cops! (p.s. sending you the bill for Hadrian’s Wall)
Thanks, but KFC has beaten you to it…
Sorry, another chippy Jock – we do pay tax as well, you know. Still, £100 million was a waste of money for the monstrosity they built.
In fact, we pay more tax than you lot darn sarf – remember that we got our pay rise last year backdated in full by our munificient Justice Minister
Would that be the same justice “minister” that releases terrorists?
Yep, the very same.
But they all release terrorists. Leon Brittan let the two who shot Yvonne Fletcher walk away scot free. John Major and Tony Blair both contrived the Good Friday Agreement which allowed out hundreds of terrorists. David Miliband secured the release of half a dozen of them from Gitmo because they’d once set foot in the UK.
We got an email yesterday saying we should throw away any ‘pledge’ leaflets, remove all ‘pledge’ posters and generally forget the whole ghastly business.
So me and another promptly checked the website in eager anticipation and guess what……yep – the pledge is still firmly there!
Tossers.
I recall years ago boxing up a pile of leaflets that had festered in the Nick for months ….
Old force newspapers – our Chiefs backpedalling leaflet on what he meant by saying we were institutionally racist, some guff about performance etc etc…
I sent it to the top floor at Force HQ with a note saying – if we are so short of money how about recycling some of this shite.
I wore gloves and left no dna. A comment appeared in our Fed magazine months later saying what some wag had done !!
It is now looking time for a repeat.
Haven’t quite sussed the unique icon bit yet, have you cuddles?
Or are YOU cuddles?!
He’s gone. Spam filter on stun.
Good God Almighty!
I’ve just looked at my ‘unique icon’ and it’s… well it’s a flasher!
Coat open, pen!s out.
Why me? Why?!
Actually, looking at the icons, quite a few are committing a similar offence!!
I am hoping that they will finally start merging forces to save money. Think of all the superintendents, chief supers, ACCs and DCCs that could be retired!! All those career ambitions turned to dust. All the empire building coming to naught.
However those that remember the Sheehy Report will recall that it recomended the phasing out of the ranks of Chief Superintendent and Deputy Chief Constable. Forces across country simply renamed the grades and then brought back the old titles a few years later.
Naive and Idealistic, Mergers rarely thin out the top ranks , there just be more levels of bureaucracy, but they will thin out the lower ranks, for every Chief Constable there will be a General Chief Constable, see the power structure of ACPO.
Like the Army, cut the no of Regiments land be less Sergeants but still need more Generals.
rephrase: for every Chief Constable s/b every five CC’s one super CC , for every 5 Super CC’s a grandiose CC,never reduce the rank or pay too debilitating for the loser, who thought he was king of his patch.
As in King then Emperor as takeovers royally take place.
Once upon there be a king baron then as mergers took place new titles came into being , royal princes, Dukes, Earls etc. For the preachers, it was just few preachers and the master, now the preacher remains and then the fast track thru to the ranks to “Arch” Bishop.
Rule of thumb for each 10 Peons there has to be a head, for each head another bighead,with all his flunkies. then the expansion, another supper large-big-head and his set of raised flunkies supernumeraries, just look at the structure of the ACPO, how many supernumeraries of hi rank supporting each derriere, rarely a lowly PC except to open the draw bridge.
I think that the Royal Railway Constabulary as a national force gets bogged down the most by “policing pledge” foolishness. It makes me when the supt on one of the three Big City Areas in the Royal Railway recently sent a e-mail saying that there needed to be way of monitoring performance and that far from “figure chasing” it was really “proactive policing!!”.
I have to add that this particular supt got into the front page of the Mirror a few years ago when a photo was released of a incident at the Force Training School when as a PS he got drunk, dressed up as a Klu Klux Klan member and subjected a black colleague to a mock trial. I know we can get carried away on training courses but making him head of diversity training was a move open to question I think
Off topic:
Mr Fahy comments that the media covered the Moat incident too much, causing senior officer to spend too much time talking to the press. Quite laughable when all ‘senior officers’ are worried about is their public image. Maybe Fahy should be more worried about day to day operational policing (Frontline, CID, REAL community policing etc) then how much time his minions speak to the media for!
http://www.gmp.police.uk/live/CommBlog.nsf/d6plinks/WADN-886BYJ
The man appears to be a political joke machine.
When Michael Todd the former GMP chief committed sucide it was clear from the reaction of GMP officers he was a respected and popular chief constable. Fahy strikes me as another member of the Mafia of the Mediocre.
I know I will be seen as a reactionary for saying this but the last great Chief Constable was James Anderton
My prayer is the one Alan Sheppard was overheard to say as he sat on top if a Mercury rocket:
“Lord, don’t let me fcuk up…”
however since I am an atheist I guess I am a hippocrite too
Six years in and I am at that stage where I am no longer confused by the legal terms or bogged down with trying to work out what the he’ll I’m doing and what happens after I hit the send button. I think that stage before was the blissful ignorance. I seem to spend far too much time now ranting over the politics and trying to understand where it all went wrong. Why can’t I fix it. This after all was why I joined a professional body. At the end of despair with a fantastic and sympathetic wife who for no fault of her own understands what we put up with, I was handed an odd book from a colleague. I remembered watching him as a kid I thought. A bumbling detective with a helicopter in his hat. I took to reading it and it surmises all of my stresses. What a wonderful thing. Here was everything I have not been able to verbalise. I have my wife reading it now. I thank you for this as I thank all the other bloggers. I have ordered the band and fir the first time in a while am looking forward to getting to work when someone says, “what’s that for?”
Thanks for the comment, may I also recommend Wasting Police Time by PC David Copperfield and Blood, Sweat and Tears by paramedic Tom Reynolds, who started it all off for me. Also, if you want a REAL laugh, Diary of an On Call Girl is hysterical!
Best order a new one then, the small one fits very well over the air wave though
Wonder what you’ve got to say about the appalling police brutality in the news at the moment? Why did he do it when he knew there was CCTV? What a bully, total scum
Why did he do it when he knew there was CCTV?
You think he should have done it if there wasn’t CCTV?
That’s a bit harsh.
Watch the timings on the CCTV. There’s more to the story than has been reported.
Yeah, she had it coming to her didn’t she.
Big leap there Bill ….. that’s demonstrably NOT what was said. But don’t let that stop you.
I am a supporter but I am worried about this case. As I understand it now she had no previous, she was a normal person. If this is the case then we are in deep doo doo as I have been backing the wrong horse. Hope she turns out to be an utter scumbag like my sister.
There was an police chief called William Parker who headed the LAPD from 1950-1967 he said that “police brutality is when a police officer behaves as a citizen would without the benefit of police training”
Contrary to what some will say officers 30 years ago did not automaticy close ranks when incidents like this occured. She may have a been a drunk but nothing can excuse the sgt behaviour.
I have pulled colleagues away from giving blows to abusive but non violent prisoners. Its not worth it