Published on September 3, 2010 in Uncategorized. Closed
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
Apologies for the absence: I blame my computer.
Three years for the Special Constable convicted of beating up an off-duty soldier is fairly hefty, in my opinion. Regardless of what one thinks of the actual assault, SC Lightfoot probably shouldn't have followed up his use of force by lying in court later, which no doubt added to the judge's irritation at the man's actions.
Nothing I've read or seen so far provides convincing proof of SC Lightfoot actually assaulting the victim in this case, however given the number of trials that have taken place (a conviction and appeal for the off-duty soldier, then the officer's trial), it's probably a pretty safe conviction and he probably did use excessive force. Although in of themselves hitting someone repeatedly on the ground, pushing their face into the road and restraining them with several officers may all be justifiable under certain circumstances - and in fact are all trained as approved techniques in officer safety training.
But I do question the sentence given. When recidivist burglars, repeat violent offenders and child abusers walk out of court without gracing the steps of their local prison for even a few moments, two years for an assault with no lasting injury is substantial in itself. And to add a year for the officer lying in the previous trial seems a double standard when we are repeatedly told that it is only to be expected that a guilty man will lie to get out of his crimes and it does not normally constitute a second offence.
Suffice it to say, Peter Lightfoot won't be assaulting anyone else any time soon. But the case has made it harder, and more frightening, for young officers to use the force they need to, when their colleagues depend on it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
The original post can be found http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/09/one-rule-for-us.html
Published on August 18, 2010 in Uncategorized. Closed
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
Every time I try to describe what it's like to be a police officer, I think about PC Sharon Beshenivsky. She was shot dead as she attended a routine panic alarm activation at a travel agents. In Real Crime on Monday night, they showed how police tracked down the killers.
Somehow the case sums up exactly what it is like to be a police officer in modern Britain, it's simply a matter of degree.
As a woman, you patrol with a female colleague, or a male one, or alone, with no distinction.
You patrol with officers of just a few months' service, when you only have a few yourself.
You are called to an emergency when you're trying to get off on time for your four-year-old's birthday party.
It's always a false alarm when you zoom there with heart racing. When you go expecting apologies, it's never a false alarm.
The crime is nearly always solvable, and it always comes down to CCTV, car registrations, random fortuitous eye witnesses, and DNA. How many vans you get to pick up your suspects may vary.
Somewhere along the way, the case will involve someone who should or could or would have been deported, only wasn't.
As a police officer, you think that no one outside the police can understand.
But actually, they do.
I don't why PC Beshenivsky's death seems so important. It could be because she was so young in service, on such a routine call. It could be because members of the public were the first to run to her aid, and later left tributes, flowers and even a sculpture at the site of her death. It could even be, dares admit this hardened feminist, because she was a woman, crewed with another woman, shot to death in the street on her child's birthday while her husband made the party preparations at home.
Strangely, the fact that she was female was actually the least relevant factor in the entire case. The robbers ran out armed, within seconds discharged bullets at the sight of the police. They would have had no idea they had killed and injured two women until later. Sharon was not even the first female officer to be murdered on duty.
But for me, the shooting of Sharon Beshenivsky and Teresa Milburn came early in my career, when I was at a similar level of service, and was attending panic alarm activations on a weekly basis. It was a time when I was clamouring about female equality, and expected to do exactly the same jobs as the boys I worked with, and to do them just as well or better. I suppose it summed up just what equality could really mean.
As a female sergeant now, and one of many in my area, I don't have a moment to think about PC Beshenivsky when working out my crewings. I don't have enough officers to be picky about who they work with, and I wouldn't be even if I did. There is literally no time or money for sexism in my day-to-day job. My female officers do exactly the same work as the men, and they are equally likely to get gunned down in the street on their way to a routine commitment.
Which is why I never miss an opportunity to spend a few minutes in a briefing talking about cases like PC Beshenivsky, and thinking about how we drive by, where we park and how we approach the most routine of calls.
If one of my shifts ended the way Sharon Beshenivsky's sergeant's did on 18th November 2005, I am not sure I'd ever go into work again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
The original post can be found http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/08/real-police-woman.html
Published on August 16, 2010 in Uncategorized. Closed
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
It is not news that police officers generally are not allowed to chase motorcycle riders who are not wearing helmets. In many forces, we are not allowed to pursue motorcycles at all. The fact is, in a crash involving a motorcycle, there's only one person bound to be seriously hurt or killed. There's also one person who is extremely likely to get away by passing between close-set bollards or onto a footpath/cycle track, so it's pointless chasing them anyway.
But there is something distasteful about the police publicly announcing that they will not chase motorcycles, or motorcyclists without helmets. It seems akin to saying, "If you're going to commit crime, you may as well do it in the most dangerous manner possible because then we won't be able to stop you".
I think what grates most on the public is the thought that individual police officers do not have discretion to act on their own initiative. That we may see something happening in front of us and the first thought is not what the best reaction might be, but "What does the force say I must do about this?"
Force policy is nothing new, and it's often in place as a reaction to an event that the force anticipates being criticised about. This means eighteen months later when the media or investigation panel publishes their conclusions, the force can respond by saying they've already fixed the problem. Plus they might actually fix a serious problem, which is a convenient side-effect.
The public know all this, and yet the physical enactment of force policy in front of their eyes can be a shocking experience. Although they will be the first to clamour when it isn't followed in a case relating to someone they heard about last week. Which is really about communication: the difference between, "Thank you for stopping, sir, as it happens there's just been a nasty robbery and you look just like the description I've been given, I won't hold you up for too long" and "Oi, you, where've you just come from?"
In any event, when it comes to the pros and cons of wearing motorcycle helmets, yes it may be true that without one the police will not chase you from the scene of your crime. But if you wear one, you can rely on the defence used by a youth on whom I recently served papers for an identification procedure:
"How can they describe my hair as brown, if I was wearing a motorcycle helmet when I did it?"
Perhaps we should just deal with motorbiking criminals like they do in Spain?
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
The original post can be found http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/08/helmet-and-safety.html
Published on August 12, 2010 in Uncategorized. Closed
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
One of the genius parting blows of the last government was to change how police forces record certain crimes (again). Now instead of recording Common Assault, Actual Bodily Harm, Grievous Bodily Harm, in that order, we are obliged to record Assault Without Injury, then ABH, then GBH.
The thinking behind it was that police forces were recording rafts of minor injury assaults as Common Assaults, because they didn't count towards the statistics for violent crime. Technically, an assault with a minor injury is an ABH - because the legal definition of ABH is pretty much any "actual" injury that is more than transient. But in reality anything less than stitches, extensive severe bruising, extended unconsciousness, broken nose, etc, will be charged as Common Assault when it goes to court. So the police were skipping out the charging decision and listing the assaults as slightly less serious than they actually were.
Lo and behold, the introduction of a new kind of crime: Assault Without Injury. No longer can minor bruising and grazed knees be recorded as Common Assaults. They clearly involve injury, so they must be recorded as ABHs even though they will never be charged as such, if they are even serious enough to be charged at all. When the case is then filed with no action, or charged as Common Assault, the ABH will lie on the system undetected - unless someone can persuade the auditors to reclassify it as an Assault Without Injury... which it isn't because there WAS an injury, just a minor one.
If you're still with me, I suggest you join the Civil Service.
The result of these presumeably well-meaning shenannigans: statistics for violent crime are through the roof and Chief Constables are wringing their hands, "WHY?"
The good news is, if you're a violent criminal, whether your crime is recorded as Assault Without Injury or ABH will not make the blindest bit of difference to your sentence: you'll still walk out of court laughing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
The original post can be found http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/08/common-abh.html
Published on August 2, 2010 in Uncategorized. Closed
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
SC Peter Lightfoot has been convicted of perjury and assault following this incident back in 2008. We all had our opinions at the time, mostly guided by the CCTV, which is not pretty.
An appeal may be pending, but either way a jury was convinced. I could raise all the usual police responses when something like this occurs, but we've heard them all before and in the end it comes down to the individual situation and what exact evidence was put before the court.
I am quite surprised to read however that the convicted officer has also been convicted of Perjury in relation to the evidence he gave at the aggrieved's original appeal hearing in 2008. Every time I try to get a defendant charged with perjury for lying in court, the CPS tell me "it's only to be expected" that a guilty man would lie about his actions. And yet if someone makes a frank admission, we give them credit for it.
I also wonder, in cases like this, how much evidence the court is allowed to hear regarding resourcing levels, the officers' training and experience (especially given this was a volunteer Special Constable - which is not an excuse, but their training does vary), and what else those officers had dealt with in town that night.
David Cameron's Big Society will encourage a greater percentage of police resources to be created by volunteers.
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
Several years ago Nick Herbert MP's office contacted me for some views on needed reforms to the police. I understand his office contacted dozens more officers, serving, non-serving, anonymous and named. At the time, the Conservative paper produced resonated with many serving officers, but was meaningless because the party was not in power.
Now they are in power, and have released some serious plans for the police. Some quotes from the Home Office paper, which by some amazing coincidence appears to have been named after this blog...
"We will abolish Police Authorities."
"We will transfer power back to the people – by introducing directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners."
"We will do away with central targets."
"Police officers should be crime fighters, not form writers."
"The Government... will have no role in telling the police how to do their job"
"The service itself needs to examine its internal processes and doctrine which can lead to unnecessary bureaucracy. Action needs to be taken to challenge the culture of risk aversion that has developed in policing. Officers all too often collect information just in case it is needed rather than applying a common sense approach. This culture change will need to be supported and embedded by chief officers..."
"[The CJS]* cannot go on being a system where half of the police say they would speak critically of it."
It's all good stuff, although we have heard some of it before. The difference now is that things HAVE to change, because there isn't any money to keep doing it the way we have been.
If all goes to plan, perhaps I can hang up my blogging boots in 2012.
Then again, there's nothing in Theresa May's paper that addresses how two youths who happy-slapped an old man to death may be walking free from prison in under a year.
The pair were also convicted of other attacks which could have ended the same way.
The little figure by the railings is the victim's three-year-old granddaughter, who remains traumatised.
Perhaps I won't ditch the boots just yet.
* Criminal Justice System
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
The original post can be found http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/07/music-to-bloggers-ears.html
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
A radical shake-up of the police is reported today. I am delighted to see that so far the shake-up consists of:
Scrapping one national crime agency and replacing it with another.
Getting rid of the people who oversee each police force and replacing them with some others - albeit locally elected.
More general claims and statements by Theresa May that she wants to free the police from bureaucracy.
I am one hundred percent behind plans to reduce bureaucracy, and PC "Stuart Davidson" Copperfield has some great ideas/examples in The Telegraph.
The trouble is, the true heart of bureaucracy in the police and other public sector agencies is Risk. The fear of getting it wrong, being castigated, sued or even criminally prosecuted, is the key driver behind half of the hoops we jump through.
We need to see concrete examples of the IPCC, CPS and senior officers backing those who act in good faith, supporting those who make mistakes, and accepting that you cannot prevent all annoyances nor all tragedies without unacceptable impingements on the liberty of the wider public.
That is something the public are going to have to get on board with if they want a functional police force. I don't see it happening any time soon, and stories like the case of Ian Tomlinson do not help our cause.
Side-note: sawn-off shotguns do not "spray out" pellets until the shot has gone 15-20 metres, due to the velocity with which it leaves the barrel. In fact the spread is barely any different to a non-sawn-off one.
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
The original post can be found http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/07/risk.html
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
Sir Denis O'Connor is a worthy and laudable man. An ex-Chief Constable of Surrey Police, now knighted and the Acting Chief Inspector of Constabulary, you might expect he has a firm grasp on the real issues facing the police today.
Which is why, when Sir Denis' HMIC report states that some officers work as few as 171 days in a year, the best results being 208 days, you can't blame well-respected broadsheet newspapers for jumping at the news. From much of the report, it is clear that Sir Denis has kept his finger on the pulse of police blogging for the last five years: he names risk-aversion and performance culture as two of the biggest causes of unnecessary expenditure in the police.
But let's dig a little deeper. The average civilian in an average job works approximately a 40-hour week, broken down into 5 days of 8 hours. Over the course of a year, this equates to 260 days spent at work. After 25 days' annual leave and 5 days' sickness, that's 230 days, barely more than half of the year themselves.
Police officers generally work a variation on a 24/7 shift pattern that takes into account the need for overlapping shifts on weekends. This means the shifts are usually 9-12 hours long, let's say an average of 10 hours. It won't be broken down this way, but this means to reach their average 40-hour week, police officers are effectively working a 4-day week (some weeks will be 6-7 days, others 3-4). They have less home and social time on days they work, but more days off. Therefore their total working days a year equals 208. Taking into account sickness and annual leave, that comes out at 178 days. Not including overtime.
The media don't care about the above, why would they? Their job is merely to regurgitate supposed facts that add to the weight of suspicion and mistrust of the police: that we don't work hard, we don't do long hours, we are basically milking overtime and skiving at the same time. Hence this Channel 4 report stating that Sir Denis identifies 30 officers involved in a burglary case from start to finish. The "7" officers identified in the custody process - if you read the report properly - actually includes gaolers and the police doctor: for a start they are not "officers" and secondly, they multi-task dealing with dozens of prisoners each day. The call-takers, crime-recorders and file-builders involved (none police officers) all juggle a caseload that no front-line police officer could possibly manage, hence it is a reasonably efficient way of structuring a force.
I am all for improvements to the police, and if the clamp down on our budgets means that we are now forced to abandon much of the performance-related and risk-averse bureaucracy that has built up under the last government, I'm all for that too.
But I'm all against the twisting of meaningless statistics to point out non-existent failings. I'm against the blind reporting of these facts with no interrogation. And I'm against the further villainisation of a group of public sector workers who share none of the rights of a normal employee, and take greater physical risks.
Who is going to call Sir Denis on the distorted and misleading data in this report?
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
The original post can be found http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/07/pc-bloggs-investigates-wibble.html
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
Of all the offences for which I have arrested people in the well-over-half-a-decade I have been in the police, the one that brings out the human propensity to wriggle, crawl and grasp for survival at all costs is drink-driving.
Your average sloshed Blandmore driver will weave from side to side as I follow them with blue lights flashing, pulling over several times to wave me by before coming to the realisation it is them I am trying to stop. They then park considerately on the small kerb surrounding the Keep Left sign in the middle of Blandmore's largest traffic light junction and fall out of the car at my feet with empty cans of cider strewn around them.
The roadside breath test will consist of me firmly explaining how to blow correctly into the tube, followed by five minutes of my first saying, then shouting, phrases such as "BLOW not suck", "You're not blowing", "No, blow until I say stop", "No, harder". Eventually the threat of being arrested for failing to blow into the machine prompts sudden understanding of the process.
At the station, the custody sergeant will find him/herself presented with someone who speaks not a word of English, despite their earnest claim moments before that they are the best friend of Sir William Willough-Ponsonby who can vouch for their sobriety.
Several minutes of "What language do you speak?" will follow, lists of foreign languages waved before the drunkard's eyes to no avail. Finally the offender will point at a language and say "Swahili/Punjabi/Romanian/French" (in English). Ten minutes later, after three attempts at getting interpreters to communicate with the person, they will capitulate and experience a miraculous recovery of the command of English. Sadly, this will shortly be followed by a massive brain haemorraghe causing them to fall on the floor and twitch in silence.
An ambulance, two sets of tapes, three different signatures and a variety of medical/mental ailments later, including a repeat performance of the inability to blow correctly despite having done it once already, the culprit will utterly fail to provide any kind of breath specimen on the big machine and will be escorted to their cell in disgrace, where the grasp of English may once more desert them until they want a cup of tea.
With any other prisoner, the custody sergeant would have enough after a few minutes, but with the drink-driver, any deviation from procedure will result in the loss of the case at court. So we are locked in battle trying to preempt the most unlikely defences, in a ludicrous process where a tick in the wrong box sets an alcoholic maniac free back onto the roads.
The worst injustice I ever heard of was a colleague who arrested a local publican for driving home pissed one night, who then failed to provide a specimen of breath and was charged. In court some months later, the publican had become a builder, had a Portuguese interpreter sitting with him in the dock, and was a devout teetotal. Evidence was presented to show the person speaking good English in custody (albeit with an accent) and providing "quick-test" readings later on that night well over the drink-drive limit. Moreover, the officer actually attended the guy's pub the week before court and had a few beers with a mate, the publican happily chatting away in fluent English with him. Plus, as it happens, the officer was fluent in Portuguese anyway.
The Magistrates threw the case out because "they couldn't be sure he had understood".
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
The original post can be found http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/07/drink-and-drive-youll-get-away-with-it.html
written by PC Bloggs from PC Bloggs - a Twenty-first Century Police Officer
"Hello left hand, it's right hand here, er... what are you up to? Been anywhere nice lately?"
As a supervisor, I am sometimes at a loss what to tell the young PCs on my team. For example, one earnest young chap came up to me recently and said:
"Sergeant Bloggs, should we be doing bail checks on criminals every night at 3am like the Area Commander says, or respecting the human rights and diversity of all citizens like the Chief says?"
As I stumbled, "Er..." another followed up with:
"Oh yes, and sarge, should I use my professional judgment to give a verbal warning to these two twelve-year-olds who pushed over another twelve-year-old in the park yesterday, as we were encouraged to do so on our last training day? Or shall I respond to this email from the Chief Inspector Responsible For Taking the Flak for the Superintendent's Ideas, and arrest them both to record a detection for violent crime?"
Before I could complete my, "Um, er, gosh..." another PC piped up:
"Bloggsy, do you want me to make sure I keep all of my three pre-arranged appointments today- in line with the Victim's Charter- or would you prefer me to spend the whole day dealing with the time-consuming first appointment- in line with Operation Thoroughness? Or as a third option, perhaps you'd like me to redeploy to some outstanding emergencies- in order to maintain our high call attendance rates?"
Unable to respond, I merely told the last PC to refer to me as "Sergeant Bloggsy", and locked the office door behind them.
Is it just me, or is that ambulance upside down?
Sometimes it isn't a case of Us and Them, sometimes it's just Us and Us.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.
The original post can be found http://pcbloggs.blogspot.com/2010/07/our-own-worst-enemy.html
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