Where have all the Police gone?

So back to our regularly scheduled programming..

I want to take a few lines to explain about the situation of POLICING in the UK these days. I cannot really speak however for Scotland, firstly having never been there, nor knowing any Scottish Police, and also because the Scots seem to be quite straight forward and probably wouldn't stand for any of the complete crap that the Westminster lot pile upon us down here.

So I started to look through news reports.. Back in 2003 there were reportedly almost 140,000 police officers, the numbers only went up from that point, I think the police officer numbers hit an all time high of somewhere near 145,000 officers in 2008. These figures are JUST for England and Wales!

Now with all these police officers you must start thinking ok, so why aren't they out patrolling our neighbourhoods or walking our streets???

So in 2007 the Telegraph did a story which stated that only 1 in 58 Police Officers was actually out patrolling. Scary thought really. That means out of 145,000 Police in England and Wales there are only 2,500 out on the streets?? WTF???????

So IF those figures are correct that is 1 Police Officer to about 26,000 members of the public. Well below the figures that it should be. Can you imagine 1 Police Officer trying to control 26,000 irate people? Not going to happen is it?

Right, so actually, where are they?????

(I'll try to get to that one in the next post but I am interested in where you think they are, so please leave a comment with your thoughts on where the other 142,500 Police officers are...)

The Party Politics

PM says recent weeks among worst

Mr Brown talked frankly in the Guardian interview Gordon Brown has admitted recent events have been among the worst in his political life and made him think he could "walk away from this tomorrow".

one phrase...

"Good Bye Gordon!"

Oh ok. I couldn't just finish off with that.

Mr Brown. You took control of this nation without being voted for. You turned it upside down. You allowed your politicians to STEAL from the public and then just stood there with a gormless look on your face.

On top of all of that. We finally hear that "SOME" MP's are going to be investigated for their Fraudulent spending of the public's money. What REALLY pisses me off is that taxes are raised every year. The government charges us MORE and MORE for fuel duty, Road Tax, etc, etc.. they tell us they'll drop VAT for a short time but raise other taxes... Yet you allow YOUR MP's to go and do what they like with no repercussions. Come on Gordon, of course it's going to be a bad week, you've been caught! All of you should bugger off out of the way.

So now we see the next headlines about the thieving politicians.

MPs 'over-claimed' on council tax

Several MPs are said to have claimed too much for their council tax More than 50 MPs have claimed expenses for council tax they have not paid, the Daily Telegraph says.

Where does it end?

When will our MP's become accountable to the public?

The police have to be accountable but it would seem the politicians can do what the hell they like.

Perhaps this lot will just go and quit, resign, or perhaps go and perform Seppuku!

Then we might actually get a group of politicians who actually wants to serve the nation, to do the right thing, to play by the rules as they should be.

Can anyone say "VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE"

Eventually I might get back to my regularly scheduled post of explaining where all the policemen are.. :-)

PC dies on duty

Officer Killed On Duty The Kent officer was injured by a vehicle as he attempted to introduce diversions at the scene of an earlier accident...

A police officer has died following an incident on the A249 at the junction with the A2 near Sittingbourne shortly after 8am on Sunday 14 June. PC Philip Pratt, aged 26, was injured by a vehicle as he attempted to introduce diversions at the scene of an earlier accident. He was treated at the scene by paramedics before being flown to The Royal London hospital in Whitechapel by air ambulance. He was pronounced dead at the hospital a short while later. Again in a sign of this becoming more and more common. Our thoughts go out to PC Pratts family, friends, and colleagues at this time of sadness. Take care out there peeps, take care!

The state of Anarchy (II)

Ok, picture this hypothetical situation........

It's winter. It's a long weekend, Monday. It's 6pm. It's cold and dark outside.

Mr and Mrs SMITH are at home with their 4 lovely children aged 16, 12, 9 and 6.

Around 7.30pm Mr and Mrs SMITH have had a few glasses of wine each and they start an argument because unfortunately their 12 year old son has been getting in to trouble at school. Nothing serious, but the argument becomes a little loud.

The next door neighbour calls the police because the arguing can be heard through the paper thin walls (now there's a shock).

The police arrive and the situation has already calmed down. The police take details and realise that there are NO offences at all. There is no need for anyone to be arrested, but then again apparently someone is supposed to be...??

Police have to check on the kids to make sure they are alright and then take details of ALL 4 children in order to submit 4 separate pieces of paperwork (consisting of around 4 pages each) which get submitted to Social Services. Then there is the paperwork for each adults so any future risks can be assessed..

No offences.

No violence.

No detections.

2 hours of paperwork.

Priceless!

PC Dies in RTI

Serving Officer Killed The Leicestershire PC was off duty when his pedal cycle was involved in a collision. He had been ‘Beat Bobby of the Year’ in 2008...

Leicestershire Constabulary have tonight confirmed that a serving police officer was killed in a road traffic collision last Friday. PC Guy Swatland (49) was a beat officer for the Stoneygate and Knighton beat at Welford Road local policing unit.

Our deepest sympathies go out to PC Swatlands friends, family and colleagues at this time of sorrow. We hope that justice prevails and should the driver of the van be found guilty of causing his death let us hope that the sentencing is adequate.

The state of Anarchy

I find it particularly shocking that even the Judiciary now feel that it is appropriate to complain about the Government interference in the workings of the Police of this nation as outlined in this story, so I thought I'd have a quick rant about it, after all I'm an outspoken type of person so it works well.

Because I know you value your time I've included an excerpt from the story here:

• Whilst summing up after sentencing a father and two sons for GBH on a man who criminally damaged their car, Judge Bray remarked; "Nobody bothers to phone the police anymore. They go round and sort it out themselves - and I know why. It's because the police no longer come round so people go out themselves and deal with it." 
  

Judge Bray has gone on to say a few other things, but in essense he's gone on to criticise the Home Office and the Police. While his criticism of the police has not been directly apportioning blame.

I feel kind of like it's 1 step forward and 3 steps backward for the police these days.

We start to make some progress and then it's all washed away in a media hailstorm.

So, why didn't police respond to the job?

In short, I don't know..

But I can tell you we've had robberies in progress and NO ONE to attend as everyone was committed. Yep, that's EVERYONE who was covering the entire area of our district. So where is the problem here?

Oh yeah.. firstly there aren't enough Police to cope.

Secondly we have far too much stupid paperwork and stupid expectations when it should be completed and how (I'll nag on the paperwork for "domestics" in my next post, you'll love it.)

Third we are covering areas far too large for the amount of officers we have available.

Fourth we spend far too much time chasing Home Office set Detections and making sure we can keep to our TARGET for the month instead of actually going out to be PROACTIVE in our patrolling! (Oh yeah, we are supposed to be Proactive but it's hard when you've got 12 crimes on your account that you are supposed to be progressing, you've got to update your "victims" every 7 days because the boss says so, and you still have to find the time to go out and find a bad person to arrest!!!!)

Let's get real.

Each shift of PC's needs someone who is employed to do our paperwork/reports etc. So I can come in, provide a copy of my pocket note book with the details for the domestic that I've just been to, that person then sits there and diligently adds those details on to the computer system, they fill out the relevant paperwork and submit it all for filing.. THEN that means that I (a SWORN CONSTABLE) can go back out on to the streets 3 hours earlier and perhaps STOP the idiots from the first part of Judge Brays problem causing the Criminal Damage in the first place.. Or perhaps turn up and arrest them prior to the original Victims of Crime going around and beating the living crap out of them!

INSTEAD this is what we get...

http://www.policeoracle.com/news/Police-Budget-Cuts-Irrational-and-Indefensible_19294.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/surrey/8070568.stm

I'm just so pissed off that I'm not even going to make those links look nice. Just click them and you'll get the idea.

The government caps the budgets, cuts the budgets, causes police to cut money from one part of a budget and send it to another part of the budget just to keep things going. I think I will have to have a rant about this further at some point.. but at the moment I'll leave you with the feeling that yes, I'm pissed off.

So of course the public take action in to their own hands. I'm dealing with a guy at the moment for just the same thing, he grabbed someone and gave them a damned good telling off for damaging his property and I have to arrest him????? WTF!

The government proudly says that there are more police constables in this country than ever before. Yep, there is. That's great.

There is also MORE PEOPLE in this country than ever before. There is also MORE CRIME in this country than ever before. And when you work it out there is just 1 police constable per around 500 people. And while that looks really good I can go on for hours about how it's not, and perhaps that'll make another post next week.

It's frustrating as hell. No wonder I'm going grey!

So many things...

There are just so many things to talk about in the news this week.. it's hard to choose just one.

So I'm going to flit about it all somewhat and just give some general opinions.

The new Home Secretary: I hate politicians as they are generally a complete waste of space. Let's just hope this one does a better job than the last stupid cow, surely he couldn't be any worse. Plain and simple.

Cops put the wrong fuel in to patrol cars... ok, I've not done this one.. BUT I can see how easily it could be done. So, lets commission a study in to how many members of the public manage to do just the same thing in a 12 month period before we talk about how much money the police have spent on getting tanks flushed!

Part of the problem of course stems from the fact that half of our police cars are diesel and half are petrol. You have to be reminded. Or perhaps part of the fault should come down to the fuel retailers for not having the PUMP NOZZLES clearly labeled.. go in to one high street retailer and ALL the pumps are black!! put BIG clear labels on the pump heads and save EVERYONE a lot of problems... In most countries the COLOURS on the pump heads (the handle bits that you hold) are UNIFORMLY THE SAME throughout ALL retailers, this is to stop this problem..

And lastly for today, because I'm completely bored waiting for work to start... Another police chopper damaged! It absolutely is beyond belief that these VITAL pieces of equipment are NOT behind massive fences in secure areas.. complete with dog patrols, security, or even a full CCTV system if nothing else... I'm pretty sure OURS is!!!

So.. why is it that after the Surrey Police chopper was damaged a very short while ago other forces didn't do anything to increase security of their own mega-million pound investments?

Staggering isn't it?

I would have thought that it was plain and simple, you protect your equipment, specially as choppers save lives. Not only the lives of the police who are on the ground, the lives of the criminals we chase, and the lives of the general public who we can rescue because of the chopper directing us straight to them!

Oh yeah, a question for you guys..

What would you like to see written in this blog? (I may not change anything but a bit of feedback is always a good thing)

Drugged up idiots..

Waaaaay back when I was posted in Big Smoke City in Southernshire... I was crewed with an Area Car driver. We were double crewed most of the time because of the sorts of things we attended.

So on this particular day I was busy in custody and my colleague the area car driver decided that he was bored and would go out for a quick drive on this particular late shift.. I distinctly remember his comments later about how he knew 5 minutes after leaving that he should've just waited for me... Always nice to know I'm wanted for something, even if it's to be cannon fodder for the area car drivers..

So Josh (who's about 5'5"-7" tall) goes out for a bit of a pootle about. Immediately managing to get flagged down by a member of the public who's alleging that a 18 stone 6'0 tall completely looney (off his guts on something illegal) idiot has just come up and smacked them in the chops without any form of provocation.

Josh being a good lad decides that he's going to call for some backup and just as he's doing this the drugged up numpty decides he's going to have a go at the cop. Good move idiot features!

Josh tells the fella to get back, he doesn't listen, he grabs hold of Josh and Josh empties an entire can of CS in to his gob at close range! (shame I missed that one)

Drugged Up Numpty goes down like a sack of shit crying and with snot running out of his face everywhere.

Josh manages to try and cuff him up as best he can... he then realises that if the idiot tries to get up he might have a problem, he promptly sits on him... he then remains sitting on him until the van and another area car arrive to back him up.. (I heard that bit from the other area car driver who told me they came around the corner to see my partner sitting on the back of some man-mountain who was all snotty and horrid on the tarmac). This all happened in the middle of a fairly busy road as well.

I have a very interesting memory of seeing Josh taking numpty out of the back of the van at the nick. Seeing the fella try to spit in his general direction, whether or not he was simply trying to clear his throat or not I don't know, but Josh doesn't take kindly to it. I've come out to assist Josh because I had almost finished with my person in custody.. and Josh had called me up and asked me to meet him in the back yard.

We are buzzed through in to the holding cell. Numpty tries to spit again and it takes a good 4 of us to put him down on the floor at this point.. Oh yeah, and he's pissed off.. mind you though, once he's down he's down.. just a matter of keeping him still and quiet, which he wasn't going to do... he's deciding to be rather noisy and annoying.

Strangely he was a completely different fella when he was interviewed, all calm and polite, and apologising for his having a go at Josh...

Another one bites the dust 'ey? ;-)

Half a pint of snot

A while back (last summer I think) one of my colleagues was really quick off the mark with his CS spray.

Now don't get me wrong, he's certainly done a good job. La'dickhead had reached out of sight for something and put his hand behind his back... he could've had anything.

The only thought running through my head at the time was "am I going to live through this shift".

So I've thought about posting this one and I've decided that to post it directly after my moaning about our stab vests is highly appropriate positioning.

I wasn't directly in the line of fire but as it turned out when I had nimbly moved around and managed to pin La'dickhead on the ground and get some bracelets on him there was only one problem.. As he had been suitably marinaded in CS and he had ended up on the ground with me pretty much on top of him pulling his arms instantly behind his back (a-la-Pat & Carl style) EVERY SINGLE ONE of the CS particles that hadn't affected him decided to fly straight in to my face.

La'dickhead gets dragged outside and sat on the gutter, despite the fact that I'm suffering from the effects of the CS it is plainly clear that he's got it far worse than me, besides, being the abject professional that I am I didn't say a great deal other than "damn, that's not nice". I get my colleague to stand there waving at La'dickheads face to keep the air moving on him.. I walk away about 10 yards and OMG I didn't know that you could blow out a half a pint of snot in ONE GO!

10 minutes later we are on the road on the way to custody with windows down and my sinuses feel GREAT.

Though I don't recommend CS as a sinus decongestant, but it is very good at that.

Oh yeah, you may remember that La'dickhead picked something up.. It was his cigarette. So why did he have to act like an moron and make us both wonder if we were going to die horribly? (Sometimes I wonder why I do this? I love my job but I DON'T want to die for it)