How could this happen? What he said was that despite official denials, this was the budget cuts starting to bite. What has been cut already in his and a number of forces, he said, is overtime. Which may sound innocuous but is anything but.
As he explained, when a force has to pay for policing any operation outside of the normal, such as policing a demonstration for example, then the hours worked are overtime. But now that there is no money for overtime, any extra hours have to be clawed back from normal police work. This is what happened in his area on the day in question. Suddenly a single officer on his own, which would have been considered dangerous under manning is now operationally acceptable.
“It is reaching critical already” he said. And what worried him most is that those at the top of the force know the reality but are allowing it to happen.
This is the withdrawal of policing by stealth, by the lies and by the connivance of arse-licking yes men who have risen to the top not just of our police force but of all our public services. A plague of target meeting, greasy-pole climbing, wasters who will deny the truth for as long as they are paid to do so.
So am I simply coming down against the Tories and on the side of Labour? NO! I have no time for either of them. They are two sides of the same failed political class and system.
Each party spends all its time claiming the other is ruining or already did ruin the country. When in truth they have simply taken turns. Each has amply provided half of a concoction by which, I believe, we are now going to be poisoned.
For ten years under NuLabour we have incubated a rancid culture of fulfilling targets rather than doing the job. What mattered was setting the ‘Ambitious Targets’, and then making sure that your underlings provided the data to prove you had met them.
NuLabour created a political and managerial culture where the truth mattered far less than the triumphant announcement that the target had been met and no one ever got promoted for asking how. The managers whose figures shone the brightest for their political masters were the high fliers who got promoted.
If costs for cleaning needed to be met, simply redefine what clean means. And to avoid any future blame, privatize the cleaning so that if the hammer should come down, the blow could be deflected to some sorry contractors while the NuLabour bag of subprime promises would provide the usual mantra of ‘learning lessons’ and ‘better accountability of subcontractors’.
If a waiting time needed to be shorter, just remove people from one list and dump them in another.
If a crime figures need to be shown to fall as proof of some initiative – easy don’t report as many ‘incidents’ as actual, official crimes. Doesn’t matter how many are committed, just don’t ‘crime’ them, which means don’t write them up. If they’re not written up, not crimed, then they don’t appear in any official figures. And not criming is easy. Just get a statement from those concerned that they will not cooperate with nor provide evidence for the police. You would be amazed how many crimes can suddenly be disappeared.
Who would think to check that crime was falling not because fewer were committed but because an order had gone out ‘not to crime’ any more of a certain kind of crime for a while? I never thought to ask. It was my friend who told me this is how it is done. He told me that in his experience the crime rate is five or six times the official figures. “I am frustrated at the lies” was the last thing he said.
For more than a decade in this country we have have made an environment where too many of the lazy, the liars and the dishonourable have risen to the top. That was NuLabor’s contribution. But now comes the moment of undoing. Because these are the people the Coalition have now turned to and asked, ‘Can we cut budgets by 20% and protect all the services?’ And what do you think they have replied? Are they the people who would stand up and say “Honestly, no”? Or are they the people who will say, “Three bags full sir.”
I think we are all, governed and governing alike, going to be horrified by how quickly and disastrously the fabric of our past achievements is shown to have been a tissue of lies. The Tories and their friends are not hacking at a solid construction. They are attacking something that the previous owners had painted over with a white wash of lies and gerrymandered figures.
"As he [being from a "metropolitan policing area"] explained, when a force has to pay for policing any operation outside of the normal, such as policing a demonstration for example, then the hours worked are overtime. But now that there is no money for overtime, any extra hours have to be clawed back from normal police work."
So the police are now being used to protect Westminster and Whitehall, private companies should employ their own security staff, and the rest of us can go hang?
You'd think that the rank & file police would realize the tremendous power they could wield should they choose to do so. Whatever the political stripe, most people agree that some sort of effective policing is necessary & desirable (some of the laws they enforce could use changing, but that's not their fault.) But I have yet to see much sign of this in the US or UK. I hope I am wrong & just haven't been paying attention.
If the police force is anything like other large government organisations I've no doubt that there's massive room for efficiency improvements. That said your point about the Tories now hacking at Labour's dysfunctional and crony rewarding legacy is a fair one.
If I were forced to find a silver lining to the coalitions actions so far it would be an inclination to data openness. Without transparency "the lazy, the liars and the dishonourable" will stay at the top.
How long this inclination for data openness lasts is another question.
Precisely the same story has been reported to councillors in my area. A policeman friend also told me that there are similar problems with equipment. He said that he had had to lie to a member of the public about a delay in attending an incident. The embarassing truth was that only one car was available, and it wouldn't start.
While accepting that at an extreme there is a risk of increased crime from inadequate manning levels, isn't it also true that much of the talk of adding more bobbies to the beat is just political posturing, as beyond a certain level there is no correlation between increased police numbers and reduced crime?
In the main the ordinary police officer desires to stop patrolling and to join another aspect of policing . As there are many and various opportunities ranging from CID to Diversity most officers move . If there were less specialist squads and a new accent on beat policing with the role and status of these officers enhanced ,this might go some way to solving the "lone PC" problem. Then we come to the gross inefficency of IT and general equipment procurement . I do not not believe that it affects local policing if all officers wear the same sort of shirt and drive the same cars ,just to quote 2 examples . Then there is the vast expense of overseas travel ,I wont even start to write about this aspect. needless to say a vast swathe of efficiences could be made if the sclerotic command structure would stop protecting their own little empires and start to think how things could be done efficiently and openly. I feel a little better now and will stop here before I go into a real rant at least I think I have been somewhat constructive instead of just criticising
I too, dah sab, and puzzled that police officers and other public servants keep concealing the truth about the reality of the cuts.
For example, in Vronsky's example above, why didn't the officer just tell the truth (we've only got one police car and it's broken) instead of making an excuse? The public can only act on what they know, and if the people in the know conceal the truth all we are left with is the lies of politicians and their acolytes.
"A plague of target meeting, greasy-pole climbing, wasters who will deny the truth for as long as they are paid to do so."
Inspector Gadget's archives are full of examples! I don't agree with him on everything, but his blog is a mine of useful info.
In France they are cutting police numbers, probably amalgamating Police and Gendarmerie, and opening the door wide for more Private Security corporations, who will of course 'regulate' themselves.
frog2
I remember a friend of mine having their drink spiked and ending up in casualty. Needless to say they found it near impossible to report the crime.
Got hit on my bike by a vehicle coming into the cycle lane and even going down the police station with the vehicle's registration number was told as I (miraculously) wasn't seriously hurt nothing could be done about it!
Anecdotally, I'd agree that in anything that could be argued as a grey area you will find it very difficult to report a crime.
jms452
opening the door wide for more Private Security corporations, who will of course 'regulate' themselves
This is a terrifying possibility. Especially in light of the evidence from Iraq, which seems in hindsight to have been an experiment in private policing. God help us all if that model is exported to the west.
It is not only now that there is a problem of, at times, a lack of Police on duty.
In the early 1980s my daughter did not come home in the evening at her usual time. Normally she and her two friends spent the evenings together at our house or at one of her friends' houses. At midnight I went to the Police Station to report that she was not at either of her two friend's houses. I was amazed that the Policeman at Holyhead Police Station said that his fellow officer was on a meal break and, so, he could not leave the Police Station.
You must remember that this was during the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland, and that the Ferry from Ireland was due to arrive at 3AM with probably 500+ passengers. It is no wonder that the IRA could enter and leave the country with no restraint. Yet the official line was that our borders were protected.
This incident opened my eyes to political lies and now I do not trust anyone in authority to tell me the truth.
David – do you have any updates on when you're doing talks in London, which cinemas/ dates, to accompany the film "Inside Job"?
Am 2/3 through your book now and am really enjoying it!