Radio Ham

Skipping around the blogosphere, reading about Section 76 of the 2008 Counter-Terrorism Act, I was struck by how the police seem to be one area of society where the right and left can join together in their mutual loathing. Everyone  seems to want to believe the worst of the police, whether from personal experience or from media coverage.

It goes without saying I think that some poice officers are idiots whose actions do themselves and the force a disservice. Some will be over-zealous, some lackadaisical; some should use more discretion, some use too much;  all will at time be guilty of errors of judgement, what with them being human beings and all. If all your experience of the police is from the newspapers then you are unlikely to get a very balanced view; police arrive promptly and deal with situation efficiently does not make the news. If you are unfortunate enough to get dealt with poorly by the police then you may well take against them, although I’m not sure why; after all, getting poor service in a restaurant won’t lead you to rail against all restaurants. No, you take each experience, good or bad, on it’s one merits. To do anything else is really little more than prejudice.

Anyway, while left and right can agree that the police are thugs and bullies and that we are marching towards a police state, opinion is divided on how this manifests itself. On the one hand

1. The police are racists who delight in beating up blacks and persecuting Muslims. On the other
2. The police are craven politically correct animals who let the Muslims get what they want and only target the white indigenous population

There is of course evidence to support both positions, but then by picking your evidence selectively you can prove anything. For example, responding to burglaries is one of my force’s priorities, issuing speeding tickets is not. However, show three examples of poor police practice when dealing with burglaries, and three examples of over-the-top actions by the police when dealing with speeding motorists – all of which will inevitably occur at some point – and hey presto, the police are more interested in catching motorists than burglars. Total bollocks of course, but never let the truth interfere with the selective supporting evidence.

And so then, to the two points above. Can the blogosphere get its collective heads together and decide whether the police are pro- or anti-Muslim? Because there is a stereotype I have to live up to and I want to know which one it is. After all, if we are going to be tarred with the same brush, can we at least also ensure we are brushed with the same tar?

Working on Christmas Eve, we received a few calls reporting strange objects in the sky tonight. Fortunately, following Santa’s progress on this website we were able to discount his involvement.

All I wonder is, that while I am open-minded enough to accept that UFOs may exist, and I wouldn’t cast aspersions upon the mental state of people who feel they have seen alien spacecraft and/or Father Christmas, the fact that said UFO spotter then thinks it a good idea to phone the police does make me question their sanity. I mean, what do they think we can do? Really?

Whatever…happy Christmas, one and all.

This BBC story tells the tragic case of two young children, aged 7 and 5,  who died in a house fire over the weekend in Eastbourne. Not surprisingly all the newspapers have covered the story; here is the result of the Google News search on the matter, currently showing 42 reports.

Though it all, however, one report stands out. While the Press Association reports children killed in house blaze, Reuters that two young children die in house fire, The Independent that young boys die in house blaze, The Guardian that brothers killed in house blaze, The Times that brothers die in house fire after mother runs for help and door slams shut behind her, and all other headlines are variations on that tragic theme, the supposedly reputable Daily Telegragh (the UK’s only remaining broadsheet, no less) decides to run with police refuse to allow mother to lay flowers at death scene of her young sons, with the follow up line “The mother of two young children killed in a fire at their family home has been marched away by police after trying to lay flowers on her own doorstep.”

How utterley pathetic. I know I am biased, and probably react in a mini fit of pique when I see the police criticised (unless it is me doing the criticising, which was partly the point of this blog), but to turn this terrible incident into a bash the police piece is absurd. For the record, the Telegragh reports that

witnesses said that [the mother] became hysterical when police told her she could not pass a cordon while forensics teams worked at the property…Mrs Goldsmith and members of her family then hit out at officers, according to witnesses, and were led back to their car and advised to leave. A forensic investigator finally retrieved the bunch of flowers, which had been dropped on the road, and placed it on the doorstep behind the cordon.

Regretable as it is, it is surely right to let the forensics team complete their work: and if that means the mother has to wait a while before putting flowers at the house then that seems a worthwhile wait if it potentially means finding evidence in what may have been an arson.

But I don’t blame the mothers actions, who is certainly acting out of the most awful sense of grief. I blame the Telegragh for turning a sad no-win situation into an anti-police diatribe, with the emotive use of the word word “marched” to describe how the police led the mother way. It seems to me that based on the facts as given the police acted correctly in a difficult situation; for the Telegragh to editorialise and imply otherwise, and to do so in a way that none of the tabloids have copied, suggests the Telegragh is a broadsheet only in design, not of mind.

“I’m not anti-police, but…” is the new “I’m not racist, but…”

Via Chicken Yoghurt, here are two videos currently doing the rounds, causing people to shriek about Britain turning into a police state. Orwell warned against it, doncha know.

http://www.qik.com/video/203590

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKl2sEN4yNM

At first sight these incidents may appear similar, but they are, in fact, completely different. In the first, two officers apply the law correctly, and are reasonably polite, albeit one of them gets a bit arsey in response to the somewhat dickish attitude of the filmmaker. In the second the PCSO trys to misapply the law, and is extremely rude and obnoxious in the process.

I guess from a professional point of view I am more appalled by the second video, but any complaints that this shows the UK as a police state are way wrong; this is an example of an idiot acting like an idiot, something you cannot legislate for, and who is acting here without the law to back him up. How can that be evidence of a police state?

From a civil liberties perspective, however, the first video is the concern. This is not news – the terror legislation that allows officers to stop members of the public without suspicion is some 8 years old – but still, it highlights the problem. We should have more to fear from police politely applying unfair laws than from stroppy tools in uniform making things up as they go along. I’d rather an individual officer fails to apply a sensible law that the whole force fairly applying an unjust one.

For those who constantly complain that that Police don’t care about burglaries, but will spring into action the moment you go 1mph over the speed limit, what do you think the respective detection rates are for these offences?

(And that probably fulfils my contractual obligation to write one post a year on this site. See you in 2009.)

Okay, six months then.

What has changed since I last wrote something here? Well, police resources have been effectively deployed in introducing call signs, a different phone system, graded response escalations procedures, and various new incident handling departments. This, we are repeatedly told is helping us to deliver an improved service to the public. The present is bright and the future even brighter.

Meanwhile, I now average a queue of 120 incidents, and have just 4 officers at my disposal. When I phone back to apologise to people who have been waiting nearly a month to see a police officer, I daren’t bring them the good news regarding call signs, the phone system, escalations procedures, incident handling departments…

They wouldn’t listen. It would shake their belief that the police provide a fucking appalling service. The fact is it’s not even that good.

PC Copperfield points to this BBC story about police officers who weren’t allowed to chase youths on a stolen motorbike due to concerns for the offenders safety if the pursuit turned nasty. It is a story that is all too familiar with current pursuit policies. Only last week we had a case where it was believed that a youth was drunk and in a stolen car. The instruction came back that if sighted the vehicle could not be chased due to the age of the youth and the belief that he was intoxicated. In other words, if you are under 16 and drunk, why not nick a car and drive it around with impunity, because the police are not allowed to catch you.

This comment from a police inspector regarding the case is disingenuous.

“In situations like this, officers need to carefully consider the safety of all road users before deciding whether or not it would be appropriate to begin a pursuit.

“This means taking into account the time of day as well as the prevailing weather and traffic conditions and the nature of the original offence and make a risk assessment based on all these circumstances.

“In this case, the decision was made it would not have been safe to pursue the bikes.”

This suggests that there are lots of factors that have to be considered when deciding whether or not to instigate a pursuit. This is true to an extent, but it is certainly not at an officers discretion, my force’s policy is far more prescriptive. In the case of a motorbike in fact the current policy states it is a no-brainer; you cannot allow a pursuit of a motorbike under any circumstances as it is too dangerous, regardless of the age of the rider or his safety equipment.  The exception would be an extreme case, where say the offender on the bike had just murdered someone.

But I think it ill behoves the media to criticise the police. Perhaps if they didn’t squeal everytime their was a police involved accident, to hold the police responsible each time regardless of circumstances, and to continually run scare stories of ever more reckless police driving, then the powers that be wouldn’t feel the need to over react with such draconian policies.

I am sure though that we can now rely on the press to start to criticise this latest police blunder, until eventually the policy is revised again to make chasing easier. Until the next tragic accident of course. It’s a pendulum, don’t you know.

See you in 4 months!

This blog hasn’t really got started as I hoped it would. The main reason being, I suppose, that after yet another day at work, trying to make headway into the 60 outstanding incidents with the 3 officers at my disposal, and coping with the 50 odd jobs that have come in during my tour of duty, when I get home I want to forget about it all. I certainly don’t want to write about it.

But something at work caught my eye yesterday. Everyone in our branch received an email from the chief of our department; the subject, can everyone get their heads together and think of a suitable logo for the department, and a branch motto.

It is nice to think that the top brass have got their minds on the really important stuff. They seem to think that their job is about buffing their own prestige and in expanding their private fiefdoms, but I bet that doesn’t feature in the eventual motto. The correct reaction when reading mottos such as “narrowing the justice gap” is to say “what a load of bollocks”, and to spurn anyone who uses such terms; but some people, sadly the people in power, take the opposite view. How sad, but predictable.

Anyway, after 3 days of bashing my head against a brick wall, I think perhaps a calendar or year planner would be a good logo – to show how long you can expect to wait to see an officer. As for the motto; “delaying incidents”, “ringing back and apologising to people” or perhaps just “suffering fools” spring to mind as good examples of what out job usually entails; I will leave you to decide where I think the fools reside.

I have just become aware of this site written by a police Inspector, and it reminds me of an incident a few weeks ago.

We received a call from a woman who stated that her ex had made threats that he was going to go around to her house and blow the premises up. Her ex had previous for firearms offences, and the female was taking this threat seriously.

We got the ball rolling, officers were sent to the address, the Inspector and CID were informed, and then we alerted our supervision to the ongoing incident. I usually wait a little while before I inform my supervision as all they usually do is to then write on the log "please inform outside supervision and CID", ie. exactly what we are doing anyway.

Anyway, on this occasion the Inspector for the division himself attended the address and tried to sort the problem. Meanwhile, as predicted, the duty officer (ie. the Inspector who covers us in comms) typed on the log the usual cut and pasted "inform supervision and CID" regardless of the fact that we had already done so. However, this time, rather than insist we inform the outside Inspector, he wanted us to inform the Superintendant.

Why I do not know. I have never before been asked to inform a Superintendant about such an incident, and I can only assume that we were asked to inform him because the Inspector himself was allocated to the job. In the mind of the duty officer we must just have to inform someone senior whatever the circumstances.

Anyway. the point is that not only am I not used to informing the Superintendant but when asked I realised that I don't know how to. I checked our computerised phone book and realised that we don't even have the Superintendants phone number to hand. I couldn't inform anyone above Inspectors rank what was actually happening in the world even if I wanted to.

Above Inspector are the ranks of Chief Inspector, Superintendant, Chief Superintendant, Assistant Chief Constable, Deputy Chief Constable and Chief Constable. You have to wonder what do they do all day, when they are apparently so totally insulated from day to day policing.