Mon 7th May ’18 (updated 8th May)  | Twitter @ES_Humour | Contact us | Website

Chances are that things will only get WORSE before they get better…

When I served in the Metropolitan Police on a 999 Response Team, we used to actually have the time to be able to do some ‘pro-active’ policing. And it is something that my colleagues and I enjoyed; its what we joined up for!

Pro-active Policing is going out on patrol and being able to look for the ‘indicators’ which trigger most common crimes such as gang violence, burglaries, robberies etc.

On the inner London Borough where I worked, we used to also have highly trained and experienced plain clothed pro-active teams (based on the Borough) who would deter and disrupt KNOWN criminals.

The combination and effect on crime of a uniformed pro-active presence and plained clothes pro-active teams should not be underestimated. We (as a Borough) had a handle on the situation.

So what then happened to these highly specialised and extremely effective teams?

They were disbanded; broken up because, in part, of the cut backs and because someone looking for the next promotion had to provide ‘evidence’ that they could meddle with something that works, in order to create a new problem that needed to be fixed.

The plain clothed team that I am referring to above, was a team known as the ‘Robbery Task Force’ (RTF).

I cannot underestimate just how effective these guys and girls were at locking up the 3% of individuals who were responsible for around 60% of the crime on the Borough.

The wrong’uns were soon let out of prison having been locked up, but thats a whole different story altogether.

The criminals were overjoyed once teams such as the RTF were canned!

Response Team officers rarely have the time to be proactive, so when you take away teams such as the robbery task force, then the vacuum that is left quickly gets filled with the dark cloud of criminality.

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There also used to be a team on the Borough where I worked called the ‘Case Progression Unit’ (CPU).

This team consisted of a mixture of uniformed Officers and aspiring Detectives who would be able to hone their evidence gathering skills in a department that was responsible for investigating a crime, and taking the suspect to Court.

The CPU meant that, as a response team officer, you could arrest someone, take them back to the nick, complete the paperwork in around 4-5 hours and then be back out on the street again.

But guess what? The CPU got disbanded as well! Taken away due to the cuts which have been forced upon the various Borough Commanders.

What this meant, was that response team Officers who could be back out on the streets in under 5 hours having arrested a suspect, were now instead forced to spend an entire shift processing the prisoner(s).

Anyone with an ounce of common sense would rightly ask ‘why get rid of units such as the RTF and CPU’? It makes no sense to bin something that works – something that actually gets results.

In this example, the RTF and CPU were binned because the bosses in the job have been forced to REDUCE the number of Officers which they have at their disposal. But also, in part, because the bosses in the job do not always understand how effective policing works, and how crime can be reduced.

You have to actually spend some time on the streets, arresting criminals, in order to understand their mindset and their perceived ‘rationale’ for what they do. This is one of the reasons as to why I personally have never understood how you can join the Police directly as a senior officer, just because you have studied a subject at University!

Whomever came up with the ‘Direct Entry Superintendent’ idea clearly has zero understanding as to the complicated reality of the criminal underworld. Leadership in the emergency services should be based on experience, not exam results.

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Policing MUST also be taken out of Politics. Politicians, concerned with their own image and progression, should not be allowed to CONSTANTLY change the manner in which the Police do their job. The only people who know how to Police, ARE THE POLICE.

What doesn’t help, is the constant Police bashing which some sections of the civilian press seem to actually enjoy doing. This Police bashing creates a very false picture of what is actually happening on the #ThinBlueLine.

‘Police bashing’ also masks the low morale that is slowly seeping through the many membranes of the Police, as we highlighted in one of our recent articles.

This police bashing only acts to widen the gap between the public and the Police, because people have a tendency to believe what they read, especially if they don’t necessarily have any experience of the subject being written about.

And the problem is, that most people actually believe what they read in the papers about the Police and how the Police could/should do their job.

These articles are often written by people who have never donned a uniform.  Why else would you get people taking to social media who have zero experience of Policing, trying to tell the Police how to do their job? People end up thinking that Policing is ‘easy’, without have the ‘balls’ to do it themselves!

But I would like to see how such people would deal with the stresses of modern day policing.

I also personally believe, that the bitter and sour critics of the Polices’ tactic of ‘stop and search’ have to take a part of the responsibility for the spike in crime that we are witnessing in our capital city.

The fact is, that stop and search works. And I talk from experience, rather than from mere opinion.

Stop & search not only detects crime, but it prevents it too. If you believe that stop and search is ‘racist’ then you have been successfully hoodwinked by the civilian press and by the former Police Officers who have quit the job, but who now wish to carve out a new career in the media.

For example, if I told you that people wearing pink hooded tops were responsible for a spike in the theft of milk at your local supermarket, then, assuming you had a good amount of common sense, if you was a Cop then you would no doubt be on the look-out for people wearing pink hooded tops around or near to supermarkets, right?

Well, this is a very crude example as to how stop and search works. But it is intelligence led. Stop & Search is based on what is actually happening, and its utilisation differs from Borough to borough.

But too many members of senior management, and especially politicians, have been too afraid to stick up for stop and search.

The result? less stop and search, leading to an increase in violent crime.

Politicians and the civilian press should, if they REALLY want to understand what is happening,  spend more time speaking to the men and women on the front line.

That is the only way of understanding what is going on, and is the only real way of coming up with a strategy of helping to prevent lives being lost on the streets of our Capital City.

Written by one of the many Admins of Emergency Services Humour on Facebook, who is also a regular blogger in our satirical fortnightly digital magazine, S__ts & Giggles. Anyone can subscribe to S__ts & Giggles! Click here to find out more —> 

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