New Streamlined Dispersals

Merry Xmas my friends.

A short post for you today, to convey the most recent amusing 'slashing of red tape' in the Met.

My supervisor today showed us a little red book with 'Police Dispersal Power' marked on the cover. It is the latest new piece of Met Police paperwork.

The background is that under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, police officers can disperse people from a public place for up to 48 hours to prevent ASB. Until recently the exercise of dispersal powers involved handing out a plan of the dispersal area and writing the person's details in my pocketbook. This new booklet was intended to 'streamline' the paperwork for issuing dispersals, but as usual, the tail is firmly wagging the dog.

"The process now involves simply giving them a ticket from this booklet," said my supervisor. "The instructions are on the Intranet." Inwardly I raised a sceptical eyebrow.

He read the notes out loud to the team, explaining the new process. To issue a dispersal notice, we must now do the following:

1. Complete the form using the subject's details and give the top sheet to the person. 
2. Create a CAD specific to the dispersal. (A 'CAD' is a log or record of actions). 
3. Create a specific intelligence report ('CRIMINT'). 
4. The IBO (an administrative team) maintains a spreadsheet of dispersals, which I must update. 
5. Scan the dispersal form on a printer and save this file into a particular folder on the Metropolitan Police computer system. 
6. Complete and give the subject a stop-and-account form. (Form 5090).

If I'm thorough (and want to protect myself against allegations) I'll probably also want to duplicate the subject's name, address and date-of-birth in my pocketbook.

This is another only one of hundreds of procedures we are supposed to know like the back of our hands.

After this rousing briefing I wanted to check a certain suspicion, so I logged into a computer and found the folder for dispersals. I thought to test it by attempting to save a document into that folder.

I wasn't surprised to find that I didn't have 'write' permission to do this...and neither did anybody else.

In the Met Police, systems are created by persons who seem to give no thought to the actual implementation – to the difficulties that the guys and girls on the street are likely to encounter.

There's a familiar pattern here. The reality is that this 'improvement' will cause the power to be used LESS often. Officers will be unwilling – without a good reason – to jump through these hoops simply to disperse people.

I predict that in a few months time dispersals will become a performance indicator, in order to force officers to use the power.

I've seen this cycle happen so many times in the police force. It's depressing.

And it's good to see that the bosses are really working hard to reduce the duplication of paperwork...

Shoot Me! I'm The Target!

The UK's official threat level for international terrorism was raised from 'substantial' to 'severe' on the 29th August. The threat level system is run by the Security Service for managing terrorist risks. 'Severe' implies that an attack is highly likely.

Since the threat level was raised, police officers have been exercising more care and diligence during their duties to protect themselves. We know that there are certain terrorist groups who would merrily murder soldiers or police officers in public.

Also you know – if you have read my older blog posts – that all police managers have a constant concern with covering their arses. They make decisions based on the need to protect themselves from criticism and protect their hopes of promotion.

So what happened in our police station when the threat level was increased to 'severe'?

Our inspector, probably desperate to be seen to be doing something, put out an order:

All constables are to wear their yellow high visibility jackets at all times when outside the police station.

If the terrorists are out on the streets carrying loaded guns or stabbing implements, they'll surely not hesitate if they see a whale-shaped yellow blob lumbering along inside a shirt and tie, fleece, body armour, yellow jacket and silly hat?

With a high risk of a terrorist attack by fundamental Islamists, I feel like I'm on show, my bright yellow attire screaming out:

“I'm here! Shoot me! Me!”

Are we supposed to now be protecting the public by literally mopping up all the bullets? Instead, while the threat level is this high, shouldn't we perhaps adopt a lower profile?

Worst still, my inspector insists upon 'single patrolling'. This is the bizarre practice that former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson made one of his key policies, together with (1) learning 'The Five Ps' catchphrase, and (2) wearing name badges.

The idea of single patrolling is that it gives the public a false impression that there are more cops than really exist. In other words – an unrealistic expectation. And, according to unquestioned orthodox police thinking, this is a good thing.

Single patrolling is also unproductive (I don't stop and search people when I'm alone), demoralising for us, potentially dangerous (it was cast aside when the London riots started) and it worries the public when they see a police officer walking alone – they tend to assume that the reason we are alone is because budget cuts have reduced our numbers.

And I especially don't want to be waddling along by myself, under my blimp-like yellow jacket, when a terrorist attack is 'highly likely'.

I'm sure you've got my point by now.

Police sergeants and inspectors do seem to like their people walking around in high-visibility jackets, but why?

Seriously, how will that help us or any member of the public?

I know the thinking - I can hear their cogs slowly turning - my inspector, like all police managers, assumes that a visible presence reassures people. He wants people to enjoy that special euphoric glow of reassurance.

Nope. That doesn't work.

My experience is that people worry – when they see coppers near their homes they assume something bad has happened in the vicinity. They ask us:

"Officers, what's happened? Is it anything I need to know about?"

Obviously I dislike the fact that my inspector has chosen to put his team in danger simply in order that he is seen to be taking action of some kind, but what disappoints me most is something else.

Like so many police managers, he can't think for himself. He also can't reason through the obvious consequences of decisions. He might work from a desk, but I'm out there walking around and hoping not to get beheaded or shot.

Not only can police managers not think for themselves, but instead of doing nothing – something they should try more often! – they do the only thing they can think of, which is to copy the tried and abandoned ideas of previous commissioners, including ones who performed poorly and resigned in disgrace.

I don't write this because I enjoy disparaging police managers, but because it just isn't good enough.

Targets In Through The Back Door

“The public aren't interested in robberies or burglaries. They want officers knocking on doors handing out leaflets.”

So said one of the superintendents on my borough recently.

I've written extensively in previous posts about how we still have targets despite the Home Secretary, Theresa May, ordering police chiefs to get rid of them in 2010, saying:

“Targets hinder the fight against crime.”

And again in 2012:

“Targets are an excuse for lazy management.”

To recap, early in 2014 the Police Federation asked Metropolitan Police Service officers for evidence that they are being set individual targets, and over three hundred responded, explaining common themes, such as:

“My sergeants run a naming and shaming list, saying 'If you're at the top you're the nuts. If you're at the bottom you're poo!'”

Officers explained how they are censured if they don't “bring in the figures,” despite that most police police-work, such as standing on crime scene cordons and dealing with traffic collisions, fires, transporting prisoners an so forth, doesn't generate performance figures.

If they fail to produce the figures they are often given 'punishment postings'. This could mean for example a month of attending only the tedious and unproductive calls, or a month working in custody or standing on crime scenes.

Metropolitan Police Federation Target Culture Report

Career-advancing courses, such as driving training, are withheld unless they produce sufficient number of arrests, stop-searches and intelligence reports.

Anecdotally it's my experience that following extensive media criticism early this year, many of these Metropolitan Police sergeants, inspectors and chief inspectors seem finally to be resisting the temptation to constantly lampoon their officers for figures, at least as far as the usual arrests and stop-searches are concerned.

Police managers being police managers, the instinct for targets is starting to displace in other directions. The Metropolitan Police Service has a spreadsheet program called AirSpace, which was created as a helpful task management tool. In the manner of such things within the Met Police, it was quickly perverted into another means for performance-recording – one of numerous such systems.

Airspace has a facility for maintaining a list of contacts, and senior officers at New Scotland Yard are now requiring that local teams grow these lists. One of the borough's Local Policing Team inspectors told us recently:

“I want five hundred names added to the contact list by Christmas this year and a thousand by Christmas 2015.”

She wants officer knocking on doors every day taking people's names, telephone numbers and email addresses, but sometimes people don't want to hand over these details.

Another example:

Some of the Local Policing Teams are coming under management pressure to spend hours each week standing at the end of one-way streets mercilessly handing out £50 tickets to cyclists riding on pavements or cycling the wrong direction. No discretion is allowed and the tickets awarded are totalled up at the end of the week and sent to the inspectors and chief inspectors.

It is so disappointing that the police managers simply can't seem to help themselves. They have never been taught how to properly manage – making intelligent and creative decisions, and utilising their staff with respect and responsibility. Chasing figures seems to be the only technique they seem to have in their toolboxes.

I know what I'll do: create a new target!
I'll slip it under the radar – nobody will notice.

Well I've noticed and here it is in a blog post. I wonder what other targets are being brought in through the back door?

People might tell surveys that they want to see more cops around, but that's because they want the cops to reduce crime. Knocking on doors and handing out leaflets won't achieve anything useful:

“Hello love. You've been burgled? Sorry to hear that, but look – have a leaflet.”

We need officers free to do their jobs without their hands tied or spending hours doing unproductive nonsense like handing out leaflets. Even if people indicated that they prefer officers door-knocking to locking up burglars and robbers, it's our job to interpret that and discern what they mean.

To protect themselves from criticism or advance their promotions, Metropolitan Police bosses fall over backwards to give people literally what they say they want. They evidence this in writing as if it were a productive crime-fighting achievement.

But, if we take our policing responsibility seriously, we need to give people what they NEED, not what they think they want. We who investigate the crimes know more about it than residents in communities. And when we speak with them it's clear that they know that.

People don't want our managers to slavishly make us act out word-for-word what the public satisfaction polls seem to say.

Returning to our senior officers' managers' orders to grow our lists of community contacts – the only benefit of generating these vast lists is the ability to send out occasional emails giving crime prevention advice. But this is only an incidental benefit, not the root motivation for the information-gathering exercise.

We can certainly grow a contact list to a size arbitrarily plucked out of the air in order that our inspectors and chiefs are able to 'prove' their productivity to their managers' satisfaction, but this isn't going to catch the burglars...

Leaving In Droves

Two years ago I would check the Metropolitan Police website for resignations and find two or three each month. These days the norm is fifteen to twenty.

Examples:

1. A detective colleague was offered a high-paying investigation job and is now working in a sunny tax haven.
2. Another has resigned to resume the poorly-paid but rewarding youth engagement work he did prior to joining the police a decade ago.

BBC News: Police officer numbers - thousands plan to leave service

This recent article is misleading. It misses the point.

The implication is that Winsor`s reforms are solely responsible for the low morale and exodus of constables. If we believe this then we are failing to hold Sir Bernard to account. The reality is that Sir Bernard's Local Policing Model is of equal or greater importance.

It's true that police officers' morale was hit hard by the Tom Winsor reforms, in particular the retrospective change of pension conditions. Officers made informed choices to join the job based in part upon the pension scheme. Where the longest serving officers hoped to tolerate only a few more years of organisational stupidity, night shifts and power-crazy supervisors, they will now find themselves being spat at and wrestling with scumbags until they're sixty years of age.

However, the real culprit here is Sir Bernard's Local Policing Model. I won't labour the details of the LPM because I've already addressed them in other posts:

Only Five Minutes Left On The Clock!
A Convenient Bottleneck
Your Local Station Has Closed? Hey Presto! – A Reduction in Crime
The Figures Prove It's Working!
My Thumb's In The Hole!
Ten Minutes
Contact Points
Disappointment Car
'Return' of Police Targets

Sir Bernard tried the Local Police Model in Merseyside: it failed. He moved to the Metropolitan Police Service – clearly a very different police force – and displaying record-breaking self-denial he saw fit in June 2013 to try his LPM brainchild a second time. We are today struggling under this burden.

The LPM's reorganisation of police teams has proved disastrous. It has had the effect of spiriting away resources overnight – the teams now sprint from the start to finish of each shift, struggling to attend the calls and providing a very poor service for the public, who are bewildered by their difficulties in finding cops and by how long they must wait for us to arrive. The LPM also provides a joyless working regime for the officers – constables spend their shifts working alone, frantically rushing from one appointment to the next, unable to spend more than ten minutes with each victim.

Sir Bernard holds invitation-only monthly audiences and in the last one he told those gathered: “I now accept that it isn't working” and “Changes will be made.”

The Local Policing Model (which in no sense is 'local') has crushed the Service. When a system is under pressure all the stress naturally flows downwards to those at the bottom – and that's why the constables are now having a thoroughly miserable time compared with two years ago.

And that's largely why so many are resigning.

It seems like everyone wants to leave, and many are officers are taking lower-paid jobs elsewhere. Many of my colleagues are developing exit strategies – studying part-time degrees, setting up businesses, becoming physiotherapists and truck drivers. Those with less than two years service can already see the writing on the wall, and those with twenty-five plus years are grimly hanging on for their pension.

The talk has it that senior officers want to save money by employing officers for only two or three years. They want people who will stay only long enough to get the job on their CV then leave. As ever there is no incentive for senior officers to take any interest in their constables' careers or welfare. On the contrary, anything that encourages officers to leave plays nicely into the diretion the senior managers are pushing the Metropolitan Police Service.

One thing that bothers me is that despite the £4000 pay cut and closure of the pension scheme, applicants remain plentiful. There seems to be no shortage of young people buying into the mythology of being a police officer – "I've wanted to be a cop since I was a small child" – and willing to put on the uniform.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a police officer, but those recruits are going into it with their eyes closed, unaware that their careers and welfare mean absolutely nothing to the senior managers.

In time they, like all of us, will realise the vast disparity between their expectation and the reality. But the job benefits for those few years – feeding on them, using them then spitting them out again.

My detective colleague who left for a private sector investigation role: he is now earning a greater salary and being treated like a human being again. After more than years of service, and running the department at the time he resigned, he received no even one thank you or best wishes message from his managers, no was he offered an exit interview. He was on the last lap of his police pension but couldn't stomach it any longer.

At twenty years service an officer is given the Long Service Medal. Long overdue, his medal failed to appear. No mention of this was made, no email, nothing. He requested the medal and chased it up for a while, then gave up.

Another – a highly productive detective with ten years of experience – regularly worked fifteen hour days until one day his sergeant presented him with five prisoners:

"Sorry, we're short-staffed today, but crack on and let me know how it goes."

Two prisoners is doable but three is a struggle. Five means a hellish twenty-hour day, disregarding the officer's welfare, and serious mistakes are likely to be made. His sergeant could have dealt with two of those prisoners, but refused:

"I became a sergeant so I wouldn't have to deal with prisoners!"

The detective decided he could tolerate this no longer and resigned.

The organisation will never start to show any respect or consideration to its officers until the supply of new officers is less plentiful. Until then we are effectively an infinite labour source to be treated with indifference.

Only Five Minutes Left On The Clock!

Sir Bernard's Local Policing Model.

Let me recap: in 2013 at the Superintendents' Conference the Home Secretary Theresa May ordered police forces to ditch targets. The police chiefs didn't exactly do as she instructed: they centred instead on the idea of having only one target: public satisfaction.

The effect this has had is that we are now slaves to the attendance targets. These targets are:

15 minutes for 999 calls (I-grade).

60 minutes for downgraded 999 calls (S-grade).

48 hours for other calls (E-grade). 

The only thing that now matters to the sergeants, inspectors and the Control Rooms, is getting to the calls within those limits. The result is that an unattended 999 call is now usually downgraded to an S-grade to avoid missing the target. Similarly the S-grades are often downgraded to E-grades. See my earlier post for an explanation:

Disappointment Car

This is why – under the present Local Policing Model – burglaries, rapes and million pound frauds are sometimes attended only days later as E-grade appointments.

Needless to say, low level managers everywhere in the Met – inspectors and chief inspectors – continue giving their teams individual targets anyway 'just in case'. They do this to prove their teams' productivity and cover their backs: this incidentally is neither a secret nor my speculation. It's well-known police practice.

You'll remember that early this year the former Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Simon Byrne (now Chief Constable for Cheshire Constabulary) told the media that there are no individual targets for officers, even though every copper knows that simply isn't true.

Expectations Not Targets

Police managers will always latch on to targets like a lifeline in a stormy sea – that's their instinct because for two decades it's the only management style they've known. So we now have a new obsession with the attendance times, and this has created some interesting situations.

Here is an example recounted to me by a dog handler:

“My role is to track down burglars. Officers will contain a house then I go in with my dog Growler. Or the suspect has hidden in bushes, so officers send for us and Growler will sniff him out.”

“That's what used to happen, and still does in theory. Nowadays the moment I arrive at a burglary the Control Room tells me they want me to go to a domestic around the corner. That isn't my role, but they say they've got no-one else available. I'm told:

'We've got a domestic around the corner from you – there's only five minutes left on the clock.' 

I'm expected to leave the burglary – and there could be suspects still in the building – and go to the domestic. Neither do they care what I do at the domestic – it's all about simply getting an officer there before the sixty minutes runs out.”

Similarly, an armed response officer told me:

“We used to patrol during downtime, but the Control Room now asks us to go to domestics. We'll go to one, but then there's always another, and another. They say they've no local officers free, but it isn't our job to go to all these calls. What if we're needed at an armed incident? We'll help out with one or two from time to time, but they're taking the piss.”

“Because of this we've stopped patrolling. Until they get rid of the Local Policing Model and things change we have to stay at our base waiting for firearms calls.”

While all this is going on, Met senior and middle managers hold public presentations to prove the Local Policing Model is working: “Look at the figures! We have more officers out there now. We do, we do!”

Prior to the meetings they brief their constables and instruct them, “Don't tell them it isn't working. We've got to make this look good.” 

The Figures Prove Its Working

If it isn't one target with which the senior officers are obsessed, it's another: if it isn't arrests and detections, it's attendance times.

The big picture is that the LPM is designed to be purely reactive – it's about attending appointments and responding to calls. Patrolling or proactive work isn't built in to it. The appointments and the sheer number of calls don't allow time.

The only times now when we are able to carry out proactive work such as drugs operations is when the Chief Inspectors panic over the teams' performance figures. They make us drop everything we're doing and pull together for a warrant. Because it's a rushed affair we use out-of-date intelligence and the consequence is an operation that fails to find any drugs or stolen property.

It's absurd for the Chiefs' to feel they have to panic over figures then rush through a botched drugs operation. I say this because the system in which we now all work – the Local Policing Model – is reactive: it isn't designed to send us out looking for crime. So the fact that the Local Policing Teams conduct very few arrests, for example, is entirely defensible. The powers-that-be shouldn't expect as many arrests, searches, detections and so on, as we used to generate.

Remembering that police bosses cannot see past targets, the LPM makes sense. They bosses don't want a proactive system. They're not interested in preventing crime, because you can't count those crimes that you've prevented. If I close a crack-house, take a dangerous dog off the street or arrest a drug dealer, I'm preventing future crimes from happening.

But they can't be counted and added into a spreadsheet of performance figures.

You can only count crimes that have happened – the number of appointments attended and so forth. Managers at all levels in the Met want to have sheets of figures they can point at and say:

“Look! Look! This shows how hard my team are working. You can't criticise me. And I'd like another promotion please.”

The public wants crime prevention, which won't can't be measured and so won't contribute to performance tables, but it's the proactive work – drugs warrants, patrols, tasking teams rounding up drug dealers – that prevents robberies, burglaries and drug dealing long term.

So, we have the worst of all worlds. All the old targets plus new pressures that result in specialist units diverted from their real purpose simply to hit the attendance targets.

It isn't weakness for a manager or a policy maker to admit that a policy needs refining and to take on board the experiences of the constables striving to implement it.

On the contrary that would show strength and leadership.

The Robocop Myth

Many of the calls I attend under Sir Bernard's Local Policing Team are so distant geographically that I use buses to travel between them. Have you ever noticed that police officers don't sit down on buses?

Ask coppers about this and they will say, “I'm in uniform. Sitting looks unprofessional.”

Why is this? Everybody, officers and the public, like to buy into the mythology that we are relentless untiring machines, like Terminators, with no need for rest, food, or a little space of our own. In 2009 ex-Commissioner Paul Stephenson brought in his single patrol policy – an idea that neglects officer's human need for one another's company.

When standing in buses we don't sit down like everyone else – we tend to loiter in the middle, near the doors – no matter how tired we feel.

Since joining the police I have acquired a bad back, poor posture, arthritis and semi-permanent tendinitis in my feet. It isn't my idea of fun to stand in heavy kit for half an hour while the bus driver practices for a track day at Silverstone.

I have decided to use the seats and, because everybody stares at coppers, I choose seats at the back, but when other passengers spot me they always stop and stare, apparently dumbfounded.

Similarly, most folk seem surprised that coppers need to eat. I can't count the number of times, when I have been buying my lunch in a sandwich shop, that I have heard the astonished comments:

“Look at that copper. We don't pay him to eat lunch. Shouldn't he be out catching burglars?”

Well, inside my uniform is a flesh-and-blood person who needs to eat. I'm not a machine.

I'm not even going to mention the fact that the job can make us work any number of consecutive hours, change our hours willy-nilly with no notice, and call us in on days off: one time I failed to answer my mobile phone during a rest day, a local officer was sent to my door to pass me the order to return to work.

They can literally do with us as they please, but hey...it's always been this way...so that's okay, right?

A Convenient Bottleneck

I've spotted something – a rather devious and clever trick that the Met senior management have pulled. Recorded offences have reduced over the last year and Sir Bernard is joyfully claiming responsibility. Yes, less crime has been recorded since the LPM started – Why might that be?

The first reason is that since the Local Policing Model started we have very little time to go looking for crime – instead we are tied up with appointments and drowning in trivia. Instead of seizing dangerous dogs, searching drug dealers on the street, or closing crack houses, I now visit café after café checking if their CCTV shows lost handbags left under chairs.

Officers were moved from prisoner-processing teams to bolster the Local Police Teams. Ironically, those officers now spend much of their time replacing response team or desk-bound officers across the borough who are sick or on leave – reducing the Local Policing Teams to skeleton crews.

The teams are running on minimum numbers because of the above, so the second reason is that the few of us left each day spend all their time running from one appointment to the next. Compared with two years ago we are on our knees, and it's because of Sir Bernard's LPM – the reorganisation that was forced on us during 2013.

There is a very clever third reason. The appointments system seems bizarre until you see the Commissioner's trick. It's admirably sly and this is it: There are only ten appointment slots each day. Within each LPM 'cluster' a maximum of only ten crimes can be reported.

It's a bottleneck. No matter how busy the criminals are, no more than ten crimes can be reported each day – plus a few at station front counters and a few taken by the response teams.

Goodbye to embarrassing crime trends. No more bad press or awkward questions in relation to the crime figures.

Perhaps there is something intelligent behind the Local Policing Model, but it isn't what Sir Bernard is telling us.