Hauling up the drawbridge!

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FFS here we go again - Halloween;  just a night of innocent fun for little kids or simply a dose of clever marketing and commercialism, or maybe even something more sinister?

These questions are hauled out in the tabloids year after year and everyone has a differing viewpoint as to the actual answer. Many of those opinions will probably be based upon age and whether or not you have little kids at home. I won’t even try to answer the question after all, it’s one of those ‘traditions’ we’re unfortunately stuck with.

I’m not opposed to people having fun per se, neither am I the killjoy that the ‘Grumpy’ nom de plume would have you believe. I just find it offensive and totally unacceptable when people’s so-called ’fun’ has a negative impact upon others. Halloween (like Mischief Night) is often just an excuse for the chav skiprats to display even greater levels of annoying shitdom and antisocial behaviour than normal.

I am a fervent supporter of genuine tradition, of historical fact (and fiction) however; I find it distasteful when some smart arse marketing guru seizes on the opportunity to make hordes of cash from it. I also find it incredulous when participants in the pseudo ‘tradition’ have absolutely no idea why they are doing what their doing, or indeed the history behind the event.

I can cope (just) with the overtly exhibitionist parents who trail their little precocious ghoulish treasures around the streets early doors. Some of the costume designs and makeup, applied for hours by proud mother earlier in the day, do actually deserve a small reward. It’s the teenagers that get me, the ones who put on a cheep mask or don a bin linner then bash hell out of the front door. You answer and menacingly they demand “trick or treat Mr” whilst thrusting their grubby hand forward.

I usually play dumb and ask them what the phrase means or, maybe advise them that going door to door begging is actually against the law in England. If I do get a reply to my questioning the reply is usually along the lines of “you give us some sweets or we slash your tyres”! How do we actually combat this constant march of Jack’s Lantern and the American comercial claptrap bollocks? Perhaps we need to go back in history to the ethos that dictates an Englishmans home is his castle?

Time to pull up the drawbridge and position the pots of hot oil on the ramparts I suppose!

Halloween: an annual holiday observed on October 31, primarily in Canada, Ireland, the United States and the United Kingdom. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints’ Day, but is today largely a secular celebration. (Read more at Wikipedia)

Related Articles

• What’s Samhain? (livescience.com)
• 10 Gorgeous Pumpkin Carving Designs to Inspire Your Halloween (pamil-visions.net)
• The Meaning of “Halloween” (thedailybeast.com)
• Stack those Jack-O-Lanterns! (myballard.com)
• “A Brief History of the Jack O’ Lantern…” and related posts (laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com)
• Curious Customs: Stories Behind Popular Holidays – Halloween (brighthub.com)

Simple routes to ‘visionary’ British policing for the 21st century and beyond?

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This week the media has been awash with ‘exclusive’ reports about ‘new’ police methods for combating the current terror threats but, what do we actually want/need from today’s police service?

The news agencies have trotted out their usual selection of sensational (but largely incorrect) emotive headlines and if I’d been a gambling man, I’d have been on a sure-fire winner selecting titles such as;  ‘Bobbies adopt Rambo Tactics’ or ‘Bobbies turn to SAS to manage the Capital’s killing fields’ or indeed any of the other crap they often use.

Here we go again thinks I; now for all the internal security ’experts’ being hauled out of police and/or military retirement to offer their ‘opinion’ (and claim their handsome sound bite fee plus expenses). The social pundits will berate the further ‘moves towards a police state‘ and, how long will it be before the ’Human Rights‘ comments are eloquently voiced by Ms Shami Chackrabarti on behalf of Liberty et al, if they haven’t already? As an aside; Shami is usually well-informed and her observations and comments are usually also pertinent however, the media tend to use her to reinforce views opposing required or sensible policing measures. The BBC were a little more restrained than their tabloid and commercial cousins might have been when reporting the issue…

Police in training for ‘Mumbai-style’ gun attack in UK – “UK security chiefs have ordered an acceleration in police training to prepare for any future “Mumbai-style” gun attack in a public place” (Read more)

There was also a modicum of sensible and realistic comment from Frank Gardner, the BBC Security Correspondent…

“Scary as this all sounds, it would be far more shocking – even scandalous – if the government were NOT making these preparations for a worst-case scenario.” (Frank Gardner)

With the increased criminal use of firearms, there is actually a need for Armed Response Units to combat today’s gun crimes. There is also a realistic need for units like the Metropolitan Police Service and their Central Operations Specialist Firearms Command (CO19), to constantly monitor and update their training methods. This is a sensible and a professional requirement to combat the ever-changing and increasing threat levels. That said, it’s highly unlikely we will see hordes of Elite Special Forces or heavily armed police teams patrolling our streets in their Jankel Guardian TIV, at least not as a matter of routine.

What do we actually want from our police service?

The underlying and most fundamental questions raised by this latest news are; what type of police officer does our society actually want? Do we still require the stereotypical Sgt George Dixon (of Dock Green) archetypal ’British Bobby’ or, some armed to the teeth gun-toting type ninja called PC John Rambo?

For some time now I’ve been thinking about these questions (and hopefully developing some answers). We probably require a police service that sits somewhere between the two and, although the threats of modern times dictate higher levels of armed response type enforcement, it is actually an unsuitable and unworkable policing paradox to try to efficiently provide one at the expense of the other. Perhaps there is a desire to move towards a continental model like the French for example? A policing system that has two distinctly differing core functions; one for helping you and dealing with your crime reports and, one for beating you with a big stick and controlling you with riot shields and water cannon. Is this the type of service we really want?

The old ethos of a multi-tasking and omni-competent police officer is probably something of a pipe dream today (unfortunately), and likely to be consigned to the history books for ever. Even if it’s only due to the unsustainable financial implications for the public purse. There is also a need to address numerous operational resource management issues, ones that are currently having a profound and negative impact upon service delivery to the public.

“How does the service reconcile having the largest number of staff ever with claims about huge falls in crime, yet it cannot cope with the demand it faces and wants to withdraw from being the public’s perceived 24/7 ultimate social service, and suffers immense bureaucratic burdens? The messages are inconsistent.” (Dr Huw Evans – Management Consultant)

The provision of PCSOs was originally an attempt to bolster the failing public face of British policing. There has been limited success however, due to vagaries in training, individual personal skills and the differing powers bestowed by Chief Constables in different force areas, the service has failed to develop their full potential and consequently, their ultimate value to the policing process. Despite the perceived values of the PCSO role, there is still far too much inconsistency in the individuals and forces they work for, I therefore remain to be convinced about the true value of the PCSO role. Are they being used correctly to support the policing function or, just providing policing on the cheap? There are still far more operational and financial advantages for having fully warranted and multi-skilled police officers.

2010 has been the year of public sector ‘reform’ (aka cost-cutting), a process which has been moving at an even faster pace since the election earlier this year. I fully support the fact that, government agencies like policing, are (finally) being brought to the operating table. Some radical and long overdue surgery is required. We need to remove the cancerous growth of mismanagement of public funds by the turkeys that don’t vote for Christmas. This grotesque illness has continued for far too long. What concerns me however is; despite the myriad of pre-op examinations and routine tests by locum practitioners, the surgeons are still wielding the scalpel blind.

How confident and brave the ‘surgeon’ will be still remains to be seen but things do need to change. As I’ve commented before, the firearms issue is only one aspect of the challenges of the police reform process and unfortunately, I’m still waiting to see something radical. There has to be some new thinking for anything really radical to actually take place.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” (Albert Einstein)

Comprehensive reform is well overdue, especially when you consider the current failings in the service. Unfortunately to date, we have simply been tinkering around the edges.

Now more than any time previously, it should be easier to apply the change that is required. Change that is required not just for British Policing to survive (at least in some recognisable format) but also, to give our policing system a fighting chance and the capability of addressing the law and order issues of the future.

I’d like to offer the following observations and suggestions to address some (or all) of the problems…

The current structure of British policing (like Sgt. Dixon) and its 43 autonomous police forces (in England & Wales) needs to finally be consigned to the history books. Take a leaf out of the Scotland policing book; they’re already making sensible inroads towards national/regional mergers (see previous post). Most importantly, members of ACPO and the Police Authorities need to bury their autocratic and parochialism crap, and stop misleading the public by implying they will lose local control and accountability with force mergers.

It is however a fundamentally flawed process to base any ‘reform’ simply upon the ‘Neighbourhood Policing’ (NP) model, a format that has extolled by many but also one which has (in many ways), compounded service failures. NP (or whatever it is called this week) was little more than ’buzzword’ policing, in many areas it simply halved the 24/7 response element of policing, at a time when actual demand was on the increase. Calling a grouping of police officers (and PCSOs)  a ‘Safer Neighbourhood Team’ might have sounded good, it may have appeased the politicians for a while, it may even have conned the public (in the short-term) into thinking the police are keeping them ‘safe’ however; when the service constantly fails to deliver response to demand, surely it has to be a joke.

Reform processes so far have been bogged down in a quagmire of theory, political considerations and autocratic self-preservation. Perhaps my (usually maligned) simplistic approach to the problem might be a good starting point for once? There may be many strings to the bow of modern policing however; these differing functions actually fall into distinct geographical areas of policing responsibility to uphold the law of the land, these include;

1. National – Including international crimes such as; people trafficking, drugs cartels, money laundering and other serious organised crimes. There are also additional responsibilities relating to the nation’s transport infrastructure.
2. Regional – High level and cross border crimes like burglary, autocrime and those crimes committed by travelling criminals, who have little or no regard for geographic boundaries. 
3. Local – Community policing issues such as theft, criminal damage, domestic violence, child protection, missing persons, public order and antisocial behaviour.

There are times when a crime or incident can realistically span all three of the above; this can create primacy and responsibility issues, usually because of financial considerations. Police managers also fear the prospects of accountability when something goes wrong with something they had no direct control over. None of these issues are actually insurmountable.

Shouldn’t we take the opportunity to look at basing the reform process around these three simple geographic areas of policing? To be fair the police service has actually tried however, because of piecemeal implementation of infrastructure, there hasn’t been a very high success rate, so far. Much of the failure relates to the parochialism in policing leadership (again), that and the lack of will to develop financial and governance infrastructures to support collaboration. The methods being rolled out in the Policing Yorkshire & the Humber model may be worth expanding upon?

The most important part of any national/regional service provision is a fully integrated communications and IT system, with local, regional and national capability. Despite initial moves in the right direction, with systems like the Police National Computer (PNC) and the national Airwave Tetra radio system, inter-force capability and compatibility is still patchy and haphazard. The radio system is just one recent example of a failed opportunity (in many forces). Because each force has negotiated system specification individually with the radio network provider, much of the potential in the system is underutilized.

I could go on for page after page; the police service has continually failed to fully embrace the potential of technology for years, for both autocratic financial and political reasons. There have also been massive failings in securing the financial advantages of economies of scale presented by joint procurement arrangements and combined/shared back office functions such as HR etc. Thankfully, the service has finally had its hand forced (to some extent) by the austerity measures, now we are starting to see moves in the right direction, but what of the future policing structure?

Although some moves have been made to extract better value policing in the three areas outlined, I believe we can and should do more. Let me expand further on the three differing areas of policing…

NATIONAL POLICE FUNCTIONALITY:

The government have already outlined changes relating to the demise of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and the introduction of a new National Crime Agency (NCA). The SOCA Annual Plan for 2010/2011 can be seen here. Tarique Ghaffur, a former Assistant Commissioner Metropolitan Police force with responsibility for serious and organised crime has said;

“…constant criticism of SOCA, justified or otherwise, has almost certainly contributed to its replacement by the NCA. The question remains, as to whether the NCA will actually deliver the anticipated results?” (Read more)

In addition to the ongoing SOCA/NCA debacle, and the communications technology infrastructure issues already outlined, we still need to address the national procurement issues and the sharing of other ‘back-office’ support functionality. It is my belief that, the latter issue will probably be most efficiently addressed at regional as opposed to national level.

With the proposed remit of the NCA, which includes serious crime and aspects handled by the UK Border Agency. This new agency could also take responsibility for the provision of policing functions at our sea and air ports. I also believe there is scope to develop a national transportation police function, further developing the work already (but only partly) undertaken by the Highways Agency.

The British Transport Police (BTP) could provide a national ‘Highway Patrol’ functionality, supported by the current Highways Agency Traffic Officers (HATO). They could be utilised in a PCSO type support role within the expanded BTP. The two agencies already possess the required national command and control and administration infrastructures to support such a development.

It could also be beneficial for the service if there was a national air support provision based upon England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The functionality (and support structure) would however probably be best delivered on a regional basis. Indeed, much of the national functionality would probably require a regional command structure for reasons of operational efficiency. Other national functionality could/should include;

• Counter Terrorism Investigation/Intelligence
• Narcotics Enforcement/Intelligence
• CEOP & Hi-Tech Crime Enforcement/Investigation
• Provision of Intelligence
• Wanted/Missing Persons Bureaux
• Police IT and Computer systems
• Creation and development of a Professional Policing Accreditation Body
• Procurement Processes (including nationally specified police vehicles)

REGIONAL POLICE FUNCTIONALITY:

In addition to the national functionality (provided on a regional basis), there is still much scope for shared working methods. My previous mention of Policing Yorkshire & the Humber is a good example of collaboration. Another good example of sharing resources was the now well established Central Motorway Police Group in the Midlands. The success of this unit which has been in place since 1990 is apparent and the North West Motorway Police Group took on a similar role and structure in 2008. This type of working is finally being looked upon more favourably than was previously the case. Functions that can also benefit from collaborative working and/or regionalisation include;

• Specialist Crime Investigation functions such as Child Protection
• Crime Scene Investigation
• Tactical Firearms Teams
• Armed Response Teams and Roads Policing
• Public Order Policing
• Marine Support (where applicable)
• Recruitment / Specialist Training / Personal Development
• HR / Finance / Estates functions

There is much to commend this type of functionality, both from an operational and financial viewpoint. It’s a pity the final drivers had to be based upon financial necessity, as opposed to visionary police leadership. If ACPO members can finally bury their autocratic hatchets once and for all, more advantages can be realised by joint service provision.

LOCAL POLICE FUNCTIONALITY:

Despite all the political and social rhetoric about community policing values, and the constant changes to unit structure and methodology over recent years, the frontline delivery aspect of the service is one of today’s major failures in policing. Delivery of an efficient 24/7 response functionality in policing is an integral part of the overall service. This Sgt. Dixon type policing ethos is actually the bedrock of British policing. It builds, develops and sustains public acceptance of the now famous and still respected (just) concept of ‘Policing by Consent’. Failures in this area have probably done more to damage the image of British policing than any other.

A desire to return to community based operational methods is to be commended indeed, it is a much-needed ethos, especially in those urban areas where policing has become a situation of ’us and them’. Not with standing the undoubted benefits of community policing, the previously flawed method of simply cutting the service in half was destined to failure. The creation of a two tier service, i.e. response officers and community officers created a two tier service, it effectively created a situation whereby neither of the groups could actually meet and fulfil the demands placed upon them.

It is my belief that, there was no need to split the service into different groups, all police officers have a responsibility to apply and uphold the law with a policing by consent ethic. Any failure in this area of policing is as much to do with an officer’s individual social skills, ones that reflect the society they are a product of, as it has to do with any methods employed by the service. We need to see response and community teams combined once again and all operating with a community ethic.

RANKS & POLICE POWERS STRUCTURE:

As I’ve said previously; there are undoubted operational and financial benefits in having multi-skilled and fully warranted police officers. There are also benefits from having an extended police family support structure, one that includes a police reserve function and a Community Support Officer role. It is my belief that for reasons of flexibility in resource management and overall service resilience, the minimum standard must be fully trained and warranted constables for any role that is required to exercise the power of arrest.

The current rank structure and the associated failings have been widely commented and reported on previously and, I believe it no longer sustainable. A comprehensive report about the excess of senior police management was produced by The Thin Blue Line.

“Too many chiefs and not enough Indians” – Officers report that their forces are top heavy with Senior Management ranks, causing confusion with a blurring of responsibilities. This causes inconsistencies in strategy with one Chiefs’ flavour of the month project being superseded by another, often opposite viewpoint, sometimes within weeks or months of the first being issued. (Read full report)

Financial and operational advantages presented by force mergers and/or collaborative working are offset by retaining the same number of senior ranks. The example that I gave previously about the Yorkshire/Humberside initiative is a case in point? Assuming the collaboration process is permanent (and was even more comprehensive), where is the sense in maintaining four Chief Constables, four deputy Chiefs and eight or more ACC ranks? There is also the remainder of the senior rank and civilian hierarchical structure to be considered.

There are various pieces of legislation and/or guidance that dictate a certain rank based level of ‘authority’ or, dictate actions and responsibilities to sit with a certain police rank. Given that legislation/guidance can be changed, is there actually a requirement for many managerial and administrative roles to be filled by fully warranted and highly paid senior police officers? The only outside duty undertaken by many of them (where heaven forbid they might actually encounter the general public), often amounts to little more than 5-10mins at the start and end of each working day whilst walking between office and car. Continually trying to justify high levels of public money expenditure on senior ranks (and other public sector executives) is becoming increasingly difficult. Couldn’t many of those administrative tasks be performed by suitably trained and qualified civilians on lower salaries?

These are just some of my questions and ideas. I am happy to answer questions and/or expand upon any of them however; what we can no longer do is sit on the fence, pontificate and theorise about the whys and wherefores. The time for comprehensive action is now. Before we waste another opportunity to give Britain the police service it requires.

In the words of our now famous meerkat… “Seemples, tssk!”

Beaker Hikers and Hairy Bikers!

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Yesterday whilst at work in the pub, the late Sunday afternoon punters and I were discussing the week’s political and social issues. No great bones of contention or fundamental disagreements, for a change…

Chewing the fat about social ills, politics, cars, women, music and the great unwashed idle youth of the day is what blokes do over a beer. Luckily for me none of the clientage started on about football (for a change). If they had I’d probably have been scooting off down the cellar to check the stock or at the very least, would be catching up on some pot washing. There’s nothing like the topic of 22 grown men kicking the wrong shaped bag of wind around, to make me slip into a perpetual vegetative state!

The previous weeks events obviously had people voicing their fears about job cuts etc. An issue with the potential for high negative impact locally, especially when public sector employment is so predominant in the area. The usual left and right viewpoints of the bar politics divide were vociferous, most had something to say about the rights and wrongs of the austerity measures, even if it was only “poxy government” or “labour would have looked after the workers better”. Isn’t it funny how the less educated normally resort to the us and them, upper class shafting the lower class argument? If only it were that simple!

To be honest, less than a week since the austerity measures were announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review, I’m already getting jaded with the dearth of ‘expert’ opinion. Whatever your opinions, at least we got a laugh from the Danny Alexander job cuts exposure gaffe and ’Beaker‘ the hapless HM Treasury Muppet also got his website hacked by disgruntled ex-followers (read more).

It appears that Danny Boy will be beating a hasty retreat from the heat of the political kitchen very shortly and will be meep meeping all the way to the back benches of parliament, always assuming your actually daft enough to believe everything you read in the papers.

Move over Danny! Spin doctors order reshuffle, live on TV - He may be a key architect of the Coalition’s huge cuts, but when they were unveiled in the Commons, Treasury Minister Danny Alexander was humiliatingly cut out of the picture. (Read more)

Another enthralling night of putting the world to rights eventually drew to a close, with the afternoon ’graveyard’ shift over for another week, I consumed a couple of well-earned ’off duty’ beers then strolled home in the now cold evening air. Normally at this time of night if the wife is at work, I relax with a couple of beers, read a book and listen to some Radcliffe & Maconie on Radio 2.

Stuart Maconie is the UK’s best-selling travel writer of non-TV tie-in books and his Pies and Prejudice was one of 2008’s top selling paperbacks. His work has been compared with Bill Bryson, Alan Bennett and John Peel and described by The Times as a ‘National Treasure’. (Read more)

As Mark and Stuart don’t do a slot on a Sunday night I grabbed myself a beer from the fridge, shuffled into the living room, fell into the grip of the armchair and toasted my toes on the hearth whilst I enjoyed my well-earned ale. At this point I reached into the magazine rack and pulled out a copy of ‘Country Walking’ magazine to read  (See Stuart Maconie interview). As I flipped through the publication I was hit by one of those eureka moments, the ones that great scientists and authors have from time to time.

In September 2009, the Radcliffe & Maconie show was broadcast live from different locations along the Hadrian’s Wall trail, as Mark & Stuart walked between the Solway Firth and Wallsend. In 2010 they continued the walking theme from locations along the Jurassic Coast including Exmouth, Weymouth, Lyme Regis and Sidmouth. They now, occasionally, refer to themselves as “The Beery Hikers”.

What a great catchy tittle for a blog post thinks I but what the hell do I write about? Well the ‘Beaker’ bit is covered above and now I’ve got connection #2 with the ’Beery Hikers’ (one to go). After reading for an hour or so and maybe even nodding off briefly, my dozziness was suddenly disturbed. I came back to the land of living abruptly as the dog stuck her big black damp nose in my ear to remind me it was walk time. I finished my now flat beer (don’t you just hate it when you fall asleep before you’ve finished drinking) and grabbed my coat and the dog lead.

We hadn’t got far down the road before my ears were stinging and fit for dropping off, it was absolutely bloody freezing. A fact confirmed the following day when the weather girl announced it had been one of the coldest October nights on record. As my Barnett is receding and I usually sport a #1 haircut, I normally wear a beanie hat to insulate my body’s nerve centre. Some warped logic tells me that if my brain cells are kept warm and active, it might just slow down the aging process. I say warped because after the years of booze, fags and a relatively sedentary lifestyle, I’ve probably already done my bit for contributing to an early onset of senility!

As my coat didn’t have a hood, and I wasn’t all that happy about having to scrabble about on the already frosty ground trying to reclaim the fallen autumnal ear, I rummaged in my pocket and found a screwed up Buff. I kind of vaguely remember thinking it was a handkerchief on the way back from the pub one night, unfortunately it was when I had a heavy cold. The fact said item may have been harbouring some unpleasant germs, or worse (yuk) was immaterial. It felt dry (although somewhat crusty) and there was no other option, unless I wanted to arrive home resembling a famous Dutch painter that is! With a little haste I performed the magic Buff manoeuvres bit and brought some relief to my frozen aural extremities…

The dog and I completed the sub-zero purgatory as quick as possible. Not as quick as it could have been but that’s down to the old girls advancing years and arthritis, bless here. It’s an absolute sodding pain when it’s pissing down with rain, you get twice as wet because she takes twice as long to do the distance these days. She doesn’t like the rain either but hell would freeze over before she would break into a trot.

We arrived home and with the dexterity of a returning triumphant polar explorer, I managed to manipulate the key in the front door and as I threw the door open wide, the warmth of the house poured out from the glow of the hall and stung my face. Shutting the door behind us, I glanced in the hallway mirror and was confronted with a Si King lookalike, although somewhat slightly less rotund. Yes! That’s it, I had found the final link in my Blog post title trilogy, The Hairy Bikers! For those that don’t know, Si King wears a Buff when preparing food in a proper kitchen.

If it wasn’t so bloody cold I’d be off back out to the Kebab shop to get some supper. Think I’ll just manage with tea and toast tonight and drool whilst watching one!