Police Cautions

I cautioned a 17 year old lad recently. What was slightly unusual was that it was for Grievous Bodily Harm, Threatening Behaviour and resisting arrest. He had been drinking with friends in a park on a Saturday afternoon. They decided to go into town for a burger. In a busy takeaway on a Saturday afternoon he decided he didn’t like someone. There was no reasoning behind it. He started pushing another lad around. Families scattered, lots of threatening abuse and frightened kids. The other lad didn’t want to get involved and just kept asking him to leave him alone. The drunken yob eventually punches the victim in the face knocking him over and he cracks his head on a table leaving him requiring 8 stitches. The offender then runs off but is followed by CCTV and the police turn up and arrest him. He decides he wants to fight and there is a scuffle and he ends up handcuffed.

The police take statements, seize CCTV, seize victims and offenders clothing and cover all the bases to get this lad charged. There is a problem though. He has no previous convictions. CPS decide he must be cautioned. Three times the case is referred back to the CPS but they would not budge.

I do feel sorry for the victims who have said that they feel the police have only carried out cursory investigations before cautioning offenders for theft and assaults. I hope victims understand that we have put up with this position for years. As soon as an offender is booked into custody a check of previous convictions is carried out. If the offender has no convictions, unless the offence is murder, manslaughter or rape, they will almost inevitably be cautioned. It is pointless spending hours and hours building the case. If the offender is making admissions, you can hardly blame us if we caution them and move on to the next case. Is this justice for some of our victims? Of course not. Many first time offenders quite rightly deserve a chance and cautioning them is the right thing to do but for many they should be in Court.

The media has at last picked up the fact that offenders are being cautioned for serious offences and have made a fuss about this. Inevitably we have had strong words from the Government about how things have gone astray but it is going to change. I am afraid nothing will change. Our prisons are too full and the Government don’t want more offenders in Court. I can only tell you that we will carry on arresting offenders and hope that eventually victims will see some justice done.

Drug Legalisation

I was hoping the last post regarding force structures might generate some debate; unfortunately not. So let’s have a look at something more controversial.

It seems to be de rigour at the moment to join the liberal call to legalise drugs. We are led to believe that spending millions of pounds fighting the scourge of unlawful drugs is a waste of money and we are criminalising thousands of people for possession of drugs for no good reason. The pro legalisation lobby claim that this will be more effective as drug dealers will be put out of business on the basis of supply not being required as demand disappears.

What does legalisation of drugs actually mean? Does it mean anyone can go and buy skunk, cocaine or heroin over the counter? Are we going to restrict purchase to the over 18’s like alcohol supposedly is? Or does it just mean we give it to addicts and they can lawfully possess and use it?

This seems to be the biggest problem with the pro lobby. There is no overarching strategy and solution to the problem just disparate suggestions based mainly around the contention that the current strategy does not work. I have looked at some of the suggestions from the pro lobby and I cannot see they provide the answer to the problem.

One suggestion is that the prohibition of alcohol did not work and so why should it for drugs? Alcohol was and is used by the majority of the population; drugs are used by between 3 and 5% generally. There is no comparison. If the majority of the population used drugs the very fabric of our society would fall apart. Who would be going to work, paying taxes etc? Who would pay for the free drugs for all these addicts?

Portugal is hailed as a country that has seen the light and legalised drugs. They have not. Portugal had a serious drug problem, the worst in Europe. They decided that a policy of education combined with feeding arrested users into treatment rather than punishment was the way forward. This is not very different to that which we do here. No one is prosecuted for a first offence of possession of controlled drugs. We have spent a fortune on education and treatment programmes. Offenders going into custody for acquisitive crime are screened and all are offered drug treatment and counselling. Few take up the offer. All Portugal has achieved is a reduction in drug usage to a similar level to the rest of Europe.

Tacit approval of drugs or legalisation in the same way as alcohol delivers totally the wrong message to society. Suggesting it is OK to use drugs and that we will supply you with free drugs until you fancy giving them up can only encourage more users. When are people going to realise that we cannot afford the mess the liberal brigade have already got us into and drug legalisation will only make it worse.

For example, society protocol used to demand that couples saved up to get married, found somewhere to live and then thought about having a family. The welfare state was there to pick up the pieces of those who made mistakes. Now we have a society where people just breed, get houses, never work and that is all OK. It is not PC to criticise as this is their right apparently. This is another story really but the point is that we are now paying out in benefits more than we raise in income tax for the first time in history. We cannot afford any more daft ideas and need to recover some ground already lost. If we start handing out free drugs to addicts we will have to give free drinks to alcoholics and free cigarettes to smokers. And it will have to be Chateauneuf du Pap as I cannot drink anything else and refusal will be a breach of my human rights.

I feel exasperated that some people think that by supplying drugs to addicts we will stop demand and so the drug dealers have no business and disappear. If we give free drugs to addicts the dealers will simply target other young people, mostly young teenagers, to increase the demand. At best, some of them will move on to other crime such as prostitution and people trafficking. At worst there will be a price war while they try and put the Government out of business. We are almost bankrupt so it is a serious possibility. The suggestion that they will disappear is ludicrous.

The laws of our land should reflect the sort of society we want to live in. We don’t want drugs in our society and we should not encourage people to use them. I am fine with users being encouraged into treatment. Dealers should be hunted down, imprisoned for a long time and every penny they own seized. The state should not become just another drug dealer.

The Brief Return of Hobbes

I've been out of the blogging business since my last post 'Market Research' way back when. My colleague Inspector Lex Ferenda has done a wonderful job taking the blog further and the visitor mark past 20,000. He's doing a better job than I ever did, and he's more handsome too. I'd pretty much said all I wanted to say when I handed over the mantle to Lex. Except, however, for one post that I couldn't quite articulate. There are times when we - the police - get things wrong. Quite a lot of things in fact. Our problem is, if we're the investigative experts, the ones who get paid the big bucks to get things right, who can tell us when we've done otherwise? Below is an admirable example of who can, and a pertinent reminder that behind every victim there is another victim, and another victim, and another....those being the primary victim's family and friends.

If there was one guest post that is worth my coming out of retirement to publish, then it is the one below. I salute John Allore, and I sincerely hope he and his family finally receive the justice - and service from the police - that they deserve.

Us and Them (and fear of the other) *

Police are cold-hearted functionaries; at their worst, dim-witted donut-eaters - punching the clock, but never really solving problems. Crime victims are whiners; bi-polar depressives who through their “advocacy” ultimately serve as a distraction to serious police work.

The story of my sister’s murder, and how the Quebec police bungled the investigation over thirty years ago is well documented. If you want the full story you can find it here on my website. Moreover, the former Vancouver police officer – and now Geographic Profiling professor at Texas State University – Kim Rossmo featured an entire chapter on Theresa Allore’s case in his recent book, Criminal Investigative Failures. I have been asked to write down some words about the victim’s perspective in the victim-police-society equation. To that end I’d like to make some comments about how we often come round to seeing police as lazy functionaries and victims as whiney troublemakers:

1. After 30 years the murders of Theresa Allore, Manon Dube and Louise Camirand remain unsolved. Quebec police to this day refuse to investigate a possible connection between these murders. The murders occurred within 17 months in 1978-79. The Quebec police claim they had no indication that the murders could have been connected despite the fact that the lead investigator in all three cases, who’s the whiney victim and who’s the donut-eating cop?
2. The initial media articles in 2002 on the death of these three young women laid a foundation for serial murder with particular focus on Kim Rossmo’s groundbreaking ideas on geographic profiling. At the time the Quebec police pooh-poohed the concept of geographic profiling as a criminology fad. Two years later I intercepted the lead investigator into Theresa’s death on his way to Washington; why was he traveling to the States? To learn about a new frontier of police research called Geographic Profiling. Who was he going to study with? Kim Rossmo.
3. Five years after all three murders remained unsolved Quebec’s Surete du Quebec made the decision to dispose of all physical evidence from the cases. I usually keep anything that has an unresolved connection with my past be it pictures, recipes or memorabilia: Again, who’s the investigator here?
4. Having learned that my sister’s body was found with a watch on her wrist stopped at eleven o’clock, I resolved to purchase 4 similar watches on Ebay from the 70s and place them at the crime scene at the same time of the year that she disappeared (to see when they would stop, to establish a time of death). The Quebec Police ridiculed this exercise as pointless-victim-meddling, yet all four watched stopped within 15 minutes of 11:00 PM, thus establishing an approximate time of death. Again, who's the victim, and who's the investigator? Because it would appear that I am both.
5. Similar to the watch; my sister’s wallet was discovered by the side of a road in the Spring of 1979. There was some disagreement as to whether the wallet had been thrown there the prior winter (when she disappeared) or whether it had been placed there more recently in the Spring after her body was discovered. To answer the question I purchased a similar wallet from the 70s, placed it in the Canadian snow around the same time that she disappeared, and retrieved it the following Spring (around the time that the actual wallet was discovered). The results? The wallet was probably tossed in the Fall when she was murdered. The Surete du Quebec’s reaction? I was a whiney troublemaker not contributing what-so-ever to solving my sister’s murder.
6. Faced with the reality that my sister’s wallet was found by the side of the road approximately 10-miles from where her body was discovered, the Surete du Quebec was asked, “doesn’t this prove that the killer drove a car, and disposed of the wallet after murdering her?”.” Not necessarily”, replied lead investigator, Roch Gaudreault… “Wild animals could have carried the wallet from the crime seen to the resting place by the side of the road.”

Yes… wild animals… following the roadways of men, traveling ten miles, and conveniently disposing the evidence along the banks of a highway.

Do you still want to ask me why I question the professionalism of police officers?

* Footnote: Us and Them: Dark Side Of The Moon was the first album Theresa ever bought and she DID listen to it on headphones.

Ringing in More Changes

I have been having a look at Force collaboration projects recently and other initiatives that Forces are putting in place to restructure. We have gone through a great deal of change over the last 25 years and it is clear there is an awful lot more to come.

A number of Forces, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Suffolk and Surrey, to name but a few are looking at a complete change in management structure. There will be some similarities to Norfolk, where last year they removed the Divisional structure and just have one HQ based management structure controlling all operational policing.

The other Forces are looking at a similar structure but will want to put their own mark on it. It appears that we are going down the route of having a few strategic police stations where you base your custody, response and investigation teams. Neighbourhood teams will be housed with partners or in a few local rented premises. Depending on the model, there will be no one over the rank of inspector or chief inspector at these stations.

At HQ you will have a number of senior managers responsible for investigation, response, custody and neighbourhoods and protective services. Savings can be made selling off, but more significantly, not having to maintain many police buildings. Further significant savings will be made by reducing the number of senior managers, by as much as 50%. Finally, centralisation of all HR, Finance and other services is made to reduce costs further.

All of this will be made more palatable to partners and the public by increasing the number of front line officers with some of the savings made. The former Chief Constable of Essex, Roger Baker, tried something similar in Essex, albeit his savings were largely coming from general cost cutting. I think this sowed a seed with many other Chief Constables.

The thought of losing 50% of our senior managers will appeal to many, but there are risks and negative points too. If we reduce all officers of Chief Inspector and above by 50% where does this leave those with aspirations to reach the dizzy heights of senior management? If you are not on the High Potential Development Scheme your chances of progressing beyond inspector may be very small for a number of years to come. What pressures will there be on the managers that are left?

Even the mighty Metropolitan Police will come under pressure to review their management structure. Can they really justify almost 100 ACPO equivalents?

Force collaboration projects are progressing at an ever increasing pace. Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire are heading towards a merger, probably within two years. Kent and Essex are in bed with one another with joint IT, recruiting and shortly major crime. HR and Finance are likely to follow with one centralised service for a number of forces.

Sussex, Hampshire, Surrey and Thames Valley are collaborating on aircraft, technical support, IT, uniform, protective services etc. Officers from those forces have already been transferred to Thames Valley to provide a regional counter terrorism unit. Secondments in some other areas are planned to take place next year.

Publicly the Chief Officers deny that this will lead to regional police forces. Privately, I can assure you, they are already speculating which of them will be taking over the new super forces.

I would be genuinely interested in others views on all this.

PCSO's Don't Work

PCSO's: a cost effective resource?

I have been involved in Neighbourhood Policing for many years and welcomed the first tranche of Police Community Support Officer’s (PCSO’s) who were introduced to the Utopian Police Force in 2003. We had recently introduced beat officers into every area in the county. They were spread a bit thin and PCSO’s were welcomed by most as an additional resource to help us gain intelligence, provide a uniform presence and deal with low level anti social behaviour and problems in the community.

Even then PCSO’s had their critics and they were seen by some as policing on the cheap. They were ridiculed for their lack of powers and it was suggested that the public were being conned when they saw uniforms patrolling the streets with limited training and effect.

Like police officers, some of the PCSO’s proved to be very good, others not so. The good ones got stuck into their communities and became well known. They came up with diversionary activities for young people and kept Neighbourhood Watch, Residents Associations and Councillors happy by giving them time and providing a conduit for information. They gathered intelligence and were a font of knowledge regarding their communities.

Over the last 6 years I have seen things change. We still have two types of PCSO in Utopia. We have the younger recruit who is using the role to have a look at the police with a view to joining as an officer. Their commitment to Neighbourhoods is limited. If they want to join the police all they want to do is jump in cars and respond to 999 calls. The majority are not really interested in getting involved in communities.

The second type are the older PCSO recruit, some of whom are an interesting bunch and vary from housewives returning to the workplace after having a family to people with all sorts of experience who may have been made redundant or just fancied a change of career. Disillusionment has set in among many of these. There is no career structure for PCSO’s. Pounding the beat on your feet in all weathers for year after year starts to lose its appeal. Even the best of our PCSO’s are struggling with motivation and the best managers are struggling to get value for money from them.

The media has made a lot of a small number of incidents where PCSO’s have apparently failed to act. I don’t place much store in any of that. We have all heard the story of the two PCSO’s who allegedly watched someone drown. The truth is they arrived ten minutes after the victim had disappeared in the water. There was nothing they could do. The fact is the public and, of course, offenders are wise to the limited powers and capabilities of our PCSO’s. The police cannot help them every time some yob is lippy or abusive to them. The public are becoming disillusioned with this role. They still regard it as better than nothing but want real police officers with powers and who use them.

I was a fan of PCSO’s; now I feel we need to review the role and its place in our police force. Should we try and make the role more interesting and support other areas of the business by giving PCSO’s additional tasks to do, for example, taking witness statements and viewing/seizing CCTV?

In April 2010 the Home Office subsidy on PCSO funding comes to an end and the whole cost will be borne by the Police Authorities. I now believe that is the time to reduce the number of PCSO’s and use those savings to increase the number of police officers in Neighbourhoods.