New Year’s Eve patrol

I don’t know about where you are, but it looks like PC Rain will be on patrol for most of the evening. In fact, where I live, PC Rain is doing a very persistent job of keeping people off the streets.

Hopefully, this patrol will be maintained way past midnight, thereby deterring people from hanging around in drunken gangs and kicking seven shades of Hogmanay out of each other!

I will be working tonight, as will many of my colleagues. I trust that those of you who are not working will respect our right to refuse a celebratory drink or kiss on the High Street. Bear in mind that if you are arrested, it won’t be before the officer concerned has given you any number of chances to go home – there are only so many cells and we don’t want them all full for the early shift, who will of course be earning double time and therefore can’t possibly be expected to work for it. If you do get locked up, it is YOUR fault that the night was ruined – not ours.

Alas, another small pleasure will now be gone for another year. The satisfaction of telling someone that they are being kept in for court until after Christmas/New Year is one of the few remaining perks of the job and I look forward to wiping the smirks off the faces of a few more recidivists with that one next year.

Have a good one – Don’t drink and drive – Keep your hands to yourselves and see you all in 2007.

© Stan Still 2006 – if you want to copy my stuff, it would be polite to ask first!

Fresh ideas, anyone?

The BBC are reporting that government ministers are admitting they are completely clueless about crime, because they are suggesting that “new ideas” are required.

A few quotes from the article and my views follow.

“New ways of tackling crime must be considered, a minister has said, after a report warned crime rates could rise for the first time in 12 years.”

There’s nothing wrong with the old ideas, it’s just that we aren’t allowed to implement them because they can’t be measured. I’m now of the opinion that performance measures are a sign of weak management. Instead of having the balls to say someone is crap, a weak manager can use performance figures to “prove” someone is or isn’t performing. Of course, it only shows how someone is performing against those indices that are being measured. What isn’t measured isn’t done and nobody seems to care.

“The leaked Downing Street strategy unit report says crime could rise if there is a slowdown in economic growth. It says prescribing heroin and alcohol rationing could help cut crime.”

This is the same government that has introduced 24 hour drinking. How can you ration something that is so freely available? Could we perhaps ask the Americans who introduced Prohibition, because that worked really well, didn’t it?

“The 60-page report, obtained by the Sunday Times, also criticises police for failing to improve their performance despite large budget increases.”

The police are criticised for not meeting performance targets that are specifically set to ensure that comparisons can be made between forces. What is the point? Unless someone is going to move house to get away from their current crime ridden estate, how reassuring is it to know that your local force can’t detect vehicle crime very well?

“Its other findings include that prisoners numbers are rising beyond capacity, there is no money for new prisons…”

No money for new prisons, but we can afford a load of new nuclear subs that will never, ever be used for the purpose that they were built for. They will not be a deterrent, because if someone is determined to nuke us all, a couple of subs ain’t gonna stop them.

“…and that nine out of 10 crimes are either not reported or go unpunished.”

So now we are getting somewhere. The reason crime is increasing is because the risk of getting punished is well below the benefits that the perpetrators reap. I seem to recall the government promising to put the fear of crime back on the criminal – this is quite clearly not happening. Most criminals now know that even if they get kept in custody at the police station, they will get bail as soon as they get to court. People don’t bother reporting crime, because they know that the hassle of having to go to court to give evidence will not be rewarded by a serious punishment for the offender.

“Ms Blears told the BBC that the document looked at “tough issues” and “new challenges” and was intended to help the government plan for the future.”

How many times have we heard this bullshit? The government have had how long to plan for the future? The only future that politicians are interested in is the next election. Why introduce radical long-term plans when another party might be in power and get all the credit?

The report goes on, predicting that another 25,000 prison places will be needed within five years. I’ll bet you now that there will be no new prisons built in that time. There will be a General Election between now and then, so millions of pounds of taxpayers money will be needed for all the campaign advertising and palm-greasing that goes on for months before the election. The net result of which is that 50% of the electorate are so weary with it all that they stay at home.

There’s no need for fresh ideas – we’ve had enough of fresh ideas. These same ideas that have made absolutely no difference to the fight on crime, because the people who should be fighting crime are handcuffed by the bureaucracy that this government has introduced.

Let experienced, effective police officers decide on the priorities and strategies that should be used to fight crime. Let these officers have control of the budget in order to target finances where they are required. Let us decide on the best equipment for the job and let us use the purchasing power of 43 police forces (I’m still using that word, even though it is nearly 2007) to get the best deal.

In summary, let the police do their job and keep the politicians out of it. They’ve got their own part-time job to do!

© Stan Still 2006 – if you want to copy my stuff, it would be polite to ask first!

999 for everything you need!

All you emergency service workers out there will already know that the 999* system is abused constantly by those people who are hard of thinking.

Just in case anyone had forgotten that the 999 number is for emergency calls only, West Midlands Police have issued a press release that indicates that 55% of calls received at the emergency switchboard are either misdirected, hoaxes or not genuine emergencies.

If you want proof that some people should be banned from owning or using a telephone, then listen to these.

Car

Television

Hedgehog

Cigarettes

And people wonder why they can’t get through in a genuine emergency.

*equivalent to 112 in Europe or 911 in the US

© Stan Still 2006 – if you want to copy my stuff, it would be polite to ask first!

Need for secrecy

Here’s a blast from the past – does anyone remember November 2006? Seems like ages ago, but cast your mind back to this post “To Blog or not to Blog”

A Police Review reader has written in with his view and seeing as PR quote stuff from my blog without asking permission, I’ve copied this for you all to read.

Need for secrecy

I thought the subject of police blogs had been well covered in Police Review after Simon Hepworth’s recent comment (PR, 8 November) and the subsequent replies that this attracted. But how wrong I was, as now PC Dave Morgan has had his say (PR, 1 December). As these two articles oppose police weblogs, I have to question if Police Review has lost its impartiality?

As for the comment about weblogs being published under a cloak of secrecy, maybe this is because in our apparently free and democratic society, anyone naming themselves is likely to be invited to meet their friendly complaints and discipline/professional standards department.

Following those views, I take it if I were on patrol and came across a gas leak near a block of flats, I would not alert the residents who lived there as this would affect their view of their gas supplier, and could result in a loss of confidence in the supplier?

PC Richard Rafeek, Lothian and Borders

Thanks Richard – and if you are a reader of this blog, could you leave a comment on how your letter was viewed by your management? That’s if you can get away from being on suicide watch for every single shift!

© Stan Still 2006 – if you want to copy my stuff, it would be polite to ask first!

Misquoted by Police Review

For those of you that read this worthy tome, you will have noticed that they included a small review of this blog in a recent “Blogwatch” feature. The reviewer wrote this about it.

It’s not much, but there’s no such thing as bad publicity!

On a more serious note, ‘You’re Nicked’ also talks about the Independent Police Complaints Commission, with his comment that he believes riot policing is too confrontational. ‘If I am in the front line and you and your mates are trying to get past me, you are going to feel the back of my shield and it serves you right,’ he adds.

Unfortunately, their “Blogwatcher” seems to have misread this post. I don’t think riot policing is too confrontational. I stated that the IPCC think it is too confrontational, which was the whole point of the post!

Perhaps this was the reason for the recent pay rise shambles? I bet that all along, the Official Side had agreed to our 3%, but it was all misquoted by some hack on the PR newsdesk.

Keep watching guys, but try and get it right next time!

© Stan Still 2006 – if you want to copy my stuff, it would be polite to ask first!

My belief is now completely beggared!

I really cannot believe that a failed asylum seeker convicted of the rape of a 13 year old girl can be awarded compensation because he was kept in custody at the end of his prison sentence.

The Home Office were (quite rightly) trying to kick him out of the country, though why this should be difficult is a mystery to me. Grab him, stick his stuff in a bag and chuck him on a plane – dead easy.

The story doesn’t say how much of his eight year sentence this pond-life served, but I would guess it would be between five and six years, so the extra 20 months he served was no more than the sentence he should have served in the first place. Now, because some “human rights” lawyers have taken up his case, he stands to receive a payout of around £50,000.

I wonder how much compensation the victim of his knifepoint rape got? A couple of thousand at the most, if anything at all. What chance will she have of getting any more out of her attacker? None at all – the courts will say that he didn’t have the funds at the time of conviction so tough luck.

Wouldn’t it be nice if just once, for a change, the human rights lawyers made a stand for the rights of the victim, instead of the villain? We can live in hope, but of course we know there’s no money in that sort of battle, so the lawyers just aren’t interested.

© Stan Still 2006 – if you want to copy my stuff, it would be polite to ask first!

Change of venue

A request to all you other bloggers out there.

I’m considering whether to move this site from Blogger to WordPress. I’ve been toying with the idea for a while and have an account set up and everything.

The only small fly in the ointment at the moment is that Blogger in Beta won’t let me export my posts to another account. This leaves me with a problem.

Do I start again and leave the two sites running simultaneously? Or do I do the laborious job of copying and pasting every single post across to WordPress?

Any views?

Change of venue

A request to all you other bloggers out there.

I’m considering whether to move this site from Blogger to WordPress. I’ve been toying with the idea for a while and have an account set up and everything.

The only small fly in the ointment at the moment is that Blogger in Beta won’t let me export my posts to another account. This leaves me with a problem.

Do I start again and leave the two sites running simultaneously? Or do I do the laborious job of copying and pasting every single post across to WordPress?

Any views?

© Stan Still 2006 – if you want to copy my stuff, it would be polite to ask first!

Why should I say sorry?

First of all, let me start by saying that the idea of slavery is abhorrent. I wholeheartedly agree that generations of people had their lives torn apart in order to “serve” the master who paid the highest price. There is no place in society for slavery (unless of course you include the free half hour for the Queen) and it is highly unlikely that slavery will ever return to these shores.

Tony Blair is currently courting publicity (for a change) by suggesting that Britain issues an apology to the nations of the world whose inhabitants were dragged from their homes onto ships bound for this country. Hang on a minute – what good will this do? Other than being another step towards his elevation to sainthood.

I’ve researched my family history and I’ve found no evidence that any of my ancestors employed slaves. Far from it, in fact. My forebears were all farm workers, no better than slaves themselves. So nobody in my past has drawn any benefit from the slave trade, either directly or indirectly.

So to the point of my post – why does Blair presume to think that he can apologise on my behalf for the behaviour of people totally unconnected to me? Behaviour that took place hundreds of years ago and incidentally was sanctioned by the government of the time. A government that none of my ancestors would have been franchised to vote for, by the way!

Will Saint Tony be asking Dubya to do the same thing? Let’s face it, Britain wasn’t the sole player in this global trade. If Tony feels it necessary to say sorry, then let him do it in his own name, not mine. I’ve got nothing to apologise for!

Why should I say sorry?

First of all, let me start by saying that the idea of slavery is abhorrent. I wholeheartedly agree that generations of people had their lives torn apart in order to “serve” the master who paid the highest price. There is no place in society for slavery (unless of course you include the free half hour for the Queen) and it is highly unlikely that slavery will ever return to these shores.

Tony Blair is currently courting publicity (for a change) by suggesting that Britain issues an apology to the nations of the world whose inhabitants were dragged from their homes onto ships bound for this country. Hang on a minute – what good will this do? Other than being another step towards his elevation to sainthood.

I’ve researched my family history and I’ve found no evidence that any of my ancestors employed slaves. Far from it, in fact. My forebears were all farm workers, no better than slaves themselves. So nobody in my past has drawn any benefit from the slave trade, either directly or indirectly.

So to the point of my post – why does Blair presume to think that he can apologise on my behalf for the behaviour of people totally unconnected to me? Behaviour that took place hundreds of years ago and incidentally was sanctioned by the government of the time. A government that none of my ancestors would have been franchised to vote for, by the way!

Will Saint Tony be asking Dubya to do the same thing? Let’s face it, Britain wasn’t the sole player in this global trade. If Tony feels it necessary to say sorry, then let him do it in his own name, not mine. I’ve got nothing to apologise for!

© Stan Still 2006 – if you want to copy my stuff, it would be polite to ask first!