Been away

To escape the wonderful weather we’ve been having recently, we took a week off and went abroad. Now suitably thawed out and back home to check what has been happening while I’ve been away.

Big news is the shooting of a fifteen year old in London. Other bloggers have already had their say - my only comment is that I predict that very soon one of these young “gangstas” will be shot dead by an armed police officer. Guess who will be to blame?

Sorry, no, I have got another comment. What’s with all this ANPR and intelligence led stop-check nonsense? Get a Section 60 up on the whole area, flood it with bobbies and search every one aged between 10 and 30 who dares show their face. The law of averages means that eventually they’ll turn someone over who is carrying a gun.

On the subject of the behaviour of children and the lack of control of parents. I’m seriously thinking of writing to all the major tour operators to suggest they ban children under 12 from flying. If not, then make the rear section of the plane the child zone and put a soundproof barrier between them and the rest of us who don’t want to see kids standing on seats or hear them screaming and moaning for the whole journey.

And what is it that stops parents from taking responsibility for disciplining their own children? During the flight, I heard two different parents threaten their kids with “fetching the pilot” if they didn’t behave. Why can’t they just tell the little sods to sit still or give them a clip if they don’t behave? It’s like those parents who threaten their children whenever a police officer walks past (a rare event according to the Daily Telegraph) by saying “he/she’ll take you away if you’re naughty”

Stopping now - before the post holiday feelgood factor gets wiped away. Back to work soon!

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

Justice served? - you decide

Consider these two cases.

Traders Jail Term Too Harsh

A bloke who has been selling stolen perfume, thereby depriving a huge multinational company of even more money, is sent to prison for three and a half years. This is later reduced on appeal. He was also selling fake watches, which probably told the same time as their genuine, overpriced equivalents. The perfume had been stolen during an armed robbery.

Man Made Indecent Images of Children

A man admits downloading over 2,000 indecent images of young girls. That is over 2,000 victims of some form of sexual assault that is perpetrated in order to satisfy the desires of paedophiles. This man gets a two year supervision order and is put on the Sex Offenders Register for seven years.

What do you lot think?

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

Report Waste

This is not a post about litter, fly-tipping or rubbish dumps.

www.reportwaste.co.uk has been going for quite a while, but it needs a bit of a gee-up.

The site has been set up for members of the Criminal Justice (yes I know it’s a contradiction in terms, but I didn’t make the name up) system to report waste and bureaucracy that they have encountered in the system.

At the moment, there is a bit of a lack of input. There is also a disproportionate amount of posts blaming the police for waste. Come on guys, get on there and even things up a bit!

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

Daily Telegraph take up the challenge

Regular readers may remember this post, back in January, where I challenged members of the IPCC to have a go at firearms training.

Well, Robert Chesshyre, who is a reporter with the Daily Telegraph, spent some time out on patrol with members of the Metropolitan Police CO19 firearms team.

Robert’s account is published on the Daily Telegraph web site and it makes interesting reading if you think that UK firearms officers are a bunch of gung-ho Tackleberrys, popping caps into the asses of bad guys at random.

Some of the highlights of this report include the fact that armed Met officers are called out 40 times a day, yet they only discharge their weapons on average once a YEAR! They are trained to use a weapon and then given more training on how to resolve situations without having to resort to firearms. In the UK in the past 10 years, 25 people have been killed by armed police officers, nine of them in London. Compare this to the 400 people who are shot dead each year in the US.

The article also talks about the number of gang-related shootings in London each week. On one weekend, there were seven reports of people being shot. None of them want to tell the police about it and bring the offenders to justice, instead, the victim gets a gun and goes after their attacker. Yet this doesn’t spark outrage in the national press - in fact it rarely makes the news. Of course, if an armed police officer was confronted with one of these gang members wielding a gun and shot them, the incident would immediately become trial by media.

Robert had a go on the simulator and reports on the perceptual distortion that affects even the most experienced of firearms officers. This distortion is a natural result of the stress that the officer is under, but it becomes translated into accusations of fabrication and cover up by the time the lawyers get hold of it in the comfort of their chambers.

Have a read of the article for yourself. I think it puts the whole issue into context.

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

Red light means danger!

There has been a lot of fuss about the use of speed cameras - personally, I think they have been used to replace traffic police and they don’t do the job they are supposed to do.

My suggestion is that they are removed, re-configured and replaced as red light cameras.

Speeding in the wrong place and in the wrong conditions is dangerous, but these circumstances vary. Going through red traffic lights, in my opinion, is ALWAYS dangerous.

The roundabout above Junction 10 of the M6 would be the first place I would put red light cameras. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll know that there are traffic lights at every entrance to the roundabout. You only have to go there once or twice to see someone blatantly ignore the red lights and go sailing into danger. Of course, they only do this because the roundabout is on the border of two police areas and no police cars ever seem to go there. If there was a police presence, then people would suddenly remember what the lights are there for. (Same as seatbelts - people “forget” to put them on and suddenly have a memory recall when they see a marked car in the vicinity)

There is a difference between speed limits and traffic lights. The speed limit signs can be obscured, or people can creep over a few miles an hour without noticing and on the whole this won’t cause other road users any problems. Red lights are always red, they are stuck on a pole in plain site and even if the light isn’t red as you approach, the amber light gives you a chance to stop. Going through red lights is more of a deliberate defiance of traffic law, rather than accidental or unintentional.

Some people pay the ultimate price for their decision to ignore red lights. Here’s another case today.

The only people to blame for deaths on level crossings are the ones who ignore red lights and try to beat the 200+ ton train that is bearing down on them. Sometimes, lucky drivers get away with it and on other occasions, stupid drivers cause injury to themselves and others by shooting the lights.

Put cameras at every junction and put a stop to this nonsense!

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

Sheila’s Wheels

Putting aside the discriminatory nature of this company’s marketing campaign, can I advise people not to insure their cars with Sheila’s Wheels? *

You’ll have seen the annoying advert, with the three Australian women singing a trashy jingle about women getting cheap insurance, whilst driving through the outback in some nasty pink car.

Next time you look, you’ll see that these women are driving on the wrong side of the road (Aussies, like Brits, realise that driving on the left is still a good thing to do) and at one point, the driver takes her hands off the wheel and waves them in the air and takes her eyes off the road.

Not the safest way to drive and if this is the sort of person that this company are encouraging, then your premiums are bound to go up in the near future - keep away from them!

*This post is intended as a humorous observation and is not designed to put people off using this company, despite the fact that they won’t let blokes apply. I just wish they would get rid of that bloody song!

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

The Paper Chase (4)

The whole purpose of us locking people up is to put them before the courts.

In order to do this, we have to put together a file of evidence for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Couple of witness statements, the charge sheets and a few bits of other information.

If only it were so.

The CPS have devised a method of making sure that police officers are kept tucked up safely behind a desk moving bits of paper about. It’s called The Manual of Guidance for the Preparation, Processing and Submission of Files. Take a look at the link - you’ll love it!

When I first joined, the preparation of files was quite a simple process, even when someone went “not guilty”. In those cases, a “full file” has to be submitted, with statements from everyone involved and all the information that the police had on the case. A full file was made up as follows

MG1 - File front sheet - gave details of the accused and the type of offence

MG4 - Charge sheet - the list of offences that the accused is being tried for

MG5 - Case Summary - a synopsis of all the witness statements to provide the prosecutor with a means of avoiding reading all the statements

MG7 - Remand Application - completed if applying to keep the accused in custody

MG9 - Witness List - all the people who have made statements

MG10 - Witness Availability - when witnesses are on holiday, nights or rest day. Particularly useful for the courts to ensure that officers are called to court at the most inconvenient time

MG11 - Witness Statements - from everyone involved in the case, regardless of how trivial their involvement

MG12 - Exhibit List - a list of any physical evidence, not in statement form, such as interview tapes, murder weapons, CCTV tapes and other stuff

MG15 - Record of Interview - a summary of the tape recorded interviews, to remove the need for the CPS to have to listen to police officers try and get a cough.

Sounds quite straightforward and a full file could be knocked out in about an hour, providing the statements were in hand.

This is a quote from the Home Office web site

“The Home Office issued a new edition of the Manual on 23 October 1997 under cover of Home Office Circular 58/1997. The changes to the Manual will reduce paperwork and other tasks that remove police from operational tasks and at the same time should help to improve the quality of case files. The number of forms required has been reduced. The remaining forms have been simplified and improved in consultation with the working group on police information systems.”

This is now the list of documents that have to be included in a full file.

MG1 File Front Sheet

MG2 Initial Witness Assessment

MG3 Report to Crown Prosecutor for Charging Decision

MG3A Further Report to Crown Prosecutor for Charging Decision

MG4 Charge Sheet

MG4A Conditional Bail – Grant/Variation

MG4B Request to Vary Conditional Bail

MG4C Surety/Security

MG5 Case Summary

MG6 Case File Information

MG6B Police Officer’s Disciplinary Record

MG6C Police Schedule of Non-sensitive Unused Material

MG6D Police Schedule of Sensitive Material

MG6E Disclosure Officer’s Report

MG7 Remand Application

MG8 Breach of Bail Conditions

MG9 Witness List

MG10 Witness Non-Availability

MG11 Witness Statement

MG12 Exhibit List

MG13 Application for Order on Conviction

MG15 Record of Interview

Now I only managed to get A Level Maths, which may explain why in my opinion, this reduction in the number of forms as stated by the Home Office is actually a significant increase in the number of forms. Perhaps someone with a degree in Pure or Applied Maths can double check my counting and see if I’ve got it wrong.

All this paper is for the benefit of the CPS - not the police, yet we are the ones who have to get it all together. Then people wonder why there are no bobbies on the beat!

If you’ve managed to get this far, then I commend you for your patience. I’ve tried to give a short summary of the paperwork we deal with on a day to day basis. Unfortunately, there is no short summary.

I won’t bore you any longer with this and I’ll get back to normal moaning and groaning in due course.

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

The Paper Chase (3)

You would think that having a computerised system for recording the details of people brought into custody would mean that paper would be a thing of the past in the custody block, wouldn’t you?

Sorry to upset all those tree-huggers out there, but paper is consumed with the same ferocious abandon in this department as well.

Why?

It’s a security blanket. Senior officers get very twitchy if something isn’t on paper - it’s a throwback to the days when everything was submitted on reports and the onset of the computer age has completely removed the need for people to submit reports. However, there are still some people who won’t believe what they see on a monitor screen - I think they get it mixed up with their telly!

Anyway. When someone is booked into custody, an electronic custody record is created. This contains details of the arrested person, when, where, why and by whom they were arrested. It also records the health and demeanour of the arrested person and allows custody staff to create contemporaneous electronic records of all interactions involving the detainee.

So if it is all recorded electronically, why is there a need to print everything out? Sometimes in duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate.

For example - a copy of the custody record is printed out, just in case the computer crashes. There are two sheets that contain the prisoners details and circumstances of the arrest. Copies of these are printed for legal advisors, appropriate adults and anyone else with an interest. Then the machine prints off a Risk Assessment form. Don’t know why - never used it. Then there is a list of the prisoner’s property, which has to be signed by the prisoner to confirm it is correct. Then a property movement sheet - because the computer system can’t record when something is taken out of the property bag.

When someone comes in to custody, they get a booklet explaining their rights and entitlements (unfortunately, no-one has thought to produce a booklet to explain their social and moral responsibilities) and they have to sign a piece of paper to confirm they have been given their booklet and to confirm the decisions they have made. This sheet, which is double sided, could be signed over half a dozen times by the prisoner, dependant on circumstances.

If a person is arrested for a trigger offence (theft, robbery, burglary, certain drug offences) they have to take a Mandatory Drug Test. A six sheet booklet has to be completed, although only one or two pages are of any consequence. Depending on the result, another two or three pages of paper die, together with the numerous copies that have to be sent here and there.

Locked up for Drink/Drive? You are responsible for decimating rainforests! There is a multi-page booklet that officers have to go through to make sure that drink drivers don’t manage to find some little loophole to get off the fact that they are killers in waiting.

When someone is charged, four copies of the charge sheet are produced. Together with six copies of any bail conditions if they are imposed, along with the file front sheets (More on the MG paper chase in a later post).

If someone is released on bail, pending CPS advice or further inquiries, then guess what? A load more paper gets pushed through the printer. There are four copies of the bail sheet, some of which have to be signed (One for the prisoner, to remind them of the date, one for the custody record, even though the details are recorded electronically, one for the case papers and one for anyone else who might want one).

When that person comes back on bail, the system churns out another copy of the custody record. I’ve no idea why. So if someone is bailed two or three times (it can happen on protracted investigations) they could have three or four copies of the same information printed out.

Every morning at 3.00, the system generates a printout of all the prisoners that have been in during the last 24 hours. This can run to four or five pages over a weekend. This report is filed, never to be looked at again. “What is the point?” you may be asking. I’ve asked and I’m still waiting for an answer.

Back on the subject of bail, the system also spits out reminders to officers of their forthcoming bailbacks. I’ve no idea why, because the officers ignore them. It just reminds them that they have got annual leave coming up and they need to find some other mug to deal with their prisoner.

In order to combat this flagrant abuse of the bail system, someone has come up with an idea. Bet you can’t guess what it involves? Of course it does - a form!! Officers have to get their sergeant to sign a form agreeing to the bail date that they are proposing. I know, I know - I’m a sergeant and I’m the one making the bail decision, but why make things simple when a whole new level of bureaucracy can be introduced? Needless to say, all this does is ensures that the sergeant can now get it in the neck when the officer in the case is on leave on the proposed bail date.

There are several other clever things that this custody system can do to keep the rainforest lumberjacks in business. It connects to the Police National Computer (PNC) and has the facility to print out a person’s PNC record. There are different types of record, but for the full effect, it is only necessary to print out an entire record for someone who has more than fifty convictions to see the printer go haywire and the paper disappear faster than a rat up a drainpipe. Then there is the Phoenix Source Input Document. This contains descriptive details of the prisoner, including information about the offence, bail conditions, warning markers etc. It is submitted electronically to the PNC, so why on earth do we get an option to print it out and if you forget to put a “no” in the box at the right point, then out it spews?

If you are still with me, then you are a real glutton for punishment. I’ll give a run down on the files that we have to prepare for CPS next - that should raise a chuckle.

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