This post is in support of colleagues who have single vehicle crewing imposed in rural areas. We don't do it where I work for response cars probably because we are more sensible*. I therefore suspect this could be a self imposed policy by police management. I understand each Division has their own patrolling policy which is up to them to draft. We do have a default position for single foot patrol, which as I've stated before I don't really have a problem with as help is never that far away. We never have sufficient officers to patrol on foot so this only really affects community teams. Regular readers will be aware I was nearly crippled whilst on lone foot patrol attempting an arrest and it still hurts, but that's part of the job and down to bad luck rather than a single patrol policy.
The centre has got rather anal about the single patrol policy wanting to measure who is complying or not. They have of course created a department to cover this and it will include spot checks. The only thing I've noticed is the demise of the policy where officers from HQ used to come out for a few hours of patrol to "keep in touch" once a month or so, pairing up with a local officer. This might well reappear once the weather warms up and I await to see if a lone patrol is order of the day.
Loved the story I heard the other day of an Inspector who was out on foot patrol at 3am with a probationer to do a few stops. A car pulls up with the on call Superintendo who then enquires why they weren't on lone patrol. Despite the Inspector's best efforts to point out he was developing his young charge he still had a lecture about single patrol. The Superintendo was of course being driven by a PC. Great for morale and the Superintendo obviously destined for the very top. This was a first hand account by the way.
Get Well Soon Fran Croucher - (whatever's wrong with you) * Did I title this post correctly or what?
* Update * We are stupid and are bringing it in too - orders from the centre, not from those who are responsible locally.
7 comments:
I can only comment from my own experience. In our division the single-patrol policy is quite strict - during daylight two officers are not allowed to patrol together. This causes the problem you raise of a probationer not being able to be supervised on foot so if there are no vehicles available then the officer has to sit around in the nick doing paperwork or online training! How is this improving police productivity and presence???
In vehicles only two officers are allowed. Which means as a SC I cannot sit in a car with two proper coppers on response. Which is a real shame because the best way to learn is to be with frontline regular PCs and not faffing about with equally inexperienced SCs. Surely someone at the top of the food chain must realise that a bit of flexibility is needed?
Has the top brass never heard of training?
Because of the fear of having more than one officer seen together our training unit have had to resort to the instrucor being in plain clothes and the probie in uniform. This is supposed to be the training they get straight out of training school prior to being assigned to a team. Sometimes there has been a lack of instructors so probies have been left in the office instead of actually learning the practical aspect of the job, this has meant when they come to team they might have one or two arrests and hardly any real confrontation. Then once assigned to a team they are supposed to be fit and trained to deal with ANY type of call. Would the public be happy with that if they knew that our new officers had less than the bare minimum of training because the home office and acpo puppets are trying to con them into thinking there are more of us than there are?? It's going to ratshit and I for one think the government need a reality check and that will only happen when the wheel comes off. The problem is we are going to lose lots of good and dedicated people when that happens.
When asked by senior management on our borough why our support unit did not respond to team requests for help with a large youth gang fight. They were not happy with the answer... Single foot patrols in crime hotspots like you told us to do!!! Our cheif has even told us at one of his compulsory talks that he expects single patrol officers to intervene in large fights after all we have an asp CS gas and a warrant of the queen!!To paraphrase him,a PCSO would just report! Gess what his last job was ? HMIC
Judas H Priest! this is totally out of the spine removal and frontal lobotomy school of management. What can you do with people like that in a crisis? (apart from shoot them and use them as cover). They are worse than the frigging UN. This country is way past needing peacekeepers, it requires peaceMAKERS.
SOC - thanks, your readers could ALSO post the picture of PC Croucher on their blog in defiance of this stupid single crewing policy.
Off Topic, with apologies…..
Chris Grayling MP, the Shadow Home Secretary, is a regular visitor to our bit it seems, so will likley have visited your pages via our link to you.
Chris has forwarded a letter, asking that we pass on his best New Year wishes and thanks to all police officers. As hyperlinks don’t always get through the spam filter, you may wish to visit our site for a peek.
We are keen that the letter, received today, is seen by as many officers as possible. We have published it on our site today and also forwarded a copy to the federation offices should they wish to distribute it.
Kind Regards
Steve (Ex West Mids)
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