Police Staff

I know I'm late on this one, but I can't really set myself up as a police staff blogger without commenting on the recent stink in Surrey.  I caught the BBC News clip on iPlayer and it was fun to see inside another force's control room - quite surprised that they let cameras in though!

There's a summary of the proposal in national terms here and a more local view of things here.  The Thinking Policeman comments here.

I'm just a worker bee, so I'll refrain from too much comment on the national issues - people like Chief Constable Rowley are paid much more than me to understand such things.

From a local point of view, I'd say that our Control Room has a healthy mix of officers and staff.  We are mostly staff, with a few PCs who are off active duty for various reasons and a few retired officers who have come back as civilians.  It would be a complete and utter waste of your money to have a PC in each of those chairs, but it's really good for us staff to have their experience in the room so that we can ask for advice if we need to.  On the other hand, I worry that our Call Centre is too civilianised - we see some bizarre things on call logs sometimes which suggest that the calltaker doesn't really understand the way we work and what's going to happen next.  I'd like to see calltakers encouraged to go out on attachment with officers in various roles, and have some current and ex-PCs scattered through the room, as we do.  Or maybe replace the civilian supervisors with Sergeants.

Should SOCOs be police officers?  I'm not sure about that one...  our civvy SOCOs do a good job, but would the experience of having been a police officer be useful to them, as it is in the Control Room?  You'd have to ask one.

I think the role of PCSO is a really useful one, as long as we don't see too much "mission creep" and they do stay in a support role.  They also generate a certain amount of work for officers, as they are likely to come across something outside of their powers while they're out-and-about and need to call up asking for Police assistance.

You, the public, asked for more "bobbies-on-the-beat" and the Pledge says that local officers need to spend 80% of their time "visibly policing."  Clearly it would be a massive waste of money to train and pay Police Constables to stand around on Quietsville High Street just to keep to the pledge, so Quietsville gets one local Police Officer and a team of PCSOs.  I don't see anything wrong with this scenario.  Obviously Shitsville needs a different mix, because PCSOs don't have the power of arrest, but I would hope we can trust Neighbourhood Inspectors to make that decision.

I can't disagree with The Thinking Policeman's maths - 1575 police staff must indeed cost more than 255 police officers.  It looks like the balance has gone a bit too far there.

I also agree, as a general rule, that we need more officers.  We don't have enough to cover demand as it is - which is why the overtime bill is so large.  Elsewhere, Mr Rowley has promised Surrey 200 new officers - let's hope we see that promise carried through.

I'm sorry, though, that The Thinking Policeman felt staff were not willing to do without breaks and so on.  My colleagues and I very rarely take meal breaks, and those of us who were stuck at work in the snow earlier this year put in 12 hour shifts to cover for our colleagues who were stuck at home.  We're proud to be part of the police and work hard in support of our sworn colleagues.