Police chief: "shake things up"

[PR1Berske]

Sounds and reads a lot like a call to get all the money from government and all the resources from merging together into data sharing units that has been tried and failed before. Yvette Cooper isn't shy from being a "tough on the causes of crime" type, though as long as Rachel is tight on the purse strings nobody might get what they really want.

A story to watch.

Links:

Police chief calls for biggest shake-up of England and Wales policing since 1960s

Chair of National Police Chiefs’ Council says major changes needed urgently to make service fit for modern age

www.theguardian.com

In England and Wales, where you live determines the kind of policing you get. That isn’t right | Gavin Stephens

We want to make once-in-a-generation changes so that every force has access to the best tools – and justice isn’t a postcode lottery, says Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council

www.theguardian.com

From the Guardian

Police are “wasting valuable time and money by doing things in 43 different ways”, with huge and urgent changes needed to end a postcode lottery for victims, the leader of Britain’s police chiefs has said.

The stark intervention by Gavin Stephens, the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), comes as law enforcement leaders privately discuss radical changes, including a new policing directorate with legal powers to boost the fight against the biggest crime threats in England and Wales.

In an article for the Guardian, Stephens, the “chief of chiefs”, says: “We are wasting valuable time and money by doing things in 43 different ways. Police forces all struggle with the same issues and spend time and money on finding individual solutions. We need to do it once, and well, for all.”


He says it is wrong that different forces deliver different levels of service to victims: “Some forces make excellent use of facial recognition technology, which has helped to catch hundreds of criminals wanted for crimes such as shoplifting and rape. Some forces have invested in tackling violence against women and girls, using video call software to cut the average response time for a victim of domestic abuse from 32 hours to just three minutes.


“As a victim of crime, this disparity means that you face a different level of service from one area of the country to another, and this cannot be right.”

Each of the 43 forces operates independently on everything, from how they fight crime to the equipment they buy.

On Tuesday, Stephens and the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, will use speeches at the NPCC conference to start outlining their visions for change.

Cooper will back a new police body to buy equipment for forces which she hopes will save millions of pounds, produce better equipment and minimise the chance of expensive disasters. It is hoped that body, a directorate with national reach, will then become the central organisation to boost the fight against the main crime threats.

Stephens says the last big set of changes to the police service was in the 1960s: “The requirements of policing have changed entirely, rendering our current policing model unable to respond quickly enough, and we are inhibited from making real progress by the way policing is organised.”

Calling for “a major shake-up”, he says there has been no significant changes since “the pre-internet era, when the handheld calculator was the height of innovation”.

That, he says, was fit for “traditional crime that happened in communities – like burglary and theft”, not modern threats, such as “fraud, riots and terrorism, which are growing in prevalence and complexity”.

 

[brogdale]

Fewer rapists, racists and murderers in their ranks would be a good start.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Sounds and reads a lot like a call to get all the money from government and all the resources from merging together into data sharing units that has been tried and failed before

It sounds to me like a management consultant has been hired and has produced their usual report recommending a cull of 'the back office' and no doubt improved digital solutions. It's bollocks.

 

[PR1Berske]

Fewer rapists, racists and murderers in their ranks would be a good start.

This is the thing about any official wanting reform and better funding, they rarely look inside before demanding from outside.

 

[agricola]

Sounds and reads a lot like a call to get all the money from government and all the resources from merging together into data sharing units that has been tried and failed before. Yvette Cooper isn't shy from being a "tough on the causes of crime" type, though as long as Rachel is tight on the purse strings nobody might get what they really want.

A story to watch.

Links:

Police chief calls for biggest shake-up of England and Wales policing since 1960s

Chair of National Police Chiefs’ Council says major changes needed urgently to make service fit for modern age

www.theguardian.com

In England and Wales, where you live determines the kind of policing you get. That isn’t right | Gavin Stephens

We want to make once-in-a-generation changes so that every force has access to the best tools – and justice isn’t a postcode lottery, says Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council

www.theguardian.com

From the Guardian

There are certainly some things within policing that a national level procurement would result in a lot of money being saved, in terms of initial procurement costs and especially in saving time and effort further down the line. Command and control systems for example often do not talk directly to the neighbouring forces, never mind those further afield even though most of them connect to national systems (the PNC / its replacement LEDS / the national Airwave network); to pass an incident between two forces often involves literally phoning each other up, calling each other on the radio or - for the technically advanced - emailing a copy of the incident across to the other force (with any update to the incident having to go through the same process). Just in terms of preventing phone calls between forces this would probably result in millions of staff/officer-hours saved every year that are then freed up to answer 999 and 101 calls, to say nothing of the advantages from sharing communication during major incidents, natural disasters, being much easier and more convienient for the public, easier training and transfer of staff between forces, being able to cover for each other during closures etc etc.

Where I think he is a bit wrong though is that having the local forces is what allows the sort of innovation that he points to, because there isnt something / someone at the national level that can interfere (out of terror at what the Daily Mail might think) before a thing is tried.

Policing is long overdue for a sensible look at reform though - the Federation have been calling for a Royal Commission for at least the past 25 years.

 

[Pickman's model]

Given the great difficulties police forces have had simply getting a comfy uniform for women officers I have no great confidence in their ability to do things right with more complex problems.

 

[A380]

Given how many times the NHS has been fucked about with it's a pity policing is still firmly based on an organisational model from the 70s that predates decent radios let alone modern IT. Blair (Tony not Ian) got close and then chickened out, we got the NCA - good, and NPAS - fucking disaster and the CT network, jury still out. We didn't get much needed force amalgamations, just collaborations. We got the curates egg of closer links with Fire and Rescue but that's really patchy across England and Wales. A Royal Commission would be the gold standard but a grown up discussion on policing and the wider public safety, security, criminal justice, emergency management mechanisms would be great.

I bet it won't happen though. No one really cares.

 

[A380]

Given the great difficulties police forces have had simply getting a comfy uniform for officers I have no great confidence in their ability to do things right with more complex problems.

FTFY