See you!

This is from the blog of one of the officers who decided to carry on after the cull. It chimes with me as I have been thinking this man's point for some while

It amused me during training when we were shown the ‘corporate’ image of the police. Members of the public (good or bad) that we deal with are referred to as customers to our business and true to this senior management are no longer leaders but managers. In fact we can’t call them superior officers any more – they’re supervisors.

What amazes me is how wrong the police have managed to get the corporate image. If I walk into a show room looking into buying a car I may have a priority feature. Let’s say I want a fast car. Really fast. Don’t care about anything else as long as it’s faster than faeces off a shovel after a particularly hot curry. Unfortunately I’m also aware it’s not free, it’s going to cost some dollar. Now as I don’t build cars or design them I go to a firm that has been doing it for years. After all they know how to design a car and all about aerodynamics and engines and the like. I don’t. I give them as much money as I can afford for the fastest damn car they’ll give me for it. Guess what? The car goes fast. Yes, it might break down a few times, but then I wanted it fast not efficient, otherwise they’d have sold me a different car altogether. It’s not that comfortable either, it tends to be a bit bumpy as the suspension is quite hard. And despite ‘the customer always being right’ they wouldn’t sell me a car that was just as fast, efficient and comfortable. Not because they didn’t want to – because I couldn’t bloody afford it!

Now, call me old fashioned… and perhaps I’m going to be wrong about this one but I thought the police were there to stop crime. In fact I thought we knew quite a bit about it – the prisons are full after all. We’re not social workers, councillors or otherwise. We know how to build a fast car, councils are better at building comfortable, slow ones.

So why do we try and let the customer tell us how to build our type of car?! I don’t care how much they say they feel comfortable seeing a police officer walking the beat or how much they think it deters crime, I’m sorry to say it doesn’t. Nor does us doing it in fluorescent jackets! In fact if anything it makes crime a damn sight easier because they know exactly where we are. To build our fast cars we need LESS visibility. We need the criminal about to shoplift to wonder if the person buying a sandwich is in fact a plain clothes police officer ready to jump on him.

And guess what? Although we’d love to stop crime in the first place crime is still going to happen somewhere we’re not. Now we could do as you want and walk there or we could try and catch the person responsible for it by getting there quickly in a car. And before you try and tell me how to build my bloody fast car again no we can’t always do both, we don’t have enough mechanics working on this car and you won’t pay what it would cost to hire them.

We want to stop crime, we REALLY do. But whilst we’re spending time looking at a space where your car once was or bumbling down your residential road on foot lit up like a Christmas tree we could be saving lives or keeping an eye on the person we know stole your car in the first place and maybe even catch him at it. When we build that car people will make room on their drive for it, alongside that MPV estate they bought from the council down the road. That one might be more fuel efficient but we all know which one you enjoy the most.