Degrees of stupidity? Why British Policing does not need officers with degrees and Superintendents with no experience

Police raid -

you don't need a university degree to be able to put a door in

It was some years ago when I was in the job, that a colleague said why he had joined the Police service. That reason was that he had won a book as a prize at school called the Ladybird book of the Policeman.  

A book which is allegedly frowned upon by 'modern' forces!

At the time I joined, out of the 20 officers in my station, 2 had university degrees. Neither in law related subjects I might add.

The proposal that all new officers attain degrees is ridiculous and comes from sources that clearly have never walked the beat, a thing that is supposedly 'obsolete' we were told about 20 years ago and a 'luxury.'

In my view it is essential, not only for what you learn, the people you come across and also to prevent lard-arse obesity of the staff. Even when I was in the job there was 'we hardly see any Police around anymore' which is 'no Police anymore' in these lean days.

A 'mission statement' does that make you feel safer?

In around 1991 I was asked to join a working group project  for a couple of months to help with the transition of my old force from being a Constabulary to a 'Police' service - this entailed a change to all officers wearing white shirts, a 'mission statement' being put on new signage which probably cost a fortune after it was dreamed up by some image consultant.

Not to mention many other 'improvements' that cost a lot of money. Like the corporate identity project to have everyone wear the force crest on their uniform and equipping all customer facing staff with a uniform, force crested Filofaxes and more. Or the reported £80,000 wasted on changing the colour of the badges from red and blue to yellow and blue to make the 'less confrontational?' Yes, you  couldn't make it up. They made up some badges and then abandoned the project! I never saw an example of the badge.

Around this time, a management of staff change came into being. I recall when I joined in the late 1980's that I could often in a day shift, see up to 8 officers around the town I worked in. After these changes, sometimes I might see 3 during the day shift and on one occasion, it was a Sergeant in the patrol car and me on foot covering the whole town.

The 'luxury' of officers on the beat as the management would have it, was the core reason why Police were often on top of criminals and crime and were able to glean intelligence. Stop and search powers often got you a name and often someone going equipped to do a crime or carrying drugs. Most crime then was low rent and done to support a drugs habit.

 Local crime intelligence could often be gleaned from the local scrotes you stopped. You don't get that from a CCTV camera, because you often don't know who you're looking at if no one has stopped them and they don't have a mugshot on the system or a hoodie up so you can't see their face. These local patrols are the building blocks of local policing.

I have nothing against degrees, but the majority of officers I worked with did not have one and it did not make a difference. They were mostly on the beat because that is what they wanted to be doing. They weren't interested in management bullshit, they just wanted to get on with the job that they joined to do.

I remember a project to give 'generalisation' skills which saw many officers taken off the beat and put into jobs they did not want to have to do, or thought were best done by civilian staff. Sure enough, the force did civilianise some of these jobs, only later by cuts to police stations, did they end up doing away with the civilians they had employed. Well thought through that one.

Senior officers need to go through the ranks

which gives them the necessary experience -

most do start on the beat -

before eventually ending up at Bramshill drinking coffee

and telling each other how good they are

A recent plan to 'parachute' civilians into being uniformed Police Superintendents is frankly ludicrous. Senior Officers only learn the full spectrum of the job by going from being on the beat and having real policing experience. I would not want to be having to contain a public order situation, commanded by some ex-Supermarket manager with a possible degree in golf course management, without real world experience. 

I think it is foolhardy to allow a civilian 'manager' to just after say a few weeks of training, become essentially a divisional commander. It is not that you have a Superintendent in every station, just the divisional HQ station, so this is hardly a job saving.

Trend policing is just that, gimmicky and an industry in itself within the police service for the 'career politician' type of officer who is ambitious to 'get on.' Empire building within the police service is where people 'need more staff' to do the job, builds on this often gimmicky scenario. I have  often seen the meteoric rise of this type.

Especially the 'Hobby Bobby' that may have some expertise in something that they are able to wheedle their way into a working group to do. Little knowledge is a dangerous thing so they say.

There are officers that go from working group to working group, often at a nice, snug, out of the way Police Headquarters building, a world away from the reality of the streets having to deal with the usual local conveyor belt smeggers.

The old officers with experience were the best in my view, not some senior officer that looked about 12 years old on a good day.

The Police Community Support Officers -

A chance for two-tier policing that was wasted

The introduction of the Police Community Support Officers should have meant that this potential resource could have taken on much of the day to day beat policing, such as taking of statements and less operational based policing work but with greater powers than they ended up getting, to free up other staff for frontline operational work.

Likely, with respect to the PCSO proposal, the Police Federation laid down red lines that they would not accept as encroachment on their federated officer's duties. That is fair enough in principle, but the PCSO's have ended up as some sort of 'halfway house'. In the inception, many of their staff were recruited from within existing police staff as councils took over parking enforcement and the police forces were left with traffic wardens without portfolio, effectively redundant. So the PCSO role was a good side move for them.

There is no doubt in my mind, that having boots on the ground does bring results in the fight against crime. You cannot fight crime on the cheap. The PCSO role should have been more forcefully increased in functionality, because that is what is needed. With more and more cuts, their functionality should be increased, to effectively the level of a Special Constable.

Much of the work the police could do should be automated. With so much more computer integration and advancement that has happened since I was in the job, the service must be more automated. It is the future, but a future in which human involvement is also paramount in the process.

Basic Income Payments will take the place of paid work

If the government adopts a Basic Income Guarantee system as jobs disappear to automation and robots, many more people could volunteer to help out with the policing situation to help with the demand. From Patrols to staffing police stations.

Crime is not all cyber crime, although this is a new area of crime compared to twenty years ago. More police are needed full stop. They still need to deal with the realities of why most low rent crime is done, to feed drug habits.