A just-job Bloggsy?

I was asked to go and assist some officers who had just carried out a section 18 search of a property on the 14^th floor of a high-rise block. It was after an individual was arrested with stolen property on them.

The door had been ‘put in’ and there were bits of splintered wood shards all over the floor. It was funny standing there with other residents walking past wondering what had happened. A couple of the neighbours even came out and said “the woman who lives there has a really dodgy son, I’m not surprised you lot are here, good to see you”.

The usual board up company turn up after forty five odd minutes of waiting. The door is fixed and a sign left on the door.

A couple of hours later we get a call from the mother and she wants the keys to her flat. My Sergeant asks me if I’m busy, I’m always busy, but of course I’ll do whatever is required of me. A ‘just-job’ I’m told. Meaning, ‘just a quick job’. They are usually nothing of the sort. I had to pop back to the tower block and take a ride on the ‘urine express’ lift up 14 floors and give the mother her new keys.

As soon as I stepped out of the lift I was bombarded with the mother, backed up by the two neighbours, who had earlier been supportive of our actions, screaming and shouting at me.

“How the f*k can you kick my door in?”, “Police are scum”, “you f*kin cnut”, “I cant believe you kicked her door in, her son’s such a good boy!”, “you’re not welcome around here”. And so on.

I quickly handed the woman her new keys and made a dash for the lift. She wouldn’t let me get a word in. She was fuming! At the end of the day her son is storing stolen property at her address. It wasn’t hidden and he has loads of previous, she knows it’s going on, she’s been his appropriate adult on numerous occasions and she allows him to stay there. If I’d have stayed any longer I think she would have swung for me.

It was interesting to see the change in attitude with the neighbours. As soon as she got home they were completely on her side and arguing on her behalf, they even appeared angry for what ‘we’ had done to her. Only a couple of hours before they were practically shaking my hand, telling me how dodgy they were and offering me tea.

Bloody just-jobs.

Plodcast

POLICE support officers Rob Wragg and Karen Sutton are putting the beat into being beat bobbies. The PCSOs have recorded their very own podcast, or plodcast, from their station in Longbridge.

Jingles feature the theme tunes of 70s cop shows The Sweeney and Z Cars.
And the playlist includes Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law and I Fought the Law by The Clash.
The cyber jocks said they have had a good reaction from listeners after the first show went out on community podcast radio.

"I took to it quite naturally," said 46-year-old Rob, from Stourbridge.

"It’s probably because I’d done public speaking in the past after spending four years as a councillor in Hampshire. But I’d never even considered becoming a DJ before.

"We play a lot of music and one of my favourites is Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law."

Karen, aged 47, from Stirchley, said if she could invite anyone on to the show it would be literary great Oscar Wilde.

She added: "The reaction from people has been really good. It’s surprising how many people have listened to it. People don’t expect police to do something like this."

Rob became a PCSO after serving as a police officer so he could spend more time on the beat.

He said: "I enjoy my job very much. People absolutely love to see us on the street. They stop and talk to us and have so much respect for us.

"Any way we can communicate with the public, whether it’s on the radio or walking down the street, is to be welcomed."

As well as playing music, the pair also give out advice on crime prevention and information about community groups and upcoming events.

Source

Are you mad Jan?

For literally six years the Police Federation (that word’s like kryptonite to PCSOs) has called for us to be disbanded.

We were branded jumped up traffic wardens. We were considered not intelligent enough to make the grade (in to the role of Police Officer), we were considered second class citizens in many respects.
Every opportunity to knock us (playing up to newspaper articles, articles they’d normally blast if it had been referring to PCs (H&S issues as an example)) and some of the comments were really below the belt. We were slagged off (the people as well as the role) on a weekly basis.

Now they want us to join up!

If anyone watched the conference, with Jacqui Smith and Jan Berry today, you’ll have heard Berry state that she believes ALL 16,000 of us (PCSOs), should be turned in to full Police Officers.

What are you on Jan?? Does that represent your member’s universal opinion? Is this what you guys think? Do you want us to all come in to work tomorrow with a warrant card, baton and spray?

To start with, and I may not be popular amongst some fellow PCSOs, but I don’t think ALL PCSOs are suitable. The recruitment standards, fitness and security vetting etc, are not the same for PCSOs and PCs.
I don’t want standards lowered. Many forces are already lowering assessment centre pass rates from the universal 60% to 55% and even 50% in some parts.

There is also a large proportion of us who don’t want to be police officers, or used to be police officers, or are too old to be Police Officers etc.

It just goes to show that The Fed only actually care about one thing, money. Incidentally, can you imagine how much money 16,000 extra PCs (training, wages, equipment and pension) would cost?? And how long it would take to train us?? And how long it would take a massive uniformed presence off the street for?? And how long recruitment of regular MOPs would be on hold for??

I’d like to see those questions answered Jan.

Poor old Jacqui “I don’t owe you nuffin” Smith looked like she needed to go to the bog, open a window, and light up a bud to calm the nerves, bless.

More on - More on police numbers..

If anyone has the time to put in a FOI request to see the number of PCSOs who are now Police Officers, I would be really interested to hear the results. The number of ex Police Officers who are now PCSOs would also be equally as interesting.

My post on the increasing amount of paperwork were are expected to do, titled ‘More on Police Numbers’, is quoted in Ian_Qt’s Blog. It seems that this is some kind of a surprise to some. Is it really a surprise?

I mentioned this increase in ‘office based work’ in a team meeting with the boss. His reaction was, “well it’s within your remit and it comes from above I’m afraid, I’ll look in to it though”. What he will actually do is ignore me and carry on documenting everything for his own promotion to CI and then move on. “That’s neighbourhood policing ticked off, what now?”

I’m starting to feel like I’m the odd one out. Others simply accept it and never make a fuss. Its part of the job, stop complaining. But it’s NOT. I started doing this job when it was all about being on the beat. Being SEEN. Building bridges, gathering intel, just standing in the crime hotspots, saying “good morning” to everyone who passes you in the street (it’s a powerful tool) . Challenging bad behaviour on the street and challenging people for minor ASB, reminding them in a delicate but fair way that it’s not on. That’s what PCSOing is about. If there are enquiries I can do for a PC while I’m out and about, then great. But that’s not what the jobs about and it’s not what’s on my original job description.

I remember debating, on a forum, what would happen when the Home Office’s funding run out and the force had to pay for PCSOs. Many said the forces would slowly phase us out. I knew they wouldn’t and that numbers would not decrease. I don’t think the will increase, only the work we do will change significantly and because of that, it will appear the numbers are decreasing, the visibility element will be gone as will deterring crime and we’re back to square one.

The apple core incident

The ‘apple core incident’ has sparked some interesting conversations in the PCSO office. Many people argued that they wouldn’t have bothered calling a unit to assist; others said they would and that if they didn’t, then what message is that giving off? Most agreed that we weren’t there and couldn’t really comment. From the press report we couldn’t really see the big deal. I find PC Bloggs sums it up nicely here.

The thing is, when we call up for a police officer to assist us, it’s because we actually need one! We spend much of our time trying our best to deal with it without resorting to that, it’s considered the last option. We don’t try talking someone round for twenty seconds and then call a unit to come a nick them, we’ve tried our best…

I’ve had numerous occasions where I have spent half an hour and longer, trying to talk someone in to giving details, or, out/in to what I want them to do. I look at having to call for a unit as being ‘defeated’.

With all respect to the cops, they come very quickly and help a great deal, we do feel looked after and protected. It’s just that it’s so unnecessary that we cannot deal with incidents like the apple core, ourselves. I feel terrible when I have to call a unit, I know they are thin on the ground and I know what jobs are coming in. I know that one more arrest will mean there is just ONE double crewed area car for the whole of my city. I don’t want to be responsible for that. The only option we have to consider is, is this worth it, is it in the public’s interest to use up this last resource for this prat. I can’t help thinking; again, that had it been a BTP CSO, this wouldn’t have tied up as many resources and look as bad for the PCSO. Littering is the very lowest level of ‘crime’ and anti-social behaviour; surely we should be able to deal with this without having to resort to calling up for a Police Officer?

PCSOs and CCTV

There are, roughly, 40 cameras that could have captured the poor bloke as he was mugged. They run from TSB Bank on High Street, all the way to Shifty Avenue, a mile away.

I was tasked with checking ALL the CCTV footage and seizing any of it if it’s of evidential value. Not a small task! Don’t tell me I didn’t free up a cop today!
I had to make enquiries with the Officer in charge of the case and the victim to ascertain the exact route he took, the sides of the roads he was on etc. This was not clear in the statement.

I then had to collate that new information with the private and Police/Council CCTV we have, to see if they would have covered it. Then, if they did, which about 12 of them did, I had to set up appointments to go and view them. Some of them need written authorisation from a senior officer to view (the Bank for instance).

Then, once all the above is sorted (it still isn’t yet) I need to go and physically view those 12 sets of CCTV footage, each about an hour in length. Then, if any of them have anything remotely interesting on them, I need to do a seizure statement, exhibit the tape/DVD/CD and book it in back at the nick.

Then the Officer in charge of the case will want me to show him the bits of footage of interest.

Silly PCSO Bloggs, what was I thinking when I said “need any help with that job Ron?”

For the next three days I’m not a PCSO, I’m a CCTV evidence gatherer!

It’s scary to think that out of hundreds of cameras on my patch, only a handful of them actually record, and out of that handful only a tiny percentage save the footage for anything longer than a week, an even smaller amount have a really good quality picture. It’s even less likely that, if you manage to track down a CCTV camera than records, in colour and the footage is of good quality, and it hasn’t yet been deleted, that you will get anyone that works there that has a scoobys in how to download/copy footage from it, for us.

The book 1984 written by George Orwell suggested that we would have cameras everywhere watching everything we do, but didn’t take in to account that the footage would be rubbish and no one would know how to work the bloody computer to view the images.

More on police numbers..

Coppers blog published this article I wrote on Friday 2nd May 2008, about police numbers and the increasing paper based workload PCSOs now have to contend with. I thought I’d get it up on my blog for longevity. Soon we’ll need Police Community Support Officer Support Officers (PCSOSOs), to free us up and get us back out on the beat!

I was reading over the blog updates on Planet Police, when I came across The Coppers Blog and a contributor named TOTO.

I was rather taken back to read that it is getting so bad in some parts that Police officers are contemplating becoming a PCSO and take a pay cut, just so they can get back out on the beat.

It reminded me of this story of a retired Inspector, with years in CID, Vice and Special Branch, now pounding the beat as a PCSO.

Is it really this bad?

We were brought about to not only bolster the high viz side of the police for public reassurance, but to also support our Police officers by taking some of the lower level jobs off them, dealing with the long term, time consuming tasks like neighbourhood disputes, meetings, crime prevention visits, police surgeries, CCTV collections, house to house enquiries and scene guard/preservation, to get them back out on the beat.

TOTO was quite right, Police officers are in the office just as much now as they were before we came along, if not more so. So how on earth are we fulfilling the part of our job that’s meant to free them up if they spend more time indoors?

This seems to be down to a larger remit, more forms, more repetitiveness and longwinded procedures.

I dread to think how things would be now, with no PCSOs at all and the police officers having to do all of this community stuff, all of the surgeries, all of the lower level jobs with the expectations we have now to tie everything in with outside organisations (more people to copy forms in to) and create problem solving files for every minor issue, with regular updates required.

It’s really worrying stuff.

What concerns me even more is that we (PCSOs), are now having to do more forms ourselves. We now have stats in place for the number of FPNs, PNDs, Stop and Account forms, Intelligence Reports we do. We are having to copy council officers, probation officers and unusual ‘squad’ officers in to every email or action we take. We are having to justify what we do in a day, results we expect to achieve and analysing results we actually achieve.

When I first started doing this job, around four years ago, I would spend an hour in the office and the rest of the time pounding the beat; it was frowned upon if you spent anymore time than that in the office. Sergeants would give you a telling off if you did. Now they expect to see us in the office a good three hours of the day, we couldn’t update all the forms, email all of the people and update our problem solving files out on the beat now could we?

We also have to fill in a document, daily, to explain (for some Home Office evaluation) exactly what we did in that day and how long spent doing it.

I’m filling in a useless forms, apparently designed to try and see what it is that we are doing that we end up spending so much time in the office filling in forms.

Are they taking the piss?