I know that there are many videos on the internet regarding the Police reforms. After watching a number of these I have decided to join the fight by publishing my own piece in the belief that any publicity is good publicity.
I hope that it gives a little insight into the current situation and the reasons that caused 35.,000 off-duty officers to take to the streets of the capital on 10th May.
The voice over from Teresa May is intended to be a reminder of the difference between the public portrayal of our Home Secretary and the private betrayal of her Government.
It’s less than three minutes in length so have a look and share the link with your friends.
I know that the Police come under fire from the press on a regular basis, and sometimes this is justified, but sometimes it appears that a paper or program have decided to publish an article simply to try to cause damage. Rarely do these things get under my skin, but today is one of those rare days.
The article in question was published by the Mail on Sunday today and attempts to imply that, not satisfied with over inflated salaries and gold-plated pensions, Police officers are busy lining their own pockets with unethical contract work within their own training departments. The headline reads:
Now police are being paid thousands of pounds for second jobs teaching fellow officers to fire tasers
This article relates to officers that have given up their time off to assist in training those involved in the widespread role-out of Taser equipment. Police officers are widely employed within the Police training environment. Initial recruit training, divisional and specialist training, driver and firearms training, all of these departments use officers with their years of experience and knowledge to provide the best quality training for those that require it. Security Editor at the Mail on Sunday, Robert Verkaik, goes on to accuse Police officers of draining the infamous taxpayer-funded Police budgets implying that this spending is unnecessary and part of some financial conspiracy. Verkaik seems to have a bit of a bee in his bonnet about Police officers and their efforts to subsidise their salaries, publishing another article eight days ago which stated that 9,000 officers had second jobs. If our salaries were so good, as is implied by so many in the press, does he not think we would spend our days off with our friends, families or down the pub? Continue reading
Reportedly so ashamed of the consequences of his addiction, the convicted man has suddenly had some kind of epiphany and agreed to start attending counselling as well as giving up cannabis immediately. With a string of convictions for possession and production of cannabis over the last two years, I have to say I am more than a little sceptical about this dramatic turn around given the lack of impact that previous court involvement has had in his behaviour. The fact that this statement was made to the court by his defence counsel makes me doubly suspicious about its validity…
Recorder Michael Leeming told him he should be ashamed of himself, saying:
‘You allowed this situation to come about. A three-year-old child was able to help himself to the cannabis and then take it into a school setting, and you can imagine the consequences if he had given it to another child or swallowed it himself. I have to take into account the concern of the other parents after drugs were brought into their child’s school. This offence is far too serious to overlook and it will bring home to you the dangers of dabbling in drugs.’
He added:
‘At first you said you had confiscated the drugs from a visitor to your flat . . . but when you were arrested you admitted that the drugs were yours. You left them on the bed the night before when you had been smoking cannabis. You should have put them out of reach of your child but you failed to do this.’
There is no indication that any Drug Treatment and Testing Orders or other ongoing monitoring has been put in place (although I hope that this would be the case) and it goes without saying that the offender will be back out on the streets in less than a month unless something catastrophic happens in the interim. My biggest concern in all of this is that the child involved is looked after. The convicted mans father was, according to reports, murdered in 2004 in a drug related incident. I would have thought that this would send a far more significant message to his family than a month in the clink, but the murdered man’s son has simply continued the legacy of drug misuse, and now, as this case illustrates, another generation has become involved. This cycle needs to be broken…and quickly!
In other related news:
On the other side of the world, American authorities have recovered more than £2,000,000 of cannabis, weighing in at an unbelievable 4 tonnes, from the ocean after 160 bales of the drug were discovered floating off the coast of California, just south of Los Angeles. It would be nice to get a few seizures like this in the UK and stop the dealers getting their hands on it…I shall be down the beach with a set of NVG’s tonight to see what I can find.
I am always staggered, when I speak to young drivers at the side of the road, about how much the under 21′s currently have to fork out to get their cars insured these days. Quite commonly I see premiums of several thousand pounds for a small, low powered and almost worthless car. Only this week I spoke to a 19 year-old guy who was driving a £250 Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 and was, for the privilege, paying nearly £4,000 per year for his policy. I remember when I learnt to drive in the late 80′s that my father was gutted at having to pay less than 15% of that for me to have fully comprehensive cover on our family car…in fact I don’t think I ever had to pay more than £600 for comprehensive cover, even when I started driving my own cars about the streets.
I have heard, many times, the uninsured claim prohibitive costs as the main reason for taking to the roads with no cover. Let’s face it, even if you get caught it’s going to cost you less than 10% of the average policy price to fork out for recovery and storage as well as the big fat No Insurance ticket. Even if convicted at court a few times in a five year period, I would estimate that the total financial penalty would be no where near 50% of the cost of driving legally. This is an issue that is more to do with sentencing than the cost of the policies involved – while the offences go virtually unpunished, there is little incentive to do things right other than personal responsibility and a law-abiding nature.
Over the last few months however I have spoken to a few young drivers who have managed to chop a HUGE chunk off their insurance costs by having ‘black box’ technology installed in their cars by one of the small numbers of insurers that now offer the service. The theory is beautifully simple…
Have the kit fixed into your car
Drive your pride and joy carefully in the knowledge that your speed, acceleration, cornering and many other parameters are being watched by the electronic gismos under your dashboard
Modify your driving where necessary to keep things in the ‘safe zone’ – assisted by online software that shows you the good and bad aspects of the data you are producing
Resist the urge to show off to your mates just this once as you know that it will be very expensive
Avoid the catastrophic aftermath of said showing off by surviving the policy term and hopefully getting to renewal with your car in the same condition as it was when you started
Pay a fraction of the price for the year’s cover and potentially an even lower price at renewal
In addition to this, if the worst does happen and you have a bump, the in-car kit can prove your innocence (or guilt) to those that would otherwise potentially judge you on your age and choice of car rather than the facts of the incident. Other technologies are also becoming an integral part of these systems. Navigation specialists TomTom have introduced software that will link their consumer products to ‘black box’ equipment and potentially improve the breadth of data available. No doubt in a few years we will be watching each other driving around on the latest Facebook or iPhone app, watching a live feed from the dash cam behind the mirror, and potentially find our driving to be subject to far more public scrutiny that we can comprehend at present.
We, in the Police, have had such systems in place in our vehicles for several years. Despite the initial suspicion that the mass of wires and blinking lights was simply a way of providing our disciplinary boards with a steady stream of customers, I will say that those on my division have been kept out of the brown stuff using the data it provides on many more occasions than have shown an officer to be at fault. I am the first to admit that it is always in the back of my mind that the old days where a good story might keep you out of trouble are gone and if I get it wrong, there will inevitably be a hoard of driving standards ‘experts’ pouring over a virtual record of my actions, taking weeks to analyse decisions that I have made in a split second. Those that say it has never been a factor in the way they drive a Police vehicle are either lying or…..well…..lying!
Unfortunately, these systems are, and will remain for many years I suspect, installed on a voluntary basis. I would argue that there is a legitimate case for compulsory fitment of these systems to those convicted of certain motoring offences as an electronic tag is used for monitoring those committed of a criminal offence. I would also argue that if these systems became mandatory, then they would result in a tangible drop in the number of speed vs ability accidents that we see on our roads. They wouldn’t fix things in all cases of course. There are always going to be those that have the inclination, lack of conscience, or financial ability to buy fast cars and drive them like missiles, but that is unfortunately something that will never change.
There is today, however, one less of these people in the world following a spectacular illustration of how not to drive a high performance car. I don’t expect that the driver of the Ferrari from this accident in Singapore would have been worried about his premium being pushed up by his driving style….unfortunately several others also paid the price for his lack of consideration. Viewer discretion is advised…it’s not very graphic, but still quite shocking!
I have read the campaign manifestos of a number of prospective and shortlisted Police and Crime Commissioner candidates over the last few days and they have served only to increase my apprehension over what this new role will bring to Policing.
They are full of cheap talk about community engagement, safer neighbourhoods, preventing and reducing crime and all the other tag lines we see on the bonnets of our Police vehicles. None, however, appear to address the pivotal issue of how they can possibly hope to achieve these idealistic goals when Policing is being devoured from all sides by the political parties that have approved their candidacy.
The elections in November of this year will bring about, as Nick Herbert put it in November, a new age in Policing, with Chief Officers being directly accountable to politicians and strategic direction being moulded by political desires.
Policing is not about politics. It is about providing an emergency service and getting the baddies off the streets as fast as possible for as long as possible. We cannot start working to a political agenda or being governed by profit and loss accounts – if we lose sight of our role we lose the ability to do it effectively.
Difficult choices have been made by Police forces across England and Wales in light of the recent Winsor 1 reforms. Police officer numbers are at a 10 year low and recruitment is still running at a trickle for those already in the service and wishing to convert from other roles to that of Police Officer. Winsor 2 attacks those that will remain with further financial punishment for injury on duty, not working long night shifts, the potential redundancy (still without the availability of industrial rights) and to top it off we now have the proposed pension reforms to look forward to over the next few years! Continue reading
