Part 7 Police officers Survival Guide.

Property, Paperwork and Police Officers.

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The average newly recruited British Police Officer is from a working or middle class family and has had no major upset in their lives beyond a family death through old age or illness, and possibly a divorce between their parents. They will have a good education, most likely a university degree and obviously no criminal background of any concern. Therefore their exposure to the service users that a Police Officer comes in contact with daily is very limited before they join the job. This is not a slight at them as a person, but it is a fact of life, you join young and na?ve and think you can change the world, that is exactly the type of people we need. We need the young fit officer with a head full of good intentions and the thirst for action, the officer that will chase a burglar through back gardens and over six foot fences at 3am in the rain. We need people who know what is right and what is wrong, they’re as financially solvent as a young person can be, this reduces the? risk from bribery and corruption from criminals.

?New recruits have to come from stable backgrounds and they have to have a good level of education too, not necessarily a degree, but they should have a good working ability with reading, writing and numeracy . If we didn’t recruit from this pool of talent the force may be at risk from characters who make rash decisions, have violent outbursts or are dogged with trauma, addiction and mental health conditions due to an abusive upbringing. The job has enough problems with corruption and discipline already without adding characters from dysfunctional backgrounds where they have had to survive extremes of abusive behaviour and questionable morale guidance.

There are 3 things that will always get you into trouble, Property, Paperwork and Police Officers, the last one was always historically written as Police Women, but this isn’t always the case, and some of the lads are just as much of a risk to you, so I’ve been inclusive of them too.

Property

You need to keep a tight grip on anything you take possession of, this may be a member of the public handing in a ￡20 note they found, or an exhibit from a crime scene. Both are as important as each other and they both need to be secured and booked into the property system and store as soon as you can. I once worked for a Detective Sergeant(DS) who liked to keep all his exhibits under his desk, this was convenient for if we needed something, but it was bad practice. I recall us searching for a murder weapon to take to court and it couldn’t be found under the desk, panic set in and we searched every nook and cranny until we realised we had submitted it to the laboratory for testing. Imagine that? A murder weapon kept under a desk; can you imagine the fall out if we hadn’t located it? Any officer who loses an exhibit may have to answer some very difficult questions from a judge in court and may face disciplinary action for neglect of duty. The same DS also kept drugs in his desk drawer rather than booking them in, this was a disaster waiting to happen, and one day he pissed off the wrong Police Officer who promptly grassed him up to the Superintendent, the DS was lucky not to face serious disciplinary action for this.

Lost property can cause just as much trouble too, if you’re ever approached in the street and a member of the public wants to hand in some found property then make sure you record it in your pocket book, get it booked into property, do not leave it in your stab vest for another day. This could have been part of a sting operation to test your integrity and many Police officers have been caught out pocketing small amounts of cash that they think people won’t miss.

Paperwork

Thankfully, a lot of reports and files are now online and kept on secure servers. However, you still need to keep them updated and current, some officers struggle with this and some try to keep all the information in their heads. If you were to die or become very sick, who else knows the information that you had kept in your head? No one, and the loss of this information may lead to a failed investigation.

Keep up to date on your investigations, even if you have nothing to add to the report evidentially you can update that you have spoken to the victim for example. Communication with your victims is key, they understand you are busy, but they want to know they haven’t been forgotten.

In times of reduced resources and increased demand you may not get a chance to progress your investigations as you are a slave to the radio, and you are going from job to job collecting more reports that you will not get a chance to investigate either. If this happens and your crime queue(list of reports) becomes unmanageable, ensure that you let your supervisor know. They will be sympathetic to your situation as you can be sure they have been there too, that does not mean they will be able to do much to help you though. You will find the rest of the team/ Station/ Force is in exactly the same position and there is no one to pass your jobs on to. Here is how to take action in this situation,

·???????? Don’t panic, don’t get overwhelmed, don’t go sick and don’t take it personally.

·???????? Jobs are like spinning plates, some are glass, some are rubber and some are metal. What this means is that you can afford to drop a few plates, just not the glass ones. If you drop a glass plate it smashes and you can never save it or recover that loss, this may be for example cases like Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence or a stalking case. A rubber plate is a case where the victim is the crown, possession of drugs or a public order matter for example, if you drop those plates and leave them for a while they’ll bounce back when you get a chance to do them. Now if you drop a metal plate, it will make a lot of noise but it won’t break, this may be a complaint from neighbours who have fallen out over parking, or a shop theft and the shop keeper is always phoning in to complain. The metal plates will make a lot of noise when you drop them but ultimately you can pick them up again when you have dealt with the glass plates first.

·???????? List your jobs in priority and start by adding a generic working sheet to every job acknowledging that you are overwhelmed with work and will be prioritising jobs with the highest levels of Threat, Risk and Harm first.

·???????? Identify quick wins,

1.?????? Is an investigation out of time for prosecution? If so update it, update the victim if there is one and file it to your supervisor.

2.?????? Is an investigation going nowhere? No identifiable suspects, no cctv, no realistic lines of enquiry? If so write it up to that effect and file it to your supervisor. Do not hang onto these reports just because you feel you owe the victim something. Most will understand your limitations and understand why it was filed, just ensure you communicate empathetically with them and apologise on behalf of the organisation.

3.?????? Are you the right person to be investigating something? Some cases belong with specialist teams and they somehow end up on your investigation queue. If you feel your High Risk domestic case should be with a specialist team then write it up and send it to that department for a review.

4.?????? Run an operation on overtime to clear the back log. Look at your force priorities, they’ll usually be something like ‘ Protecting the vulnerable, preventing crime and bringing people to justice.’ You can link this to your afore mentioned glass plates, Domestic Violence, Violent Crime or a series of shop thefts by the same offender can have a disproportionate effect on everyone’s workload and they come with risks to the organisation. Approach a supervisor or even you station inspector and discuss running a clear up operation on overtime to clear the back log. Once you have a list of all ‘violent crime’ for example, Your Inspector will need to bid for overtime and you will need to ask for volunteers to work overtime. You will then need a running log of jobs from everyone’s crime queue in your department that fit the criteria that need attention by the officers on overtime, they will come on duty and work their way through the jobs, picking up prisoners or finalising the enquiries as they progress. Bit by bit the crimes will disappear from the investigation queues and officers will start to get some breathing space which will enable them to concentrate on the rubber or metal plates. These operations can save lives and they can save yourself and the organisation a lot of embarrassment if a repeat domestic violence victim is murdered and their previous reports have not been investigated. Operations such as these are frequently under taken, especially towards the end of the financial year when the force wants to use up its overtime budgets.

·???????? Consider regime change, is your supervisor actually looking after you? Or are they unintentionally destroying a team crime report by crime report? Some supervisors are not robust enough nor do they have the grit to make quick and accurate decisions in the interest of anyone except themselves. They are risk averse due to fear of criticism from their bosses and they fear complaints from the public. These are the Sergeants who will not file anything until they have every single piece of information even if that information is not relevant. A good supervisor should be giving you a proportionate investigation plan to conduct. A basic one for a shop theft may be something like,

1.?????? Take statement from shop owner.

2.?????? Review CCTV for suspects and circulate images for identification if of sufficient quality.

3.?????? Manage expectations of the victim as to likely outcome if no suspects are identified.

4.?????? Review intelligence systems for similar incidents with identifiable suspects.

5.?????? Submit for filing if no suspect identified.

?If your Sergeant or supervisor is continually sending you off on fools errands for multiple statements or unrealistic house to house enquiries then they are failing you. They may just be an acting Sergeant who wants to make a good impression with increased positive outcomes. People like this rarely impress as it is soon noted that their teams investigations are stalled and there is an increased amount of sickness due to stress. However some Sergeants are just built this way and they cannot help but micro manage and over task their officers. If this becomes the norm and you see the ship sinking around you, it is your duty to do something about it, tell the sergeant, if they don’t listen, tell the Inspector, this is not snitching, it is survival and Sergeants and supervisors like this are the cause of a lot of stress and sickness.

·???????? Make a start, you will not clear your back log by bitching about the system for hours in the canteen, nor will you achieve anything by going sick. If you go sick there is a good chance your jobs will be waiting for you to return to work, if they have been reallocated you will inherit them back from a grumpy cop that has had to do your work in your absence. Prioritise your work with the glass plates as your first actions and get on with it.

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You have to make a start; however big the challenge is.

“How do you eat an elephant?... One bite at a time.”

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Police Officers

If anyone is going to throw you under the bus it won’t be a criminal, nor will it be a member of the public, as in real life, your biggest betrayals will come from the people closest to you, and that means you will be at some point in your career stitched up by someone within the organisation. As a shift Sergeant just before retirement I had a queue of Officers just dying to grass on each other, I’d have my daily visit from ‘The snitch’ telling me that they didn’t like the way such and such did this or that, it was truly like being a primary school teacher looking after needy children. Now don’t get me wrong, if someone is corrupt or out of line they must be dealt with, and without people telling you what’s going on how are you meant to know? But there has to be a degree of balance between malicious complaining and genuine concerns for professional standards. This kind of behaviour was rare in my earlier career, if someone were out of order they’d be told face to face, or a team meeting was called, without supervision present, and the offender was challenged to their face, especially if they had been telling tales.

Maybe this has become more prevalent due to the reduction of officer numbers, which also means the reduction of opportunities for development and promotion too. Someone wants to look good and the only way they can do this is to make someone else look bad. This is a risky strategy and not one I will suggest as a way to career progression. As I have said reputations stay with people for a long time in the Police and if You’re known as someone who isn’t a team player it will follow you around for the rest of your career.

One of the worst things that I have encountered is officers who are not that proactive and unwilling to get stuck into a disorder or violent arrest criticising those who do. The Police is a violent job and without the people who are willing to get stuck the service will be walked all over by the thugs of society. To my dismay I often saw a gaggle of the snitches crowded around a computer monitor dissecting body camera or CCTV footage of an incident, they were stage by stage picking through the bones of how the other Police Officer was performing, just like internet trolls they were not taking into account the behaviours of the suspect and they didn’t have a full understanding of the situation from just a snap shot of video. Every time I saw this I challenged it by openly calling these people out and remind them that last week the same people were criticising their body camera footage, it really angered me that? they were so keen to see a colleague fall from grace and be criticised for doing the best they can in any given scenario. Be aware of criticising colleagues in a situation that you were not involved in, you were not the person who had to make that decision at that time and in those circumstances, hindsight is a great thing when you’re sat in a comfortable office watching snapshots of video. It is however unhelpful when you are the officer out on the streets facing down a violent criminal.

As a flip side to this, do not expect to have the indefensible defended either. If you have abused your powers or acted in a criminal way you can expect no quarter from your colleagues, the days of officers closing ranks and lying for each other are long gone in a time before even I joined the Police. This closing ranks is not something I have ever seen, you may receive supervisory support, or your peers may have empathy for your situation, but do not expect them to risk their liberty, livelihood and pensions for your abuse of powers. At the drop of a hat all cops will turn on a bad apple and they will stand in court and give evidence against you. I am not so na?ve to think that there is not some corruption of this type out there, but from my experience this is usually found at an organisational level in the corridors of power where they are trying to protect the reputation of the force, there is no place for it on the streets.

Spare a thought for your supervisors, they have a hard juggling act to perform between managing staff welfare, managing work that needs to be completed and managing upwards and outwards to senior managers and the public. I have often seen supervisors turned on by members of their team because they have had to ‘manage’ the team member in a robust way, basically they have received a bollocking for not doing their job or for behaving in a manner that is not appropriate. Now this is why managers should not get too cosy and friendly with their teams, they need to keep a professional distance and be able to evidence their decision making and justify their behaviours. Once a supervisor steps into the realms of ‘managing’ a member of staff they enter a world of risk. Some officers do not have the resilience or character to accept that they were wrong and accept their bollocking, these are usually the ‘Shift Hero’ or ‘sick, lame and lazy’ types. What they will start to do is build a protective empire around them of people who they can manipulate in an effort to undermine the supervisor, they will try and evidence incidents in the past when the supervisor has done or said something inappropriate, they will also engineer situations to gather further evidence of this and undermine the supervisor at every opportunity. This behaviour to me just exposes the petty and childish nature of some people, if you ever have a true grievance don’t drag the team into it, they may actually turn on you and support the supervisor for one thing, but it is also the incorrect and most destructive way to deal with your problems. Grow some resilience and have a one on one meeting with the supervisor, if you feel that you cannot do this then speak with another Sergeant or your Inspector, they will walk you through the situation and they will discuss what your options are? in regard to starting the correct grievance procedure or acceptance that you were at fault. Supervisors are not usually stupid people and you will not be their first problem child, if they have challenged you about a performance issue they will have evidenced it in writing and linked a development plan to it. They have been forced into being formal about challenging staff because historically they have been unsupported by the organisation against staff that are being bitter and malicious, so, if you receive a quick bollocking for something or just get given a job you don’t want to do, suck it up, buy the cakes for the team as a penance and move on, life is too short and the job is hard enough as it is without inside fighting or plotting.

Police Officers Survival Guide, Available in print, ebook and audiobook too.

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