tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21367257101554993182024-03-13T06:43:35.688+00:00Sheepdogs & WolvesA UK Police Officers blog, hopefully helping to explain why we do what we do and why the Police do things a certain way. There's probably going to be a bit of moaning and ranting but hopefully not too much!!Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-47383511258292649222014-11-03T15:06:00.000+00:002014-11-03T15:18:06.151+00:00Sheepdogs and wolves....... and kangaroos!!So, I'm not quite back. I've been thinking for quite some time about writing again, an awful lot has happened since my last post over 5 years ago. Firstly, I finally left the Met, best decision I've ever made to be honest. I was enjoying how my career plans were going right up until the Olympics, I made some friends for life and managed to get on some really awesome jobs, nearly getting killed in Brixton during the August 2011 riots with a scaffolding pole round the head wasn't one of them however. <br />
<br />
My wife and I had started deciding on an exit strategy which was ultimately going to get me out of the job, as I had lost my taste for most aspects of it completely, the main trigger for me was the riots. Not what happened during, it was afterwards with the media and the constant slagging off from the public. The scummy rioters I could handle, that was the job. Being slagged off by thousands upon thousands of people who days earlier were cowering under their beds while we literally battled to stop people burning entire estates to the ground.... fuck me, that was something else. The fact that no police officers were killed was a direct result of the awesome green angels in the LAS, not the level of violence we faced - many people have been medically binned or have quit as a result of injuries they sustained, and their treatment by the job after. I was involved in a rescue of a female officer who got abducted into a crowd during a baton charge, they only stopped stamping on her head and legs after her leg broke and they realised the screams were from a female. <br />
<br />
Then there was being treated like crap during the Olympics working 20 hour shifts for 3 months and having to get whatever sleep we could in vans, rat infested police stations, underground car parks etc... Post Olympics it was carnage, the Met introduction of the Local Policing Model destroyed literally thousands of careers, many like me were put back to square one, and that for me was the last straw. <br />
<br />
When I first joined up it was the one job in a hundred which made the rest of it worth it, towards the end it was closer to one job in a thousand, if that. The job politics, the bullshit with the government, the most anti-police Home Secretary that the country has ever seen, the media.... it all just became too much and I decided that was me done. <br />
<br />
The retraining had one very specific goal - to emigrate. I'd done a lot of specialist ops in the counter terrorism side of things in the years up to and over the Olympics and Jubilee. I really enjoyed the planning and ops development, so became a certified Project Manager and Risk Manager, along with another degree to boot! We'd been saying for years that we were going to try and get out of the UK, we've both travelled a lot and agreed a long time ago that the UK wasn't where we wanted to raise our family. We planned initially on Canada for purely ease of travel from the UK for family and then Australia or New Zealand, we had no idea really, somewhere else. Anywhere else. <br />
<br />
The plan was afoot and well underway, the job went to rat shit at every possible turn, I'd had 6 different shift patterns in a year, three different teams, been shafted by people who never had the courtesy to even meet me first, effectively putting my career plans back 5 years. Were it not for the plans already in place I would have jacked it in, I was on a low, probably the lowest I've been for a very long time despite the exit strategy. <br />
<br />
But then opportunity ever so gently tapped a little finger on the door.<br />
<br />
The glimmer of hope eventually became a blinding glare, and 18 months later I'm writing this post from our little house on the beach in sunny Australia!<br />
<br />
Without a shadow of a doubt the last 18 months have been the hardest of our lives, the three of us have moved half way round the world, leaving friends and family back in the UK. We've made some great friends here who have gone through the same incredibly stressful process, the application and training has given me a new reinvigorated love for the job. Same job, different post code, but you'd be amazed how much of a difference it makes not being slagged off every ten seconds from literally every direction, bosses, politicians, media and the public alike. Oh, and being paid 100% more with the same monthly outgoings is pretty nice too!<br />
<br />
I don't know how much I will be writing, it certainly won't be as much as I did before but I have got a few stories to tell. Quite possibly one of the most horrific jobs I ever dealt with happened in my last few shifts before I left the Met, thankfully the fucker has been found guilty and at this point is awaiting sentencing for 3x attempted murders. <br />
<br />
I've been through the mill and I'm glad to say I've managed to make it out the other side intact, well mostly. Things are good, job is going well and I'm looking forward to another summer with no rain for 100 odd days.... beats walking around London in the pissing rain at any rate!! To my many friends still working on their own exit plans I wish the best of luck, to those of you who supported us despite an almost relentless onslaught I thank you, truly from the bottom of my heart. <br />
<br />
We can't do this job without you, we may be miserable, grumpy, people-hating, anti-social bastards, but we'll give everything we can to try and help you. I honestly hope you never have to experience some of the things that I have seen, but I could not be more proud of the tenacity and devotion that my colleagues and I would give every day. It takes something else to lay down in a pool of someone else's blood, to hold their hand and tell them that you will stay with them no matter what, knowing all too well that your voice could be the last thing they hear. <br />
<br />
Please look after my friends, they need you as much as you need them.<br />
<br />
<br />
For now,<br />
<br />
MCM<br />
<br />
Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-47358737493529276762009-06-17T20:59:00.003+01:002010-02-10T14:53:55.280+00:00ENDEXWhen I started writing this blog it was never meant to be more than a personal catharsis, in that aim I think it succeeded as I've managed to get a few things off my chest which some of you guys have read and commented on. I haven't posted much over the last 6 months due to work, I've been getting a lot more into stuff I can't talk about and have hardly worked on team, and public order duties have lost all appeal. They say a change is as good as a rest and I'm liking how things are going even if it has meant I've been absolutely knackered, it just means I get to enjoy doing the family stuff and enjoying my rest days all the more.<br /><br />Due to a combination of my work role changing, getting lots of cancelled rest days, and now more importantly because of the Times, I'm going to be calling it a day. I won't be posting anything new on here for the foreseeable future.<br /><br />The Times decided for whatever reason to expose NightJack's real identity. After a written warning, the deletion of his blog and now a lost case in the high court, NJ has been well and truly burned by the media and I've no doubt his career prospects are going to be extremely limited for some time, and I have no intention of putting myself on offer for that one now that a judge has ruled on it. Personally I hope the ruling on anonymity in a public forum comes back to bite them in the arse with regard to anonymous sources, especially as the law of unintended consequences seems to favour anything to do with the Police or media.<br /><br />For the 100k or so site hits in a the last year I'd like to say thanks for your support again, I'll probably speak to some of you on some of the other blogs but in the meantime, I'm out.<br /><br />MCMMetcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-3501731176880839352009-06-05T02:22:00.005+01:002010-02-10T15:00:20.265+00:00Point Number EightBack in January I wrote <a href="http://sheepdogsandwolves.blogspot.com/2009/01/meet-new-boss-much-same-as-old-one.html">this post </a>about the appointment of our new boss. In the list of things I very much doubt we'd get (and thus far we haven't) was number eight's "specific targeting and extreme harassment of each divisions top 50 criminals until they are locked away, move out of London, or kill themselves." Now, the last bit may seem harsh to some people, but as I and all of my colleagues know how much pain and misery someone would have to have caused over a number of years to get into the top set of criminals for a given area, few of us would shed a tear if they were to turn up swollen and bloated after a couple of days at the bottom of the Thames.<br /><br />When I was a probationer in my old force we had a new divisional commander who moved to us from a neighbouring force, and at one of his meet and greet sessions he outlined his strategies for winding a few of the local criminal necks in. Aside from more 'encouragement' for the local CPS prosecutors to actually work at putting some of them to court for the right offences (and not busting the offence down to get an easy guilty plea) he wanted us to harass our top twenty or so criminals. By harass he meant executing arrest warrants at the most inconvenient times possible like Christmas or their birthday, searching them when and where possible - but especially in public - if there was even the slightest grounds, and getting in touch with all known members of their family to trace them if they were named as suspects in a crime allegation.<br /><br />The most encouraging bit was that in ordering us to assertively target people he knew that we'd be subject to complaints from the suspects as well as family members, and possibly members of the public. "That's my problem, not yours" he said "and besides, if they are complaining, then it's working"<br /><br />This type of Policing is extremely labour intensive, it's not just a case of putting one or two officers on the suspect, you need dozens to get proper 24 hour cover for just one person. Overt surveillance is not as difficult as covert as you need many more, but you still need resources to put into it and you have to sustain pressure for some time before you actually see any effect, but as <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1190373/Theyre-Headcam-police-halve-rate-burglaries-shadowing-suspects-day-night.html">Essex Police </a>have shown the time and effort IS worth it. By targeting known burglars and basically making their lives a misery for a change, they have drastically reduced the number of residential burglaries compared to the year before.<br /><br />As a preventative measure - in lieu of burglars actually getting any meaningful prison sentences - harassing them works. They're not going to be able or willing to go out in the dead of night and screw someone's house or garage over if they know that outside their own house are a couple of Police officers ready to follow them. Their thieving burglar mates aren't going to want to hang around them, and other people will know that they are a criminal if they constantly see them walking down the street with a couple of Police officers a couple of steps behind.<br /><br />There are inevitably going to be ECHR issues and some could (and probably will) argue that we are breaching their right to privacy, free assembly, family life etc but to be honest I don't care about that. My personal belief is that if you breach someone else's human rights by committing crime against them, then your protection under the human rights act should be forfeit.<br /><br />There is also the cost factor involved and eventually justifying that cost. If we harass our most prolific criminals enough then they will either stop committing crime or move out of the area. This drop in crime is great for you and me, but not so great for those holding the purse strings. How can you justify spending a fortune on a crime reduction tactic when there is no crime to speak of? That paradox of proactive policing is one that the government have failed to grasp for so long, and it's the main reason for the removal of beat officers - a Police officer walking around is going to reduce both crime and the fear of crime but how do you measure prevention?<br /><br />Annoyingly we can't say "well Billy burglar used to commit 1 burglary a day, so over the last year we've prevented 365 burglaries" because someone will just say "prove it" and we can't.<br /><br />The only way is to look at what happened in the previous year, but if you are that successful and continue to reduce crime there comes a point where there is no crime year on year and someone is going to suggest that you don't need the money to continue policing that way any more. Harassing criminals, getting in their faces, ruining their weekends or parties and generally making their lives a misery is a proven method of reducing crime, not only from them but from other people who see what will happen to them if they get on the list. How about a bit of consequence to their actions for once?<br /><br />Metcountymounty.<br /><br />PS, I will be revisiting the other points on that list but as Essex have proven the point so well I thought it only right to acknowledge it!Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-74423554191746313522009-06-02T21:29:00.006+01:002010-02-10T15:00:20.274+00:00StuffSo, today has been another interesting day in the world of policing and general politics. It's taken long enough, but finally the evil wicked bitch - sorry, witch - of the east has decided to quit. Not because she has admitted that she has been the worst, most hostile , most anti-Police and generally incompetent Home Secretary in recent memory, but because she got caught milking the taxpayer (me and you) for money by calling a spare room in her sisters house "her main home" and the house where her family lives as a second house. That, and she claimed for some porn so her husband could knock one out a couple of times. I can't really blame him because his wife is pig ugly, but there is enough free porn on the internet if that's your thing, and there's considerably less chance of getting humiliated by a curious and diligent reporter.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE3cs7-s0kYvvIQ_VBKOYNsqCE8UrYMA0bfdTz3dewj1q7ZuWlgIVOBiUa5klpPgkfkSZthqPoXmLUlsZUqLxmolcWVEgbH_OjTE-7jphcQEM-pQ96_hLn48L1_24SgZm1Vwje8xSwGUiQ/s1600-h/news-graphics-2008-_662342a.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342844287260209490" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 257px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE3cs7-s0kYvvIQ_VBKOYNsqCE8UrYMA0bfdTz3dewj1q7ZuWlgIVOBiUa5klpPgkfkSZthqPoXmLUlsZUqLxmolcWVEgbH_OjTE-7jphcQEM-pQ96_hLn48L1_24SgZm1Vwje8xSwGUiQ/s400/news-graphics-2008-_662342a.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />I wonder if he was thinking the same as me? "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out..."<br /><br />On that last point about reporters, I have said many times that I'm no fan of the main stream press but I must admit that I think they have done rather well of late, what with exposing parliament for the hive of vulturous swine that they are, and the Met hierarchy for the S.44 stop searching debacle. If ever there was proof that we are no where near a Police state, the fact that we have a free and independent press proves that, no matter what the Daily Wail and their numerous misguided armchair experts suggest. I've never been an advocate of stopping and searching people who are soooo not a terrorist (as I discussed in <a href="http://sheepdogsandwolves.blogspot.com/2008/05/target-profiling.html">this</a> post) just because someone in SO15 thinks it's a valid tactic, and if I used any S.44 ops I've been on to target criminals instead then so be it. You can accuse me of being complicit by carrying out lawful orders and searching people at choke points, but as I've always tried to specifically target people who fit my own personal profile of "scroaty bastard" I make no apologies for making crime arrests during counter-terrorism stop searches, of which I have had many.<br /><br />Now on to separate matters. A combination of work and FANTASTIC sunshine has made me inadvertently miss a rather large milestone on this blog - 100k site hits.<br /><br />THANK YOU!!<br /><br />The old stat counter at the top gives me a bit more than just the number of hits the page gets, I get lots of other info such as what countries my visitors come from, what sites direct them here and who links to me etc. Aside from every country on the European continent I've had visits from all over North America and most of Australasia too which is rather nice. I've had links from left and right wing sites, news sites, Police sites, random blogs and even a World of WarCraft forum, which is odd, but again, Thanks!<br /><br />I know I haven't had many posts on recently but as most followers know the world of response policing, public order and other stuff I can't talk about has been the cause of many a cancelled rest day as well as the occasional splat of overtime, and when I haven't been at work I've been trying to make as much Vitamin D as I can!!<br /><br />We've been absolutely hammered for aid recently which has lead to teams being left unjustifiably and dangerously short. Thanks in no small part to the Tamil protests (or Op Mirandy as my various overtime sheets have known it) we've had loads of people abstracted from teams just because they proved at the very beginning that they could actually get a few thousand people on site in next to no time (unlike swampy) which has caused a massive headache - and bill - for policing it.<br /><br />Contrary to popular belief we don't have huge reserves of public order teams on duty "just in case" and aside from the TSG units on Commisioners reserve (a few PSU's to provide emergency cover for public order, backing up response or life threatening/large scale incidents) if something kicks off our resilience is tested to the full as we have to scratch around for anyone currently on duty to don kit and make their way there. If you have all your units on all the time you'll have no one left within 24 hours as we're not robots and need breaks and sleep, so trying to plan for appropriate resources has been an absolute nightmare for the public order branch and relevant duties offices. It's also cost a fortune to the tune of over £8 million, and that was a couple of weeks ago.<br /><br />I've no doubt that a huge part of the hesitation to kick them out of the square has been fall out from G20 (and yes, officers HAVE refused to use force to move people because of the threat of media witch hunts and suspensions even though it's EXACTLY what we are trained for) and the threat of their community rallying to swamp Westminster with tens of thousands of people in a very short period of time. If anything it shows that a determined group of people can bring central London to a standstill in protest with very little actual violence. Surely another sign that we aren't as much of a Police state as some think?<br /><br />I will try and get some more posts up soon but to be honest if the sun stays as it is (thanks to El Nino no doubt) then I'll be out there in the garden, on the beach or on the water like everyone else when I'm not wearing a polyester shirt with body armour or a couple of stone's worth of riot kit. In the mean time, thanks again for visiting, thanks for the comments and thanks for the support when <a href="http://sheepdogsandwolves.blogspot.com/2009/02/very-bad-day-in-bad-couple-of-weeks.html">some jobs </a>have made me question why I actually do it, and <a href="http://sheepdogsandwolves.blogspot.com/2009/03/meet-james-cleary.html">others</a> why I should carry on doing it.<br /><br />Now, get off the bloody computer and go and get some sun while you can!!<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-51345476313208007732009-05-04T23:04:00.005+01:002010-02-10T15:00:20.280+00:00Peaceful Protest..... yeah... of course it was.....At the Mayday! demo organised predominantly by <a href="http://www.smashedo.org.uk/">SmashEDO</a> around 1000 (police estimates are usually lower and organisers usually much higher) turned up for a supposed peaceful street carnival. Because of the massive amount of negative press surrounding the G20 and police tactics, a more low key and standoff approach seems to have been adopted in deference to containing from the outset.<br /><br />It didn't work, and it kicked off.<br /><br />There were probably over 7000 people at the G20 on the 1st, I really have to ask myself what would have happened if we had just left them all to it, considering only around 1000 appear to have got the initiative in Brighton. Frankly, considering the huge lack of support we received from our bosses, numerous politicians and the majority of commentators in all the mainstream press, I think we should have just left them to it and I definitely think we should at the next big one, if only to prove a point. The lack of assertive action in containing a crowd that had violent intent has made the Op Commanders in Brighton look likes dicks and has caused the guys and girls on the ground to get more grief and suffer attack for the SMT's fear of looking bad on youtube and on Newsnight.<br /><br />If you were one of the officers there then let me know how you think it went compared to G20 as I know there were a lot of teams from all over the place with us at Bank, so the comparison would be nice, especially so close to the last one.<br /><br />There hasn't been much coverage on the news yet, but here's a couple of snippets about today's festivities down in sunny Brighton.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.fitwatch.blogspot.com/">Fitwatch</a> -<br /><br />FIT teams have been forced to retreat from the Smasho EDO/ITT demo in Brighton. Due to a large number of participants engaging in Fitwatch tactics, they are not able to get any footage. People have physically pushed, shoved and kicked them out of the demo. A mobile CCTV van was blocked and forced to drive away. Two FIT officers trying to stop someone from doing graffiti were pushed away.This shows what can happen when we collectively resist our oppression. We no longer have to be passive victims to this policing - we can fight back and we can shut them down.<br /><br />Congratulations to all those involved in Brighton and good luck for the rest of the day.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/">Indymedia</a> -<br /><br />After meeting by the Palace Pier, the protest moved through the centre of Brighton cheering and chanting. Four young anarchists climbed to the top of the Barclays building, where they hung a banner reading “Arms Dealers Out Of Brighton’. Barclays is notorious for being one of the banks most complicit in the international arms trade. The people responsible for the banner were welcomed into the crowd as heroes, and avoided arrest. After passing peacefully past the Clock tower, down Queens Road and through North Laine, the protest clashed with police on London Road.<br /><br />A heavy police presence blocked part of the road outside McDonalds, and minor scuffles quickly escalated as mounted and riot police forced through crowds to protect the building. A smoke-bomb lit by protesters, combined with a push forward from mounted police, frightened shoppers and nearly split the protest in two.<br /><br />From then on, the protest became a game of cat-and-mouse - although it was sometimes hard to tell who was the cat and who the mouse. Protesters managed to force back mounted police several times, while police hastily re-grouped around the protest as it moved into residential districts and through Preston Park. However, neither protesters nor police seemed to have a plan as such, and after much walking and a few minor scuffles - including the arrest of one man by riot police - the protest moved back into the town centre. On the seafront, for the first time in the day the police attempted to ‘kettle’ protesters by surrounding them on all sides.<br /><br />However, protesters quickly skirted down onto the beach and back onto the road behind police lines. The protest moved on peacefully and, after more skirting through narrow lanes and moving around police lines, settled on the grass outside St. Peter’s Church to dance and relax.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1177214/May-Day-protests-turn-ugly-violent-clashes-erupt-streets-Brighton.html">Daily Mail</a> -<br /><br />A May Day protest descended into violence today as anti-war demonstrators clashed with police in Brighton, where thousands of visitors had flocked to enjoy the bank holiday.<br />Three police officers were injured after scuffles with mask-wearing activists who organised a march through the city's streets. One man was arrested.<br />At one point activists climbed up scaffolding onto the roof of a Barclays bank branch and unfurled a banner as part of the protest against an arms factory in the city. Graffiti was scrawled on windows and paint bombs were pelted at buildings marked out on an ‘anti-militarist’ map that included more than 30 banks and businesses.<br />The American Express building, police stations and several McDonald's restaurants were targeted.<br /><br />Protesters chanted 'Whose streets? Our streets' as they marched through the city, while police officers on horseback cleared the way ahead of them.<br />Organisers had instructed protesters to wear red, but many wore black with masks covering their faces, which they said was a stand against the country's surveillance society.<br />Daytrippers and tourists, many down for the launch weekend of the Brighton Festival, were forced to run into back streets for cover as the crowd surged through the busiest streets and police tried to cut them off.A police spokesman said: 'The protestors having been attempting to target some premises and there have been some flash points of violence.<br />'Missiles have been thrown at police officers and police horses by the demonstrators.<br />'Three officers have suffered minor injuries - I do not believe they need hospital treatment. The group of 500 or so is still moving around the city.'<br />Activists from peace campaign group Smash EDO were protesting against EDO MBM Technology, an arms factory in Brighton.<br /><br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8032579.stm">BBC</a> -<br /><br />Police have criticised May Day anti-war protesters for pelting officers with missiles and causing criminal damage. Sussex Police said three people were arrested, including one for assaulting an officer, amid some violent scuffles during the demonstration in Brighton.<br />Police say three officers suffered minor injuries like twists and sprains.<br />Campaign group Smash EDO, which wants local arms factory EDO MBM Technology closed, organised the protest which it described as a "huge success".<br /><br />Smash EDO estimated about 1,000 protesters had gathered on Monday, but Sussex Police said it was about 500.<br /><br />Brighton and Hove City Commander, Chief Supt Graham Bartlett, said: "Once again... we have seen unjustified acts of violence aimed at premises and police officers.<br />"Members of public including many visitors to the city have been clearly frightened and intimidated by a small minority of the group who have been verbally abusive, and throwing missiles at police.<br /><br />Sussex Police said three officers were slightly hurt and three people arrested<br />"One member of the public was struck in the face by a missile and had to be treated by a police medical team." Police also criticised organisers for not telling them how many protesters were expected and what route they would take. Protests began with a street party in front of the Palace Pier before moving through the city centre and on to the factory to the north of the city. A small number of demonstrators surged towards officers in riot gear and flares were let off. And one small group scaled scaffolding in front of a branch of Barclays Bank and unfurled a banner.<br /><br />Later groups of protesters gathered in the grounds of St Peter's Church and listened to music.<br />A number of others returned to the pier where they were surrounded by police in riot gear.<br />Smash EDO spokeswoman Chloe Marsh said the day was a "huge success".<br />"Large crowds arrived on foot and on bikes, bringing sound-systems, banners and a carnival dragon," she said. At least 30 protesters had reported injuries and some were struck with batons by officers concealing their identity numbers, she said. The march was a larger version of a demonstration regularly staged against EDO MBM Technology. The weapons manufacturer has never commented on the protests.<br /><br />Lets see how many 'Police brutality' stories come out and short clips hit Youtube.<br /><br />Same shit, different day.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-27966571781555169362009-04-28T08:24:00.014+01:002010-02-10T15:00:20.283+00:00I owe you a less than five...Having had a week off to chill out, see some sunlight without wearing body armour and let my skin get used to breathing instead of being covered in polyester, I'm feeling much more normal again. I was looking at my duties the other week and was actually shocked to see the amount of cancelled rest days and non voluntary overtime (as in had no choice because of prisoners, sudden deaths etc) that I've done since January. For some reason the last couple of months worth of shifts have been nightmarish, in the last month we've had a couple of weekends that have directly compared to New Year with the number of urgent calls and prisoners, loads of which are for decent jobs like robbery, GBH and burglary.<br /><br />It's nice to get a busy set of shifts to make the 12+ hours go faster, but you need a break afterwards to recover which hardly anyone has had due to the amount of aid commitments the we've been hit with such as the Tamil demos, G20 and the Israeli Embassy - the vast majority has been done on cancelled rest days meaning we get sod all but a day in lieu, that we'll have to fight to actually get back. The shift pattern we do works really well if you have the time off in between shifts but getting that thrown up in the air by being required to work just leaves everyone knackered.<br /><br />I've no doubt the up coming Mayday protests down in sunny Brighton will put more officers in the spotlight, I really can't see some of the protest groups missing an opportunity to have a go at some Police officers and then film the aftermath to give to the Guardian.<br /><br />The media and political storm after the G20 has definitely taken its toll on morale on frontline officers, the murmurings of dropping out of public order training has turned into outright corridor conversations with no care to who is in earshot. I'm not going to go into the Ian Tomlinson incident anymore, there has been enough speculation and comment on blogs like the <a href="http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/">Coppers Blog</a> and <a href="http://www.fitwatch.blogspot.com/">Fitwatch</a> from people who know what they are talking about, from people who haven't got a speck of a clue, and people who just want to throw their twopence in.<br /><br />One thing that has come out of the G20 is the issue of public order training and exactly what we are trained to do and in what circumstances we are authorised to use certain tactics. Take for example the 'Nicky Fisher' incident - large crowd getting too close to a line of officers putting in a cordon, they are pushed back by other officers, someone takes exception to being pushed back and gobs off because she's a 'woman' and doesn't think a man should push her. She pushes the officer who again pushes her away, she shouts and swears at him and moves forward grabbing his arm, he swipes her away hitting her in the face with the back of his hand (personally I would have gone for a single or double handed push and thrown her up the street) and she STILL gobs off. All the time the officers are being surrounded by media photographers, protestors with cameras and people shouting abuse them.<br /><br />The officer gives a couple of very clear 'get back' shouts to everyone and turns away from Fisher. She decides to go forwards AGAIN and the officer escalates his use of force having already given her multiple and very specific opportunities to remove herself from the situation. He draws his baton and gives her a strike to her legs (and not even full force hit because the bruise would have been different) causing her to fall over. After that the video footage shows lots of people going into 'shame on you' mode - which by the way I've never heard until the Israeli embassy demos in January, just like the new fashionable trend of throwing shoes at demos that they've adopted.<br /><br />The main issue with the Fisher incident appears to be that the officer is tall with a large build and she was a munchkin. Does that mean that as Police officers we are only supposed to use any form of force on people of equal or larger size to us? Considering that most public order officers are tall males with a large build that rationale would mean we shouldn't be dealing with 90% of people at demos just in case we are larger than them, so what's the point in us being there. Do the public really want a plethora of extremely short and slightly built officers for public order duty so we don't offend other people's sensibilities by having to use force on people smaller than us?<br /><br />Seriously?<br /><br />She had more than enough chances to go away and didn't and the officer rightly - and as trained - used a single strike to the legs in escalating the use of force. How many times do people think that he should have been pushing her away before she got the hint? what if she never got the hint and refused to get back? Everyone knows the slur of 'small man syndrome' but one thing this job has taught me is that 'small gobby woman syndrome' is just as bad if not worse, and you're more likely to actually get injured by them because no one wants to start manhandling a small woman. And they have nails and pointy shoes, and like to use them.<br /><br />This incident and a number of others from the G20 have really put public order policing in the spotlight along with the tactics used overall. The problem we've got is certain tactics require different levels of force from the officers on the ground. The tactic of containment requires us to be up close and within body contact distance with people who invariably don't want us there. The only way to control a crowd that doesn't want to be controlled, and is at the very least being obstructive and at most violent, is to use force. This can be anything from pushing to strikes with shields and batons, right through to a running line with long shields as we had at the Israeli Embassy.<br /><br />When you compare our tactics with virtually ever other country in the world we have considerably less serious injuries. The main reason is because the preferred option in most countries is to leave well alone and then step in once trouble kicks off. The problem with that approach is that you have to use much higher levels of force in order to get control because any delay in assembling resources just gives the crowd time to cause more damage. The increased media attention on the results of having officers up close and personal where videos of people being punched, hit with shields, batoned and pushed has caused an outcry and prompted calls for a national debate on public order Policing.<br /><br />Some people have been saying in the media "well I don't care what they do in other countries, the is the UK and I only care about how we do it here". Well they should care because doing nothing is not an option, so we either do it our way and look forward to more videos of people being punched, pushed, hit with shields and batoned, or we do it like everyone else in the world. This means full complete deployment of shield teams (no messing about with half kit, then short shields followed by long after we've been attacked repeatedly) and creating stand off distance from the shield lines to prevent people getting close enough to attack officers.<br /><br />The only way to do this is to extend the range of your use of force beyond that of shields and batons by using projectile weapons such as baton, rubber bullets, live rounds, CS grenades and water cannon. Do we really want that over here? I know I don't, especially if the current trend of suspending is going to continue if officers are seen on video doing things that doesn't look nice, regardless of whether or not they are trained to do it. To put this into perspective for you, if a firearms officer shoots and fatally wounds someone in the course of their duty then they are removed from frontline duties pending investigation. They aren't suspended, they are still on duty and working just not in a public facing role.<br /><br />During the briefing with IPCC chairman Nick Hardwick to the Home Affairs Select Committee, he said that he supported calls for a national debate on public order policing but also that "we can't train our Police officers to use certain tactics and then completely wash our hands of them when they use those tactics because we don't like how they look"<br /><br />This last comment has been the point that is seriously destroying morale amongst officers at the moment, especially those who volunteer for public order roles. I've watched an awful lot of videos on youtube and on the various news sites and blogs, and I really have not seen anything that we are not trained to do in both normal officer safety training or public order training. Police officers volunteer for any specialist training such as driving, firearms, public order, searching or CBRN, and we can just as easily un-volunteer from those posts. If the everyone did that, I've no doubt the wheel would come flying off within a shift, let alone over a couple of days.<br /><br />If it is going to become the norm that officers are suspended for doing what they are trained to do, how many people are likely to put themselves forwards for that? A suspension stays with you for your whole career, and no one is going to want a suspension for excessive force plaguing every promotion board or course application, especially if you just did what the instructors and the job trained you to do.<br /><br />While I was working over the G20 my shifts were changing literally on a daily basis, a couple of times I was actually getting changed as I came on shift or just as I was going off. It was ridiculous. Our job absolutely relies on the goodwill of officers to both put themselves forwards for training in specialist roles and to put ourselves out to actually make things work. If that goodwill is going to be completely abused and all support is removed then no one is going to do it any more. In one of the many phone calls I had over the G20 week from the duties office (who were pulling their hair out having to chop and change at literally the last minute) I spoke to one of the Sgt's I've known for years -<br /><br /><em>"Mate, I need you to do me a favour, I need you to do a quick swing tomorrow, I know you're finishing late tonight but I need you on an early start.</em><br /><br />Have I got a choice?<br /><br /><em>Not really, but I'd rather you agreed to do it than having to force you or someone else to.</em><br /><br />Fair enough, if you can put me on a team that's going to get off on time that would be appreciated.<br /><br /><em>I'll try, but I owe you a less than five for helping me out.</em><br /><br />You owe me more than that Sarge after this week, it's been shit<br /><br /><em>True, serves you right for volunteering to do the courses though, see you later"<br /></em><br /><br />MetcountymountyMetcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-57788177635156884292009-04-03T14:16:00.004+01:002010-02-10T15:00:20.286+00:00G20Along with the vast majority of my colleagues in the Met, and those from the county forces, BTP and the City, I'm absolutely shattered. It's been a long couple of weeks - thankfully with some variety - but that was mainly because we didn't have enough people or kit to fill all of the posts. As a result public order serials went short, search teams went short, vehicles were plundered and all teams but predominantly response, were decimated. <br /><br />Those who were on were constantly retasked at the last minute, many came on with no idea what they'd be doing or what kit they needed because their duties had been chopped and changed so much that no one had a clue. The vast majority didn't care anyway, we just got on with it. If you have infinite resources then you can cater for most eventualities and keep a good body of personnel available for fluid and spontaneous incidents. <br /><br />Not even the Met is big enough for that, especially in the current economic climate with budgets very tightly controlled in lieu of paying for plenty of back up. Standing at the forward command area at the ExCeL and seeing how much was involved from Level 3 PC's for area security through to the SFO's, helicopter crews, public order teams, search teams it was quite awe inspiring really. Christ knows how we're going to deal with the Olympics, that's going to be ten times bigger and will go on for months and not just a couple of weeks. <br /><br />I've no doubt an awful lot will be arranged at the last minute and will be sorted out on the hoof, that's how we usually do it anyway.<br /><br />Most officers were on extended shifts (12 hours minimum though most did 16+ each day) and when things went properly pearshaped we had no relief and were just kept on, regardless of when we were due to start the next day. On the 1st for example, most of the serials were on an 0800 start, they didn't finish until 0200 and were then due back on for 0430 - so much for a minimum of 11 hours between shifts. After spending 14 hours getting battered with bottles and poles in one of the cordons in the City we were retasked to clear and take the climate camp. <br /><br />Before we cleared the camp I was walking around trying to find somewhere to sit down and the streets were littered with shattered public order teams trying to get some food and fluids, others were trying to get a couple of minutes shut eye before we went back in. When you're that knackered you don't really care that your new found pillow is a kerb covered in broken glass and debris. <br /><br />Before anyone says we milked the overtime so why complain, we were all on cancelled rest days so no one had any overtime except normal time+3rd after 12 hours. After two weeks of extended shifts, no one wants the overtime anyway, we all just need sleep.<br /><br />When I can get my head together and sort my very knackered legs and feet out I'll be putting some more posts up, in the mean time I'm going to enjoy the family stuff, go to the zoo and get some much needed rest. In lieu of some decent vids of some of the action, here's a brilliant vid I was told about whilst getting rained on by bottles of Becks -<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jSbb9U6GPXE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jSbb9U6GPXE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-35378430336467976862009-03-04T18:53:00.006+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.290+00:00Meet James ClearyA little while ago I wrote <a href="http://sheepdogsandwolves.blogspot.com/2008/09/vile.html">this post </a>following a briefing slide we were shown at work asking for help identifying a burglar who preyed on sick children at Great Ormond Street Hospital. After some decent work by the guys and girls in the crime squad the suspect was identified as being 47 year old, James Cleary -<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh34-2xqS50uJ0zgz7Gu6ljL8OxSVcqUTcy1-V22VIdt1pWzoe4TuDru6AhLFh5TfwC6BNzqxjSXi2_FHu7r1CXAKjA0TjwHiPb9W-i8R99WVRFxe5tuaNyR3HKxhX91eu3n8xKghV5QcsC/s1600-h/article-0-03A77801000005DC-542_468x286.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309412043906052306" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 244px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh34-2xqS50uJ0zgz7Gu6ljL8OxSVcqUTcy1-V22VIdt1pWzoe4TuDru6AhLFh5TfwC6BNzqxjSXi2_FHu7r1CXAKjA0TjwHiPb9W-i8R99WVRFxe5tuaNyR3HKxhX91eu3n8xKghV5QcsC/s400/article-0-03A77801000005DC-542_468x286.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />On the 24th of February 2009 Cleary pleaded guilty to four counts of burglary, admitted two more and asked to have them taken into consideration - by admitting further unsolved or unreported crimes they can be given leniency in sentencing. <br /><br />Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith sentenced Cleary to 20 months in custody and said -<br /><br />"Your counsel is absolutely right. The financial value of these matters is less than £2,000 apparently, but the sentimental value of a play station and games for a sick child is far greater.<br /><br />'But I am bound by the guidelines from the Sentencing Guidelines Council.<br /><br />'It seems to me that when you committed these offences you targeted vulnerable community premises, that is to say hospitals, but your entry into the children's ward or children's hospital is a further aggravating feature as I see it."<br /><br />Considering that the maximum sentence in law for a single non dwelling burglary (with no violence or weapons) is 10 years at Crown Court, you have to wonder exactly what a burglar would have to do to get that if repeatedly preying on sick children inside a hospital attracts only 20 months - even if he did plead guilty. If you think now that he automatically gets half his sentenced reduced on anticipation of being granted licence, and then up to a further third of whats left for good behaviour, Cleary is going to back out on the street long before Christmas this year.<br /><br />That'll teach him..... won't it?<br /><br />Cleary is a prolific and habitual burglar with numerous previous convictions for burglary and other offences. For each offence he would have been found by, arrested by, investigated by and sent to court by the Police. How can we possibly be to blame for the rise in crimes committed by people like Cleary when the Police officers who have dealt with him have done EVERYTHING they could possibly do on every occasion? It's not our job to sentence people, that is for the courts. I've seen people with over 200 previous convictions out and about committing crime, and getting caught by Police officers.<br /><br />That is us doing OUR job over 200 times for one person and yet they are still able to walk the streets freely. We rarely get people arrested who have no previous convictions, nearly everyone we deal with has already been caught and convicted several, if not dozens or sometimes even hundreds of times before.<br /><br />If someone receives the maximum sentence for each crime they are convicted of the prison population will go through the roof very quickly, but once they are in, there aren't going to be as many convicted criminals out on the streets able to commit crime. If anyone is stupid enough to commit crime such as burglary, theft, assault etc and then loses several years of their useful life because of it, well that's their fault isn't it?<br /><br />Why should we feel guilty about having a large prison population when they are the ones who put themselves there?<br /><br />If someone is in prison, behind bars, he cannot be breaking through your back door as you sleep, or breaking into your childs hospital room while they are recovering from life saving surgery. That is a simple fact, but one that people still refuse to grasp when they call for community sentences, or leniency over long custodial sentences.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.<br /><br />PS. I've a few things going on and a course coming up so will be off the grid for a few weeks. Stay safe.</div>Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-39128018628160150592009-02-19T22:53:00.008+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.297+00:00Very bad day in a bad couple of weeks.Work has been stupid busy recently and I've spent the few days off I've had mostly trying to forget about it and live in the normal world. My list of days that I'd rather never happened is reasonably small considering some of the things we have to deal with, most jobs just go into the work box and get locked away to be dealt with as and when, but unfortunately I've had another one added to the list quite recently. I'll have to wait until the inquest and investigation is concluded to give you a better picture of exactly how utterly horrible and fucked up the whole situation was. Watching a kids heart get ripped apart and watching their entire world turned inside out in the blink of an eye is bad enough, but knowing that Police bureaucracy, bullshit accountability and arse covering protocols dragged it out needlessly for the family still makes me feel sick.<br /><br />We, the people on the ground did everything right. We do it all the time and we are good at what we do, we work well together and don't have to ask each other to help out, we all know what needs doing and we crack on and do it. We don't like getting other people involved as we can deal with the vast majority of jobs ourselves, and we can deal with them quickly. The problems come when we have to get other people involved who aren't there and who don't really give a shit - to them it's just another call to make, another list to check, another CAD to update.<br /><br />They can't see the childs tears. They aren't talking to the next of kin and hearing the distress as every possible outcome is running through their mind and ripping it apart by the second. They haven't seen the worlds best paramedics and frontline trauma teams doing everything they can to stop the person they've never met from passing. They can't see the once feeling and loving eyes glass over to nothing, to emptiness, to pain for those they will never see again. They don't care.<br /><br />To us thirty seconds is a lifetime in a situation like that. To them thirty minutes just is another step closer to going home on time, and it can't pass quickly enough.<br /><br />I've always said that it's the one job in a hundred, or even a thousand, with a proper victim to help or a proper criminal to catch that makes the others worth dealing with. I joined this job to help those people when I can, and it makes me sick to know that some people I have to work with don't share that view, or have forgotten it if it ever existed, or that distance themselves from it to make sure their arse is covered. I know people who are terrified of the thought of getting put back out onto the street having festered in an office after getting off the frontline as soon as their probation finished. Others we work with have absolutely no concept of what we actually do, and they don't care about that fact either because they'll never have to deal with it.<br /><br />They don't want to deal with the things we do and they have no incentive or motivation to do things with a sense of urgency when we ask them, as that invariably means cutting corners or stepping on toes and they won't risk it.<br /><br />I make no apologies for hating a very large number of people both inside the Police and outside, this job has given me more than enough evidence to justify every stereotype or prejudice that I've got, but I still care about people who are in situations they never asked be in or did nothing to bring on themselves. These are the people I want to help; the people who are unable to do anything to help themselves. Proper victims.<br /><br />I know that sometimes, more often than not in some places, we can't get to some calls from the public. A lot of the time we don't even get to hear about them as there are always more serious things coming through to us, even though it occasionally turns out some of them aren't exactly as we were told because someone has deliberately lied about the incident to make sure we get there. I'm sorry that we can't get to your burglary report because a shop has lied about how 'violent' a low value shoplifter is because they are sick of us saying we have no units to deal, or that someone has called in a hoax knife/gun threat just to see how long it takes us to get there "if they ever actually need us" or because they think it's fucking hilarious.<br /><br />The Police officers who are still on the frontline teams, working 24 hours a day answering 999 calls want to help people. We care about the fact that normal tax paying members of the public, who are no different from our own families, are victims of crime, or victims of fate through no fault of their own.<br /><br />We want to help them, I want to help them, because I still care despite all that other bullshit.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-62407444020598054762009-01-29T09:21:00.007+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.300+00:00So... who started it? an update on vids.Short and sweet, here's a couple of vids found by Plastic Fuzz which I think look pretty good and give a good indication to which side wanted the fight, especially the guy in the second video who says "we're trying to get to the Israeli Ambassador and they're protecting him, so that's why it's kicking off" If you follow the links at the bottom of the video when it finishes, there are loads more from the 10th now.<br /><br />First one.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8iQyXXsBBQ0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8iQyXXsBBQ0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />With no hint of irony, given that accelerant was thrown at the Police officers on the gate, here's the second vid to the relaxing theme tune "Firestarter"<br />1.49-1.53 was my serial.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jtr-6sWgTEE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jtr-6sWgTEE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />MetcountymountyMetcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-56874382385427544152009-01-27T21:31:00.013+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.301+00:00Meet the new Boss, much the same as the old one.Contrary to what Sky's Martin Brunt thought when he said that Sir Ian Blair's resignation would cause a drop in morale throughout the Met, on the afternoon he announced he was leaving I've never seen so many people in the canteen talking about him with smiles on their faces. The next day a skipper I know said "it's great news isn't it, if the Met canteens had a laugh-o-meter in them, they would have blown up yesterday afternoon"<br /><br />So now that the "PC PC" has finally gone, Sir Paul Stephenson is going to be the new Commissioner of the Metropolis. I've never met him and I probably never will, unless something goes horribly wrong somewhere, and the most I'll see of his new direction and 'leadership' will be a weekly podcast on the Intranet that I won't watch. We may get some policy directions that will be changed by countless levels of chinese whispers, so by the time they get to us they will do nothing but serve the needs of the borough Commander or the divisional Superintendent to make sure they get their year end bonus for meeting targets and budgets.<br /><br />Sir Ian Blair set the direction of the Met as Commissioner but it was Sir Paul Stephenson who actually ran things from an operational perspective. Whilst I'm well aware that there are things Sir Ian wanted and everyone was required to do, here's a few things I am certain that we won't get in the immediate to near future -<br /><br />(1) a doubling of the number of response officers actually deployable for every team, on every division and borough in the Met.<br /><br />(2) a doubling of the number of response vehicles and vans (that actually work and don't break down all the bloody time) to accommodate the influx of officers back to response and the significant increase in prisoners that will result.<br /><br />(3) the opportunity for response officers to actually proactively patrol and engage with the public because the vast majority of the bullshit calls we are sent to have been cancelled because we shouldn't even be going to them, or they are significantly downgraded to the level they should be in comparison to an actual emergency.<br /><br />(4) Taser.<br /><br />(5) someone with any substantial rank standing in front of the news cameras immediately after a substantial event to give the people the information that WE had at the time, even if we are being criticised by people (including family) who have no idea what actually happened.<br /><br />(6) someone who will tell the Home office to get rid of the <a href="http://sheepdogsandwolves.blogspot.com/2008/04/look-how-red-line-goes-down.html">National Crime Recording Standards </a>and to stop trying to micromanage how we work.<br /><br />(7) the complete return of discretion, in line with the office of Constable, instead of directed policy.<br /><br />(8) specific targeting and extreme harassment of each divisions top 50 criminals until they are locked away, move out of London, or kill themselves.<br /><br />(9) the return of local knowledge to control rooms by basing them in divisions and alongside teams instead of in 3 remote bases staffed by people who rotate daily, haven't got a scooby which road is where, who is who, where our borders end or what specialist teams exist to deal with specific things. This won't mean much to anyone outside of the Met, but to those in, it will mean everything.<br /><br />I'll be more than happy if I'm proved wrong on any of those points, but after yet another knackering nights weekend of mayhem, close calls and not enough people to deal with it, I'm a tad pessimistic that anything will change for the better.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">Update - some quotes from the Boss -</span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">“Ian Blair did it his way. I was a loyal deputy. Now I am going to do it my way”<br /></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">“One of the key issues is keeping the communities on board to give us a mandate to go in there and use some pretty intrusive tactics to stop kids killing kids.”</span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">"We have to be intolerant of violence, no matter where that violence comes from"</span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;">"It is my aim to be a top-class police leader of the biggest police force in the UK and one of the best in the world." Interesting he used the words Police force instead of Police service, it's not something Sir Ian Blair ever said, which is a good start.</span>Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-46985229652928622332009-01-18T13:15:00.006+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.303+00:00Is peaceful protest possible?Of course it is. I've worked on loads of demos over the last few years ranging from calls for life to mean life, children's charities, anti war, anti capitalism etc and only a very small number have ever deteriorated to the stage of people being arrested, and even less turning into large scale public disorder. The vast majority have been attended by dozens to hundreds of people, and even a couple where a few thousand have turned up and there have been no incidents or problems. Compared to last week at the Israeli Embassy, I can attest that the 'flash mob' protest at Heathrow Terminal 5 was a considerably more jovial affair.<br /><br />As usual the differences on numbers were wide apart, 500 from the organisers, 250 for the official Police estimates, from where I was standing we estimated the number to be around 350. The protest was reported by some media outlets as creating 'chaos' at the airport but it was anything of the sort - there was an area set by for the protest to be held in, security at the terminal was out in force and we had plenty of level 3 officers and a couple of level 2 serials to prevent anything getting out of hand.<br /><br />We were briefed that BAA had actually given permission for a protest to be held within the terminal, contrary to existing legislation, which made things considerably easier for us to plan around. An area was set aside by the airport staff (which wasn't used eventually), level 3 officers were patrolling the terminal and the level 2's were in place behind the security access to the departure lounge. If the protestors got through us there, the terminal would have been shut down and we would be looking at a 'search to contact' of the entire terminal (and possibly even 'airside' which would have been an absolute nightmare) and every nook and cranny until everyone who wasn't supposed to be there was accounted for and removed. As we did that, the airport would be shut down which is why there is specific legislation prohibiting demonstrations within airports.<br /><br />It was a gesture of 'goodwill' by BAA to allow the demo to go ahead but if it went wrong, the disruption would have been enormous to both passengers and the airport, and a number of people (including some of our senior officers) would have been out of a job by the late afternoon. A point which we were made aware of and reminded constantly about in the run up to our deployment!!<br /><br />We were told to expect the demonstrators around 12 noon, and that they would be there for between 15-90 minutes, depending on how many turn up and how emotive they are. From where we were at the departure lounge entrance we could see a few people in the distinctive red t-shirts underneath coats milling around, the vast majority seemed to be women and children. There were a few men around but it seemed to be more of a family atmosphere to everything and not in the slightest bit hostile. When the time came all the coats came off and the crowd that had gathered near the main exit began jumping around and singing, there was quite a bit of jeering and throwing red balloons and sponges around, and at one point a few people got half-nekid and did the congo. All in all, a reasonably loud, relaxed and very friendly demonstration<br /><br />After a few more songs and chants the group started to thin out quite quickly after about 30 minutes, by 45 minutes they had all gone. Once the bosses were happy that the demonstrators had left or that there was no threat (from them anyway) of a security breach, we were stood down. We waited for redeployment to central London to assist with the anticipated demonstration at Trafalgar Square but as there were only a couple of thousand people there we were 'dismissed with thanks' and headed back to go home.<br /><br />I spoke to a mate who was at the demo as we headed back to our nick, "I've seen a few of the knobbers who kicked off with us last week, but apart from that there's hardly anyone. Most of them are loud but alright, looks like loads have stayed away because it kicked off so badly last time" I got a text from him not long after I left to go home "as expected, a few have kicked off, going to be a long one, laters"<br /><br />And so, as expected -<br /><br /><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4279688/Starbucks-smashed-and-looted-as-anti-Israel-protests-turn-to-violence.html?mobile=basic">Telegraph</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1120942/Gaza-protesters-unleash-fury-Starbucks-coffee-shops-late-night-rampage.html">Daily Mail</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.ealingtimes.co.uk/uk_national_news/4055944.Anti_Israel_protest_turns_violent/">Ealing Times</a><br /><br /><a href="http://fitwatch.blogspot.com/2009/01/500-pigs-20-horses-16-dogs-2-starbucks.html">FIT Watch</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.itv.com/News/Articles/Violence-erupts-at-Israel-protests-202336625.html">ITV</a><br /><br /><a href="http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20090118/tuk-anti-israel-protest-turns-violent-6323e80.html">Yahoo News</a><br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-51393958093936107882009-01-11T19:19:00.015+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.306+00:00So.... who started it?Around 100-120k people marched yesterday. We were briefed that the public order branch expected, and had been told the plan had been arranged for around 15-20k, despite it being all over the media and sites like Indymedia that around 100k were due to turn up. The estimates on numbers are usually somewhere between the Police ones (invariably considerably less than there actually are) and the organisers who seriously ramp up the turn out. On this occasion however, the front of the march reached the embassy as the back had not long left Hyde Park, a distance of just under 1.5 miles, and it was packed, literally building line to building line across 4 lanes of road. We were told (at around 3pm) the official Police estimate was 20-25k, which was complete and utter bollocks. There were a hell of a lot of people, at the front end were families and old people, at the back were mostly young males.<br /><br />As usual we had been told that our role was to facilitate the lawful demonstration and that we were effectively 'community Policing' unless the situation changed and things became violent. Crucially, we were told that despite the fact that nearly every march relating to the Gaza/Israel situation had experienced violence, this was not sufficient evidence to suggest that THIS march would become violent. As such, because the senior officers are so afraid of offending the wrong people, we were NOT in possession of riot helmets or shields which were left on the carriers, although we all were in our protective gear and coveralls under the yellow jackets. We were wearing our normal everyday beat helmets and to say some were not happy about that would be a slight understatement.<br /><br />Unlike at football matches where fixtures are given categories to judge the expected level of violence based on previous experience (A = virtually nil, C+ something like Millwall v Chelsea, Rangers v Celtic etc) these aren't used at demos, which is why we have FIT - forward intelligence teams - who identify specific individuals based on known previous history, in order to judge the expected level of hostility.<br /><br />My serial was one of the several dozen at the front of the march. The organisers had loads of volunteer stewards whose job was supposed to be to facilitate the movement of the march although they were all as emotionally involved with the march as everyone else there. They were organised at the front in three separate ranks, with the 'celeb' marchers in between the 1st and 2nd, and the rest of the march behind the 3rd. Not long after we set off a group of about a hundred young males broke through their own stewards and sprinted off towards the Police serials at the head of the march. After some negotiation with the stewards, they agreed (eventually) to rejoin the march behind the stewards and celebs. Our serials at the front were stretched out along the sides of the march, with a couple of officers every 50-10o meters or so.<br /><br />Things were pretty peaceful for the whole length of the Bayswater Road and although very emotive, there was quite a bit of banter between the Police officers and the demonstrators and things stayed that way despite the massive numbers until the head of the march got to the North Gate of Kensington Gardens. Inside were a couple of PSU's on the other side of the gate, and as we passed there was nothing more than a bit of shoe throwing and jeering. We carried on down towards the front entrance to the Embassy and our end stayed pretty much the same. All of a sudden we heard calls from one of our other serials that dozens of people tried to break through the gates to get to the embassy and were climbing the fencing, throwing anything to hand, throwing burning flags at the gate and that they needed more units to help out. Within seconds we heard the call that no police officer wants to hear "more units now, urgent assistance, we're under attack, officer down"<br /><br />What had started as a several dozen turned into a hundred or so and the officers were being attacked with missiles including glass bottles, balloons filled with paint, scaffolding clips and metal poles, and a couple had been dragged into the crowd and were beaten to the floor. One officer was knocked unconscious by a scaffolding pole, two received really bad facial injuries and the other officers (male and female) were kicked and punched repeatedly until a couple of PSU's managed to get to them. At the time we were not allowed to wear our protective helmets and were still marching towards the Embassy.<br /><br />Not long after we got to the Embassy gates the crowd stopped to shout and jeer at the gates (as they can't get close to the Embassy itself) and there was a bit of banner and shoe throwing. From where we were the crowd couldn't see the gates and all they knew was that they had stopped. Immediately they blamed us and lots of people were asking us "why have you stopped us marching?" It's a simple fact of numbers, 100,000 people won't fit down a street at the best of times, let alone when the head of the group has stopped because they wanted to demonstrate, we hadn't blocked anyone in at that point.<br /><br />Within a couple of minutes we received the order to get our shields and helmets from the carriers after the extent of the attack and injuries received by the officers at the North Gate was fed back to the commanders. Because of the scale of the march, at least half the demonstrators hadn't seen any Police presence and to see a few of us here and there trying to get our kit gave them more than enough opportunity to shout abuse and thrown coins, cans, bottles etc as we tried to make our way through. The RVP point for the vans was changed because of the hostility we were getting to make it easier to get kitted up without having to walk half a mile or so up the road through a predominately (at that point) hostile crowd.<br /><br />We got back to our posts near the front of the march to be told that a couple of shops opposite the embassy had been attacked and ransacked and that protestors had been seen stealing bottles and knives which were distributed through the crowd and subsequently thrown at the officers at the front gate. We were then informed by a serial at the gate that they had had several bottles of accelerant thrown at them which failed to ignite. At that point PSU's were brought in to contain the crowd which did effectively block them in, the hope being that they would dissipate out the other end. The confrontation became even more violent, demonstrators destroyed the fencing that was keeping the pavements clear for the shops and emergency evac units, and some of the fencing was used as a barricade to stop the Police PSU's from getting into the crowd to arrest people, specifically those from last weeks demo who had been recognised by the intelligence teams.<br /><br />We then used filter cordons to try and dissipate the crowds to get the vast majority of people out of the area, this consists of a couple of ranks of officers with people still able to pass through. The people responsible for destroying the shops and throwing the missiles/accelerants were still in the crowd outside the embassy so they were contained. When information about the cordons started feeding back into the crowd a number of demonstrators tried to break out and were using anything and everything to attack the officers on the cordons, including the barriers themselves.<br /><br />As the violence increased, our escalation increased, and for the first time in almost 8 years (in the Met) full deployment of longshield units was authorised, it was probably around 8pm at that point. Short of watercannon, rubber bullets and teargas, this is the highest state of force we can use in a public order situation and the decision to authorise it was not taken lightly, because it is so obviously aggressive.<br /><br />Over the next several hours we had to use more cordons to force back crowds that had gathered on all sides to dissipate them as some (but not all by a long shot as there were a lot of normal demonstrators mixed in with them) of the group contained in the embassy continued attacking officers, vehicles, property, horses etc. We kept the cordons in as the protestors were taken out of the embassy cordon section individually where they were videoed for evidential purposes (to check against CCTV later) and searched for any items taken from the stores, they were then allowed to leave. As the number of people in the contained area shrunk we were able to move the cordons in further which released more officers to assist in searching so the whole group could dissipate quicker. Our cordons and teams were eventually taken down around half ten, having been in place from around four when it first started kicking off outside the embassy.<br /><br />Here are a couple of vids already on youtube, make of them what you will.<br /><br />The march along Bayswater Road and then Kensington High Street, just down from the embassy after we were ordered to get our full protective gear and shields.<br /><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vuYsANIWBFo&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vuYsANIWBFo&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />At the gates of the embassy, note the bloke singing "all Police are pigs, lets kill coppers" which was pretty much the order of the day from the majority of the people attacking officers.<br /><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5voVc827wUw&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5voVc827wUw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />missiles being thrown and fencing used as barricades.<br /><br /><br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wble59t5NlU&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><br /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wble59t5NlU&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />MetcountymountyMetcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-87112113593810419172009-01-06T12:34:00.009+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.349+00:00Burning FlagsOn one of the demos I worked on the other day the topic of flag burning was raised during the initial briefing, in response to the huge number of people in Trafalgar Square on Saturday holding a veritable bonfire before they started off towards the Israeli Embassy. At present in the UK, flag burning is not a specific offence in criminal law and there is case law that states simply burning a flag isn't enough to charge or convict for racial incitement of violence or to charge or convict for any public order act offence. The high court decided that the act of burning a flag was nothing more than destruction of personal property, if the person doing the burning owned the flag.<br /><br />A couple of years ago some officers from ACPO suggested <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6095260.stm">making flag burning a specific offence </a>in order to prevent groups deliberately causing extreme offence to others and unnecessarily escalating demonstrations into violent conflict. There are always going to be people at demos who will try and provoke other people or have a go at the Police to get some 'good' images on Indymedia, and they really don't care how they go about it. I've worked on plenty of demonstrations that have been rather pleasant and perfectly legal, as well as a few others where a minority have been there to do nothing but start a fight.<br /><br />Personally, I find flag burning extremely offensive. It's more than just a piece of cloth with dye on it, it's a symbol of identity and history and burning it is intended to cause offence and intimidate people into reacting. I've been at demos where some people do it just because it's the 'in thing' to do and they don't care or can't understand why some people are extremely offended, because they (by their own admission) don't care about their own country, flag, its meaning or its history.<br /><br />A couple of the demonstrations over the last couple of days have been extremely heated but ultimately peaceful, and even as the thousands of people rallied around speakers they didn't get the flags out to set them on fire and they all (for the most part) dispersed afterwards without any incident. The longer the trouble in the Middle East carries on, the longer the demos about it over here are going to continue. Most will be passionate but peaceful, others will be violent. The large demo on Saturday turned pretty ugly after the protestors left Trafalgar Square and Police officers were pelted with bottles, bricks, banners and anything else to hand until it was later brought under control.<br /><br />After the unbelievable indecisiveness by senior officers at the Notting Hill carnival this year to relieve untrained and unprotected Level 3 officers with properly equipped and trained L2 or L1 officers after they were subject to sustained attacks with bottles and bricks (and were literally begging for additional assistance and support) it was actually quite refreshing to hear a ground commander on the radio pull the officers out and send in the specialist riot teams of the TSG along with L2's within a few minutes of everything going pear shaped. I've no doubt one of the commanders taking a direct hit to his own head influenced the speed of the decision making.<br /><br />With more demos planned for the foreseeable future including advertised rallies of the same nature on Saturday and Sunday, we're going to have some interesting days ahead in the Capital, along with the usual day to day Policing requirements and requests from the public!<br /><br />After 12-15,000 people had a relatively peaceful if somewhat heated demo in Trafalgar Square, here's what happened when most of them decided to march to the embassy via Pall Mall and St James's Street -<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_H8BTvGqN0Q&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_H8BTvGqN0Q&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />This vid was footage after it kicked off from around Kensington Gardens -<br /><br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BsRl5foi69I&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BsRl5foi69I&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br />And yes, those officers on core response teams were still answering 999 calls, despite having had most of their public order trained officers stripped from normal team strength for the day!<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-67377631372037152342009-01-02T23:37:00.006+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.352+00:00Animal PoliceDue to some unfortunate business in the Middle East having ramifications over here I'm not going to be around for a few days, so in lieu of a proper post here is a vid I saw on TV which I think you'll find amusing!<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ybVb3t560oY&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ybVb3t560oY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />MetcountymountyMetcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-60688049060047731642008-12-31T18:10:00.003+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.354+00:00Happy New Year peeps!!!Here's last years London fireworks for anyone who never saw it, for those of you working in town tonight I hope you have a view of this years, it's about the only thing that's going to be enjoyable!!<br /><br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/G8sPADP2UU0&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/G8sPADP2UU0&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br />See you guys in 2009,<br /><br />Out.<br /><br />MetcountymountyMetcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-55456873940516991472008-12-28T23:00:00.008+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.355+00:00Good will to all men<strong></strong><br /><strong>Christmas Eve</strong><br /><br />Busy night judging by the number of bods in custody, I spoke to a mate on the other team as I took the vehicle over, he looked completely shattered. No one had a break (as usual on nights) and they were live dealing with constant calls from early car at 6pm until we came in the following morning for 7am. There were only a couple of calls outstanding, a couple of drunks on buses refusing to get off, shop alarms going off, so we cleared them up and headed back in for briefing. They had quite a few people in custody considering it was the night before Christmas Eve.<br /><br />The next couple of hours were lots of calls to alarm activations then we had the first ‘proper’ job of the morning; executing a court order to seize travel documents of a three year old whose mother was threatening to remove from the country permanently. A Judge in the high court has seen enough intelligence to determine that a child is at risk of abduction and has seen fit to order the Police to execute the court order “as a matter of extreme urgency” to seize all and any documents related to travel, but has not provided us with the intelligence pack and has only authorised a power of arrest if the officers have reasonable ground for suspecting that any person has not complied with the order.<br /><br />There is no power of entry or power of search, and no information as to exactly which travel documents we are to seize. Short of someone slamming the door in our faces, we can’t really do anything other than ask ever so nicely if they wouldn’t mind handing the bits over, as we don’t know what we’re looking for.<br /><br />I call the court up to check exactly which documents we are supposed to be seizing and ask a couple of reasonable questions - does the child have a passport? Where has the intel come from that the child is at the address? Is there intel that a flight has been booked or other travel arrangements have been made? The answer from the court is they don’t know anything. Not very helpful. We get no joy at the address, or with any agency related to travel documents as Christmas Eve is a discretionary day for civil servants, and they all appear to have taken it off. It’s not as if a suspected child abduction is anything serious anyway. We manage to find some other addresses as well as the court issued one and check each of them. No luck, to be honest the mother has probably taken the child already.<br /><br />We all contributed to putting a buffet together so each crew on our team can get some food and we can at least experience a modicum of festive cheer in between calls to shoplifters, arguments, dippings, people getting drunk and fighting etc.<br /><br />Later on we get the best example of instant karma I’ve seen for a while. A bloke trying to shoplift sprints away from security, decides to cross one of our main roads to lose them, and promptly gets gobbled up by a taxi. Thankfully the taxi driver and his passengers were unharmed, and after LAS checked the guy over and confirmed he only had minor injuries he got nicked. It turned out he was also wanted on a warrant for burglary. The warrant wasn’t backed for bail meaning we couldn’t release him and had to keep him in custody to put him for the first available court hearing.<br /><br />Unfortunately for him, the first court wasn’t until the 26th. Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha. Merry Christmas.<br /><br /><strong>Christmas Day</strong><br /><br />So much for expecting to have a nice chilled day. As I walked down the corridor to get the car I walk past the front office and see a mountain of exhibits scattered around the place, loads of seized clothing and a couple of the nightshift guys sitting on the floor cataloguing everything. One of them looks up and see’s my rather puzzled face “R&B night” he says. I shake my head and ask “how many injured?” without looking up again he says “four separate GBH’s that we dealt with, one’s in a really bad way, there are a couple of scenes as well. It went pretty tits up when the clubs kicked out”.<br /><br />I was surprised it was only four then his colleague said “there were a few other ABH’s but they didn’t want to know (didn’t want to make a crime complaint to Police) and LAS dealt with them”<br /><br />The hospital and scene guards took up most of the morning and tied up pretty much everyone, then as yesterday there were lots of alarm calls, a couple of building searches, a couple of domestics (one was quite nasty apparently) and then lots of driving and walking around deserted side streets looking for people to search, if appropriate, obviously. We had some good vehicle stops and searches and got some good intel although we didn’t get as many bodies in compared to a normal dayshift.<br /><br />We did manage to actually get a bit more proactive patrolling done than usual and the visitors with nothing else to do did seem to appreciate seeing lots of Police officers around to take photos with. Considering some Christmas days that I've spent at work, it wasn't actually that bad really.<br /><br /><strong>Boxing Day</strong><br /><br />We’re standing in the back yard listening to the radio and it seems that every cock and his mate has decided to visit our patch and cause mayhem for the families out shopping and the shop staff trying eagerly to sell them everything possible. It got so bad during the day a Section 60 was authorised in the hope that some aggressive searching and Policing would discourage most of them to bugger off somewhere else. A couple of vehicles come back in for a quick handover and after the usual pleasantries and friendly insults we chuck our kit in the back and head out.<br /><br />Despite having extra people on, plain clothes units out targeting steaming teams (thieves who swamp an area enmasse to cause mayhem and steal as much as possible) there are calls coming out all over the place for Police assistance to stores and from other units requesting back up. We get a couple of urgent assistance calls which ended up in several people arrested from different jobs, we also had a couple of officers injured at each one. With the majority of shops closing, the calls dropped off a bit but those who came up just to cause trouble just went to other parts and carried on. Group robberies, assaults, steaming off licences etc carried on for a bit and for the first few hours of the shift was a case of blues to a call, jumping out, throwing whomever in the van and then blatting off to the next.<br /><br />It was stupid.<br /><br />After the shoppers went home the calls eased off a bit as the pubs started filling up and we managed to get a brew in, it then went pear shaped again as the pubs kicked out and the clubs started filling up. We had quite a few pub fight calls with doorstaff requesting support, “innocent people assaulted by doorstaff” and units requesting backup after queue fights and ejections got continually out of hand. As the drink and Christmas cheer really got going we had a couple of nasty GBH’s and a few ABH’s involving some of the most unpleasant casualties I’ve met in a while who started the fights but failed to get the first punch in and then tied up desperately busy ambulance crews.<br /><br />Another ‘victim’ was found in a bleeding heap outside a hotel, fortunately for him the first crew on scene had already dealt with him earlier on after seeing him and a couple of mates square up to a group of blokes, they circulated the description of the suspects who were picked up not far away. I can’t go into too much detail, but they had very stupidly linked themselves to the attack on the victim and we were literally in stitches as we got them out of the van.<br /><br />We then spent the remainder of the shift ‘encouraging’ drunks to grow up and go home, such as the idiot who decided to step in front of the car and shake his cock at us whilst we were on blues, until he realised we were the Police and not an Ambulance, and that we were neither impressed, nor amused.<br /><br />All in all, it was a rather busy and somewhat unpleasant blur, and reinforced my view on a couple of things -<br /><br />1) I hate drunk people.<br />2) I should have booked it all off.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-69607875940921985362008-12-23T19:21:00.003+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.358+00:00Merry ChristmasIf you're working, you're not the only one, just remember to keep the eyes in the back of your head wide open, especially at the seasonally festive domestics.<br /><br />If you're not working then well done for convincing duties to let you have a life.<br /><br />And for those readers who aren't in the job, thanks for visiting and contributing to my blog, I'll let you know next week how my joyous Christmas was spent as my crystal isn't working at the mo.<br /><br />From me, to you, have a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year, I hope it's a safe one!<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-88158836745925028562008-12-20T19:29:00.006+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.359+00:00Cops with camerasAs most frontline coppers do, I like to watch stuff like Road Wars and some of the other Police Camera Action type programs when I'm on my days off. It is very 'job pissed' but handy for a bit of shouting at the TV, snippets of useful procedures and techniques and a bit of a laugh at what some people do on camera, no matter what side of the criminal justice fence they operate on.<br /><br />One program that got my interest was called "cops with cameras". Compared to some of the others it's not that great but the basic premise works quite well - strap a load of miked up body cams to a team of officers from different units and watch what happens.<br /><br />One particular clip caught my eye, two response officers were searching for a guy with a huge knife threatening random people in the streets, they split up to search a building line and one runs into the suspect who doesn't decide to drop the knife and come quietly. Funny that. The ensuing fistfight and struggle was caught on both cams as the other officer went to help and it looked exactly the same as any other violent struggle - lots of punching, lots of screaming and shouting and not an iota of Steven Seagal-esque flawless armlocks or body throws to take down the suspect in a couple of 'nice on TV' moves.<br /><br />Needless to say it didn't look particularly nice, but then anyone who as ever had to try and restrain someone who doesn't want to be restrained will tell you that violent use of force doesn't look nice. It's not supposed to.<br /><br />A couple of weeks ago the <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5262534.ece">Mark Aspinall video</a> brought out the same criticism of the Police that usually happens when a routine arrest appears to go over the top. I think there are three things missing from the video which would have given a considerably clearer picture of what happened - the other 7 minutes of CCTV conveniently missing from the news stories, audio of the entire incident, and close up audio/video that would have been recorded had the officers worn cameras. Having watched the vid a couple of times, the strikes/punches were clearly Home office approved officer safety techniques to deaden a muscle group - they are aimed at the shoulder and stop when his arm goes back into the cuff. Despite the hundreds of armchair experts saying we can't use punches, we can, it's approved, trained, and used when we need it.<br /><br />The only thing I would have done differently in that situation would be to pin the guys head to the pavement with both hands and all my bodyweight, exactly as I described in <a href="http://sheepdogsandwolves.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-many-does-it-take.html">this post</a>, which funnily enough says about biting - which Aspinall did. As soon as you pin the head you neutralise the use of the neck, shoulder and back muscles which makes it considerably easier to get someones arm into a cuff, which Aspinalls clearly wasn't at the time he was punched.<br /><br />Last year the video of 'epilepsy sufferer' Toni Cromer caused exactly the same stir and the media was all over it with accusations of brutality, racism and victimisation after PC Mulhall used several strikes on her during a violent arrest outside a club. The story ran for a couple of days until Cromer admitted during an interview on Sky News about having drunk a bottle of Brandy, having never had an epileptic fit in her life, admitted that she did not suffer any injury inconsistent with a restraint (arm bruises and cuffbites), admitted that she had pleaded guilty to criminal damage and admitted that it had never crossed her mind to pursue an allegation of assault by the Police, despite the video being shown in court. That was until convicted racist Ruggie Johnson decided to try and make a name for himself and released the video to the press claiming racism. PC Mulhall was dragged through the mud, and worse.<br /><br />After investigation the IPCC and the CPS confirmed that the use of force was completely justified and legal, PC Mulhall was exonerated. The media never gave as much coverage to this fact as they did of the original story, even after PC Mulhalls apparent suicide a year later. I cannot help but wonder if he had a camera on him, with mike, would it had prevented those allegations in the first place?<br /><br />There is only so much you can describe in a statement about an arrest. Even if you go into 8-10 pages describing everything about the scene, the suspects actions, your actions, what observers did, history etc, it still doesn't show the incident as well as video footage. As they say, a picture says a thousand words, and I've always firmly believed that writing how someone was violent, aggressive and fought whilst being arrested pales into comparison when you show a video that could be an outtake from '28 Days Later'.<br /><br />There are obvious limitations with CCTV such as range, coverage and lack of audio. There are also going to be occasions where an officers memory of an incident differs from the footage, especially when extreme stress, violence and adrenalin are factors in perceptual distortion, which can lead to accusations of lying. I was involved in an arrest a couple of years ago where a drunk bloke was threatening people outside a club with a knife and a broken bottle. My mate and I rushed him and ended up struggling on the floor before we managed to get him cuffed. Thinking about it right now I clearly remember being only a couple of feet away and fighting to control his arms and disarm him for several minutes before a van turned up. The CCTV however showed that we were around 15-20 feet away before we ran at him and we managed to get him disarmed and cuffed in less than a minute, and the van arrived almost immediately.<br /><br />I believe that for the vast majority of arrests and incidents, an eye's and ear's view would show courts and the public what it's really like when we deal with people - specifically those who don't want to be dealt with - and how completely unrealistic many of the expectations of how we should deal with suspects actually are. Given the current problem of Police officers accounts not being believed by the media or the public (despite evidence supporting the accounts) I think that frontline officers having body worn cameras is a vital tool that we could benefit from.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-61105178107476496002008-12-15T16:10:00.003+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.363+00:00Computer Says NoFor some reason I can't log into my blog site (although I can get onto Blogger?!?!) through my laptop so I'm using a funky iPhone which has now convinced me to get one. When I can figure out what's going on I'll put another post on!Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-54251103965128239162008-11-26T20:14:00.007+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.365+00:00Please, get me out of here.The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) is a piece of legislation that governs Police (and other agencies) powers to interrogate technology such as computers and mobiles for the purpose of criminal investigations, to prevent serious public disorder and to protect security interests, amongst a few other things. It was brought in for a number of reasons, mainly to legislate in anticipation of the increased use and requirement to analyse technology during investigations. I believe it was also to put some serious stops in place to prevent us nasty untrustworthy Policemen from stitching innocent people up (as we clearly always do) and just doing what we want with suspects phones, computers, email accounts etc without someone way high up the chain of command offering their head to the block if it all goes wrong. Cynical I know, but it was the Labour party who brought it in, and they're not big fans of the Police.<br /><br />As a front line Police officer my use of RIPA is not as regular as CID or special branch for example, but when I do have to use it, it would cover things like mobile phone traces, interrogating mobiles for intelligence on suspects movements, putting together covert recce's on premises before executing warrants or interrogating seized computers during an operation where time is critical.<br /><br />I dealt with a job recently that highlighted to me the serious problems of having such high level authorisations needed for something so apparently simple as a cellsite trace. Cellsite is what we call the triangulation of a mobile phone using information from the service providers cell masts. How it works is we contact our liaison department at each of the service providers, they then check their records to see which masts have been hit by the phone when it connects at regular intervals or when it was turned off, and depending on signal strength from various masts they can triangulate and give rough area of where the handset is.<br /><br />To give an idea of how rough, for the job I was on, we were given a central location but a search area of 400 meters from that point. You can imagine how difficult - and almost pointless - an area that is to search in the middle of the most densely populated city in Europe. Different companies can give varying results, I have heard of differences in search areas from 20 meters to half a mile from the central location. Because the cellsite data comes directly from the service provider the Police have no control over how long it takes them to collect the data, triangulate and get back to us. They also charge for the service, I was told on our job that the Met would be charged £5k for it.<br /><br />Cellsite data can be forensically examined in extreme detail as happened in the Soham murder investigation. By analysing the exact strength of the signal from relevant masts, the investigators were able to prove that the mobile belonging to one of the girls was located at the front door of Ian Huntley's house before being taken inside and switched off a couple of feet inside the hall.<br /><br />For investigative purposes a cellsite request has to be authorised by an officer of the rank of Superintendent or above and that authorisation can only be granted if the officer believes that there is serious risk of harm or a serious threat to life. When you're running an historical investigation where you have a murder (for example) there is no problem in getting the authorisations as the need for the data is obvious and unquestionable. For a fast time operation, such as a vulnerable missing person, a suspected abduction or a silent 999 call, the opinion of the level of threat is extremely subjective, and just because one person thinks the threat justifies cellsite, it certainly doesn't mean everyone in the command chain agrees.<br /><br />The decision has to be based on the information immediately available, including history of the subject, informants, suspects and circumstances of the call/investigation. I won't go into too much detail but a job I was on recently involved requesting cellsite as part of the investigation into the apparent disappearance of a female. I'd got in early for a Sunday day duty as usual along with a mate, and to do the night duty a favour we took a vehicle out to clear up some of their outstanding calls. After we'd resulted the half dozen or so calls and were on the way back into the nick for parade, we received a request to attend a street to meet with an informant reporting her friend missing.<br /><br />We got there just before 7am, only a couple of minutes after the control room had got the initial call. The informant who I'll call Rebecca worked in a club and had seen her friend Jessica in there with a guy who Rebecca had never met. Jessica told her that he was a friend she'd recently met, and a couple of hours later as Jessica and the guy left, she told Rebecca they were going to go to another club that stayed open later. Not long after Rebecca finished work at about 0530, she had received a text from Jessica that read "Please, get me out of here" Rebecca sent a text back and a couple of minutes later she received a phone call from Jessica who sounded drunk and appeared to be crying. Jessica told Rebecca that she didn't know where she was, she was drunk and wanted to leave and the guy wasn't letting her go.<br /><br />Rebecca then spoke to the male who gave her an address of where he was but told her not to bother coming round as he loved Jessica and she was safe. He then hung up, and switched the phone off. Rebecca tried several times to call Jessica back with no joy, after a short time she called a couple of friends and they got in a taxi to the address the guy had given, and when they found it was a Doctors clinic, they called the Police.<br /><br />We did all the checks we could at the scene, short of putting the clinic's door in. Rebecca, Jessica and her friends were all no trace on intelligence checks or the Police national computer suggesting that none of them had ever come to Police notice before. Rebecca seemed completely honest and genuine, the text she received was exactly as she had said and everything else checked out. On the information that we had, both my colleague and I were seriously concerned for Jessica's safety, to the point of thinking we could be looking at another <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3570999.ece">Martine Vik Magnussen</a>, given the similarities in events leading to her disappearance. The only possible lead we had at that time was to get a cellsite done, especially it was still relatively recent to the first message from Jessica.<br /><br />The duty officer disagreed and refused to put the request forward to the duty Superintendent, based on that information, as he decided there was not an established threat to life or risk of serious harm. We debriefed Rebecca and her friends to try and get as much information as possible about Jessica's lifestyle and habits, we went round to her address and after gaining entry to her room we interrogated her laptop for any possible leads or clues to what she was like.<br /><br />By the time we left to go back to the nick we had a possible suspect who was ident to the male Rebecca had seen Jessica with, an address he lived at and enough grounds to arrest him and search his flat and vehicles. We got back and the investigation was now in full flow, a Detective Chief Inspector was in charge as this was now classed as a high risk missing person, and his first call was to put the cellsite through. As far as he was concerned the evidence suggested reasons to suspect serious harm was likely, even before we searched Jessica's flat and proved she wasn't there asleep and recovering from a hangover. By the time cellsite came back, it was some seven hours after we first attended. The duty Superintendent by the way, didn't bat an eyelid when they authorised the cellsite request.<br /><br />Jessica was later located, she said that there was some 'miscommunication' between her and Rebecca and she denied saying what she had in the phone call, despite the text message she'd sent. The address that Rebecca was given was remarkably similar to the one Jessica had actually gone to, we'd even checked that street as it sounded similar but we found no building number that matched. It turned out to be a flat number. We'd confirmed that she was less than 100 meters away from the central point that the cellsite data gave us, but realistically there was no way we could have searched every possible place, it would have taken literally hundreds - if not thousands - of officers to search within any useful time frame.<br /><br />The information that we had suggested to us that Jessica was in potential danger and merited further aggressive investigation. Thankfully it turned out that she was in no danger, but over a hundred Police hours were taken up (wasted?) determining that, as well as the cost of the cellsite. As much as we would love to be able to, it would be virtually impossible to put that much manpower into every missing person investigation. This one job was classed as high risk and tied up nearly every person on my shift, as well as the duty CID team for the majority of the day.<br /><br />As for silent 999 calls, or even calls with seemingly innocuous conversations being heard in the background as happened in the very unfortunate case with <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4941612.ece">Hannah Foster</a>, we simply do not have the resources to deal with every single one - there are around 5.5million silent or believed unintentional 999 calls in the UK every year, with less than 1% of them later being confirmed as genuine.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-89301477963043297492008-11-20T23:49:00.005+00:002010-02-10T15:00:20.369+00:00A brief pauseApologies for the lack of postage recently. Thanks to a combination of quick swings, way too many extended duty days, hardly any rest days, being run ragged thanks to being significantly understrength on team at the best of times, and then having our teams treated like a bottomless pit for aid (instead of actually paying people to come in) which has left us even more short staffed than I could have thought was actually legal, I've been left with a rather unpleasant dose of man-flu, the first sickness bought I've had for a few years that's not injury-on-duty related.<br /><br />To say the morale on my team at present was 'low' is like saying Harold Shipman was just 'a bit naughty'. It's shit. Proper shit, in fact, and I know I moan, but I've been like a veritable ray of sunshine recently compared to some people (dockyard oysters aside) who are trying at the very least to get out of the borough, some murmurings have been about getting out full stop.<br /><br />Picture the scene - you know that, on a good day with everyone in, you are only a couple of people above your minimum strength levels. The minimum strengths are decided by the SMT as the minimum 'safe' level of officers to deal with the anticipated volume of calls and to provide a level of resilience should things go tits up, as they invariably do. Given abstractions like court, sickness, courses, annual leave etc, you also know that you will ALWAYS be under strength because your team simply doesn't have the number of people it should. You put a leave application in to get some time off with your family which is rejected by the duties office, as usual the answer is "unable to authorise as officer numbers are below minimum strength"<br /><br />Fair enough, you think, it was a long shot anyway, that's why you only try and plan stuff on your rest days - if they aren't cancelled.<br /><br />And then you turn up to work on the day you wanted off to find that two thirds of your team for the day have been taken off duty to do some aid (a demo, Op Blunt, court security etc) on another divisions ground, leaving you with a couple of vehicle crews for the whole shift. You ask where the main bulk of the aid is and realise you have a mate on duty there so you text them to see how short they are today "we're ok actually, really flush, even got some walkers out, why?" is the response. The outrage train has well and truly left the station, and you're driving.<br /><br />This happens virtually every single day and if I described the boundaries of my patch and how many people we actually have to Police it (physically out on the ground answering 999 calls and patrolling, not in total on duty as we only make up about 4-5% of that number), I'm pretty sure I'd have my legs done under the new 'damaging public confidence' regulations.<br /><br />Thankfully I've got leave booked over Christmas (that I had to book in January, those who left it until March onwards have had some or all of their applications for leave refused because we're under strength on team) so between now and then I'm going to be mostly working and sleeping and won't be doing much posting.<br /><br />I'm glad to see ZaNu Labour's efforts to increase officer numbers to 140k over the country has worked out so well for us on the front line.<br /><br />MetcountymountyMetcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-84430455025499287402008-10-24T12:25:00.013+01:002010-02-10T15:00:20.372+00:00Researching the validity of conferringAs some of the comments in the last thread obviously show, the topic of conferring is a contentious issue at best, at worst it is seen by some people as Police officers lying through their teeth to cover perceived mistakes. Whatever your view is, there is no perfect answer, short of downloading peoples memories into a computer to be analysed, so the best answer has to be one that achieves the highest quality of evidence possible. There has been extensive research in the areas of memory formation and retention which suggests that the current practice of conferring is one of the ways to achieve the best evidence.<br /><br />In reaction to repeated calls by the IPCC and the MPA, the Met has commissioned Portsmouth University to conduct studies to determine which methods would be best for not only achieving best evidence but also for the welfare of the officers involved. There have been extensive studies already conducted in the US which suggest that the current practice of conferring IS the best method of obtaining accurate evidence, the problem we face is the public simply don't trust that medical and psychological evidence and think that we are colluding when we sit down, debrief to reconstruct the incident and our own individual actions and then write them up.<br /><br />The following is an article from the Metline magazine published by the Met Police Federation and discusses the outcome of research commissioned by the Met Fed into how errors in recall can occur. Have a read if you want and feel free to discuss, critique or lament et cetera.<br /><br /><strong>The Write Approach</strong> - New research sheds much needed light on how the brain processes memory in high stress encounters and calls into serious doubt suggestions that officers should not be able to confer over notes after incidents.<br /><br />Officers who confer and write a report after a firearms incident are likely to produce a more accurate account of the event than officers who do not confer and are interviewed. That is the conclusion of a research team which carried out an experiment in which volunteer firearms officer were put through a challenging simulation of an incident and were afterwards required to demonstrate what they had remembered of it. The events during the simulation were recorded by three CCTV cameras so that the officers recollections could be checked against what actually happened.<br /><br />The primary aim of the study was to examine the validity of current theories about how memories are generated and their relevance to Police officers involved in high stress incidents, but it also examined the effectiveness of achieving accurate recall of events from individuals afterwards. The experiment was carried out by the Force Science Institute, which is conducting a number of scientific research programmes for the Met Federation. The researchers realised that the study had to be realistic enough to create genuine stress among the participants, as well as requiring them to make the sort of 'action decisions' that would be vital in a real life encounter. It also had to be arranged in a way that the outcome would be changed by the officers actions and novel enough that the officers would have to read the situation rather than rely on experience.<br /><br />The answer was to rig the gym at Hendon to resemble the reception area of a hospital ward, complete with waiting patients sitting around. The officers were given a scenario, learning that they were being posted as guards for a man who had been wounded in an armed robbery and was in a locked ward. As they walked through the reception area to their posts, they were confronted with a conflict - which they had not been told about - between the 'brother' of the wounded man and the receptionist (the receptionist having denied the brother access to the ward) of such an intensity that the officers were obliged to intervene. While their attention was taken up by this incident a hostage taker burst through a door beside the reception desk with his left arm around a hostage and a double barrelled shotgun in his right arm. The hostage taker discharged his weapon twice into the floor before pointing it at the officers, who then needed to control or shoot the man. Once he had been disabled, the action ended.<br /><br />Forty six officers participated in the study, divided into teams of two or three. When it came to recalling the incident some were asked to write reports after conferring with colleagues, some wrote a report but without conferring, some were questioned - after conferring - by a third party while a fourth selection of officers were each interviewed without conferring among themselves.<br /><br />The researchers, meanwhile, categorised the officers recollections into two types. The first type - called 'internal' - encompassed recollections of the officers own thoughts and behaviour. The second - 'external' - dealt with recollections about the other players and the environment. Each of these types was then further divided into "narrow" (a specific focus of attention) and 'broad' (a wider overview).So, for example, if an officer remembered thinking that he or she had to move to a pillar, the recollection was graded 'internal narrow', while if they thought they were in danger it was an 'internal broad' recollection. A recollection that the shotgun had two barrels was recorded as 'external narrow' while the memory of someone falling to the floor was 'external broad'.<br /><br />In this way, it was easy to see what sort of things were most likely to attract an officers attention, and which things they were least likely to pay attention to and, consequently, fail to memorise. The different methods of eliciting their memories - written reports, interviews, conferring and non conferring - were also graded for their effectiveness in respect of the number of things officers could recall and the accuracy of those recollections. Overall, the officers recall of 'external' things was more than 400% better than their memories of what they themselves were thinking or doing. And within the 'external' category, their recollection of specifics ('narrow' focus) was almost twice as good as their recollection of the broader picture.<br /><br />The researchers report comments: "this 'tunnel vision' or 'selective attention' is characteristic of all humans who engage in this type of encounter... this study indicates that this phenomenon also occurs in well trained Police officers." It continues: "the important element of an 'external' focus of attention particularly an 'external' and 'narrow' focus of attention, is that the process of focusing allows the officers to focus on what is important to them at the time but that they can miss other items that may later turn out to be important. For example, if the officers attentional processes at the moment of the shooting were on the alignment of the gun, they did not note anything about the specific movement of the subject, their clothing, the subjects action towards the hostage etc"<br /><br />The researchers say that this narrow, external focus facilitates great performance but renders officers 'attentionally blind' to anything they are not focused on. Their memories therefore became less accurate, or non-existent, about things upon which they were not focused. The report points out: "They were quite often inaccurate or unobservant about the hostage and almost never noted the behaviours or action of anyone other than the shooter. They almost never noticed the presence or action of the shooters brother and even other officers."<br /><br />The researchers cite one officer who described how his two colleagues 'froze' and how he fired his first shot before either of them had drawn their weapons, but the video showed them all drawing their guns almost simultaneously, with one - who was just two feet away - firing immediately afterwards. Another officer spent a great deal of time describing how he pushed an individual out of the way, while the video showed him putting his hands as if to push the person but then recoiling back and taking cover. The different methods of getting officers to reconstruct events after the incident - writing reports after conferring, being cognitively interviewed without conferring - had wildly varying error rates.<br /><br />When it came to recalling those things upon which the participants were 'externally' and 'narrowly' focused upon - that is things to which they were more attentive - the officers who conferred and wrote reports recalled 314 correct details and only made two errors, representing an error rate of 0.14 per officer. The researchers describe the statistic as "amazing". The error rate per officer of the 'external narrow' recollection of the report writing group who did not confer, although still small, was 0.6 per officer. Officers who were interviewed provided, on average, more than twice the amount of information that the report writers did, but their error rate soared. For example, officers who conferred and were interviewed about their 'external narrow' observations recalled 765 items of which 66 were incorrect - an error rate of 4.5 per officer.<br /><br />Worst for errors were those officers who did not confer and were interviewed, whose error rate in the 'external narrow' category was 6.6 per officer - that is, 47 times greater than the confer/report group.<br /><br />Commenting on the big discrepancy between report writing and interviews, the researchers comment: "The primary source of the errors dealt with information on the edge of the constables focus of attention. The constables worked hard to provide accurate information but the interviews apparently led them to expand on items that they were less knowledgeable about." The researchers point out that the primary aim of the experiment was to demonstrate the degree to which 'focused attention' occurred in high stress incidents and the manner in which it affected the officers perception afterwards.<br /><br />The effectiveness of the different methods of eliciting memory recall was only a secondary study and did not meet the criteria of a full study, which would require more officers to participate. But they conclude that, nonetheless, their findings indicate "reports produced less information but are more accurate in their detail" They add: "when constables are going to have to report on an incident, the most accurate reporting of the details is going to be provided by those constables who had a chance to confer. A further conclusion might be that the less the officers provide about the incident, the fewer errors they will make, especially if they report only on the behaviour that they were most specifically focused on"<br /><br />The article was based on the research report entitled "A study of the presence of perceptual distortions in firearms officers" and raises some very important points which the study by Portsmouth University will go into much greater depth. The issue regarding statements is always going to be the perceived credibility or ability to trust those submitting the evidence, but the ultimate aim is to provide evidence to a court for trial or coroners inquest. There is only so much error in a statement that a jury will tolerate before bringing the whole statements reliability into question. With regard to the accuracy in statements, the problem we face is to decide if we want an extremely accurate statement whose credibility will always be questioned by some people, or if we want less accurate but more detailed Police witness statements that face being deemed unreliable because of the vastly increased number of errors.<br /><br />As always, it seems we're damned if we do, and we're damned if we don't.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-1133029968461815542008-10-09T21:53:00.008+01:002010-02-10T15:00:20.375+00:00StatementsGiven my last couple of posts have been short cathartic rants, this post is a long one, but hopefully I'll explain why.<br /><br />Following recommendations by the Metropolitan Police Authority after Stockwell, the IPCC recently called for the practice of Police officers being able to confer whilst making statements to stop. This was in direct response to criticisms of Police by the family of Mark Saunders who was fatally wounded by armed officers after he went off his nut and started shooting into other peoples houses and didn't stop when asked. This is the third time the IPCC has called for the practice of conferring to stop after the tragic deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes and Harry Stanley, both of whom were shot by Police officers and were later confirmed to not be armed.<br /><br />Nick Hardwick of the IPCC said: "The IPCC welcomes the recommendation in the MPA’s scrutiny report that the practice of officers conferring to make their notes following an incident should be discontinued and procedures put in place to demonstrate that the accounts individual officers give are their best and genuinely independent recollections.”<br /><br />Mr Hardwick added: “We are confident that the investigations we have conducted into fatal police shootings, are rigorous and capable of withstanding public and judicial scrutiny. But we recognise the concern and suspicion this practice sometimes generates amongst bereaved families and many members of the wider public. That suspicion cannot be in the interests of families or the officers concerned.<br /><br />“The IPCC has a legal duty to secure and maintain public confidence in the police complaints system. As the public body charged with oversight of the Metropolitan Police Service, the MPA’s support for our recommendation confirms the IPCC’s own view that the public do not have confidence in the current procedure in which police witnesses and civilian witnesses to the same incident are treated very differently<br /><br />“Both the MPA and ourselves recognise the uniquely difficult and dangerous job performed by firearms officers. The IPCC is clear that its investigators do not treat officers as suspects unless there is evidence that an offence has been committed. We recognise that the firearms officers are lawfully carrying weapons and we do not treat them as suspects in a crime unless there is evidence to do so. However, when the state takes a life, we believe that there must be a rigorous investigation and the families and public are entitled to the fullest possible explanation of what occurred and why. This is the approach we have taken in all 14 fatal shootings we have investigated since 2004.<br /><br />“The current post-incident procedure limits our ability to obtain the best possible evidence from police officers involved in an incident. Each case is different and the importance of the officers' notes will depend on the other evidence we have available.<br /><br />"The IPCC also recognises that changing the procedures following fatal shootings has far wider implications and may affect the way the police service gathers evidence for criminal investigations. Current guidance reflects the convention that police officer witnesses to an event are permitted to confer before writing their statements. This is a principle in daily police practice. It is not within the IPCC’s power unilaterally to alter policing practices and we recognise that the Police Federation has strong views on the subject.<br /><br />"While the courts may, in time, come to a definitive ruling on the question of officers’ notes we think ACPO, the Police Federation and the other police organisations need to quickly recognise the current situation is unacceptable. We think it would be possible to develop post incident procedures that provide reassurance to families and the public that best evidence has been obtained and reassurance to officers that they will be protected from unfair treatment for just doing their difficult and dangerous jobs. We seek to work with ACPO and the Police Federation to do that.”<br /><br />It is a well known fact that Police officers witness statements and other witness statements are obtained in very different ways, as acknowledged by the IPCC. There are a number of extremely obvious reasons for that and a couple of not so obvious reasons, all of which must be taken into consideration before calling for the practice to end.<br /><br />Firstly, a number of people have said that Police witnesses should be treated no differently from any other witness. As Police officers, we are trained to take statements from witnesses and write our own, and obviously how much practice you get can affect the level of quality of a statement. When an incident occurs we don't get all the witnesses then sit them in a room on their own and ask them to write their own statements, if we did, the vast majority would be completely un-useable in a court and would be missing massive chunks of information as well as having irrelevant information, hearsay and time lines would be all over the place. When we take statements we have to cover rules established under the caselaw of R v Turnbull and follow the ADVOKATE acronym -<br /><br />Amount of time the suspect was under observation<br />Distance between the suspect and the witness<br />Visibility<br />Obstructions to view<br />Known or seen before<br />Any reason for remembering<br />Time elapsed between observation and identification<br />Error or material discrepancy in description<br /><br />In addition to getting a full account of what happened, we interview the witness and ask probing and open questions to get specific details which can then in turn be expanded upon. A key area to completely breakdown in the recall is the sense of time and the order in which events occur. This can obviously damage the credibility of a witness if everything is later shown to be wrong and ripped to shreds in a court. It's not impossible to imagine a defence solicitor challenging a witness "Quite clearly this event happened before that one........ if you can't even get that bit right....... how reliable is the rest of your evidence?"<br /><br />I have seen statements from PCSO'S that have been 10-15 lines long which I have then had to retake, expanding them to over 3-4 pages. It wasn't a failing on their part, just a lack of proper statement training, a lack of understanding of the chain of evidence or of identification requirements and a lack of training in criminal law such as offence wordings and points to prove. Considering that PCSO'S are at least regularly involved in Police incidents and occasionally have to give statements, if we had members of the public write their own following incidents they hardly ever deal with, they would for the most part, be worthless.<br /><br />The complexity of the involvement or the type incident does change how much you can actually recall. Just walking down the street and seeing a shunt and a heated argument can last just as long as someone coming up to you, screaming in your face and demanding your wallet but your recall would be expected to be wildly different between the two. The more traumatic the incident the harder it is to get certain information, as soon as you get a raised heart rate and stress response kicks in the less your brain actually holds onto, especially if you haven't experienced it before. This is called perceptual distortion and is subject to an extensive body of research by psychologists and physiologists, I'll be putting a separate post up about it later on because it's too significant to be just a two or three liner but I've written a bit about it <a href="http://sheepdogsandwolves.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-are-my-hands-shaking.html">here.</a><br /><br />When we write our own statements we very often write them together and get a brew or some food to eat at the same time as it's a good opportunity to get refs breaks. Because our statements are expected to not only present the incident as we saw it, but are basically the backbone of the file, they should contain all of the relevant data for the incident. This would include exact times, descriptions, relevant history, street names, callsigns, authorities, incident numbers etc, most of which we would not have to hand before or during the incident.<br /><br />As I said earlier, one of the main things to go in memory immediately and soon after a traumatic event is the sense of time and order of events. Whereas we can interview a witness and expand on specific details to make sure the statement is accurate, it's extremely difficult to do this to yourself. Considering how many police officers we usually have on duty, it would be an incredibly enormous and wholly unjustifiable drain on resources to have to have another Police officer who wasn't involved in the incident to obtain our statements for us. There simply aren't enough Police officers to do that.<br /><br />A decent statement takes an hour or so (at least) if it is a complex incident and you know nothing about it. For a shift of ten police officers each arresting one person every couple of days, most serious incidents happen around the same time (thanks kindly to Murphy's Law) and involve more than one officer, we'd need to increase the number of police officers by at least 3-5 just to take statements from other officers to allow the investigations to be completed expediently. In order to stop the extra officers from being deployed and tucked up with jobs they would have to be specifically for statement taking - so they might as well not be Police officers - but in today's bureaucratic world they would not be employed just to take statements. Heaven forbid they had a couple of days or even a few hours where they didn't actually do anything and just milled about, the fact that they would have to have other requirements in order to even justify their position means that they would run the risk of not being able to take statements immediately.<br /><br />By sitting down and debriefing the incident and then writing our statements together we can get all of the other bits of information together that we need for the statement, tie up time lines and generally piece together the incident. I've no idea how many times I've been dealing with something and someone has suddenly popped up and then disappeared just as quickly. Gaps in memory and uncertainty about decisions made at incidents are proven triggers for post traumatic stress disorder and eliminating the causes as soon as possible helps to prevent this extremely damaging psychological injury. I wrote about this a bit more <a href="http://sheepdogsandwolves.blogspot.com/2008/04/calm-down-dear-its-just-job.html">here. </a><br /><br />The fact that we deal with arrests and violent incidents all the time reduces the influence of perceptual distortion thanks to stress familiarity but it doesn't extinguish it. A bog standard gobby drunk getting floored and cuffed after a short struggle is far from being on a par with someone trying to put a knife in your neck, or having to use extreme or even lethal force. Only by being able to properly debrief every incident are we able to deal with them, the severe pressures on our time such as dealing with calls and prisoners and subsequent admin mean that the only time we can do this practically is when we put our statements together.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com47tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2136725710155499318.post-25370364195003410272008-10-04T09:18:00.007+01:002010-02-10T15:00:20.381+00:00Is she taking the piss?I'm in nights mode which means at the present stage I'm knackered and my ability to mince words is zero but this, I'm afraid, just HAS to be said. Jacqui Smith on Boris Johnson's 'invitation' for Sir Ian Blair to remove himself from post -<br /><br />Speaking on BBC's Question Time, Ms Smith said: "There's a process in place that the mayor chose not to respect"<br /><br />WHAT? you mean like YOU did with our fucking pay negotiations last year and are still doing by completely destroying the fair process that has existed for 30 odd years, simply so you can control it on your terms?!?<br /><br />She then went on.....<br /><br />"What is important when you are both choosing and when you're supporting somebody that you're asking to do a job like that is that you keep party politics out of it"<br /><br />REALLY?? So you're saying that you'll be willing to give the job to someone who is blatantly right wing in their views and who thinks that the Police should be terrorising real criminals and harassing them until they stop committing crime, move, or kill themselves?? Give me a break you fucking hypocrite. The post of Commissioner is everything about politics and everyone knows it. It shouldn't be, but then you bastards have been trying to get the Police under your thumb for a hundred years, exactly how stupid do you think we are?<br /><br />Home Secretary, as a serving Police officer and one who wants nothing more than harass drug dealers and burglars and their ilk every single day, I for one cannot WAIT until the Tories get in, for no other reason than you'll lose your seat and you'll have to fuck off back to something you actually know, like teaching, which is the only thing you're actually qualified to do.<br /><br />I've been pissed off about that comment since I read it on the train yesterday afternoon and now I've said my piece I'm going to sleep.<br /><br />Metcountymounty.Metcountymountyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10481062180758614720noreply@blogger.com48