Theresa May is due to announce this week that in future, you can become a Superintendent or Inspector in the Police Farce without any prior experience of policing. It’s called Direct Entry, possibly from the hallowed grounds of Kidderminster University’s Media Studies Department.
They will be able to decide the correct response to a call saying, for instance, that the staff of the local Chinese takeaway, armed with machetes, are chasing a group of Jamaican Yardies down the High Street. Do you send two police women in a Ford Escort, a van full of riot trained experienced coppers, or just send the CID round in the morning to take a statement from the survivors? Your call. We can only speculate how useful three years of propping up the bar in the Student Union will be in this situation over and above several years of being one of the unfortunate plods sent out to deal with such an incident.
Into this farcical mix steps Sir Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, saying that actually, whilst Ms May is about it, could she make sure that the Media Studies trained Superintendent comes from one of the black or ethnic minority communities, because:
Often we are out there resolving disputes between communities and we need officers that understand different communities and different backgrounds.
A statement which presupposes that the decision made will be one that reflects the cultural or ethnic background of our new Superintendent. Otherwise what is his point? Assuming that the Chinese-Superintendent-with-Media-Studies happens to be on duty that night, and not the Afghan-refugee-with-Media-Studies-Superintendent, then how is his cultural background going to affect his response? Will he understand the cultural need of the Chinese community not to be called slanty-eyed chinks by fleeing customers who haven’t paid their bill – and delay sending any response? What if the Jamaican-with-Media-Studies Superintendent is on duty? Will he reflect on the resentment of the Jamaican community against pro-active policing on innocent Jamaicans and send a unit out to arrest the Chinese for attempted manslaughter?
Hopefully he would view the situation as one in which innocent bystanders could get hurt, which could escalate, and send out a van full of riot experienced coppers to arrest both parties – even if such van full turns out to comprise G4S ex body builders and nightclub bouncers, as may well be the future. In which case – what possible difference would his cultural or ethnic background have made?
The Police Force is never going to be large enough to comprise specialist transgendered officers to deal with the handbag slinging fracas in the Ladies powder room at the ‘Heaven’ nightclub, nor to field ex-asylum seekers to arrest the asylum seeking shoplifter in Sainsbury’s who thought you could just walk in and walk out with your week’s shopping, not understanding our strange ‘British’ cash desks. Nor should it be.
It should be solely composed of those who are prepared to forgo a life of ease behind a desk, in favour of long cold nights out on the streets, dressed up like overstuffed teddy bears, weighed down with all the equipment required to file any number of 30 page reports, deliver a baby, haul body parts out of a tree, or stand single-handed and confident between a line of machete wielding Chinese waiters and the Peckham contingent of the Yardies. If anybody is going to be promoted to Superintendent and ask other men to do just that – then they should be seen to have had many years experience of doing that which they require of others. Otherwise they may command a station, but they will never command the respect of that station.
As a middle-aged white woman, I don’t wander absently mindedly out of the front door of Marks and Spencers to examine the true colour of that cashmere jumper I am considering, I am perfectly aware that such behaviour might lead the store detective to imagine I was shop lifting, based on their prior experience – but then I don’t have a community leader to shriek to the Guardian that the Police are institutionally biased against middle-aged white women who leave a store with un-paid for goods…
I can see the superficial attraction of saying that ‘communities’ (when did we become a collection of communities and not a nation?) need officers who understand how they operate – but that is to pander to the problem, not solve it. It is the very fact that ‘communities’ (that word again!) have been led to believe that the law should not apply to them because of specific aspects of their cultural past. The Police are not allowed to say that it might be a good idea for young black youths to not hang around the bus stop in Brixton wearing identical clothing to that reported by a woman who had her handbag snatched last week – for fear of being labelled ‘racist’. It is ‘tarring a community’. Community leaders rise up in horror when a young black man, stopped whilst driving a high powered Mercedes car through town at 3am turns out to be a footballer on his way home from a nightclub and not a drug dealer topping up his local ‘drops’. It’s racial stereotyping apparently.
The problem originates from the same syndrome that led to Liverpool University maintaining a cupboard full of mini mortar boards and gowns; they use them to visit local schools to show seven-year olds how they might look were they to go to University one day. Michael Gove approves, it is called ‘reaching out to young minds’. We used to have an army of such people. They were called ‘teachers’, and for generations they took a special interest in the farm labourer’s son who actually paid attention to the lessons, and encouraged and supported him to go to University. Now we are forced to go over the head of those teachers in order to instill the idea that it is only hard work and dedication that leads to University, not your Father’s occupation.
In communities, this syndrome manifests itself in a belief that they are special, different; not as individuals, but as a community. That the policing of that community should therefore be ‘different’ and by implication ’special’. It is a problem that should be addressed at Government level, not by the Police. They should be saying loud and clear that there are only two communities in Britain, the law-abiding and the non-law abiding; and that the non-law abiding community is policed by British police officers, applying British law to British residents. It is for the courts to take into account any mitigating circumstances from a person’s past life – not the Police.
The cultural origin of British Police officers is irrelevant and rightly should be so. Unfortunately, under Fahy’s suggestions of fast tracking black and ethnic minority officers to positions of seniority, the only people who will be discriminated against are those officers with years of experience who had worked their way up the ranks, hoping to be promoted, and then find they are the ‘wrong colour’.
That should improve morale no end.
Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...
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Well, if the initial reports from Pimlico are accurate, we have a nice, diverse mix of criminals cooperating with each other already, so we’re halfway there…
http://bit.ly/X3ecDr
Considering the gender imbalance in UK Universities these days, particulalry in the ‘soft’ aread like media – studies. this sounds like job opportunities for the girls rather than the boys. If they don’t have a transgender unit or Inspector you can be sure there will be no shortage of domestic violence feminist hit squads available, sourced from the Womyn’s Studies Departments.
A Superintendent is a senior management position and presumably to be able to enter at this level the candidate would still need appropriate senior management experience and training. Going back some years now, when George Orwell joined the Burmese Colonial Police in the 1920′s, he had a lengthy in-service training at the police college in Burma that included learning local languages and then assumed a number of assignments which immediately started at the executive level, for example in one he was in charge of security at a large oil refinery close to Rangoon at a time when terrorism was a real concern, or in charge of local policing for an entire district.
Obviously a very different set-up from Britain today, but still a massive responsibility for a man in his early 20s.
Clearly the police today do have problems in recruiting sufficient talent and if they need, say, a public relations expert, does it really make sense to take someone whose expertise already exists at street level policing or crowd control or investigations away from work in which they have gained experience and train them in public relations when someone with public relations training AND experience could be hired from outside?
Hiring from outside into senior specialist positions in police forces could be very beneficial in terms of bringing in new ideas.
I agree. The most senior positions in organisations like the police, schools and hospitals are purely management roles, they do not require the ‘coal-face’ skills of constables, teachers or doctors. The job is about managing resources to deliver service objectives. It may be argued that taking a good doctor out of the operating theatre and trying to turn him into a manager wastes two jobs – you’ve wasted an excellent doctor and usually created an inadequate manager, the impact of which compromises the whole field. Same applies with coppers and teachers.
Management is a particular skill-set and should only be carried out by those holding those skills. Our problem here is actually about reward – because we traditionally reward ‘managers’ higher than ‘technicians’, the only way a good technician can achieve higher pay is to try to become a manager, thus creating the double-waste problem. A more creative approach to the reward structure is needed. That said, on no account should any positive discrimination ever apply to the appointment of managers – managers need credibility and any hint of positive discrimination destroys that every time.
In a past life, I managed groups of highly-skilled technicians, despite the fact that I knew little of their ‘trade’ – that wasn’t my job. My job was to exploit the total available resources of that team to deliver for the company, keeping the customers, the team and the accountants all happy, not to be some sort of super-techie. Once the team recognised this, they learnt to appreciate having a manager who wasn’t going to interfere every day in their technical fields, but who was dedicated to getting the resources to help them to succeed in doing their job. Different jobs, different skills.
But that doesn’t happen with Plod. Senior Management have no idea at all what real coppering is about, as they are political animals intent on ticking boxes, applying their masters’ politically correct social engineering, work 9-5, and have one and a half eyes on their retirement knighthood. They are also usually viewed with distrust, suspicion and even contempt by most officers below the rank of Inspector, and by a hell of a lot of Inspectors as well.
No, I’m a civilian and so have no vested interest, but having read a lot of PlodBlogs (including the inestimable Inspector Gadget), I can assess what appears to be an overall attitude and am reminded of the old proverb “A fish rots from the head down”.
“But that doesn’t happen with Plod. Senior Management have no idea at all what real coppering is about…”
My understanding is that under the current system all senior management in police forces are people who had to enter as line officers and work their way up? Is this no longer true?
Could we say that Jose Mourinho (chief coach of Real Madrid) has no idea about what kicking a ball is all about, because he failed to make the grade as a professional football player?
My understanding is that many senior officers were ‘fast-tracked graduate entrants’ who rose to the heights by virtue of a 2,2 in creative dance or some such irrelevancy.
Not really a good example. he may not have made the grade as a professional football player, but he no doubt played football at some point. Direct entrants will never have been police officers.
That in itself is not a problem, as long as they stick to managing things in the police which don’t affect day to day policing. have them manage the vehicle fleet or finances – but not how we police.
“Clearly the police today do have problems in recruiting sufficient talent”
And recruitment policies like this will only add to the difficulties
the correct response to a call saying, for instance, that the staff of the local Chinese takeaway, armed with machetes, are chasing a group of Jamaican Yardies down the High Street….is to get down to the bookies and put it all on the Chinese. The Yardies run fast and are very violent but the Chinese are clever, determined and know how to cooperate to chase them in to the river. This will simultaneously solve much of the street-crime and the modest winnings (you aren’t going to get long odds on this) will fund the police.
Do I get the job?
You should! A bit more wit and humour in the police force would go down well with me!
There is still plenty of wit and humour in the police Anna. However, expressing it usually ends up getting you on wrong end of a discipline board. Paranoia and fear rule these days.
Unfortunately if we were to make any comment as “racist” as that (I know!) then we would be up in front of PSD with our careers in our hands
You should have seen how I would sort out the one about the fight in the ladies lav. I didn’t write it down because Anna’s had enough trouble. But I can promise you it would work and cost less than half a crown.
This sort of thing has been going on for a long time. I was told in the mid 1980′s that I ‘was no longer the image that the police wished to present’ because I happen to be built like a second row forward. My general size and physical appearance were deemed ‘intimidating’. Nothing changes, it’s just that the process has been going on longer than you think. I have seen the erosion of physical fitness standards and removal of residential courses because they discriminate against certain groups. With regards to the comments by Jonathon Mason I take the view that we might as well give direct entry a go but I fear that the persons will be chosen to tick boxes, not because they have the ability. The public will also have to be prepared for even more cock-ups than there are at the moment, for a direct entry Insp will not have an experienced NCO to lean on as an army officer does. These direct entrant Inspectors will be the ones making decisions at 3am, decisions that will be examined at leisure later. The new direct entrants will, I fear, not get the training they need to function. Instead of lengthy in service training I fear it will be ‘pick it up as you go along’ and a few residential modules at a commercial training somewhere. I just don’t think a direct entry Supt is the person to be running a complex live crime investigation or public order situation until they have been seasoned at a lower level.
“I fear that the persons will be chosen to tick boxes, not because they have the ability. ”
There seems to be some misunderstanding about the nature of ticking boxes.
Ticking boxes on its own is easy to do, but setting up the structures that need to be monitored on a checklist is much more work. For example if you have to design a training course for incoming police officers there will be numerous things in which they MUST be certified as competent in order to comply with statutes and regulations. To provide the training you will need to make sure that you have all the necessary instructors who are hired and competent and slotted into the schedule, and then you will need to have some kind of emergency backup plans to provide the training if the instructors fall sick or pregnant (!)
How do you set up and maintain a complex undertaking like this without using checklists? You can’t just do it all in your head, and even if you could, what would happen if you were promoted and someone else took over?
I wasn’t referring to ticking boxes in the way you meant, i.e. evidencing competencies but rather in the way of ticking boxes to ensure that the candidate was from a particular group. Not that that would ever happen of course. I have done my fair share of box ticking as well, to ensure that I was certified as competent for paritcular roles and ensuring that others were competent.
I understand that there is to be an intense 18 month training course; maybe. And I could see the possible attraction of recruiting someone who has experience of leadership in the army, for example. Recruiting someone who had been a civil servant, accountant or spin doctor seems me me much more problematical, but maybe exactly what is intended.
But in my view the fact is that there is no substitute for a good few years at the business and bottom end of life, making the tea and mopping up, so to speak. Or in this case, walking the beat. But I am, of course, old fashioned and a fool. *wanders off mumbling*
“And I could see the possible attraction of recruiting someone who has experience of leadership in the army, for example.”
Good example! My niece, who is a science university graduate and a former professional athlete, and also a graduate of Sandhurst was an officer in the British Army for a short period of time before she decided that she didn’t want to manage convoys in Afghanistan for a living, so she then joined the plod, where she now works for the Met in counter terrorism. She did have to enter as a PC nonetheless, but I don’t think she had to do a long period “on the beat”.
I imagine that the direct entry inspectors and superintendents would still have to pass the same inspector and superintendent exams, which include a lot of law, etc.
I can see the sense of fast tracking for self evidently able and talented people such as you niece, but I dont think it is a good think to parachute in from above. Sounds like she will be doing the country proud and keeping us safe. Amen.
You’re spot on about army/services leadership experience; and here we are closing the careers of hundreds/thousands of such men and women. Why can the Home Office not see beyond the end of its silly nose?
Training as a monk wouldn’t be too bad, either. Teaches discipline, I’m sure.
@alan scott:
Going back to Anna’s original point, I suspect it is because the Home Office sees the Army as being more of a problem than anything else (too white, male and working/middle class). Bringing ex-Army types might help improve the discipline and morale of the Police force, but it does nothing for the “ethnic diversity statistics”.
Gurkhas could be useful – knife crime would fall if the bros and homeys faced the prospect of little giants with drawn kukris.
What a splendid suggestion.
Brian for Commissioner!
There have been various schemes for accelerated promotion which saw candidates promoted to Insp within 4-5 years. the problem is if one of these people is a failure since the the force usually does not get rid of these people and you end up with a ‘bed blocker’ at Insp/Supt level. The Home Office back in the mid 1990′s didn’t seem to be too keen on ex military types joining the police for some reason.
Bit too old for pounding the beat Alan; wouldnt mind using the old brain box though! Where is my deerstalker and magnifying glass….?
>middle aged
I’m keeping stumm
.
OK, verging towards vintage, but are we going to argue about the odd ten years or so?
If my youngest son ever returns to the land of his birth for any length of time he will be fast tracked into The Singapore Army, and then hopefully fast tracked up the ladder because he is white. Well, they could hardly expect him to do any Jungle Warfare, could they? Although personally, I have always thought that this would be a good idea.
I’m guessing here, but with a name like ‘Fahy’ could this guy possibly be from an ethnic minority?
Oh, sorry! Wrong expression. It’s people like me who are currently the new ethnic minority. See http://dioclese.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/ethnic-minorities-and-positive.html
Of course, it all right for you Anna because you are a woman so you get positively discriminated against – it’s us men who are therefore by definition negatively discriminated again. But it’s not your fault. I forgive you!
There is of course no such thing as ‘positive discrimination’ because that is an oxymoron…
You and I sir, are WOGs (white old geezers) and deserving of no consideration, as we caused all the problems in the world.
Go ask Theresa May and the womyn at the universities, they have a better plan. Police departments are already far superior to previous times due to an influx of womyn superintendents, ethnic superintendents will surely make the situation doubleplusgood.
So, now it’s a good thing to be “institutionally racist”?
And discriminatory Joe, don’t forget discriminatory…!
‘Positive discrimination’ – the best oxymoron ‘since military intelligence’…
And ‘user-friendly software’…..
Julia! shame on you for such an easy one. No Services in your background?
Politicians come and go, whether honest & intelligent, or corrupt & dense (like most nowadays). But no-one has ever improved upon the Peelian principles. Any political “idea” about policing from May or others should be considered against these – it will usually be found wanting..
Well, Robert Peel’s principle was “policing by consent”, so that might open the road to an ethnic minority boss, if such might secure the consent of the policed. We have similar problems here in Holland. “Ethnic minority” youth terrorizing a certain Amsterdam neighborhood, for instance, confident that the police would adopt their usual “soft” (i.e. consensual) approach. In the end, the adult males of the same community were recruited into a sort of neighborhood watch, with support from the local police. The adult males knew the ‘mores’ and dealt with the youth appropriately. I believe the scheme faltered, but that was rather in the face of the newer, harsher attitudes to crime and criminality. But as for a ‘managerial’ grade of Copper enjoying accelerated promotion? Can you visualize one? All buttons and brass, scrambled egg on the hat, in a press conference with a media training shine on? Ugh! Now that might well bring the Coppers into disrepute.
Here in the Dominican Republic, the police are generally the same ethnic group as the criminals, unless the suspects are Haitians, who are the preferred suspects when the perpetrators are unknown. The traditional practice here has been to shoot suspects on sight if there is any sign they will offer resistance, but more recently the police have been adopting more of a softly, softly approach, just allowing local vigilante groups to beat the perpetrators to death and quietly dispose of the bodies.
By adopting this statistical approach it is hoped that the number of murders committed by the police, currently around 10% can be reduced.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=14092&ArticleId=324672
There are no plans to introduce BBC style censorship and TV coverage of murders will continue to show dead bodies, pools of blood in the road, suspects being beaten by police, and interview witnesses and the bereaved while their faces are still tear stained.
Ah well, if we can import some Dominican Republican candidates then things might look up around some parts of London. Might not be all bad then…
That’s it in a nutshell. Bring in some Jamaican or Pakistani cops and their home-grown methods of law enforcement and these communities will soon be crying to get their British bobbies back again.
Don’t worry, when you get the tens of thousands of Bulgarians which are rumoured to be heading for the UK, a few of them heading up plod in places like Bradford will do wonders for the crime statistics. Having suffered 500 years of Turkish occupation, they are very sound when it comes to dealing with Muslims.
Possibly so, but the more likely scenario in this politically correct world are muslim superintendents imposing sharia law on all and sundry. Theresa May and the Camoron would be relaxed about that.
To raise the simple question of language as a guide to ethnicity and culture. In London we are told there are over 200 languages spoken. In the town where I live one primary school has 34. Quite how does the Met’ or my local county force manage with a police force divided up into that many sub-sets? Clearly it is just not possible.
The same way organizations like hospitals do. You make a list of phone numbers of available interpreters in as many languages as possible, and call them in if interpretation services are required. Police may also be able to use people at the scene of the crime or accident to help if there is a language problem.
In Florida I noticed that although Spanish is the main second language, there were very few cops who spoke the language to any extent, however they could quickly get someone on an iPhone to interpret if necessary.
No, you employ a private company who pay far less than the previous interpreting service and as a result get a lower and lower standard of interpreting, resorting in some cases to the “more reliable” google translate service. (At least it’s free!).
Who says privatisation and the police don’t mix….
Not really supportive of too many special allowances to suit the ‘community’. The rules are whatever the host country deems acceptable; if you have some incompatible social or religious habits, don’t expect tolerance to be extended to indulgence. Best not come at all if you’re going to upset the locals.
So we’ve already lost that game.
Having progressed quite a bit from the bench (not bewigged) in my working days, I think frontline experience can be a great help, if we also remember day to day that there are people lower down being paid to be good at all the frontline stuff and management of it. It doesn’t help to do their job for them.
I think the serious risks can come when those without much hands-on/technical experience engage in the introduction of significant change.
And public services do get change.
Having a clever idea is not the same thing as leadership.
As with some of our never had a job politicians’ activities.
Since my particular involvement, in the early 1980′s I have seen many initiatives but nothing to rival Mrs. May’s meddling.
One of the favoured expressions of those at the sharp end of policing, whose experience of actually doing the job is, apparently, completely irrelevant in 2013 is: ‘The job’s F%&$£@#…’
In this instance, I think they are right!
An excellent post Anna and if you can see the problems from a thousand miles away then why can’t the government? Probably because they want to destroy the police and parachute in people who are grateful for the job and do as they are told.
Don’t start me on positive discrimination.Has it ever worked in any organisation?
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I can’t help feeling that the better managers are those with some experience of what they’re managing. By all means recruit Police Superintendents from elsewhere, but ensure that their training includes a good few months as a Constable, including the Saturday night inner-city shifts.
If you go to Saudi Arabia and wander around half sozzled on a Saturday night, or parade yourself in only a skimpy bikini, you may find out that not all countries are so keen to ‘make allowances for cultural differences’. We have one law code applying to all in this country, and whilst the average Constable will use a degree of common sense and flexibility, there’s no room for different rules for some just because they’d like it that way.
The correct response to any crime involving minorities is to accuse a white celebrity of paedophilia.
I’m not ‘sure’ if the overall concept is that “Policing” of any incident is to be done by members of the same (similar?) ethnic/religious/racial/gender ‘communities’ as the victims – or the suspects?
Anna. I think that I must object in the strongest possible terms about this sentence ‘Assuming that the Chinese-Superintendent-with-Media-Studies happens to be on duty that night, and not the Afghan-refugee-with-Media-Studies-Superintendent, then how is his cultural background going to affect his response? The chances of any Superintendent being on duty at NIGHT is of course ludicrous no matter what their ethnicity or university degree. The closest you will normally get is a) the on call super tucked up in bed b) someone lost and out and about by mistake or c) one who wants to try to recall what it was like when he or she was a PC working nights and therefore still does the odd night shift in order to maintain a partial grip on what his/her bobbies have to do on a day to day basis.
Direct entry will not work as politically correct candidates will be chosen rather than people with genuine skills to make the job better. They will be warranted officers with 18 months training and therefore will have very little experience of what they will be ordering their PC’s to be doing. They will not know what it will be like to fight a drunk on a cold sunday morning at the end of a 7 day set of shifts but they will have the power and authority to question the outcome of the incident. They will create resentment from the bobbies who have worked their way up only to find their career aspirations blocked because a spotty 21 year old with a 2.1 degree has been promoted in as an Inspector. Neither will they have the knowledge or experience to manage a big operation such as a football match, riot or major murder enquiry.
“a 2.1 degree”
Not that good.
It’ll be a 2.2 at best.
It will also be in “Underwater Ferret Farming” or something equally relevant…
Worked in a large company; saw people brought in for fast tracking; some were duds, the rest used the experience then fast tracked off somewhere else.
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