Dorset PCC admits his force has lost control of FAC fees

[Charlie Muggins]

If the Conservatives are the safe pair of hands, I'd hate to see the unsafe ones.

Ask and ye shall receive.

[Sixshot6]

If the Conservatives are the safe pair of hands, I'd hate to see the unsafe ones.

Ask and ye shall receive.

You know the radical leftists were out today (read unemployable losers) and they had one of those class war banners and Ed Millband was on there with Cameron, Clegg and Farage. He wasn't left enough for those unwashed numpties. My gast was flabbered. I figured someone was going to show that, but I still think we can do better, even than the upper class twit he failed to beat.

And yes I am happy Balls is gone, but I can still dislike Cameron and think that pretty soon what Churchill Said about Baldwin is soon going to apply to Cameron as it does to every touchy-feely paternalistic Tory Party leader. I'll still say he's a f*** up and being governed by the kind of people who are doing to policing and to the probation is not going to work out well. I'll still stand by me saying , we can do better.

[Sim G]

It's worth ponderin' history, ooman.

Once upon a time, people policed themselves. Saxon England, for example, had a well respected system where each community (village, hamlet, town) was responsible for law and order within its boundaries. If there was a dispute, it was taken to the moot* where both parties put their case forward to be settled by a debate of elders. If a law was infringed, the whole community had their say upon it. Penalties were agreed and imposed communally. There was no need for a police force. If a villain needed to be apprehended the 'hue and cry' was called and all able bodied folk assisted in the hunt and capture of the miscreant. This was true policing by consent and the edicts agreed upon and made at those moots form the basis of English common law to this very day.

Things changed when William the b****** turned up and overthrew the saxon regime. The Normans quickly imposed rule by dictat rather than consent and introduced the constabulari to enforce it. This was policing as a means of oppression. Laws were now made from the top down rather than from the bottom up and the common man very quickly lost his powers of representation and the imposition of communal justice as the shire reeves and later magistrates became the focal point of the legal system.

Fast forward to today. Crime is reportedly at an all time law and our police force seem more concerned with social engineering and politicking than fulfilling and rosey eyed Dixon of Dock Green role, if that was ever their purpose. Maybe we can do without a police force and once more become responsible for ourselves.


Discuss...

But it's also worth pondering that a 1000 years of "progress" has resulted in a society where the fact is, some people need the help. We've got to the stage where an old person can lie dead in their own flat for a month before anyone even rings the authorities about the flies. Police ourselves? People walk away. When I got knocked off my bike, I lay in the road with eight broken bones. The bloke who drove into me, left the scene. I lay there unable to see clearly because of the blood in my eyes and the contact lenses gone, with the engine of my bike screaming and the back wheel causing a cloud of smoke from the gutter, whilst the good people of Maidstone blared their horns to get round me....

The fact is I've sat and cried with the old lady as I helped her put pyjamas on her Chindit husband of 75 years who had just died. I spent two hours promising a teenage girl that if she supported a prosecution this time I would ensure her thug boyfriend would never use her as a punch bag again. (THE most satisfying arrest of my entire career!) The look on the woman's face when I came round the corner and just happened upon her as she was panicking that she couldn't find her dog. Or the father whose hands I gently had to pry from his 6 week old son who had succumbed to infant death syndrome. Some people really do just need the help. And that's why I joined.

Oh yeah, there's been the sh1Tbag who I've rolled around the street with because he's had too much to drink, and the skag head stealing from sheds and even the indignant who demanded did I "have nothing better to do than give him a ticket"... well yes, I did have, but he at that time was the dick on the phone whilst driving, who prevented me from doing something better. And even when going to watch England at Twickenham with my lad, the conductor called over the train tanoy because some fare dodging ba$tard thought he'd punch the clicky instead of giving him his name and address.

Being a copper is not something you do, it's something you are. No one knows better than me that there are some right wrong 'uns in a police uniform, but they really are far and few between. The overwhelming vast majority of coppers would give their life to protect you and yours. But, some are tainted in their view. Some have had a raw deal at the hands of the police and if someone comes from the position that all police are corrupt oppressors of the people, I'm unlikely to change their minds, regardless of what I do or say.

Crime may very well be at an all time low, well recorded crime is. The public are telling the police more and more, they don't call. They don't bother calling because the police won't do anything. Or they'll turn up next week when it's all too late. Unfortunately, something had to give with all of the cuts. My own force has lost 500 officers and 1000 suport staff. That's 25% of the work force. But that work hasn't gone away. What has given is, you won't see proactive policing. You won't see mitigation patrols or even community engagement. What's going on is you have officers dealing with case loads, then out to fire brigade another call, then back to the station to add to and continue the case load. The public aren't getting the service they deserve and it's not because of the "will", it's because they physically can't.

The future isn't very bright either. There's massive rumblings about "privatising" the police. Despite what is said, policing by consent is the underpinning cornerstone of what we do. I don't think that will last long once share holders have to be satisfied by meeting targets.
The government know they can do it as well. Chief Constables as Life Peers, reviewers of policing given Knighthoods and political appointments, all the while ensuring that the police can take no action against this by destroying the staff asociation, and the Daily Mail stirs up the public....

There are less police officers than there were a decade ago. Policing is 20% cheaper than it was five years ago. There are liberal think tanks and anarchists alike who think this is a good thing. All I know is that there are people out there who will need the help, no matter how big or how small, but need it they do. The police can't help them and society won't be there for them. So in the words of a Ghurka colleage, "What to do...?"

[Sim G]

Its just being run so incompetently.

And that's what has hamstrung the public sector so much over the last decade or so. We've ended up with insipid and weak management of the public sector because everyone is afraid to make a decision or take action for the fear of it going wrong and being "blamed". Invariably these days, that will mean your job. Now I'm not talking about wholly out of and corrupt or incompetants remaining in post, but it's filtered down over time that even if you've done something for all the right reasons, it's the result from every single angle and viewpoint that the result had also be spot one, or else you're out the door. Is it any wonder feck all gets done?

[Sixshot6]

It's worth ponderin' history, ooman.

Once upon a time, people policed themselves. Saxon England, for example, had a well respected system where each community (village, hamlet, town) was responsible for law and order within its boundaries. If there was a dispute, it was taken to the moot* where both parties put their case forward to be settled by a debate of elders. If a law was infringed, the whole community had their say upon it. Penalties were agreed and imposed communally. There was no need for a police force. If a villain needed to be apprehended the 'hue and cry' was called and all able bodied folk assisted in the hunt and capture of the miscreant. This was true policing by consent and the edicts agreed upon and made at those moots form the basis of English common law to this very day.

Things changed when William the b****** turned up and overthrew the saxon regime. The Normans quickly imposed rule by dictat rather than consent and introduced the constabulari to enforce it. This was policing as a means of oppression. Laws were now made from the top down rather than from the bottom up and the common man very quickly lost his powers of representation and the imposition of communal justice as the shire reeves and later magistrates became the focal point of the legal system.

Fast forward to today. Crime is reportedly at an all time law and our police force seem more concerned with social engineering and politicking than fulfilling and rosey eyed Dixon of Dock Green role, if that was ever their purpose. Maybe we can do without a police force and once more become responsible for ourselves.


Discuss...

But it's also worth pondering that a 1000 years of "progress" has resulted in a society where the fact is, some people need the help. We've got to the stage where an old person can lie dead in their own flat for a month before anyone even rings the authorities about the flies. Police ourselves? People walk away. When I got knocked off my bike, I lay in the road with eight broken bones. The bloke who drove into me, left the scene. I lay there unable to see clearly because of the blood in my eyes and the contact lenses gone, with the engine of my bike screaming and the back wheel causing a cloud of smoke from the gutter, whilst the good people of Maidstone blared their horns to get round me....

The fact is I've sat and cried with the old lady as I helped her put pyjamas on her Chindit husband of 75 years who had just died. I spent two hours promising a teenage girl that if she supported a prosecution this time I would ensure her thug boyfriend would never use her as a punch bag again. (THE most satisfying arrest of my entire career!) The look on the woman's face when I came round the corner and just happened upon her as she was panicking that she couldn't find her dog. Or the father whose hands I gently had to pry from his 6 week old son who had succumbed to infant death syndrome. Some people really do just need the help. And that's why I joined.

Oh yeah, there's been the sh1Tbag who I've rolled around the street with because he's had too much to drink, and the skag head stealing from sheds and even the indignant who demanded did I "have nothing better to do than give him a ticket"... well yes, I did have, but he at that time was the dick on the phone whilst driving, who prevented me from doing something better. And even when going to watch England at Twickenham with my lad, the conductor called over the train tanoy because some fare dodging ba$tard thought he'd punch the clicky instead of giving him his name and address.

Being a copper is not something you do, it's something you are. No one knows better than me that there are some right wrong 'uns in a police uniform, but they really are far and few between. The overwhelming vast majority of coppers would give their life to protect you and yours. But, some are tainted in their view. Some have had a raw deal at the hands of the police and if someone comes from the position that all police are corrupt oppressors of the people, I'm unlikely to change their minds, regardless of what I do or say.

Crime may very well be at an all time low, well recorded crime is. The public are telling the police more and more, they don't call. They don't bother calling because the police won't do anything. Or they'll turn up next week when it's all too late. Unfortunately, something had to give with all of the cuts. My own force has lost 500 officers and 1000 suport staff. That's 25% of the work force. But that work hasn't gone away. What has given is, you won't see proactive policing. You won't see mitigation patrols or even community engagement. What's going on is you have officers dealing with case loads, then out to fire brigade another call, then back to the station to add to and continue the case load. The public aren't getting the service they deserve and it's not because of the "will", it's because they physically can't.

The future isn't very bright either. There's massive rumblings about "privatising" the police. Despite what is said, policing by consent is the underpinning cornerstone of what we do. I don't think that will last long once share holders have to be satisfied by meeting targets.
The government know they can do it as well. Chief Constables as Life Peers, reviewers of policing given Knighthoods and political appointments, all the while ensuring that the police can take no action against this by destroying the staff asociation, and the Daily Mail stirs up the public....

There are less police officers than there were a decade ago. Policing is 20% cheaper than it was five years ago. There are liberal think tanks and anarchists alike who think this is a good thing. All I know is that there are people out there who will need the help, no matter how big or how small, but need it they do. The police can't help them and society won't be there for them. So in the words of a Ghurka colleage, "What to do...?"

Very inspiring stuff and I'd have felt the same sending b****** down you mentioned using his girlfriend as punching bag, having worked as a young boy with my nan and granddad in the general barnsley area (if I say where that might identify who I am a bit much for my liking) on the fruit and veg stall, we had many women work for us who seemed to let their partners beat them saying "He loves me and it was so endemic my gran got able to spot a woman who'd been beaten a mile off sadly) so I would most definitely feel the same as you there. You're right on recorded crime and a police officer I know said the exact same thing to me "Recorded crime is down".

It suits the government fine as they look good and yet people are let down, its a national disgrace. But I'm here to say Sim, don't you and anyone or any of us give up. I know I may not have the same wisdom someone like you has, but we can't ever give up hope that things could eventually be sorted. But for now it is bleak and its sad that despite people's alleged political leanings (whether conservative or labour) that they'll sit back and let it happen. Evil triumphs because good men do nothing (and that wasn't the exact Burke quote, its been b****** over the years, but the message was the same).

Both the best and worst is to come Sim G.

I'll leave you with a poem I think fits Sim. The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[Charlie Muggins]

You know the radical leftists were out today (read unemployable losers) and they had one of those class war banners and Ed Millband was on there with Cameron, Clegg and Farage. He wasn't left enough for those unwashed numpties. My gast was flabbered.

So the Extreme Left were upset that the Not Left Enough chap got fewer seats than the Even Less Left chap. So upset that they decided to 'demonstrate' their dissatisfaction. It seems they only enjoy democracy when the demos votes they way the Extreme Left like. Quelle surprise.

I still think we can do better [than Cameron]

I don't especially like CMD, but to paraphrase Sir Winston, he was my least favourite candidate except all the others.

[Sixshot6]

You know the radical leftists were out today (read unemployable losers) and they had one of those class war banners and Ed Millband was on there with Cameron, Clegg and Farage. He wasn't left enough for those unwashed numpties. My gast was flabbered.

So the Extreme Left were upset that the Not Left Enough chap got fewer seats than the Even Less Left chap. So upset that they decided to 'demonstrate' their dissatisfaction. It seems they only enjoy democracy when the demos votes they way the Extreme Left like. Quelle surprise.

I still think we can do better [than Cameron]

I don't especially like CMD, but to paraphrase Sir Winston, he was my least favourite candidate except all the others.

That seemed to be the order of things I guess. Plus it got annoying hearing Charlotte Church, those people despite their leanings are always the first to leave when taxes go up or do something to offset. It would be nice for them to understand you can't always get your way. That and if I didn't have a my own moral code, she'd replace Kinnock as Welsh person I'd most like to throw a brick in the Mush.

But like I said, they can go out and protest as the government is paying their dole or they got some bull s*** excuse from their lecturer in Lesbian Wolf husbandry to go and make an Ass of themselves.

I can understand that, but if we don't strive for better we get stuck with mediocrity. It says alot that historians are rating Harold Wilson as a more astute operator at times than Cameron but then it seems standards have lowered. I wonder if 50 years ago he'd have advanced any further than a diplomatic post?

For now, enjoy the ride and watch Cameron pretend to triumphant but always walking on egg shells and the left fighting amongst themselves and Derek Hatton has been let back in the Labour party, I guess selling Dodgy property in Cyprus had gotten boring for him?

[Gaz]

At risk of going back on topic, Dorset Police press office are now stalling on supplying me with accurate statistics about their firearms licensing department.



As for policing in general ... I don't know where this "policing by consent" nonsense comes from, frankly. It may have been relevant or even true in the 1950s but it went the same way as Dixon of Dock Green.

When my parents were burgled, the police didn't bother turning up for a week. When they did they mooched in, looked at the damaged back door, shrugged their shoulders, said they weren't interested in fingerprints or anything like that, issued a crime number ("for the insurance") and buggered off again.

When I called the Met Police press office a few weeks ago to ask for a copy of the criminal charges they laid against a man (perfectly routine request from a journalist to a police press office, and one they routinely answer without any problems) they - for the first time I can remember - denied that they had access to the charge sheet and referred me to another agency. I later discovered the man had committed suicide a week before that conversation. The only plausible reason I can think of for the police to refuse access to that particular charge sheet - a public document - was because they wanted to dodge any reputational damage associated with the defendant's suicide.

I see the armed police loitering around major London railway stations quite often. They terrify me. Their attitude towards weapon handling is slack at best and downright dangerous at worst. There are stock pictures in major news organisations' image libraries, taken and issued by official police PR operatives, of rusty weapons in the hands of these people. I see them in the flesh, carrying loaded/made ready weapons, fiddling with triggers while muzzlesweeping crowds of hundreds. Thank the God I don't believe in that the grownups refuse to let them carry automatic weapons - the thought of a burst ND at a rush hour railway station doesn't bear thinking about.

And then I look at social media. The Judge Dredd fantasies fuelled by the echo chamber of Twitter have to be seen to be believed. You'd think London was an offshoot of Mogadishu and these people were the original Black Hawk Down team. People, citizens, call them what you will, are no longer people - they are "mops" or "suspects". Them or us. The Good Guys in Uniform versus The Other, the worthless mops, the civilian scum who hate us and keep electing people who hate us. That's the undercurrent of thinking behind this attitude - "it's them or us, and if we don't give them a kicking and keep them in their place we'll get voted out of existence, boys."

Policing is not about consent, it's about a uniformed tribe who look on everyone around them as a possible arrest statistic, a target to be met, a box to be ticked, a miscreant to be attacked - or a newspaper seller, a student protestor, a Brazilian electrician, in the wrong place at the wrong time while thugs in uniform roam freely as their mates turn a blind eye. Only the other week a police employee was convicted of assault after assaulting a student, knocking out his tooth and then colluding with his associates to present a false version of events in court (though in fairness I must note the jury cleared them of that charge). By pure chance his bodyworn camera captured the incriminating evidence against him - and exonerated his victim. Another police employee armed with a video camera repeatedly refused to capture the violent cop on film at the scene of the attack. These are not good people dedicated to keeping the Queen's Peace, these are violent thugs in a faceless, uniformed mob who think they are the law personified and can do no wrong. (oh, the student's crime? He was kettled after attending a central London protest and jumped a fence so he could get home. The violent policeman saw him jump the fence and thought he'd fit him up for a laugh)

Because public consent for policing doesn't exist, the police attempt to manufacture evidence that it does. Why do you think the Met has launched its own news service, modelled directly on the satirical "Metwork" website dreamed up in a fictional Channel 4 drama? That way pesky journalists - those scum who keep reporting crimes we ignored, revealing our corrupt officers and pointing to embarrassing cockups that threaten the chief's OBE - can be cut out of the picture altogether. All is well, citizen. A Brazilian illegal immigrant carrying a bomb was shot dead on the Tube last week by our heroic firearms team. Go about your business.

How many shooters are aware that NABIS, a police-sponsored ballistics agency, is engaged in a long term political and media campaign to have antique firearms (yes, including section 58(2)) banned outright? How many shooters know that ACPO presented false statistics to the public time and time again to turn us into a profit-making cash cow? If it wasn't for a Tory minister telling them to show their detailed working we'd have been royally screwed over - by the very police forces so many people think are on our side.

Time and time again I see reports of police employees up in court, or witness evidence that police have gone off the rails and tried to cover it up. Time and time again we're told these are just a few rotten apples. I'm sorry, but the entire barrel must be rotten to the core if this is the state of the ones you actually bothered yourselves to get rid of.

The police as an institution hate the public. They're just canny enough not to show it openly.

[zanes]

^^ Word.

[Sixshot6]

At risk of going back on topic, Dorset Police press office are now stalling on supplying me with accurate statistics about their firearms licensing department.



As for policing in general ... I don't know where this "policing by consent" nonsense comes from, frankly. It may have been relevant or even true in the 1950s but it went the same way as Dixon of Dock Green.

When my parents were burgled, the police didn't bother turning up for a week. When they did they mooched in, looked at the damaged back door, shrugged their shoulders, said they weren't interested in fingerprints or anything like that, issued a crime number ("for the insurance") and buggered off again.

When I called the Met Police press office a few weeks ago to ask for a copy of the criminal charges they laid against a man (perfectly routine request from a journalist to a police press office, and one they routinely answer without any problems) they - for the first time I can remember - denied that they had access to the charge sheet and referred me to another agency. I later discovered the man had committed suicide a week before that conversation. The only plausible reason I can think of for the police to refuse access to that particular charge sheet - a public document - was because they wanted to dodge any reputational damage associated with the defendant's suicide.

I see the armed police loitering around major London railway stations quite often. They terrify me. Their attitude towards weapon handling is slack at best and downright dangerous at worst. There are stock pictures in major news organisations' image libraries, taken and issued by official police PR operatives, of rusty weapons in the hands of these people. I see them in the flesh, carrying loaded/made ready weapons, fiddling with triggers while muzzlesweeping crowds of hundreds. Thank the God I don't believe in that the grownups refuse to let them carry automatic weapons - the thought of a burst ND at a rush hour railway station doesn't bear thinking about.

And then I look at social media. The Judge Dredd fantasies fuelled by the echo chamber of Twitter have to be seen to be believed. You'd think London was an offshoot of Mogadishu and these people were the original Black Hawk Down team. People, citizens, call them what you will, are no longer people - they are "mops" or "suspects". Them or us. The Good Guys in Uniform versus The Other, the worthless mops, the civilian scum who hate us and keep electing people who hate us. That's the undercurrent of thinking behind this attitude - "it's them or us, and if we don't give them a kicking and keep them in their place we'll get voted out of existence, boys."

Policing is not about consent, it's about a uniformed tribe who look on everyone around them as a possible arrest statistic, a target to be met, a box to be ticked, a miscreant to be attacked - or a newspaper seller, a student protestor, a Brazilian electrician, in the wrong place at the wrong time while thugs in uniform roam freely as their mates turn a blind eye. Only the other week a police employee was convicted of assault after assaulting a student, knocking out his tooth and then colluding with his associates to present a false version of events in court (though in fairness I must note the jury cleared them of that charge). By pure chance his bodyworn camera captured the incriminating evidence against him - and exonerated his victim. Another police employee armed with a video camera repeatedly refused to capture the violent cop on film at the scene of the attack. These are not good people dedicated to keeping the Queen's Peace, these are violent thugs in a faceless, uniformed mob who think they are the law personified and can do no wrong. (oh, the student's crime? He was kettled after attending a central London protest and jumped a fence so he could get home. The violent policeman saw him jump the fence and thought he'd fit him up for a laugh)

Because public consent for policing doesn't exist, the police attempt to manufacture evidence that it does. Why do you think the Met has launched its own news service, modelled directly on the satirical "Metwork" website dreamed up in a fictional Channel 4 drama? That way pesky journalists - those scum who keep reporting crimes we ignored, revealing our corrupt officers and pointing to embarrassing cockups that threaten the chief's OBE - can be cut out of the picture altogether. All is well, citizen. A Brazilian illegal immigrant carrying a bomb was shot dead on the Tube last week by our heroic firearms team. Go about your business.

How many shooters are aware that NABIS, a police-sponsored ballistics agency, is engaged in a long term political and media campaign to have antique firearms (yes, including section 58(2)) banned outright? How many shooters know that ACPO presented false statistics to the public time and time again to turn us into a profit-making cash cow? If it wasn't for a Tory minister telling them to show their detailed working we'd have been royally screwed over - by the very police forces so many people think are on our side.

Time and time again I see reports of police employees up in court, or witness evidence that police have gone off the rails and tried to cover it up. Time and time again we're told these are just a few rotten apples. I'm sorry, but the entire barrel must be rotten to the core if this is the state of the ones you actually bothered yourselves to get rid of.

The police as an institution hate the public. They're just canny enough not to show it openly.

I know for a fact they issue false statistics do the ACPO. Brocock Air Cartridge guns anyone?