You Pays Your Money…..

Thanks to Hibbo I have a new strapline.

Nightjack – Whining Eloquently Since February 2008 ®

I think it has a ring to it. As regards YLAALOH (aka DaveH aka Tuppers aka Tupperware PC), its time to re-instate the “tough on trolling, tough on the causes of trolling” policy.

I woke this morning to Radio 5 and was not at all surprised to hear that defence solicitors were just a little bit upset about all the penalty notice giving and cautioning that is going on at Police Stations these days. As I understand it one of their sources was a specialist Criminal Defence Solicitor Digby Johnson of The Johnson Partnership. They possess a very “amusing and informative” website. They never prosecute.

Proving that anything can be made “Daily Mail ready” with the right spin, the line is that some offenders are getting off lightly by being PND’d or cautioned when they should be charged and sent before a court. Hmmm.

Digby said: “The criminals play the system day in day out. They admit the offence quickly to qualify for a ticket, which is the fastest way of getting out of the police station.” Nothing to do with costing you fees for representing them at court then? They are going to play the system anyway, so why not let them do it in the way that inflicts least demand on the public purse?

I have my own spin which is that Police, CPS and Court time is being freed up and costs reduced by the expedient of dealing swift, summary justice to those minor offenders who admit their crime. I look forward to a time when the C.P.S. lawyer actually has some time to read the file in front of them before they attend court. I hope that officers will be back out on the streets faster with a caution than with having to fire out a full file and then deal with the inevitable CJS and CPS memos before wasting half a day not being called at court. I hope that courts will be able to give longer and more careful consideration to the facts and arguments before them.

Most of all I hope Criminal Solicitors and Barristers have a good long think about killing the goose that laid the golden egg by screwing the system for every penny possible until fixed fees and central contracts caught up with them. Every defendant deserves the best possible defence? Sure, just as soon as every victim gets the best possible prosecution. Roll on the Public Defenders Office so that both sides can be represented by underpaid public functionaries.

Given that we are now hauling in people that we never used to, in cases that may be criminal strictly speaking but are so minor that they should never see the inside of a court, caution has got to be a good way forward. Where it goes wrong is lots of cautions for the same person and the cautioning of those who should rightly be prosecuted. I am sure there will be some very errrm expedient cautioning decisions made out there by various Inspectors. Some folk say that we do it to jack up the detection rates. Maybe we do when the alternatives are

a) Let them go / look the other way (see credit card fraud)

b) A toe curlingly awful meeting with the CPS followed by putting together a big file for a small job, followed by lots of memos, followed by a wasted day in court being called a liar by the representative of a guilty person.

c) Swift caution / PND and back out for some more coppering.

Oi Where’s My Fee?

Losing The War One Battle At A Time

For about half of my career, I have been closely involved with “The War On Drugs” at the street level.

There is the old school bricked up dealer. You know from the address, “council-near-condemned” or “bottom-of-the-heap-private-rented” what awaits you. A near derelict, deeply unhygienic hole of a dwelling occupied by some old beyond years street dealer selling enough bags to feed their own habit. Little or no furniture will be on display and it is definitely not because the resident is going through a Starck minimalist phase. Somewhere in the kitchen will be scales, shopping bags with bits cut out, needles, tin foil and burned spoons. Maybe the dealer is dipping the bags for an extra tenner a day but he is always waiting twitchily by the mobile phone for me and my friends to kick the door in.

Then there is the mobile dealer with the mobile phones. The full traveling pharmacy experience. Much harder to catch as they are always on the move. Round our way they even have half decent “company cars” provided by the wholesaler. They draw less attention. From time to time we go time on target but the best way to take them out is to use undercover cops. This can take Class A off the streets for whole hours at a time. It also generates a lot of good press about community focus and clear messages.

Whichever way we do it, unlike in the movies, they never give up the wholesaler and after 18 months of a 3 1/2 years sentence they are back.

Occasionally we get to hit the jackpot and we get a wholesaler with a few ounces of the good stuff.

That’s the war against drugs at the level of our Division. For every one that we knock off another one springs up ready and willing to take the money and run.

War on drugs? We’re losing and we know it. The fighting is fun but long term, we’re just adding a risk premium to the street price.

Is It Over Yet

Can't Get There From Here

The comment so often thrown at Police as we haul the latest public order / minor assault arrestee away from their loved ones is “Why don’t you go out and arrest some proper criminals like murderers and rapists.” This makes it sound like there is some large pool of murderers and rapists that we could be bothering instead. There is no such pool and the arrest rates for murder and rape are pretty good. We put a lot of time and effort into murder and rape. I think people want us to do that. That cynical comment from the public is however a pointer. There is clearly a perception abroad that we work only to meet arrest and detection targets. There are meant to be desperate coppers thirsting to meet their monthly detections allocations and thereby criminalising matters that should have been left with a word of advice. A lot of people seem to feel that the Criminal Justice System has stopped producing any justice.

On a totally unscientific sample of readers over the weekend, one of the reasons for the developing fracture between the Police and the policed is the strongly felt perception that in order to meet arrest targets we tend to go after the easiest targets. I don’t think this is the case. I think the truth is that we are going after targets we never have before and some of them are very easy to pot because they comply. They comply because they are decent folk who don’t know any better.

At the risk of repeating myself, let me once again rail against the National Crime Recording Standard (N.C.R.S.) and the resultant automatic criming of many trivial incidents. This happened because those who govern the nation, those who control the law and those who manage us do not trust us. Why should they? We went political for Mrs. T over the miner’s strike, we generally don’t vote to the left, we tend towards an un-nuanced view of politicians’ expenses claims, we are harsh and blaming towards criminals and sceptical of non-custodial interventions. there are reasons enough. They began to suspect correctly that we cuffed crime. Here are some anecdotal examples.

• When I joined 15 years ago, it was acceptable to attend an incident of domestic violence where there had clearly been an assault and to mark it off as “no complaint” and “advice given.”

• There were towns where there were no windows broken by criminal damage, only accidents where a stone must have been thrown up from the road by a passing car. In 1994 I was bollocked by a local DS for criming such a broken window even though the window was broken with a thrown car jack.

• Youths attending certain stations would be offered bail in exchange for writing off a certain number of crimes. We weren’t too ethical about whether they did them or not, we just used “Taken Into Consideration” offences to bulk out the detected crime figures.

• Playground fights that the participants walked away from were never ever crimed. Heck where there had been any minor assault that was basically an agreed fight, we would hold off writing up the crime report, speak to both sides and see if we could persuade them to drop the matter, then write it all off as advice given.

• Excellent local performance in detections or in crime reduction could be the result of a little local book cooking. A new Detective Sergeant would realise that abandoning the bad old ways might mean a crime figures catastrophe that they would be blamed for. The system was thus to some extent self perpetuating.

Now perception is important, and over time, what with the McPherson Report and the like, those who employ and manage us became convinced that we were unfairly ignoring and otherwise failing to deal with crime allegations from minority groups and other socially disadvantaged types. They looked for a way to ensure that everybody got a fair shake of the stick and so was born the hated database specification and control procedures that we call N.C.R.S. It was signed by ACPO in April 2001 and fully implemented by 2002. It was designed, and has grown, to be an auditable straightjacket of procedures designed to ensure that every crime from a slap in the face to a bullet in the head got treated the same. Report, Record, Investigate, Arrest, Detect. Thus it was that the detection became King.

These are the principles in it.

2.1 All reports of incidents, whether from victims, witnesses or third parties and whether crime related or not, will result in the registration of an incident report by the police.

2.2 Following the initial registration, an incident will be recorded as a crime (notifiable offence) if, on the balance of probability:

(a) the circumstances as reported amount to a crime defined by law (the police will determine this, based on their knowledge of the law and counting rules), and

(b) there is no credible evidence to the contrary.

2.3 Once recorded, a crime would remain recorded unless there was additional verifiable information to disprove that a crime had occurred.

Note the language “will result in the registration of an incident report” “will be recorded as a crime.” You can take it from me that from 2002 onwards, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary absolutely hammered any Constabulary that did not have such a system in place. From then on, it was just a matter of time and ever increasing criminalisation of behaviours. As soon as Tracey realised that she could get “That slag Donna” properly locked up with a phone call complaint, guess what Tracey did? Better than going on Jeremy Kyle, nearly as much fun as Springer UK. Every green biro merchant and bitter ex with a grudge now generates an incident report and if the facts in the report can be shoe-horned into a crime, a crime is recorded and allocated to some an officer who is tasked to investigate it. That officer must either solve it or write it off somehow. The system of compliance auditing has tightened so much that even the old sweats (5+ years) with a black belt in writing off rubbish jobs find it is now more work to write jobs off than run them to conclusion. Writing a lot of jobs off is not a career move either.

So when your 12 year old daughter gets arrested for a playground fight, it likely isn’t some keen officer thirsting for an easy conviction to round off the month. It may be, but the likelihood is that for the officer it is just another complaint ground out of the N.C.R.S. sausage machine and s/he just wants to get it dealt with so they can move on to the next one.

Computer Says Lock Up

Soft Tactics

Paul, MCM, MOP, Ragnar, Hibbo and others have continued to post some fascinating stuff on the “Modest Proposal” thread.” As I understand it, Paul has deep concerns that officers charged with investigating allegations against teachers and others in loco parentis are going all out to get people charged when a child makes an allegation against them. First a health warning, this is not my regular area of work. I pitch in when necessary so I have done a few, but it isn’t my bread and butter. Because of this, I may be poorly informed and anything I say should be taken with a reasonable sprinkling of salt. Secondly, I should point out that I believe a lot of the problems stem from a political and managerial distrust of the rank and file Police causing them to straight jacket us with very “If A then do B” type processes and then auditing our compliance to death.

We Have Historical Allegations

These are never going to be easy to investigate. From a Police point of view, there can be horrendous issues. The forensics and scene are likely long since gone. Corroborative witnesses may be hard to come by 10 or 20 years down the line. The victim themselves may be relying on partial and confused childhood memories. This is one of the reasons why we may “trawl” other contacts. Where an adult is offending against children, experience leads us to believe that serial offences are likely. We go looking for more aggrieved because bluntly, 12 witnesses in the box all saying “Mr. X did act Y to me” is a lot more credible and persuasive than the original complainant alone. Yes, it does involve us trawling for victims. If not done properly by way of open questions and enquiries, there is a real risk of starting a witch hunt. It is probably better to ask “Have you ever been assaulted whilst you were at School X” rather than “Did teacher W ever assault you.”

Imposed Unconditional Belief

I have posted on this before and the current best practice with victims of sexual crime is to show them no doubt. Not the merest flicker of an eyebrow raising. Nothing. We treat the investigation as if nobody ever lies to us about sexual assaults when the only scientific studies show that actually quite a lot of people do.

Investigating To The Bottom Line

Perhaps because we work in an adversarial system, the main thrust of the enquiry can easily become “obtain evidence to convict the suspect” when it should be “obtain evidence regarding the allegation.” It is always profitable to find out what happened and why as well as who and when. The bottom line for a criminal investigation is a name in the offender section of a detected crime report. It is very easy to decide what the name should be and then go looking for evidence to confirm your suspicions. For any particular burglary or car crime, every CID in Christendom has a list of usual suspects that the local jacks can rhyme off. In teacher / historical type allegations however you generally start off with a named suspect. If the evidence shows that named suspect didn’t do it, that must mean that the complainant is mistaken for some reason. It seldom means that the crime is written off though. We end up with an unsolved crime and potentially a lot of intelligence on a named suspect.

Post Huntley Nerves

Post Huntley, even when jobs are dead and going nowhere, we try to collect and organise the intelligence. Lets be straight, Bischard exposed an area of great weakness in that we didn’t build up intelligence profiles of Ian Huntley or people like him. Most divisions have men who form sexual relationships with young girls who never complain or never stand up charges. All we did with Huntley was dot random unconnected reports around various systems. He then got a job that brought him into contact with children and he murdered two of them. Could a proper inteligence collection plan have stopped him? Don’t know, might have done is the only honest answer. After the fact, it is clear that Huntley was a lucky serial child sex offender who kept getting away with it. Some offenders have an uncanny knack of selecting victims who will not complain or who will lack credibility. Had the information trail followed him perhaps a more informed decision would have been made about his employment.

Better Practice

If we want to give ourselves the best possible chance of keeping the Huntleys of this world out of the caretakers cottages, we need to collect information on allegations made against people whether they are substantiated or not. What is perhaps missing from this information is a qualitative assessment. There is a world of difference between “Teacher X arrested on suspicion of rape of student Z” and “Following complaint of rape against teacher X by student Z, enquiries showed that at time of alleged offence teacher X was outside UK. Student Z informed of this and retracted her complaint stating that she had made it up because she didn’t like him.”

Lastly, if you are a teacher being investigated, it is likely that you are sat over the table from a specialist squad and their 9-5 weekends off job is potting grown ups who hurt children. It is not generally where the best detectives go but the staff are usually dedicated and somewhat driven. Look for the department working the most unpaid overtime and you find them there. They don’t really do targets but they don’t do risk to children either. Their risk bar is set rather lower than that of the Social Services.

Presumed Guilty?

A Survival Guide For Decent Folk

**04/08/08 Moderate Sarcasm Warning **

Paul has posted a number of lengthy replies on the “Modest Proposal” thread. In these days of us increasingly having to deal with law abiding folk who have fallen foul of the “entitled poor” and those who have learned how to use us to score points and exact revenge, I thought it would be a good idea to give out a bit of general guidance for those law abiding types who find themselves under suspicion or under arrest. It works for the bad guys so make it work for you.

Complain First

Always get your complaint in first, even if it is you who started it and you who were in the wrong. If things have gone awry and you suspect the cops are going to be called, get your retaliation in first. Ring the cops right away and allege for all you are worth. If you can work a racist or homophobic slant into it so much the better.

Make a counter allegation

Regardless of the facts, never let the other side be blameless. If they beat you to the phone, ring anyway and make a counter allegation against them. Again racism or homophobia are your friends. If you are not from a visible minority ethnic culture, may I suggest that that the phrase “You gay bastard” or similar is always useful. In extremis allege sexual assault. It gives us something to bargain with when getting the other person to drop their complaint on a quid-pro-quo basis. This is particularly good where there are no independent witnesses. When it boils down to one word against another and nobody is ‘fessing up, CPS run a mile and you, my friend, are definitely on a walk out

Never explain to the Police

If the Police arrive to lock you up, say nothing. You are a decent person and you may think that reasoning with the Police will help. “If I can only explain, they will realise it is all a horrible mistake and go away”. Wrong. We do want to talk to you on tape in an interview room but that comes later. All you are doing by trying to explain is digging yourself further in. We call that stuff a significant statement and we love it. Decent folk can’t help themselves, they think that they can talk their way out. Wrong.

Admit Nothing

To do anything more than lock you up for a few hours we need to prove a case. The easiest route to that is your admission. Without it, our case may be a lot weaker, maybe not enough to charge you with. In any case, it is always worth finding out exactly how damning the evidence is before you fall on your sword. So don’t do the decent and honourable thing and admit what you have done. Don’t even deny it or try to give your side of the story.  Just say nothing. No confession and CPS are on the back foot already. They forsee a trial. They fear a trial. They are looking for any excuse to send you home free.

Keep your mouth shut

Say as little as possible to us. At the custody office desk a Sergeant will ask you some questions. It is safe to answer these. For the rest of the time, say nothing.

Claim Suicidal Thoughts

A debatable one this. Claiming to be thinking about topping yourself has several benefits. If you can keep it up, it might just bump up any compensation payable later. On the other hand you may find yourself in a paper suit with someone watching your every move.

Always always always have a solicitor

Duh. No brainer this one. Unless you know 100% for sure that your mate the solicitor does criminal law and is good at it, ask for the Duty Solicitor. They certainly do criminal law and they are good at it. Then listen to what the solicitor says and do it. Their job is to get you off without the Cops or CPS laying a glove on you if at all possible. It is what they get paid for. They are free to you. There is no down side. Now decent folks think it makes them look like they have something to hide if they ask for a solicitor. Irrelevant. Going into an interview without a solicitor is like taking a walk in Tottenham with a big gold Rolex. Bad things are very likely to happen to you. I wouldn’t do it and I interview people for a living.

Actively complain about every officer and everything they do

Did they cuff you when they brought you in? Were they rude to you? Did they racially or homophobically abuse you? Didn’t get fed? Cell too cold? You are decent folk who don’t want to make a fuss but trust me, it pays to whinge and no matter how trivial and / or poorly founded your complaint there are people who will uncritically listen to you and try and prove the complaint on your behalf. Some of them are even police officers. Nothing like a complaint to muddy the waters and suggest that you are only in court because the vindictive Cops have a grudge against you. Far fetched? Wait until your solicitor spins it in court and you come over as Ghandi.

Show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it

You think that if you are a difficult, unpleasant, sneering, unco-operative and rude things will go badly for you and you will be in more trouble. No sirree Bob. It seems that in fact the worse you are, the easier things will go for you if, horror of horrors, you do end up convicted. Remember to fake a drink problem if you haven’t developed one as a result of dealing with us already. Magistrates and Judges do seem to like the idea that you are basically good but the naughty alcohol made you do it. They treat you better. Crazy I know but true.

So there you go, basically anything you try and do because you are decent and staightforward hurts you badly. Act like an habitual, professional, lifestyle criminal and chances are you will walk away relatively unscathed. Copy the bad guys, its what they do for a living.

But Officer…Please…Listen……..

First Brew

It’s the golden first half hour at work and that first cup of coffee is steaming gently on my desk. I am an early arriver so there is usually just me a DS, a DI, maybe one of the HOLMES team. My first pleasure of the day is reading the night Inspector’s logs from around the Force. We indulge in some spelling mistake spotting and a little heavy sarcasm but the true scorn is reserved for those log entries that are transparently posted by those bucking for promotion.

Now if PC X has made a good lock up of some prolific burglar overnight then I have no problem with the bunting going up so everyone knows who saved the figures for the week. If C.I.D. have piloted some complicated job home against the best efforts of defence and C.P.S. then a few self congratulatory lines are in order. What sticks in my craw are the entries where some failed drug warrant that has recovered half a spliff and 20 quids worth of luncheon vouchers is hailed as “positive action” “welcomed by the local community” “intelligence led” and citizen focussed.” This is the unmistakeable language of the C.V. builder. In their world, nothing ever fails, there is no such shape as pear and every deployment is a resounding success hailed by our “community partners.” The reality is we missed again and the locals watched another layer of Teflon accrete to the local Don.

I learned my lesson early when I had to run one of those “Crime Week” Operations. Lets say for the sake of argument that I called it “Operation Kurious Oranj” as a protest.  It was foisted on our station from above and my Inspector of the time saw it for the plum kicking waste it was and passed it to me. Wise man. At the end of any such exercise there are always the fag end jobs and one Thursday morning, I passed out such a job to a Search Team. I was a particularly “up” briefing, full of buzz words and on reflection a Vichy, obnoxious disgrace to honest coppering.

The team returned inevitably empty handed and their acting Sergeant beckoned me for a quiet chat and a smoke on the back yard. “Jack” he said as we stood by the back door “we don’t mind if it’s a shit job, but don’t try to pretend it isn’t.” That was it. There’s still a lot to be said for that approach.

A Community Reassuring Seizure Yesterday

The Hungry Sheep Look Up

I keep seeing little green shoots that I hope are recovery of some of what might make our society work a little better.

The prisons are brim full, crime is at record low levels, there are record numbers of Police. I am thinking that somebody somewhere might care to connect these three facts. Despite the best efforts of Jack Straw and the Sentencing Guidelines Council to persuade the magistrates and judges not to send convicts down, we keep building good enough cases and they keep getting sent.

The D.W.P. is talking about removing the crutch of unconditional benefits payments from those who would want to let us pay for their lives forever. It’s still just talk mind you but at least they are talking. They are also beginning to get interested in how many sad smack heads we are subsidising and looking for ways to get them into treatment.

In Portstmouth, the council has made a big U turn over a little matter. It was only £500 for a charity that helps wounded servicemen back here. At first the council wrote a mean spirited little letter full of “could cause offence to ethnic minority groups who may also have experience of injury / violence due to the war.” Now I am no expert at literary criticism or redaction but I will bet my next cup of coffee that the person who wrote that nasty little post-script has at least thought of showing solidarity with the “Stop The War Coalition. As usual, they are trying to take out their angst on an available, but wrong target. Anyway, the local and national press got after the story and the council paid up and made a grovelling apology.

It’s a little thing, a small step back in the right direction and it made me smile after a long day interviewing a “special needs” suspect and then planning for a “borderline fit to interview” suspect. How busy? Busy enough.

And Are Not Fed

A Modest Proposal

It is very, very easy to allege Police brutality when we are seen locking up people on the streets. It is never pretty or elegant to see and always ends up looking like a bullying scrum on CCTV. Journalists and activists seem to have absolutely no idea what it is really like to arrest a violently non compliant person. Any time an officer is seen striking or batoning anybody the cry of brutality goes up. They just have no idea, absolutely no idea. If they knew better then perhaps they would understand.

I have an idea to help them understand better. They can train for 40 hours at whatever martial art they want then they can dress in uniform with body armour, gloves, helmet, cuffs, PAVA spray and the ASP / baton of choice. Their task is to subdue and cuff me.

I will then get drunk and take a good chunk of pain killers in advance. I may or may not have a weapon at my disposal, they have to guess because I am not telling. I may have a number of friends nearby to back me up but again, I won’t be disclosing that. I may or may not have won medals at national martial arts competitions, they can guess.

All I will do is fight them as hard, dirty and no holds barred as I can. I will kick, punch, scratch, gouge and bite in such a way as to do the most damage to them that I possibly can. If anything gets near my mouth I will bite as hard as I can. Ideally I will be looking to bite off a nose or ears but if that fails arm or leg will do. If I can get any pressure on a joint I will try to dislocate it. If possible I will leave them with a lasting injury like a badly broken bone or a scar from a bite. Eye gouging is a distinct possibility. If I do manage to overpower them I will stamp and kick them past unconsciousness and if time permits, into brain damage or death.

To make it fair, they can bring friends but their friends must start 3 miles away in cars, in heavy traffic.

They are free to use any of the kit and any moves they know but they must carefully judge how much force to use on me and they must not do anything that is not approved or taught in Officer Safety Training. Specifically, they should really try hard not to hit me in the head, spine, kidneys, gonads or stomach and think hard before going for a major joint. I will not be returning the favour.

Any takers?

Only 24 Hours To Crack The Case (Part 9)

Before I get into the story, just a few words on a milestone

The blog is past 100,000 hits and now holding steady at around 20,000 hits a month. Thank you for carrying on reading. I e-mailed Gadget right at the start wondering if I was stoking a fad? I’m still not sure that I know the answer to that question. What I do know is that there won’t be a book, at least not a Police Blogger book. I’ve thought long and hard about it and it’s just not for me. Great respect is due to Copperfield, Bloggs and Gadget for having enough to say that was new and shockingly true and for saying it so well.

For myself, if I hadn’t read and commented Gadget, I wouldn’t have bothered writing myself. Most of what I wanted to say, well they have said it. I just get to bring my perspective to the party. If anyone wants to read any of my stuff, here it is and it is handily archived. The internet is amazing; these powerful tools are offered to us all for free, all the research tools I could ever need are at hand. I have had it all for free and that’s how I pass it on.

Back to the story

Hilda Brown lived with her disabled son Bill. She had a bad fall in the kitchen a few years ago. It knocked her confidence. Bill was hit by a car whilst still a young man and he had lived the last 25 years downstairs in his wheelchair. Hilda took to staying downstairs with Bill in the living room. They would pull blankets over themselves to sleep and in winter, they would wear hats. The room became cluttered with bags and boxes. A patina of dirt began to form. After the fall, Hilda stopped getting out of the chair so much. In the end, she never got up out of it at all. When the ambulance paramedics arrived, Hilda had been lying in that same recliner chair pretty much non-stop for 2 years.

Social Services became involved and introduced a package of care. They installed a stair lift that did little but gather dust. They visited and did accurate and worrying assessments of Hilda’s needs. They dutifully noted the grave risks to her health from her environment. A special bed was specified for Hilda but she refused. There was a zimmer frame, she stood it by her chair and hung things on it. Help with moving and staying clean was offered and also refused. The Social Workers even had hard words with Bill when he started hitting his Mum and throwing things at her. He stopped, the Police were not informed but it wouldn’t have made much difference at that stage.

There were flies in the house, lots of flies because Hilda had open ulcerated sores on her legs. There were maggots in the sores and that’s why there were the flies. She had a GP and Nurses attending the house regularly.She refused their advice about going to hospital or letting them take better care of her. Hilda knew exactly what she wanted and she insisted on getting just what she wanted, no more and no less. The Doctor called and told her, leave the chair or you will surely die. She refused. The Nurses would bandage the legs but the ulcers never really healed properly.

There were home helps and cleaners but Hilda wouldn’t let them in any of the house except the kitchen and the living room. The local sandwich shop delivered pies, sandwiches, chocolate and cold drinks through the front door that was always left open. The home helps got to make hot drinks 4 times a day and clear away Hilda’s incontinence pads and various soiled towels which were always stinking by her chair in plastic bags. The home helps and cleaners never lasted very long. Hilda would not accept any male carer or any carer at all from a minority community. She was foul mouthed, abusive and very fond of complaining. Hilda would let them clean her hands and face only. She did not change her dress ever so far as anyone could remember. By the time the ambulance paramedic arrived he couldn’t find a clean enough patch of skin to get a needle into safely.

At the end, Hilda must have known something was wrong. At last she allowed a Social Worker to call for the ambulance and the crew arrived. One later described to me feeling the carpet squelch like molasses under his feet. The smell of human decay and corruption in that room hit them like a wall. They retreated back to the ambulance for disposable suits. When they lifted Hilda from the chair, they broke the accumulated crust of the puss from a side plate sized pressure sore and years of poor personal hygiene. She was welded to the fabric of the chair so they had to peel her away from it. The paramedic on the team was sick into his mouth for the first time in his 20 years service but carried on lifting. The pressure sore was bone deep.

Hilda died in hospital some days later clean and in no great pain.

Afterwards, everybody told their stories to us detectives and we wrote it all down for the coroner. We get to hear a lot of horror stories. Everybody was terrified that blame was coming their way somehow but they told told it straight, oversights, errors and omissions and all. My first feeling was outrage. How could this happen in our town? The truth of it came to me after my ire cooled as I listened to the stories of the people that worked in Hilda’s life. There was nothing wrong with Hilda mentally. She got to make and stick with bad choices and everybody concerned with her could only watch. They did what they could and she ignored them. That’s how it is. People are free to make bad choices and sometimes there are very bad consequences for them. Hilda had her reasons for lying in that chair and we will never really know them now.

Just A Chair

Rejoice, Rejoice!

What an interesting week to be a Cop. Gordon Brown and David Cameron sounding tough on the “Evil Poor.” In that vein, I really like the Rogerborg phrase “Entitled Poor.”

Then the Home Office announces “Radical plans to cut red tape and give the Police more time to get on with the job of reducing crime.”Then I looked at the Green Paper. Ah Stop and Account, so clearly a really bad idea, has been given another 6 months of half life. Why?

To cap it all, the Crime Figures are out and thanks to the clear minded, consistent and principled political leadership and guidance bestowed upon us over the last decade or so, we have somehow managed to reduce crime in just about every way that you can. I’m going to stick my neck out here and suggest that record numbers of cops have clawed back some of the ruinous back office stat collecting waste of hours and that we have indeed filled the prisons to bursting with the right people. What works reliably to reduce crime? More Cops and fuller prisons. It’s a fact.

Then I read the detection rates and … well overall down 2% on last year. Specific clear up rates are

Violence Against The Person 49%

Sexual Offences 30%

Robbery 20%

Burglary 13%

Car Crime 11%

Not very high really. Still, the overall numbers are apparently dropping away so although we are a bit less likely to solve your crime this year, you are less likely to suffer crime in the first place.It isn’t as if anybody believes the crime statistics anyway. How do you measure fear?

It’s just quiet, too quiet. Sitting here waiting for the other boot to drop, I have this horrible foreboding that the main reason we were allocated the hand held data terminal P.D.A. thingummys was so that we can do our paperwork out of the station in the car or in doorways thus pumping up the “time on the streets” percentage. Actually they are a good thing, just not as good as working at reducing the actual amount of paperwork. Oh and bad bad news to lose and about as secure as you might expect.

I also have a feeling that the apparently abandoned top-down targets will be replaced by locally accountable targets enforced locally. I expect that locally elected Police bosses will be just as rancid, just as soon as they figure out that the public will vote for cheaper or nastier.  That is of course if the public don’t vote in some extremist ideologue with an agenda somewhere between Happy Talky Talky and the Gestapo.The arbitrary targets big stick won’t go away just because the Home Office stops doing it, because the Home Office have just passed the big stick to somebody else. Sure enough, here come the challenging, locally set efficiency targets in Chapter 7. Local Police kicking for local people.

I still don’t see anything about returning discretion and encouraging risk taking coming back, just more about recording what we do to show we are accountable, necessary and proportionate. More policy, more “no-one ever got in trouble by doing it by the book” leadership and direction.

You know what? Police Reform Green Paper, same stuff, different bottle. Increased civilianisation to lower costs, more blame allocation mechanisms dressed up as accountability, more erosion of the office of Constable. Look, Jacqui, the miner’s strike is over, they lost. No, it is true that we don’t tend to vote Labour. Sorry didn’t know you took that so personally.

A Delighted DC Night Looks To The Future