If you’ve got trouble…

The ‘plebgate’ affair has brought to light police misconduct regulations which are not necessarily straightforward to understand (Image from russavia)

As the ‘plebgate’ story progresses, many of the recent controversies have surrounded whether officers should have faced police misconduct proceedings after they had given an allegedly misleading account of their meeting with Andrew Mitchell .

To outline what had happened, following a suggestion that Mr. Mitchell had referred to officers as ‘plebs’ following a dispute on Downing Street, he had agreed to meet with police representatives to set the record straight.

Following the meeting, officers had given an account of what Mr. Mitchell had said during the meeting which, so the implication is, was different to what had actually been said according to a recording made of the conversation.

A complaint had been made about this and it concluded by a police Professional Standards Department following an investigation that this did not amount to misconduct and that there was no case to answer in terms of disciplinary action.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) however reviewed this conclusion and disagreed with it, suggesting instead that there had been a case of misconduct to answer.

The framework against which these decisions are made is The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2008 which set out how disciplinary matters are addressed and applies to police officers in England & Wales.

Police officers are held to a set of ten standards published in the Regulations, they indicate how officers are expected to act and behave.

One of the most important standards is that ‘police officers are honest, act with integrity and do not compromise or abuse their position‘.

When misconduct proceedings are proposed, it is because an officer is alleged to have fallen short of one of the standards expected of them.

If it has been decided that there is a breach of the standards, it then has to be decided whether the breach constitutes ‘misconduct’ or ‘gross misconduct’.

‘Misconduct’ is a breach of the Standards of Professional Behaviour whilst ‘gross misconduct’ means a breach of the Standards so serious that dismissal would be justified.

IPCC Deputy Chair Deborah Glass had suggested that rather than concluding there was no case to answer in respect to the officers’ actions, she thought rather the outcome ought to have been a finding of gross misconduct for which the officers had to answer.

To address misconduct where proven, officers can be offered management advice, a written warning, a ‘final’ written warning that could lead to dismissal and in the most serious cases, dismissal.

Officers have a right to appeal decisions made should they feel they have the grounds to do so.

As the 116 page Home Office guidance suggests, the Regulations are not the easiest to digest and so the above summary is only really a starting point to understanding how the process is intended to work.

I’m keeping an eye on the story and will look at blogging again when able to try and clarify how police misconduct regulations should work in the context of the story.

Moving on up now…

What’s the process for constables wanting to get their hands on a set of these, other than ‘borrowing’ some off an unattended coat?

As far as police forces go, the Westshire Constabulary is one of the worst around.

Officers from pretty much every other force will agree that particularly when it comes to Westshire’s Sandford Division, their bobbies are some of the laziest in Britain and it comes as no surprise that the public are not happy.

Pretty controversial, no? Well actually, no.

You see, whilst from reading the force’s extensively detailed profile, you may think that you’ve stumbled across England and Wales’ 44th police force, Westshire is actually a completely fictional police force used as part of the police promotion process.

Yes, Jeremy Sarno hasn’t really been the chief constable since 2009, Kristina Metz isn’t the force’s PCC and there aren’t 98,000 people living in West Ferry, which doesn’t exist.

It’s all part of the catchy ‘Objective Structured Performance Related Examination’ (OSPRE) which officers have to pass to qualify for promotion to the ranks of sergeant and inspector.

The examination process is – or at least to date has been – split into two separate stages.

The first is a 150 question, multiple choice law exam lasting three hours and capable of causing even the most prepared officers’ heads to explode right there and then in the examination hall.

This is OSPRE Part I, if successful officers are then able to progress onto Part II which if you’re reading this around mid to late October 2013, officers will be sitting about now.

This was the exam I took last Friday at the College of Policing’s Ryton campus.

With even more head exploding capability than the first stage, Part II involves constables assuming the responsibilities of a sergeant or inspector for five role play scenarios.

Each involves meeting an actor playing a dissatisfied member of the public or an officer with a discipline issue, the candidate has five minutes to resolve the issue with an assessor scoring them on competencies including decision making, professionalism and leadership.

It’s an odd, nerve-racking exam and one that officers hope they pass mainly so that they avoid having to put themselves through the exam again the following year.

With Part I and Part II both passed, an officer can consider themselves qualified for the next rank and then awaits promotion boards – formal interviews – at which if they are successful, they then are promoted permanently.

Promotion to ranks above inspector takes place via interviews rather than funny role playing as above, it is also possible that officers not to have passed their boards can ‘act’ up a rank temporarily to gain experience.

As I’d suggested earlier, the above framework is up for some imminent tinkering with Part II of the process due to be scrapped and replaced with something called the National Police Promotion Framework (NPPF).

This means goodbye to the role actors with the funny costumes that they don’t wear but should do, and hello to a work-based assessment lasting twelve months with a set of stripes of pips at the end of it.

The change is taking place as under the old system, many more people were passing the exams than there’d ever be room to promote hence fostering some unrealistic expectations for those completing the process.

Personally, I’d add that Part II always seemed an obscure assessment that offered no guarantees the successful candidates would be suitable to undertake the rank and as such, appeared to fail in its purpose of vetting potential leaders.

The new system has been trialled in a few forces already and should be introduced nationally from next year.

So there’s police promotion as it is, and as it will be, in a nutshell.

It’s an exciting step to take and daunting too, some of the officers sat in exams now will be future Chief Constables and hopefully will be fortunate enough to lead forces performing a little better than Westshire!

Anyone interested in the finding out more about the NPPF can have a look at the College of Policing’s Police Promotion Framework and also at the NPPF FAQs.

Take it where you find it…

Should your stuff be stolen, what can you do to help increase the chances that you’ll get it back?

The first question I’m often asked when taking a report of a theft concerns how likely it is that the victim will get their stuff back.

The likelihood sometimes comes down to how ‘clever’ (relatively speaking) the thief has been in disposing of the goods, although there are steps that it’s always a good idea to take in the short term as they can only increase the chances of recovering goods.

When we arrest folk under suspicion of theft, we have a power to go and search their homes and this is something that we do to see if they’ve been stupid enough to leave behind any evidence of their crime.

We’re not always lucky when it comes to searches and this is because when it comes to offloading stolen goods, it’s something that criminals will want to do as soon as possible to avoid getting caught red handed.

Wanting to be rid of the ‘hot’ goods, it’s a buyer’s market and the items will be sold for a fraction of their value.

With goods being quickly offloaded, there are some sensible steps that you can take to follow the trail yourself and help raise the chances of seeing your stuff again.

Said sensible steps that I’d be looking to take following discovering a theft are as follows:

• Have a search around the local area: Particularly in burglaries, criminals sometimes stash goods in hedges etc so that they can return at a later point and ‘find’ them with it then being harder to connect them with the crime. Have a good look around local undergrowth, wastelands and woods to see if there are any signs that something has been stashed.
• Browse online: I recently dealt with a job where the victim found his stolen goods for sale on eBay and was able to alert us so we could follow up the lead. Check the auction sites, message boards, local papers etc and see if your goods have appeared.
• Check the pawn shops: Most respected pawn brokers take photographs of people bringing in things to sell and ask for ID too, this isn’t to say that it’s not worth checking though.

The above tips go hand in hand with the advice I’ve given before and will continue to give until I’m about to retire with a long Gandolf beard, this is that you should make a list of all of your valuables and register them on Immobilise.

It’s simple enough – without serial numbers, identifying features or photographs it can be frustratingly difficult to tell who things belonged to when they’re been recovered suspected stolen.

Immobilse is a totally free online property register allowing you to put together a list of your valuables that we can then check and use to get goods back to you.

Pawn shops check serial numbers against the database also and in another real life example I’d dealt with recently, a pawn shop had stopped the sale of a PS3 when they found it was nicked.

We then checked ourselves, confirmed the theft and contacted the rightful owner to arrange its return.

So there they are, a few handy tips for property recovery and there’s little else for me to add than another reminder, this time in shouting capital letters and bold font, that if you take nothing else from this blog, it ought be that you should GO AND REGISTER YOUR VALUABLES ON IMMOBILISE – please, please, please!

A house is not a home…

Walsall Police Station under construction in 1965. As part of our recently announced estate review, we’ll be looking at how best to use our buildings.

The best part of twenty years before this fresh faced officer was born, workmen from W. Kendrick and Sons Ltd were scurrying around what was then a building site on Green Lane, Walsall, to build the ‘H’ division a new HQ.

State of the art for its time, the new base featured a shooting range, billiards room and a fountain in the front office that functioned as both an aquarium and an impromptu bath, depending on who was using it.

As Kev Pitt writes on his beard-strokingly interesting blog about the construction of the station, the total cost for the build came to £444,979.

Fast forward to the current day and whilst the building has served us bobbies well, it now costs more per year to maintain than the entire station cost to build in the first place, not adjusting for inflation.

As I’ve written previously, it’s owing to these sort of economics, alongside the fact that the station is in dire need of an update, that we’ll be moving out of Green Lane over the next few months.

The reshuffling due to take place forms part of the wider estate review announced by PCC Bob Jones on Monday under which the force’s bean counters will be examining our 140 properties with a view to reducing the £17.5 million cost associated with maintaining them.

Areas to be examined include how we’re currently using our buildings, the long term maintenance costs and whether we could save money by finding ‘room mates’ such as the local council with whom to split the bills.

On the latter point, it’s something that’s already happening in Solihull and has been very successful thanks to a well organised washing up rota and understandings that police officers take out the rubbish once a week and that councillors buy a new carton of milk when they finish the old one and don’t have the TV on too loud late at night.

Furthermore, the reshuffling also takes into account our move towards ‘super blocks’ with our living history cells at Steelhouse Lane being shut accordingly.

The estate review will take place in four phases taking us into the distant future-scape of 2015 and we’d be keen to hear from yourselves on how the proposals might affect you.

You can contact us through a range of different methods by clicking here, I’ll keep you updated on the project too with a special focus on what’s happening at Green Lane as and when I hear more.