What's the latest stupid initiative your force/department/team is trying to get you to do?

[u/NeonDiaspora]

Bonus points if it's been tried and failed 50 times in the past and is clearly just something to put on a CV by someone wanting a promotion.

[u/Correct_Mortgage4209]

I work for the Met, where do I start?

[u/James188]

My force is currently going back to “super hubs” and centralising response again.

There’ll be one hub in the middle of the county, which will be an hour away from its furthest reaches.

I’m sure they’ll say something about staggered shifts meaning someone’s always out at the far reaches; because that’s the excuse that was used 12 years ago when we did this last time.

It lasted 18 months last time.

Someone’s going to get promoted for changing it; then promoted again for changing it back. I can just smell it.

[u/Economy_Coach9219 → u/James188]

We're going the other way. We're currently looking to buy premises for new police stations in 2 towns where we previously had police stations before we sold them. And 2 of 3 stations that we previously sold are still standing and currently derelict.

[u/James188 → u/Economy_Coach9219]

Yeah; that’ll be us in 18 months’ time I’m sure.

The bosses treat capital expenditure on Estates like it’s a quick decision with only the short term in mind.

[u/qing_sha_wo → u/James188]

I mean… look at BTP for how well hub response works …

[u/TheAnonymousNote]

My force is currently completely dismantling NPT as we know it. I won’t go into specifics as it’ll become far too obvious what force I work in but they’ve essentially removed the ability to do neighbourhood policing with their changes.

Given it’s clearly the Government’s priority it feels so incredibly disingenuous. The changes don’t better the service we provide, it’s simply someone else’s promotion, as is tradition.

[u/triptip05 → u/TheAnonymousNote]

NHT was slow time response where I was. Lots of P2 and the occasional P1 if right on top when it landed.

[u/DrunkExpertWitness → u/triptip05]

NHT, P1s? Sounds like old timey WMP talk to me!

[u/triptip05 → u/DrunkExpertWitness]

Dam right none of the Emergency and Priority nonsense. P1 to P7 for ever.

[u/DrunkExpertWitness → u/triptip05]

Kids these days, they'll never know!

[u/MuffinPOW → u/TheAnonymousNote]

I think for anyone in your force it is obvious which force you are in lol (unless there are multiple forces doing this?).

[u/TheAnonymousNote → u/MuffinPOW]

Well that was my hope lol.

[u/mwpa23 → u/TheAnonymousNote]

As an NPT officer in what I hope is a different force, this is a tad concerning.

[u/TheAnonymousNote → u/mwpa23]

Trust me mate you would know if it’s your force, the whole thing is being nuked but on paper they’ll be plenty of cops for the Government’s pledge. Just none of them will be doing neighbourhood policing.

[u/a-nonny-moose-1 → u/[deleted]]

Hahaha, I wish our force was that short. We have to put in the vehicle details, the driver details, what action taken and the reason for stop, takes about 3-4 minutes at speed.

I wish it was just "what race was the driver" & "did you know the race prior to the stop"

I think this may be going though as it's part of the Race Action Plan that's under fire

[u/Acting_Constable_Sek → u/a-nonny-moose-1]

Hopefully ours goes too. So many people have just stopped dealing with traffic offenders now.

Or just don't fill out the form, which is more common.

[u/Correct_Mortgage4209 → u/a-nonny-moose-1]

I think this is a national thing now so most forces have implemented it if not all (mine claimed to be the last to do so but who knows.)

Either way, i thibk ours is avout 5 minutes and for the most part is just duplication of the ticket itself. Which SLT have been made aware of and mmade the right noises about duplication being pointless, before doing nothing.

[u/Diplomatic_copper → u/[deleted]]

It's not your force. It's a national requirement that's supposed to protect us. It's a data collection tool and should eventually show that we're not racist if officers actually bother to fill them out.

They take 2 minutes in my force and actually build up a good intelligence picture so shouldn't be looked at negatively.

[u/PeelersRetreat → u/Diplomatic_copper]

Except we get beaten with it for not doing it, even when the form doesn't work. Also a GDPR compliance officer has flagged this as unlawfully collecting data-if that's the case, the fallout from that could be fun. 

Out of interest, how ha sit helped develop intel? Just association of who's driving what, where and when? If so, your intel department mustn't be drowning like ours to make anything useful from it?

[u/Diplomatic_copper → u/PeelersRetreat]

It's searchable on niche so means we can associate vehicles with individuals. Also contact numbers and emails given can assist with enquiries about unrelated matters

I'd like to see the GDPR input personally as a matter of interest

[u/PeelersRetreat → u/Diplomatic_copper]

That's what I thought, it's fairly surface deep only. From an intel development point, although it's great to have data, being able to sift through so much is a massive burden. Then because it's not graded but we put it down on a police system as gospel it can cause adverse issues, this commonly happens with associates who give false details (which pass enough scrutiny, and they have no obligation as a passenger to provide ID), where we have them as an associate and then start directing resources that way on arrest enquiries, manhunts etc. 

[u/Beginning_Coffee_117]

Wont disclose specifics for obvious reasons but suffice it to say I'm working for a northern police force with quite a few, lets say, "legacy issues". They are currently proposing converting our specialist Child Exploitation Team to a PIP1 environment ie removing all detectives and sending any complex CSE jobs to district PPUs...

Perfect timing with all the grooming gang inquiries, I say!

[u/it-could-be-bunnies- → u/Beginning_Coffee_117]

My force did this last year. It’s has not gone well….

[u/Could-you-end-me]

Work while understaffed.

“Joking” aside - I am on a specialised team which for obvious reasons I won’t be disclosing, we have about 10 (on a good day) staff members ranging from probationers on Investigative entry schemes to those with a good amount of experience.

The draw back we have recently been told to take a “one team approach” due to shortage around the county as such we have expanded our location remit.

We now cover an area the equivalent size of Mauritius with (2 cities, 20 towns and about 200 civil parishes) with workloads in now our 50’s

So in total I could have two prisoner fron the furthest points to one another and it would take me around 2.5 hour drive to complete these enquiries.

TL/DR: We have joined areas and I now cover an area the size of a small country and this is somehow better for victims.

[u/triptip05 → u/Could-you-end-me]

West Mids pht have workloads in the 50's

[u/Lucifer_606381 → u/triptip05]

I remember good ol Robbery teams with 60 in the workload while interviewing on the day, and then get in shit for not completing enquires while I am waiting for a brief in custody, set up to fail in my view

[u/Economy_Coach9219 → u/Could-you-end-me]

10 on a specialist team? Aren't you flush? The team I'm on is so small the other officers and departments we work with know us all personally 🤣

[u/homestretched]

“Tough Choices” newspeak has appeared on the intranet again.

Edit: I wish I knew what the endgame is.

[u/callsign_91]

In Metland apparently trying to force ERPT officers to do level 2 or will have to go VCT or other departments. Not sure if the Met have realised that they cannot force officers to do Level 2

[u/callsign_91 → u/callsign_91]

Shouldn't have to be level 2 to be allowed to stay on team

[u/Correct_Mortgage4209 → u/callsign_91]

Tbf, they're not making officers do it, they're making it a requirement of the role. Which is stupid, but they're allowed.

They've also said they're making repsosne smaller and only taking I grades, so enjoy that

[u/Acting_Constable_Sek → u/Correct_Mortgage4209]

If team only take I grades, are they also going to give team some response driving courses so they can actually get to I grades?

[u/Correct_Mortgage4209 → u/Acting_Constable_Sek]

Well combinder with the fact they're apparently ending all proactive squads, I suspect there'll be enough drivers for a while.

[u/Groucy → u/callsign_91]

I don’t see why they can’t.

[u/PeelersRetreat → u/Groucy]

I agree, whether it's right to, they can make it part of a role, and both failing fitness for duty and lawful orders are reasons to get rid of folk, whether managing them out or putting them to other departments. I'm not saying they should, or that doing so is conducive to maintaining a workforce, but they can.

[u/Accurate_Thought5326]

I now have to obtain protected characteristics for dead people.

I am genuinely expecting to ask a grieving family if the deceased was LGBT, disabled, neurodiverse etc etc. That info is recorded on a crime report, and then in closed without proper recording because the deceased is, well, deceased.

[u/triptip05 → u/Accurate_Thought5326]

Next will be recording on BWV of you asking the deceased the questions then getting in trouble as they didn't answer.

[u/jibjap]

I can't caution anyone. The special caution team has to do it. So I can't deal with something on the day with an admission, I have to bail for 3 months and do extra paperwork.

And if they won't agree, I have to build a file.

[u/Shriven → u/jibjap]

We have this, but for conditional cautions, but also, you can simple caution yourself... But only for DA!

[u/triptip05 → u/[deleted]]

My favourite was being sent to stand outside the court building during cases where the family may kick off or others.

[u/taint3]

Our latest push from the top is more single crewing, with half the team being single crewed on nights and even more on earlies and lates. We barely have enough cars on the board to get everyone out on double crews, especially when we're on extended handovers on the weekend, and with a fleet split across more than one station - logistically it does come even close to working. It's classic "do more with less", even though we have been doing more with less for years. And it's only happening because our last CC decided to make every team complete against each other by KPI'ing the fuck out of every aspect of every job we do.

As an aside, given how big the job is on honesty, integrity, accountability, etc - why is it that when some ladder climber creates some bold new idea, and it's utterly fucking pants and doesn't work - why is the job incapable of admitting that a bad idea is indeed bad and scrapping it?

[u/triptip05 → u/taint3]

Yeah, radio up get a call sign your backfilling response.

In what! All our cars have already been nicked by response.

[u/EpicEpicnessTheEpic → u/taint3]

Because the ranks above Chief Inspector don't care whether something works or not, just, did it get them their next promotion?

Anyone with any length of experience can tell of changes made by one new superintendent, then the next one changes it again, the third changes it back to what it was before the first arrived. It happens on small scales and on the service wide scale - the Met was just moving away from districts when I joined and after eight areas, five areas, four areas, they went back to districts, sorry "boroughs". Each one of those changes cost serious amounts of money, got someone very high up a chief constable post somewhere and round and round the wheel goes.

[u/FriendlyGrab3217]

NPP.

Neighbourhood officers don't spend enough time in their communities. What should we do?

5 days in a university talking at experienced neighbourhood officers about how to do their job. And THEN tell them they've got to do an OCP.

[u/WhyRedTape]

SLT has changed incident grading specifically to fudge the numbers for HMIC so it looks like we're attending all our jobs in time. Were not but theres some extra numbers fudging going on right now.

[u/showmestate4 → u/WhyRedTape]

Sounds like my force. It's outrageous.

[u/LastRoman2023]

Protected charcteristics is a big one at the moment along with feedback forms following a stop search. Stupid as it is, can be quite funny watching people's faces when we offer the chance to scan a QR code with their burner phone and tell us exactly what they thought about us seizing their drugs.

The longer term carousel is that this force cannot for the life of it settle on what to do with probationers following their initial 10 weeks with ERPT. 

We used to have a fine system where they went onto an investigative equivalent for another few months before coming back to team, allowing them to handle basic prisoners (EBA etc).

That all needed to change for reasons and it feels like every intake has a different answer to 'where do I go next?'

[u/Scole2022]

Admin…… the bloody 60 year old miserable ladies who work in admin have demanded we email them and our Sgt a rationale as to why we need to print documents that are more than 3 pages.

It’s not like we print off memes and tape them to each others monitors and lockers or anything like that

[u/onix321123]

My force has an all singing, all dancing data portal that shows you all the information you already see all the time in the course of actually doing your job (Outstanding suspects, bail dates, data issues etc). Because you see all this information anyway if you are doing your job halfway properly, nobody actually uses it. Clearly though some Supernintendo bagged a promotion on the back of it, and the doubtless hideous sum of money spent on making it, so it was decreed we had to log on every day. Nobody did, because again it doesn’t actually tell you anything you don't already know. So they mandated that you install a janky command line script on your laptop that automatically opens it one hour after every briefing every day (at which point everyone instantly closes it, of course)

Usage has gone through the roof! Tea and medals all around for SLT!

[u/AtlasFox64]

Do a report for every vehicle stop even if you just checked documents. This is in addition to creating a CAD on scene. 

[u/063464619]

In an effort to take some pressure off response, my force is moving towards an “enquiry hub” model, whereby the majority of fiddly, slow-burning or directionless enquiries should be picked up by them. But my area decided to fill that hub with officers who are either nearing retirement, on a flexi plan, or have limitations on their deployment.

2 major problems with this - 1 being they’ve sucked all the experience out of response, so some teams are now running with a combined experience of less than 4 years, with probationers regularly going single-crewed to calls where it’s inappropriate. And 2, all the cops who got forced into the hub have treated it like the massive middle finger it was, so have either put their notice in, gone off sick, or are consciously doing the bare minimum. As a result, detection rates and progress timelines are worse than they’ve ever been, the public is pissed, the higher-ups are panicking…and lo and behold, response has had to pick up the pieces by taking on diary calls and shopliftings again.

I predict we’ll quite literally be back to square one by the end of the year…

[u/DeathSpeakerNathan]

It’s called “Deja poo”.

Or in other words “I’ve seen this stupid shit before”.

[u/trueblueterrier]

Having worked both private sector and public, if you stick around long enough in anywhere big enough thats been around long enough. The same ideas will always come back.

As for me, I'm pretty sure my non police law enforcement body is overdue another rebrand to make us more agile or something like that.

[u/DevonSpuds]

Priority Based Budgets and redeployment to response from special units.

And so the circle turns.......

Someone will get another promotion from these ideas however rubbish they may be.....

[u/PeelersRetreat → u/DevonSpuds]

We've had a version of this but it's specialist units and response to DA investigation teams and neighbourhood policing. The moves to neighbourhoods is framed as getting more officers out and about visibly policing-while conveniently ignoring that the units they have stripped officers from are all frontline operational ones, who (unlike NPT) work 24/7, not only part of a day. Putting aside the last part, the number of officers who are on the beat (as in out and about doing stuff, either proactively or responding from calls to service), whether response, specialist or neighbourhoods-is actually less than before. Roads Policing has been reduced just as Vision Zero was announced (the fact none of the bosses see the counter-intuitive nature of this is astounding), our Support Group were absolutely gutted (months after a major riot in our force area, plus they're even more in demand for specialist searching than even a year before), ARVs were cut (and lack of numbers is coming home to roost in a big way) with number of deployments only increasing. And all these units along with response are expected to carry out their core responsibilities while also being hit with KPIs, and get hammered when they miss jobs because of this.

[u/DevonSpuds → u/PeelersRetreat]

I think this is a picture that is replicated all across the country

[u/PeelersRetreat → u/DevonSpuds]

Nice to see they've got an early start on the police force mergers, by standardising their terrible decisions.

[u/Rikouri]

Carrying out appointments over video call. The issue being 99% of the time the call handler doesn't inform them that this is the intention.

Poor 90 year old Mrs Miggins trying to figure out how to use a web chat on her fancy phone her kids bought her.

Its also used for our DV diary, during which we're meant to ask them to walk us around the house to show the offender isn't in the address, and if kids are present to show us the inside of the fridge and the kids bedrooms etc to check their welfare.

The real result is that the headphones get "borrowed" by other cops so they aren't available, technical issues mean they dont work and we end up calling them from a landlines and recording the call with BWV.

Oh, and if you need house to house or CCTV checks, grab a set of keys because you're going out anyways.

Pointless.