General Policing Discussions

So, The THE POLICING AND CRIME Act is coming in December 2017 and will change the powers and procedures of the 136 & 135 mental health act significantly. Just wondering if your force is aware and has done anything about it? Ours has been working hard, but not really got anywhere. https://mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com covers all the changes pretty well. Key points - you can 136 in private and have a power of entry. (not dwelling) No children to police station under 136, ever. Not for any reason. Only 24h for assessment, rather than 72. Important - 24h begins when you arrive at the first place of safety. Even if they won't accep…

Poor management of legislation which lacked proper consultation with the people actually doing the work. We have had a few issues with mental health recently that has left us fudging arrests for offences just to justify getting them to a safe place. To be fair I complete many Home Office/CoP courses and I could easily drop in to a DC role if a force would accept me. There is a massive Service Justice review beginning, I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the service system isn’t disbanded and some elements amalgamated. The review is well overdue defence wastes so much money on policing MDP are in the chopping block at the min, Defence are struggling to see…

So this is more of an observation than a query but I wanted to hear from other's as well on what i've seen and noticed. I'm still fairly new in service and, unfortunately, I'm base on the ihub. I get on with everybody in my team, the banter's there (often where most would call challenge) and so on. However, that seems to be just within our sub-group; we're now on a set of nights and yesterday and I was crewed with an ERT officer for the shift. The man made next to no conversation throughout, we drove to 40 minutes for a job in complete silence. This is the second time I've walked away from a shift hoping I don't have to crew with the fella again, on my …

I'm a Welfare Officer employed by the charity 'The Defence Medical Welfare Service' working on a pilot project delivering welfare support to Police Officers, Staff, Specials and their immediate family members in Avon and Somerset Constabulary. I'm currently supporting a Special Constable who suffered an injury on duty that may require surgery. I'm aware of the Special Constable Group Insurance Scheme, which was previously administerd by NPIA then transferred to the Home Office. I'm trying to obtain the policy summary and detailed t&cs for this cover but have had no response to date, either from the Home Office or the College of Policing. My enquiry was sent to…

All, I am frequent reader and infrequent poster and come you today with a few questions. As a bit of background, I am a response PC in a busy urban nick, working an area notorious for gang violance and drugs. I am also a force first aid instructor. As an example of the kind of jobs we deal with regularly, last set of shifts alone we had one murder, a number of GBHs and two stabbings. In addition to this, an officer from our neighbouring nick was stabbed whilst attending a mental health job. Thankfully the injuries were not life threatening. Now, onto the point of this post. With the above in mind, I feel that the nature of the incidents officers are confr…

Hello all I'm starting my 3 weeks course today and i'm nervous about what to expect; some officers have said it was the best course they'd done while others told me exactly how several of their intake failed to make the 2nd week. Does anyone have advice they'd be willing to share about this? I'm fairly experienced driver and I'd like to think my hazard awareness/perception is onpoint, as I ride my motorbike all year round!

On the 11th December, new regulations come into force dictating when we can use police stations as a place of safety for people arrested under S136 - basically, it'll be almost never. These regulations were inserted into the MHA by the Policing and Crime Act, and so are part of the law. Here's a brief summary of the requirements for people who may only occasionally come across the power: * A child under 18 years may never be taken to a police station as a place of safety, under any circumstances. * An adult (A) may only be taken to a police station if the decision-maker (i.e. the constable exercising the power under most circumstances) is satisfied that the beha…

How would Special Constabularies function? Let's presume that legislation gets passed and all regular front line officers are authorised to carry a sidearm. What would happen with Specials? Would/Should they be authorised to carry as well? Would they be restricted to very specific neighbourhood or community engagement duties? Maybe they'd have to be reformed to be similar to a military Reserve force with higher training and more time given to the Job at once? Or should Specials be disbanded?

Has anyone got any experience with the Police Now Graduate Scheme? https://www.policenow.org.uk/the-programme/about-the-programme/ Looking at graduate schemes, and this one keeps popping up. What are people's opinion of the scheme, and whether it would be a worth while experience or is it a bad idea, and other graduate schemes would be a better option?