Complaints against officers

[Fedster + 1,307]

Introduction of disconnected computer systems mean that officers spend hours each day servicing them.

Officers were 'more mobile' with paper based systems in the 80s

Date - 4th March 2021
By - Gary Mason

Officers were “probably as mobile as they were ever going to be” in the 1980s before the adoption of digital systems when they used mostly paper, a former officer has said.

Ian Williams was a chief inspector in West Yorkshire Police having started his 32-year policing career with the Met. For the last four years of his service he led the delivery of mobile policing in West Yorkshire.

He is now a consultant with Motorola and told the BAPCO conference this week:  “You could argue that police officers in the 1980s were probably as mobile as they were ever going to be.”  

“You took all the [paper] forms out with you and whatever you dealt with you had the right form to fill in.”

When an officer came back to the station they could put the correct filled-out form in a ring-binder, give it a reference number and then go home at the end of a shift.

He said you could also argue that police officers then were far more mobile than they have been in recent years because of the exponential growth in separate back office policing systems in digital silos.

“The technology we have brought in has actually brought officers back to the station in order to do more work on a back office system,” he said. “They were probably spending a couple of hours a day filling out those processes on siloed back office systems as a result of introducing that technology over the last 30 years.”

He said some forces have gone down the route of introducing a “mobile back office view of the world” through providing officers with laptop and tablet computers when they are out of their stations. 

“I’m not saying there isn’t a space for that type of equipment out and about for inputting long statements but there were a lot of occasions in my career when I certainly wouldn’t have wanted a laptop or a tablet,” he said.

He also said the use of companion apps that connect an officer to back office systems  - even those that come with worn devices such as body worn video  - have limited use if the system is in a silo.

A single user interface that connects the officer to local and national systems should be the prime goal of forces he said.

“That is where we want to go. It means you are effectively looking through a single pane of glass into whatever system the officer needs,” he added. “But it is also integrating all those companion apps and all those systems into a ‘single truth.’ So it doesn’t matter whether you are booking on in the morning or giving evidence at court.”

A key area being developed by some forces in terms of mobile working is judicial disposal. They are using mobile app ‘wizards’ to cut down on the amount of inputting errors. He said: “The forces that we are seeing  using this have cut down their errors in case compilation within an RMS [Records Management System] to zero because there are mandatory fields for officers to fill out.”

There is an issue that officers will be carrying too much equipment if they have a digital pocket notebook, a body worn video camera and a radio the conference was told.

There could be come “convergence of devices” between the radio and the BWV device for example but Mr Williams warned that would have to be done very carefully because the radio “would be the very last thing” a front line officer would want to lose,

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[BlueBob + 692]

That's outrageous.  What is being said seems so close to reality and common sense.  Surely non senior management team is going to allow that to come to fruition without a concerted creation of a multi-layered inter-partnership focusing hierarchical non-silo committee being considered in implemented no sooner than the next generation!

[Radman + 2,163]

17 hours ago, BlueBob said:

That's outrageous.  What is being said seems so close to reality and common sense.  Surely non senior management team is going to allow that to come to fruition without a concerted creation of a multi-layered inter-partnership focusing hierarchical non-silo committee being considered in implemented no sooner than the next generation!

All I will say is when I first started 12 years ago as a PC a simple shoplifting file or byelaw report job etc which was paper based took approx 1hour to complete, with nothing more to it than a GAP expected low level summons job. 

Now the same file on the electromic systems will take in excess of a day thanks to a bloated system filled with repetition, needless box filling and incredibly slow infrastructure.

Whilst things are better in regards ro having immediate access to information and intelligence cops are far more reluctant to process people proactively because of this bloated electronic system.

The conspiracy floating around for years was that the system was intentionally designed to be cumbersome to cut police generated crimes, whilst I dont buy into that I do think the end result has seen a huge drop in offenders being proactively dealt with. 

[skydiver + 1,099]

Also consider the number of reports we have to fill in which in itself means that we have more intel to check.  PPNs, DASH, use of force forms, PNC, Genie, PND, custody records, ASB reports....Its all very well having the tech to generate all but they are still slow to fill in and to read.  

[Jack McCoy 303]

1 hour ago, Radman said:

The conspiracy floating around for years was that the system was intentionally designed to be cumbersome to cut police generated crimes, whilst I dont buy into that I do think the end result has seen a huge drop in offenders being proactively dealt with. 

I don't think it's a conspiracy at all. 

All you ever hear is how overcrowded the prisons and how busy the courts are, so the political choices were one of the following:

a) increase taxes to build/fund more prisons and courts

b) decriminalise all summary-only offences and leave them entirely within the purview of civil law proceedings and mostly focus on violent either-way/indictable offences

c) overload the Police at the front-line level with needlessly convoluted and cumbersome practises in order to reduce the rate at which they can successfully report offenders

The first 2 options were clearly political suicide, so the only option left was to screw us over and both parties love it as it takes all the pressure off them and the Judiciary and the story will forever be "Police fail to protect victims and secure evidence for prosecutions".

In pursuance of this, we have seen Stop/Search powers obliterated, charging decisions taken away, recording crimes based on honest held belief so that we spend 85% of our time recording, writing off and filing reports of dogs barking as harassment and case file preparation now involving CPS doing no work what-so-ever and expecting they should be able to wake up at 08.00, go to court for 09.00, read out an MG5 and a couple of MG11s and secure convictions by 10.00 for 99% of reported offences.

We 've also seen front line policing take on the role (and corresponding responsibility and paperwork) for various social work agencies. Examples:

1) Why do we conduct non-emergency welfare visits at homes when schools report a concern for a child, BEFORE any report has been submitted to social work, or social work has even been notified or conducted their own primary investigation?

This means we become the first responders and assume the duty of care to safeguard and make all the necessary referrals, thus needing to create specific departments that deal with this full time.

2) Why do we have to submit 100s of referrals for domestics every day? Why can't we share a computer system with the relevant agency and each time a log comes in with a DA/DV marker, it notifies their on-duty staff and they can access the full details, including the updates cops put on. They can then deploy their own representative to the scene who is trained in speaking to vulnerable parties and children and submit their own report based on their immediate observations. 

3) Why are we constantly guarding suicidal/high risk MISPERS at hospitals? Just pass an act of legislation that allows medical professionals and all security staff at hospitals to restrain and even secure these particular people and be done with it. Other countries allow for medical staff to use soft straps to physical tie down people who make suicidal proclamations and security staff are equipped with hand-restraints and irritant sprays. 

4) Similarly, why are we wasting some much time on truant teenagers? All these care-homes tell their staff they can't put hands on to prevent a teenager with a history of self-harm to leave the care-home, even if they say "I'm going to kill myself" as they walk out... Care-home staff are taught that it's against the children's Human Rights and Health and Safety laws to lock them in their rooms. Change the law, train the staff and let the police deal with crime, not babysitting angsty teens that go missing 5 times a week because they were asked to go to bed at 22.00 and spat the dummy.

 

 

 

[SD + 688]

They also did not deal with with DV incidents, had little access to intelligence, crime recording was shoddy, they didn't have to deal with cyber crime and their workload was nothing like it is now. So, it's pointless to compare the 2 roles. Is there an issue with IT? Absolutely! And I should know as I work for GMP. But there is no comparison.

 

[BlueBob + 692]

11 minutes ago, SD said:

They also did not deal with with DV incidents, had little access to intelligence, crime recording was shoddy, they didn't have to deal with cyber crime and their workload was nothing like it is now. So, it's pointless to compare the 2 roles. Is there an issue with IT? Absolutely! And I should know as I work for GMP. But there is no comparison.

 

Its not pointless, it can help us understand how things have evolved, the changing expectations that every recurring delusion that there is a policeofficer walking thereat around every corner.
Having had dealings with a full global company,  with hundreds of systems etc. What they had formally roles was an entry tick box,to show the areas you were dealing with and it brought most (almost all) the elements together in what we would see as a single document, and then distribute then relevant bits to the relervant departments.  It is possible there just needs to be the will
 

[Equin0x 161]

Officers are using apps on their phones to connect to the police systems? 😮 Are they properly secured?

[SD + 688]

38 minutes ago, Equin0x said:

Officers are using apps on their phones to connect to the police systems? 😮 Are they properly secured?

Yes

[Top Cat 3]

In the early 90s this was still very much the case.
You took a large folder out with all the forms, and dealt with each job from that folder.
The only need to return to the nick was at the end of the shift..or to have refs (! Yes, there was time for pre-planned refs too in those days...)

[BizzieBee 100]

On 15/03/2021 at 14:26, Equin0x said:

Officers are using apps on their phones to connect to the police systems? 😮 Are they properly secured?

Yes, and it works very well. Police phones, that is. Not their own... just to be clear!

I’m not sure what forces others belong to in this thread but seems like their execution hasn’t been great. 

Teething problems and some niggles, but I don’t need to return to the station to do anything. Only log on for case file progression and whatnot.