The Havoc Makers Part 2.

In a few weeks time I will have completed 30 years Police service. We joined, I believe, for the right reasons, seeing a 25-30 year job offering security and interesting work. We wanted to serve as Police Officers, a community that supported us.

The initial training was kept simple and the main objectives the Chief Constable set were public tranquility, a low crime rate and an orderly society.

Perhaps I am biased, but we achieved those objectives and were proud to have done so. Promotion was possible but never a forgone conclusion. Certainly a sound knowledge of Police-work was an important factor when considering a promotion, but everyone sat exams knowing that all were equal.

Like most of my colleagues I had a secondary education but felt sure the Police service offered me a career with opportunity. I quickly realised my personal aptitude was towards  CID and, wrong as it be considered today, I have spent 26 years in that field of work. I believed in what I was doing for the community and that continuing to serve in one department was not selfish but where I was best suited to serve a community.

The Service itself was a single team effort, your rank was irrelevant. The objectives were to be met by all. There were no absolute rules. Policemen used common sense as well as the law to reach the objectives. We were supervised by seniors who played a very active role in that street level of policing. In other words, everyone was a police officer.

Slowly but surely it became obvious that the established fundamentals of the service were to be pushed aside in the interests of academic failures who were entering the service. Such people saw the high salary of the police, together with special consideration towards because of their academic qualification, as a very attractive proposition.

The Police rank structure was created in order that junior officers would be supervised by senior officers but at street level, not as it-is today. The current situation in one unnamed Force is that the Chief Constable sees a damn sight more of the streets than 60% of his senior officers.

But the job has never changed. The responsibilities are the same. The trouble is that the job has been allowed to slip away from contact with the public with the result that slowly but surely people have become anti-police. Positive policing keeps the lid on positive aggressions, and the only way to to achieve peace and tranquility is to sweep out all these support service cupboards to find the police to do the work initially intended, face to face with the public in the areas in which they live. We do not need all this rank, all this support, all these excuses for evading our responsibilities. If people want to be administrators, employ them as civilians. The way things are going we will have two police services shortly, and that will be the ultimate disaster.

The Havoc Makers Pt 1 & Pt 2 acknowledgement to Ken Brown, a Detective Chief Inspector of No4 Regional Crime Squad on the eve of his retirement who hit out at the legion of academics in 9 to 5 Monday to Friday jobs. His views were carried in Police, Police Federation magazine in August 1988.

 In September of 1989 the same publication carried an interesting article title ‘The Butterfly Syndrome’.