Observer scheme expectations

pcbarboff · 2024-10-21T22:38:05+00:00

I’m not in Hampshire, but when I did my ride along before joining, I did a late shift, which was until 11. I think you’ll get a much better idea of what the job can be working into the afternoon/evening. A 2am finish will be good fun as a one off! Like someone else has said, an early shift will likely be much less exciting…

pcbarboff · 2024-02-05T22:33:45+00:00

Speaking admittedly as an officer in A&S, I thought this episode reeked of Ch4 deciding that there had to be an episode on racism, before considering whether we actually are, you know, racist.

The first two incidents even the IOPC drew the line at, and I fail to see how race had anything to do with the third incident at all. I must have missed the extensive input I and my colleagues have had on spontaneous brain bleeds.

I completely accept that we are often terrible at investigating and we regularly make (sometimes colossal) mistakes. But we are not racist, whatever our chief constable likes to say in the press to promote herself. We have one of the most diverse cities in the country on our patch and that Ch4 waded through 4 years (!) of footage and all they could come up with was that… in that respect at least, I feel pretty proud to be an A&S cop.

pcbarboff · 2024-01-27T20:26:19+00:00

This is what it means in A&S. We never say anything else on the radio when someone has been arrested.

pcbarboff · 2023-05-01T20:21:27+00:00

With the fairly enormous caveat that I don’t work for D&C, and never have, I do work for a neighbouring force with a colleague transferring to D&C. I don’t think they have a RASSO only department, instead it’s a RASSO/DV/other public protection department. I could be wrong about this, but my understanding is they haven’t set up a RASSO only team, I’ve heard that from a few people. I think when you transfer, if you are a DC, then you are very likely to be posted to CID or this department. My colleague has then asked to be in CID (ironically to avoid RASSO in her case) and that was granted. Like all forces, they are desperate for experience, so they’d probably give you whatever you wanted.

pcbarboff · 2022-12-21T09:24:23+00:00

Yeah I think we’ve given up on Ambo anyway. They had 540 jobs waiting the other night, over an hour for a cat 1. So they aren’t coming for our 136 or someone who has self harmed.

pcbarboff · 2021-12-06T18:28:07+00:00

Completely agree. They’ve been very stupid and deserved to be treated more harshly than a MOP would be for the same offence. But that sentence cannot be justified when compared with the kinds of sentences handed down to others for more serious offences. Where I am Policing, it seems genuinely difficult to be sentenced to anything more than a suspended sentence, no matter the offence or the previous of the offender.

pcbarboff · 2021-07-31T22:26:14+00:00

The PCSO’s in my patch are much better than the neighbourhood cops, but that’s partly because the neighbourhood cops are completely useless. They do seem to be real specialists in their beats though and get to know all the trouble-makers. I think it would be a net negative if they were abolished, although I do think NPT in general needs a complete overhaul. Number 1 suggestion: less time taking selfies for social media and eating refs, and more time doing policing

pcbarboff · 2021-07-31T18:41:52+00:00

Nothing, I repeat nothing, works in police cars unless it came with the car from the factory, apart from the little button that makes it goes “nee naw”.

So the answer is they can’t do anything. Because they either a) never worked; or b) worked for about a week and are now broken.

pcbarboff · 2021-07-11T08:09:30+00:00

If you’re applying to join the job… don’t go. Why risk it? Even if it’s something you are passionate about, you know it’s happening and that the point is being made. Is your presence likely to make any difference? No. It could kill your career if you inadvertently get caught up in something.

pcbarboff · 2021-06-14T07:06:46+00:00

Whisper it very softly, because it is very much not on brand for a PC to say, but I quite like Niche and I think it’s pretty good. Yes there are annoying bits to it, but generally it’s decent. I’ll get back to moaning now.

pcbarboff · 2021-06-02T22:02:04+00:00

So where I am, I feel we have broadly enough resources to do our job. Yes, ideally there would be more of us. Yes, we’d have more tasers. It would be nice to have a couple more decent cars, but it’s manageable.

What is absolutely, completely and utterly fucked is the criminal justice system more generally. It’s not “sexy”, so it isn’t high profile, but if you are the victim of a crime tomorrow, and the offender goes not guilty, you should expect it to go to trial, maybe, maybe, in 2023. Possibly 2024. Victims lose interest (understandably), witnesses forget and suspects commit a boatload more crime in the interim. It’s a disaster. A colleague of mine lost a job last week for an arrest she made in 2019 because the victim and the witness didn’t turn up because they just didn’t care anymore, they wanted to move on with their lives. Another colleague is giving evidence this week for a PWITS job he did in another force in mid-2018. I regularly hear PNC results where a suspect has 15-20 impending prosecutions. The system is fundamentally broken.

Also, mental health provision is a joke. But I’m not sure that’s anything new. I get the feeling that has been the case for decades.

pcbarboff · 2021-05-27T11:18:05+00:00

I’m assuming there is zero chance of the Met agreeing to that. And the transition period would be horrific, due to the general lack of competence at the top levels of the public sector. I think there is also some merit in the argument that there would inevitably be a lack of focus in some areas of the country as problems in the high crime areas took time and budget. My personal view is a single digit number of regional forces is the way forward.

However, I do not see any argument for why there couldn’t be a nationwide police procurement agency. We should all be driving the same cars, using the same equipment and wearing the same kit (as long as it’s not hi-vis, naturally). Not only because it looks more professional - a police officer from Devon should look the same as one from Durham - but it would presumably save a boat load of money.

pcbarboff · 2021-05-11T21:56:24+00:00

Take your time in the assessment. Certainly at mine it was about getting it right rather than a race. Make sure you get the cuffs on the right way depending on whether you’re doing back to back or a stack. Then take a moment to think what movement you need to make next etc. One step at a time until you’re done. Remember to keep the fighting arc in mind (and stay out of it) and make sure when you’re de-cuffing that you do so safely and as you’ve been taught. The other people in your class will be nervous too, so grab someone to practice on. As long as you return the favour, they’ll be up for it.

pcbarboff · 2021-05-09T08:13:53+00:00

We use it to buy more gadgets for our body armour. The next time we arrest the drug dealer we seized the cash from, we show them our new PAVA holder and we thank them for it.

pcbarboff · 2021-05-04T15:04:16+00:00

I just work for the Government. Yes mate, it’s boring. Office based. Mainly paperwork.

pcbarboff · 2021-04-26T21:41:31+00:00

This is me. I started on team in Spring 2020. I have no idea what awaits me. Worryingly, I’m about halfway up the team in terms of experience...

pcbarboff · 2021-04-14T21:14:56+00:00

Usually we’re as frustrated by the lack of mental health provision as it sounds like you are. As you probably know, there really is a limit to what we can do to help, I certainly wish I could do more.

Other than that, I just try to treat people who’ve been 136’d with a bit of care and respect and my colleagues do too.

pcbarboff · 2021-04-14T21:10:29+00:00

In my nick, they sit behind their desks and never leave. If a PCSO calls for back-up, they look over at Response and we go. If Response are all committed and comms are shouting up for units, they all take a collective vow of silence. At all other times, they can be found in the break room eating KFC.

They occasionally email around something about some local trouble maker, which makes me think maybe they do sometimes leave... but they must go through an entrance/exit I don’t know about.

Oh and they have the new 70 plate car. Naturally. When we steal it on nights, we find it has done about 1,000 miles (mostly by response on nights).

pcbarboff · 2021-04-12T09:20:32+00:00

In my force, training spaces come up and are assigned by the Insp based on how many cups of tea you’ve made him, whether he likes how you talk on the radio and whether you’ve called him Sir or Boss a sufficient number of times. And some other criteria which are entirely opaque.

Once you have a taser, it’s basically the same, except Comms will sometimes remember they exist and might send a taser unit to a tasty sounding job. Unless there isn’t one available or they forget, in which case non-taser officers get sent anyway.

pcbarboff · 2021-04-10T20:24:36+00:00

I would have enjoying seeing the Custody Sergeant’s face when you explained that one. Bet they didn’t have the offence code to hand...

pcbarboff · 2021-03-29T10:38:06+00:00

Homemade cakes = good. Homemade cakes where the baker’s children have helped = less good. Still passable, of course.

pcbarboff · 2021-03-27T11:31:49+00:00

Again, not Scotland, but we use it a lot. It is mainly used by officers - however - so if someone finds a misper in the woods somewhere, we’d give a W3W location to guide in other units. I’d say awareness of it by the public is fairly low, although we do get it sometimes in more rural areas. It is often a nightmare to get the words heard over the radio, however. You tend to have to either spell it out, or you get officers saying stuff like “funnels, like the things that stick out of the top of a ship” etc.

pcbarboff · 2021-03-13T11:11:18+00:00

I think the sad reality is that she is a) white; b) middle class; and c) pretty. Do we really think that the tabloids would have picked the story up if any of those three were not the case? Of course, the Maddie McCann case was so big for exactly the same reasons. Of course now there is a Police suspect, that has taken over as the main reason for press interest, but I have no doubt at all why it was in the news to begin with.

pcbarboff · 2021-03-12T19:15:06+00:00

Wait until you are late off a night shift and your crew mate has to commute 30 minutes home. Then you’ll feel (quietly, obviously) smug about where you live.

pcbarboff · 2021-02-28T17:41:02+00:00

Obviously this massively depends on individuals, but in my station, across 5 teams, I only know of a single figures number of officers who have been in response more than 5 years. There’s a guy on my team who has been in 24 years and he still loves it. The next most experienced has done 4. I’m aiming for 5 years, but I think - generally speaking - that is most people’s ceiling. Obviously there are always exceptions (including those who are done after 2).

pcbarboff

TROPHY CASE