Recalcitrant police forces

Rhoda Klapp

If we really do not hve a policeman who can do the job the way the government wants, they will of course be closing Bramshill and delegitimising ACPO? (They can't disband ACPO. it is not theris to do with as they like, but they can remove all its privileges and ignore its bleatings.)

But as for picking this one yank as the saviour, then failing to get him in, that is a weak stupid policy, deserving of failure. Bratton knows no magic.

Frank P

Ahhh, that Westminster Bubble; made from piss inflated by hot air. It was a non-starter from day one. The new commissioner should have already been in place. Pussyfooting around and the political gimmickry of Septic Supercops is sheer unadulterated bullshit - criminal negligence - and typical of Cameron's media PR background. Cameron will rue the day he took on the Old Bill, whatever their deficiencies (mainly engendered by outgoing Marxist Mob), we still all rely on their presence of a dark night and they are still a deterrent, depleted as they are. Cameron's disproportionate attack on HM Constabulary at large will fuck him in the end. Idiot.

In2minds

ACPO versus No10, is this a turf war between rival gangs on the streets of our cities?

LMS

Much as I would like to see Bill Bratton or someone like him succeed in getting control of the Met, he can't replicate his form of policing over here because our politicians are too chinless to support it.

In the US there is wide acceptance that Policing involves arrests and harsh sentences for the most minor of offences, and we are currently arguing about a 4 year sentence for incitement to riot... in the US incitement to riot would probably get the perpetrator 15-20 years! Big city US police departments are very obviously forces, the Met is a very much a service.

strapworld

Frank P, you are a bit testy this morning dear chap! You and I both know that the Home Office selected Chief Constables are a shadow of what has been. Although we both could name spectacular prats in that role before the Home Office Mould set. The infamous Chief Constable of Durham who, when the aids epidemic first hit the fan, told his force that Domestos killed 99per cent of all germs so they had nothing to fear! The former (met trained) Chief of Northumbria who declared that dustbin lids were a far cheaper and better form of shield for use in riots! I could go on but there were so many really good Chiefs who had got there the hard way and knew what it took to be a copper. Sadly none of the present lot have an inkling. How this government expect them to deliver 'tough' policing does make me laugh. To finish let me have another laugh, Lord Blair!

Austin Barry

If Cameron continues to rile the Met, I suggest he steer well clear of Stockwell tube station.

daniel maris

A nation of 60 million can't produce a decent chief constable? Those senior officers spend years - literally years - on various training courses.

Really we ought to get back to basics. Patrolling and low tolerance Policing reduces crime. Time we implemented sensible policies.

Andrew SW18

I really don't understand all the fuss. Mr Murdoch has clearly established that, in the Met, London already has the best police force that money can buy.

Chris

The idea of bringing in Bratton is laughable. British politicians really need to get out from up the backside of the Americans.

Is this the best we can do?

If Downing Street cannot overrule the Home Secretary on the choice of Police Commissioner, then how can they realistically implement cuts?

These are not Tories that we are dealing with; these are low-fat Labourites or Libdem amateurs (take your pick!). This bunch of Tories is not Maggie's party; some might see that as a good thing, but that is what's not needed for these perilous times.

Jeremy

Well if he will go around doing impressions of Dennis Hopper and calling himself "the world's most successful policeman", what does he expect?

"Ah'd uh-gotten de jahb...if it weren't fer dose cah-mmie pinko lah-mis...."

Perhaps we could get something patrolling the shopping precinct at Trowbridge. He'd probably go down well in Trowbridge...

strapworld

Andrew SW18 tell me your next stand up booking.

Tariq

Clearly the PM was hoping Bratton would do for the Met, and for him, what Ian MacGregor did for the Coal Board and for Mrs. Thatcher. But does England really have to keep looking to the American experience to sort out its problems?

Viv Evans

"Number 10, though, maintains that it still wants to appoint outsiders to positions of authority in the police, even though it is now trying to claim that the commissioner of the Met was the wrong place to start this process. It was, apparently, too big a job to give to someone from outside the magic circle of chief constables."

'Magic circle' of constables - yep, it truly is, especially as they seem to think they are not accountable and even PMs should bend their knees ...

Regarding what 10 Downing Street 'maintains' - reminds me of St Augustine's Prayer: "Lord make me chaste - but not just yet."

Axstane

We do not have any idea how Bratton would perform. Our policing style [no jokes please]is totally different to that which pervades in the USA.

Peter London

ACPO, a private company, should be getting no support from the Government.

Also is Hugh Orde a serving policeman? He is 'Chief Constable' of ACPO but isn't this like Alan Sugar being 'Chief Constable' of AMSTRAD?

If he is not a serving officer then why does he go around dressed like one?

Chris Rose

To those who have commented above:

You may be right that he was unsuitable for the job. There may be a better candidate. But why wasn't he allowed to apply? Not allowed to apply! Quite extraordinary.

Yosemite Sam

Re Sir Huge Orde and his role at Acpo. Isn't it an offence to impersonate a police officer?

Occasional Ostrich

LMS @ 12:40pm

"very much a service."

Aren't 'services' required to serve? Someone other than themselves, I mean.

Biggestaspidistra

Are we allowed to bar foreigners from British jobs? I thought we weren't.

Chris

Gosh, Jeremy, you're almost as funny as a dose of the clap.

Frank P

Peter London

You are right. Have you looked up the ACPO website and discovered just what a scam it now is. What a toxic mix of private commerce and double dipping excops. I don't wonder that widespread bunging is now rife again and Commissioners and AC's are 'at it'.

I can only assume the TB fixed up some sinecure status for Orde as reward for his compliance in NI. What a carve up that settlement was?

ACPO was once just a yearly piss-up of Senior officers who swapped war stories and took turns at being chairman. Who the feck do they think they are now? Orde should take his pensions and his honorary directorships and STFU.

Tariq

Ian McGregor was Canadian. Don't speak ill of the dead. Just before he died I spoke to him the clinic of a London Hospital and asked him what he thought of Blair being elected.

"Ahhhh. The Trojan Horse!" He replied. How right he was.

And look what's spilled out of the belly of this latest one, too.

All together now, in the immortal words of Sir Richard Mottram, "..........%*!!**?&!!..etc."

Oh yes, indeed we are!

Andrew

first Cameron invites him over, then fails to get him in, then pretends he didn't want him. cameron is hapless. I have never seen someone not live up to their potential so spectacularly. he's probably surrounded himself with yesmen like Obama and genuinely thinks he is doing a good job.

I S

'The best candidate for the job'? In his own mind, maybe.
No surprise to note that a juvenile twerp like yourself has been suckered by Bratton's bullshit.
Why this cultural cringe toward the Yanks? I came across a few septic advisers during the Blair/Brown era and I struggled to ascertain what they brought to the table , apart from overweening self-confidence and stupefyingly impenetrable management gobbledegook.

Frank P

strapworld

There's a very great distance between criticising current police practices and wet senior officers (which I do consistently, as you know if you bother to read my posts) and suggesting that the answer is to import a bullshitting 'supercop' as Cameron is doing and thereby writing off every other copper in the UK by doing it.

I could tell you stories going back to the early Fifties about politicians who thought they could usurp the constabulary duties and call the shots to their own advantage (why else would a politician do anything in today's world)). They all came a cropper and so will this prick. It's political suicide, because unless politicians are prepared to do the grunt work involved in policing, then there own arses depend on the boys in blue; and I don't mean the fey posturing college boys who have have been given the levers of political power in the police, I mean the chaps and chapesses who have to attend the eruptions that break out through the thin veneer of civilisation and put their lives on the line. If I remember correctly, the last Guv'nor to go down at the sharp end was Superintendent Richardson from Blackpool, a long long time ago. And if I was to tell you the true story of that cock-up, your hair (if you have any left) would turn white, curl and fall out. As you say, police corruption is not new, but the worst form of corruption, complacent incompetence, is what does the damage and that needs fixing from within. It has been achieved in the past and can be again. But not by giving a grandstanding Yank another pension as a PR exercise.

Heads need to be cracked by the good guys in the Job. There are thousands of them who could do it, given the chance. They just need resources and backing and pandering to the public clamour of people who want to work off their petty grievances against police by making the constabulary pips squeak with 'their share of the cuts' is folly of the highest order. He will regret it. Particularly as some of the worst villains on our patch have seats in the Westminster Gas Works - as we have seen recently demonstrated. The hypocrites are just deflecting attention away from their villainy. Grrrr! You're right, I am in a testy mood having just visited Tesco and paid £73 to fill up the petrol tank of my modest family car and another £55 for half a trolley of inferior crap called groceries which have been inflated by about 100% in the last 6 months.

Thieving bastards! Who has given the green light for this sort of extortion? If the rioters were to set fire to Cameron in a Tesco forecourt, I wouldn't piss on him to put out the flames. The oily bastard would probably burn in a flash anyway.

David Lindsay

Look, he might very well have a contribution to make. But come on. Would a Briton be considered for Chief of Police in Boston, New York or Los Angeles, even if he had been a highly successful Commissioner of the Met? Well, there you are, then.

David Cameron's merciful failure to hand over the policing of by far our largest city, together with nationwide responsibility for counter-terrorism and for the security of the Royal Family, to this "Supercop" should serve as a spur to us finally to get over imported cop shows.

Then we would no longer have the ridiculous spectacle of cars careering through our quiet countryside adorned with imitations of the giant badge of the NY or LAPD. Nor would we have to endure guff either about elected sheriffs or about "a British FBI".

ndm

James Forsyth writes:

-- It was, apparently, too big a job to give to someone from outside the magic circle of chief constables.

More significantly. It demonstrates a real lack of self-confidence for a country with 60 million people not to be able to find someone to run its top police force. If the Prime Minister lacks this level of confidence in the country - he should take the obvious measure and step down.

David Ossitt

Peter London
“Also is Hugh Orde a serving policeman?”

No he is not.

Google Hugh Orde and then click on the Hugh Orde – Wikipedia link, in my opinion he is a political appointee.

The Wiki page is quite brief but none the less makes sickening reading, here is just a snippet.

“ Sir Hugh Stephen Roden Orde, OBE, QPM is currently Chief Constable and President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, representing the 44 police forces of England, Wales and Northern Ireland”

And so it would appear that you can be a Chief Constable, without having a force (sorry service) to be Chief Constable of, and one might surmise; if you have kissed and fondled the right arses.

biggestaspidistra

from Graeme Archer's blog in the telegraph on this subject:

"The British public sector has finally achieved the endpoint of its lunatic dream: diversity co-ordinators abound, demanding that ethnic, gender, age “targets” are met, which means discrimination against potentially more suitable candidates for some jobs. But when it comes to the top jobs, the Old Boy’s Network prevails, in a fashion that wouldn’t be tolerated in any other walk of life."

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/graemearcher/100101294/theresa-may-rejected-bill-bratton-for-one-morally-repellent-reason-because-he-is-an-american/#dsq-content

Rhoda Klapp

"If the rioters were to set fire to Cameron in a Tesco forecourt, I wouldn't piss on him to put out the flames. "

Is that only because of the old trouble, Frank?

Tom B

A bad decision by HMG. No doubt fearful of the disgruntlement of British police officers, but I think that some Brit cops might quite like the energy and obvious success that Bratton has enjoyed.

There are aspects of US policing that I don't want to see in the UK - there have been a spate of "no-knock" raids on homes amid the disastrous War on Drugs that have gone terribly wrong - but the US also has many examples of successfully controlling gangs and making the country safer. I fondly remember being able to walk around New York in the 1990s and last decade, feeling much safer than in the days of old.

Anti-Americanism is an ugly emotion at the best of times. In situations like this, it is ugly indeed.

Frank P

Perhaps we should let the Police Federation that represents, without militancy and privilege like ACPO, the rank and file of rozzers, have to say about what's going on. The MSM seem reluctant to give them a hearing:

"GIVE THE PUBLIC THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM THEY WANT

The country is in danger of fighting violence, arson and looting on our city streets with sound-bites. The Metropolitan Police Federation – and, we suspect, every victim of the recent riots – want to see these criminal acts fought, instead, with a resilient, efficient, properly resourced criminal justice system.And this is something which, at the moment, the country does not have.

Prime Minister David Cameron has been quoted as saying: "Whatever resources the policeneed, they will get."

Yet police manpower resources are being diminished. Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary Report 'Adapting to Austerity' says that, as a result of the cut to its budget, the Police Service in England and Wales is reducing in size by 16,200 police officers.

This is almost exactly the number of officers that was deemed necessary be on the streets to protect London from criminal attack on the night of August 9.

Mr Cameron was also quoted as saying he had asked the police if they had everything they needed and had been told they had.

Which police were these, precisely? Senior officers? The very epitome of back office people which the Government has vowed to eradicate?

Or front-line police such as the frighteningly outnumbered officers attempting against the odds to protect the streets of Tottenham during the first night of rioting?

Mr Cameron says the police will be allowed to use baton rounds – "Whatever tactics the police feel they need to employ, they will have legal backing to do so."

So what? The police have legal backing to use ordinary batons, too, but many fear to do so in case one strike goes wrong and the officer involved faces a criminal charge.

What the police need is not meaningless words but cast-iron assurances at the highest political level that they will be allowed to confront arsonists and looters effectively without fear of themselves ending up in prison. The Government has made much of its intention to reduce police bureaucracy. What the police need here is action, not words.

As things stand, a dog handler is being obliged to waste time writing a statement when their dog has, on instruction, barked at someone – because this is deemed to be a use of force.

Similarly, an officer who draws a baton in the face of a hostile crowd must record their actions in detail. Let's get rid of this bureaucracy, not talk about getting rid of it.

From the front line officers' point of view, London's police are already being squeezed until the pips squeak.

In the Met, leave has already been cancelled for the next week; a week later there is no leave due to the Notting Hill Carnival and there is no leave the weekend after that due to a planned English Defence League march.

Officers will continue to do everything they can to protect London and its citizens; however they cannot sustain extended hours of working indefinitely.

And while they endure gruelling duties which last up to 20 straight hours at a stretch, they know that shortly their payment for doing so is to be slashed.

Burning buildings and looted premises provided dramatic pictures for media covering the riots. But from the point of view of police, the most striking images were those of youths and children committing acts of destruction and theft without even bothering to cover their faces in front of the television cameras.

Why? Because they do not fear the criminal justice system. And that's not surprising.

Many of the young people arrested by Metropolitan officers during the riots were, on Crown Prosecution Service advice, given police bail, meaning that they were immediately back on the streets again.

Some will doubtless vanish before any further action can be taken against them.

The Prime Minister has stated that anyone convicted of violent disorder will be sent to prison.

We will wait and see whether the CPS and courts share his appetite for incarceration.

In view of the thousands of breached community sentences and ASBOs which litter the Criminal Justice System – not to mention the millions of pounds in unpaid fines – we have little faith that they do.

What the police need is a more resolute approach in punishing offenders, who are all too often are freed by the courts to re-offend, obliging officers to expend time, energy and resources in re-arresting them for new offences time and time again.

Metropolitan Police officers have total sympathy with, and care about, those people who have lost their homes and possessions or their businesses, which they have spent a lifetime building up. Officers are committed to doing all they can to prevent fresh victimisation by the mob - or indeed, any criminal.

But those in power must listen to the people who know most about policing the streets –the frontline officers who actually do it – and must mean it when they say these men and women will be properly resourced.

And the bigger machine of which the police are just a part – the criminal justice machine – must be made to work in the way the public want it to work and have a right to expect it to work.

John Tully.
Vice Chairman Metropolitan Police Federation.

For further information, please contact John Tully on 07825 169648"

There you have it my blogging buddies, direct from the horses mouth. The voice of the PBI. Listen up!

Baron

Frank, would you mind if Baron were brutally honest with you, tell you why you shop at Tesco, fill up a modest family car, rage, the guy who just got himself retired from the Met top job is likely to miss Tesco altogether, his car, a Rolls if he wants it, fill be filled up by a chauffeur?

Hold it not against Baron though, he still admires your wordsmithing ability, and your capacity to bang the head against a wall, what’s it made of anyway?

Look, those who got the job, will get the job, will do in the job what the laws of the country tell them what they must do, the laws enacted because the pseudo-liberal elite that calls the tune here wanted them enacted, imported, it’s that simple, if the uman Rights thing, other pieces of legislation shackling the police’s, the courts’ hands remain as they are, are not removed not even Him could do any better, clear the streets permanently, make the place as safe as it was before the rot set in. It won’t happen for as the force morphed into service, justice morphed from retributive to restorative, restoring the criminal back to crime before one can say restore.

You just read the judgment below, it appears on another blog courtesy of a legal man, the judge goes on and on how tough he must be to punish those who participated in the riots, then hands out the sentences: 18,16 months, 10 months suspended, referral. If the sentences for the rioting were that lenient what can a copper guided not by the Yank but by one of your Met’ hard men do to a lad who litters, spits at him, calls him a pig, ha.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/Misc/2011/12.html

ndm

Graeme Archer blogs on The Telegraph:

-- The Home Secretary has decided, in advance: no Americans. That’s not just short-sighted. It’s almost morally disgusting.

Short-sighted? Morally disgusting? Britain does not need Bratton to run the Metropolitan Police - but it does need better quality commentators.

Baron

and another thing, Frank:

this chap Tully (a mate of yours?) makes a similar point: “The police have legal backing to use ordinary batons, too, but many fear to do so in case one strike goes wrong and the officer involved faces a criminal charge.”

you see, sir, the umbrella under which any and all statutes, regulations, guidance and stuff come under is the omnipresent, omnipotent uman Rights Act, the subsidiary, supplementary statutes flowing from it, we leave them as they are, no tweaking, no removal, no nothing, things stay as they are, likely get worse, just wait until the public shock, anger, disbelief over the rioting subside as they must, the uproar of the pseudo-liberal elite will be deafening, they’ll insist we must further loosen prison punishment, we must hug the thug, it's the society that has failed them, we must throw more money at re this and re the other.

When the boy says the police have his ‘full backing’, the answer to him should be ‘stuff it’, we need the full backing of the law, the law and only the law speaks, rules, gives full backing.

as the folks who speak Latin say: Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius.

Frank P

Rhoda Klapp

You been hacking into my medical records? You don't work for News International do you? :-)

porkbelly

In all the fuss about whether a foreigner can be trusted with leading the august Met (good thing the same nationalistic standards are not applied to sports), and the hand-wringing about how to unshackle the cop on the beat, think for a moment about what abandoning the softly-softly approach to criminal justice will require: lots more prisons filled with lots more criminals and costing lots more money.

Because, at the bottom of it, there is a criminal underclass that is not going to respond to all the tough love in the world. They have been born and raised as opportunistic sociopaths, molded by the environment Blair and his minions constructed for them. They are mostly not going to change - they'll just modify their criminality to suit the circumstances.

So all the additional policing will simply funnel more of them into the criminal justice system, and as Frank P points out there is nothing to be gained by processing them through the same old revolving door of lenient judges: the only thing that will take them off the streets is prison. Basically you will have a whole generation of young men from urban areas behind bars, and the rest of us will be glad of it.

Not pretty but there it is. This is one way America got its crime rate down and why the incarceration rate there is so high - it works.

Mirtha Tidville

Bratton..the best man for the job???????????err how do you know this...I`ll have a pint of whatever Forsyths been on...

Un-PC social worker

I went to a talk given by Bratton at the Atheneum a few years ago: I thought he was very very impressive.

Frank P

Un-PC social worker.

"I went to a talk given by Gratton at the Atheneum a few years ago ..."

Exactly! Very droll.