How significant is this report that claims the public feels police officers are "more interested in being woke than solving crimes"?

[JellySaurus]

Home Secretary should reform failing police forces - think tank https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-627323366^

Very pleased to see this statement, and the BBC reporting it, but is it going to make a difference?

And you're repeating your police service "poor little me, how was I to know???!!!"

And, on top of this.

And after all this ignorance.

You now tell us that you used to work in rape crisis??!!!

Goddesses weep. Now, you're trolling.

I'm not trolling.

My work with victims has always been devoted to helping those women .

I was actually good at it . I got good results. But the cost to me personally meant I couldn't continue in that line of work .

Please don't lump me in with what you think of the police service. I was very dedicated to prosecuting the sexual offences I dealt with and I was pretty successful at it .

I am - believe it or not - on your side . But you have the benefit of not knowing exactly what constraints the police and cps work with .

In an ideal world - I'd love to do more .
Please don't think I'm trolling. I came back to the thread because I'm listening and there are questions that I can ask .

If you the women on this thread find anything I'm saying offensive I will not offend further by posting .

If I can offer anything- insight into the law , the constraints within the law we face - I'll happily stay and try to offer that .

I am not here to offend . Or excuse .

I'm reading the links , I'm here to learn and if I can , feed back to my superiors where we are going wrong . To ask the pertinent questions this thread has thrown up .

NB
I didn't work for rape crisis - I worked with them as a police officer.

It was massively educational. That's the kind of training police forces need . Not stonewall.

The reason people think you are trolling is because, if a body cam is able to give the 30 seconds before you hit the button, it is obviously saving on a loop all the time, and the technology dumps everything over 30 seconds/1 minute old but saves it at the front of a section of footage if a button is pressed.

Which means it must be recording it somewhere, it isn't going back in time.

Again, it takes about 10 seconds to work out, that if time travel doesn't exist yet, that's what it is doing.

So insisting it isn't recording when it is, makes it look as if you are trolling.

It IS recording, it is saving it, it just dumps saved data that isn't needed

The reason we get into pedantics is because when a serving police officer tells you something that is impossible [time travel] it undermines everything else they think and say.

And if I was using technology I'd like to know how it works, and so would many people. It feels like you have given up on knowing the why of anything and just do what they tell you. No curiosity.

I think you should keep posting, both of you. It is certainly interesting and more people need to know the machinations of what goes on in the 'back office'.

Here's how it works.

The camera and associated electronic recording device has three states.

• 1. Off. No recording takes place.
• 2. On/Standby. The camera is on, records a short time span in a limited memory-space, most likely in RAM, so at any moment the previous 60/30 seconds have been captured. Sometimes this is described as a 'rolling' 60/30 seconds period of recording. Anything prior to 60/30 seconds is lost as the memory-space it occupied is overwritten. (But see below.*)
• 3. On/Activated. Immediately the operator activates recording (with the apparatus already in On/Standby mode, of course), the 'rolling' 60/30 sec held is moved to a more permanent place/status, where the camera also places the recording it makes from the moment of activation.

Simple enough - and rather like the way our own evolutionarily-developed/god-given consciousness/short/long-term memory works.

Where Felix and others went wrong? Not noticing state (2). Of course the camera can't be wholly off and then switch itself on 30 seconds before activation. It must have been already on and recording. An effect taking place prior to the action which causes it is impossible.

I'm sorry to have so derailed this thread. But the point I made stands. Sorry, Felix, but you seem to be a (somewhat stereotypical) hard-of-thinking bobby. Why should we take seriously anything else you say, given you got this simple aspect of your own day-to-day procedure so wrong?

[*Oh, and the story doesn't quite end here. As with all modern-day surveillance technology, we should be wary of claims that recordings are permanently lost. Sometimes the clever girls and boys the police employ to search computer memory for them will be able to recover 'lost' data - even when recorded over as in this scenario. Big Brother has lots of tricks up his sleeve. So, beware of people in uniform with cameras, particularly if you have done nothing wrong.]

It was massively educational. That's the kind of training police forces need . Not stonewall.

I agree with this. With a service focussed primarily on women (even if they provide services for men), not Survivors Network or Mridul Wadhwa that are more interested in pushing their gender ideology agenda.

Stonewall used to publish a list of which organisations (public sector, private sector, and third sector) who are part of its "Champions" scheme. It took the list down off its website when organisations started leaving en masse

@stillvicarinatutu I remember you from when all this was fields. (Serial name changer here, so you won’t recognise me)

i always admired your tireless efforts on the relationships board, and was a bit surprised when you got yourself in a bit of a pickle earlier. Took some guts to come back with an apology.

Took some guts to come back with an apology.

Absolutely. I appreciate the importance of understanding how the body-worn tech works - and officers should definitely be trained in that - but it some of the criticism seems a little harsh.

There's clearly a misunderstanding over the concept of "it's always recording"; indeed it is, but only 30/60 seconds is retained at any one time. It's clear that still and Felix don't think their bodycams are "always recording" because they couldn't download and review their entire shift when they get back to the station, only the parts (plus 60/30 prior seconds) when they had deliberately activated the device. It's a shame that they weren't taught how it works, but the thread seems to be being unnecessarily derailed over this simple misunderstanding.

Ereshkigalangcleg
And I'm not engaging with this derail and deflection any longer, because you're just coming up with scenarios that are nothing like what has happened here.

I never said that the examples i gave are like what has happened here. I gave three new examples to test you argument - either your argument is good, or your argument is bad.

If you don't want the police to become involved in any kind of 'wrong think' and not have anything recorded anywhere, then your argument should hold for any given situation. As everyday, a new situation will be phoned into the police to deal with. If you argument is sound, then the above examples i gave should just fit in with your thinking that nothing should be recorded anywhere on Mr Smith, Mr Jones & Mr Thompson.

So, I have answered your question, perhaps you could answer mine:
Would you be fine will all three people getting the jobs and being granted a fire arms licence?

What would you do to free up more police resources which are constantly being depleted due to safeguarding? losing entire shifts due to safeguarding issues and not being able to touch anything on the event queue?

This is what is stopping us tackling crime effectively - not 'woke' issues

najene & SantaCarlaCalifornia & SongAtTwiighlight
I'm sorry but it is true - the body cams are always on and on a constant 30 second buffer. So when i press the record button, it activates itself from the 30 second buffered footage. As stillvicarinatutu says, its a feature designed to capture significant moments if they happen without warning.

Its not a case that it knows when to start capturing an incident - its on a constant 30 second buffer which will be 'overwritten' if not activated. Once activated, it starts to record the footage filmed (and sound) for however long you need it (or the battery lasts).

This is why the battery of the camera will not be enough for the entire shift. Of course the battery is also depleted quicker when the button is pressed and it starts to record.

AlisonDonut - its not time travel - its a 30 second buffer

najene - you're not making any sense - the camera is on, but not activated. When 'on' but not 'activated' its constantly on a 30 second buffer. When 'activated' it starts its recorded footage from its 30 second buffer start point - not time travel. So, its not wrong - basically you hit the button on the camera and you get 30 seconds of footage prior to the button being pressed.

SongAtTwiighlight
We don't need on-going training on BWV. We received training on them when they were deployed and nothing has altered on them. I was told how it works and the 30 second pre-recorded buffer. I was told how to mark the footage as evidential, how to upload it to the CPS database and how to add it as a link to MG series of documents so it can be electronically sent to CPS.

We don't really need to know how it works. Most of the officers don't know how the engine management system works on the panda cars and how it communicates with its ECU. They won't know what grade timing belt and how the timing marks line up with the cam shafts, or what the oil pathways are in the cars etc etc

We use laptops - but most won't know the software that's operating in the back ground to make them work, or what chip set is operating on them.

Each call to police is graded on threat, harm and risk - so its not the case that 'you coppers are right there' when someone complains that another has been unkind - and other cirmes are ignored.

just out of interest - how are you judging that a crime such as rape is 'so seldom properly investigated'?

stillvicarinatutu
Our call handlers are similar to yours and don't filter a great deal out. Possibly due to the volume of calls they handle and they amount of calls backing up - so they will often err on the side of caution and just 'put a job on'

However, the filtering starts with the dispatchers, who have more time to read and grade the call due to threat, harm, risk (thrive it we call it). Also comms can filter the jobs out by passing it to the comms supervision (Sgt & Inspector and a FIM if required)

I can also believe that someone rang up saying I'm offended by a sticker and they just put a job in the box, but if it was a simple as this it would have been filtered out at some point before being dispatched to a unit.

What my argument is - we have not actually determined on this thread what was said by the reporting person. You know as well as me that people do embellish things to get a police response - and once they have gone down that route, they won't go back on themselves once police arrive.

The other filter is of course the officers that attended the address - if the reporting person said its 'just a sticker' with no other additional material - why would the officer waste their time in perusing it - they would just write the job off as 'advice given to the reporting person - no further action'. Officers don't want to take on more jobs than they need to due to their crime investigation queues

Why the PCSO went back when the job was closed - no idea - but they were wrong and should have a complaint made against them.

Not sure whats its like in your force, but to reply to SongAtTwiighlight - is a crime such as rape taken seriously in your force? It is in ours and always treated as a priority and properly investigated from my experience. We might not get convictions - but that's a different issue to the police taking it seriously.

I agree with you - that I have never had stonewall or mermaid training or anything like it! And I don't have a lanyard of any description.

TheBiologyStupid
Yes - i was told how it work and the 30 second pre-recorded buffer. I was told how to mark the footage as evidential, how to upload it to the CPS database and how to add it as a link to MG series of documents so it can be electronically sent to CPS.

What we are saying is that we don't need to know the software & hardware which the camera is accessing to make this 30 second pre-record possible.

The reporting person was a PCSO so will know how to game the system. I'd have thought asking the PSCO what the sticker said before sending two officers out, or reading the sticker before knocking on the door would have been a time saving move but as we can see, there is no common sense applied, so much so the PCSO is free to revisit and have another go at the woman.

How many person hours has been spent on one sticker? It is ludicrous.

If
I can ask you all to just think about something:

So . As police officers we learn very quickly that very often things are not what they seem . It is BECAUSE we have an enquiring mindset that we dont just take at face value everything we are told .

That's why Felix is asking the question about how the sticker was reported.

If I can give you an example please .
A man phoned 101 saying his ex , was harassing him and had threatened him with a knife . She was a nurse .
Had I simply taken his account and crimed it - she would have been suspended ok?

What actually happened was she had caught him on dating apps meeting other women and chucked him out of HER house . He wanted her to take him back so was going round every night pissed up hammering on the door until she called 999 and he was arrested. He received a police caution. Within 10 minutes of him leaving custody he rang 101 with the allegations that she was harassing him and threatened him with a knife .

Now had I not had the good sense to nip and see her - and say what's going on ? Had I not looked him up (saying he was the victim here remember? ) I'd have not see he'd been arrested for harassment and start to out two and two together.

When I got her side - (which could all be proven and we remain friends to this day ) I went back to see him . I asked questions, how big was this knife , etc he blustered and I knew he was lying
I don't often lose my patience. But I told him I knew exactly what he was doing , and that if he tried to pull that stunt again I would personally go back round and give him a ticket for wasting police time .

He decided to continue to harass his ex and I subsequently arrested him a further twice . I took her statement . She had the evidence - he didn't because it didn't exist .

He was charged . Restraining order . Bushka.

My point is that if we DID NOT delve into both sides of a story- if we just believed everyone and didn't bother to talk to the accused person- well - the point is people lie . To get what they want . He just wanted revenge because she wouldn't have him back . He was trying to get her sacked and arrested. By lying . We have to talk to both sides for this reason.

I get that this sticker was in the window - but if I go in uniform to a house - then just turn and leave - the neighbours will say to the person ooooo police were at your house today - what for ?

Then people panic . So even if I can see there isn't anything to investigate- as a courtesy I would still knock on and just say hi - nothing to worry about - had a report of xyz - I can see that's not the case - sorry to have bothered you " and on my way .

I guess re the body worn - because it was compulsory- I didn't have a choice to wear it or not - I just didn't ask how it's technology worked - I just learned how to turn it on , how to press record, how view the footage and download it . Pointless asking a great deal when you haven't got a choice to use it or not .

It's like our radios - we can be tracked and watched - I do t love that idea either but I have to use the airwave radio so I don't know how the tracking works - now I am in a slightly different role I can see where everyone is all the time . It's weird . But it also means if someone is being a lazy Bobby and a job comes in right next to them they can't keep quiet and pretend they're not there , and if you get attacked or in trouble - control can see where you are to send help . Double edged sword these things . Yeah it is a bit big brother. But is used as a force for good .

I suppose one of the things that feels like it comes across on here is that the "police " should t talk to people unless they're a suspect or victim.

It's as if were seen as threatening- I ge that because before I was one I used get nervous if a cop car was behind me 😂. But honestly we're just people, often friendly nice people and chatting to people is the biggest part of the job if I'm honest.

A man phoned 101 saying his ex , was harassing him and had threatened him with a knife . She was a nurse. Had I simply taken his account and crimed it - she would have been suspended ok?

No, not OK! I'd have fully expected you to look further into a report of harassment and a woman threatening a man with a knife...rather than just accept it and her lose her job.

The worrying thing is, is the police in a position to just 'crime it' and boom she's lost her job? If so, that's another example of the system that can be weaponised. With no proof and probably no right of appeal because it's just been 'crimed' with nothing to back it up.

No - the police - the job - is investigate . That's literally the job . There seems to be a real culture of fear and suspicion that the police are there to do harm to women pervading here and that's not the norm in my experience. I'm not saying there aren't some whopping mistakes highlighted on this thread .
I think the job is going the wrong way - that's true . New directives all the time with no real thought gone into it -lack of common sense in both new recruits and leadership. I agree .

Me and many of my colleagues agree that simply recording everything as a crime and negating later is fundamentally wrong on every level . We keep waiting for someone to sue and then hopefully Instill change . I had a major major set to with a Sgt only a few weeks ago when being told to crime something that simply was not a crime . I refused. It went to my inspector and luckily they agreed with me - in the end we got audit and governance involved. I dug my heels in but yeah you're right - what we are being told to do now is crime everything and negate it later which is absolutely wrong on every level .

Another question I can ask if our audit and governance dept actually because I think - like me - you get bogged down in the slog of day to day bureaucracy and actually do stop questioning this shit .

I'm glad I did come back actually because it has got the cogs whirring.

I think the fight has been knocked out of me - I've often stood up and said NO but it does get me in bother and seen as trouble . I've had a couple of complaints now because I've said no to something but also lost my rag with it ....I've been on the naughty step a few times now .

I certainly prefer the British tradition where the police are merely citizens in uniform and completely approachable, unlike those in many other countries who are armed to the teeth and you risk a bullet if you catch them on an off day.

That said, I'm sure that you've conducted door-to-door enquiries many times in your career. Therefore I'm sure that you've come across many bizarre reactions when the door opens. Many people just aren't used to a police officer appearing on their doorstep, even if accompanied by a casual "good morning, one of your neighbours was burgled last night, did you see or hear anything unusual?"

When a constable knocks on their door, most people will have all sorts of things racing through their heads: "Where are the kids? Has something happened to them?"

So you can see why it might make people jumpy. Not that it should stop you conducting your enquiries diligently.

In this particular case, a call was made by a PCSO who presumably knew how to push the right buttons for a response (I know from personal experience as a victim how the mention of hate crimes makes people with scrambled egg on their cap very jumpy). After the officers had visited and decided on NFA, a PCSO (was it the same one?) appears to have taken it upon themselves to doorstep the woman again and harangue her. The outcome of the complaint will be interesting, for an officer (not a warranted constable, but still someone in uniform) to have taken it upon themselves to persue what looks like a personal vendetta is surely breaking some of the most elementary principles of policing.

Thank you for that . I'm older not necessarily wiser 😊

After the officers had visited and decided on NFA, a PCSO (was it the same one?) appears to have taken it upon themselves to doorstep the woman again and harangue her. The outcome of the complaint will be interesting, for an officer (not a warranted constable, but still someone in uniform) to have taken it upon themselves to persue what looks like a personal vendetta is surely breaking some of the most elementary principles of policing.

I absolutely agree with you. That pcso completely over reached . I'm glad Bella doe is maki g a complaint. This cannot be tolerated. No one has any right to tell someone how to think . No one has any right to say your opinion is not permitted. (The only time police would even get involved in that quagmire is if someone was foisting their offensive opinion on the public at large using hate speech or displaying hate speech or anything likely to incite hate - and this was definitely not in that league ! ). I've worked with brilliant pcsos and also shockingly bad ones . That this particular pcso didn't know the law , rode rough shod over the warranted officers that did - needs addressing.

I never said that the examples i gave are like what has happened here. I gave three new examples to test you argument - either your argument is good, or your argument is bad.

No, because as I said, the issue isn't one of "if we can monitor paedophiles we should be able to monitor everyone's home life and opinions". There has to be a sense of perspective and proportion.

No - the police - the job - is investigate . That's literally the job . There seems to be a real culture of fear and suspicion that the police are there to do harm to women pervading here and that's not the norm in my experience. I'm not saying there aren't some whopping mistakes highlighted on this thread.

I know that's what the police should be doing. You actually said that alot of the time, you take information on face value and 'crime it'. And when men can easily call up, say things that didn't happen against their wives or girlfriends who are literally trying to escape DV, you just 'crime it', you are playing straight into their hands and not investigating anything.

I am genuinely stunned that behind the scenes, what we suspected was going on is actually going on. No wonder women get shafted by judges in court when all sorts of nonsense has been recorded on them with no evidence or even investigation. People have lost access to their children, bewildered as to why there are reports against them that didn't happen.

You say that you have got lost in the job, and I'd agree with that. You are playing with people's lives here and are in turn being played yourselves.

I do find it quite astonishing that you can't marry up in your head the nurse that could have lost her job to the panic you felt when I asked for your name and number after you were offensive to us. How many other women out there have felt that same panic of not having any right of reply because a man made up something and got it recorded and they lost their income because of it?

Or the panic when 3 people turned up on someone's doorstep to talk about stickers?

Or the panic when officers turn up to discuss you tube channels and being 'untoward about paedophiles'

Or the panic about being arrested and taken to the station in your wheelchair and your house raided [raided!!! books taken!!!] to talk about the stickers in amongst many stickers in town.

And there are many, many more. Honestly in the last 5 years we could probably get pages and pages of them for you. These are just recent and relevant. And these are the ones we know about.

I genuinely am not here to beat you up but the system is being played and you still can't see it.

And all of this why - because many people think biological sex is a thing, we don't want lesbains subjected to rape culture [cotton ceiling], we don't want children transitioned behind our back and get onto the path that leads to puberty blockers, sterilisation and lifelong distress and we don't want males in women's prisons. These are not concepts that are 'out there'. They are perfectly reasonable and there are good sound perfectly normal pedestrian reasons behind them.

I am genuinely stunned that behind the scenes, what we suspected was going on is actually going on. No wonder women get shafted by judges in court when all sorts of nonsense has been recorded on them with no evidence or even investigation.

This. A massive overhaul is needed.