Personally, I’d rather see the Met Police clean up the Tory party.
The longer their failings can be discussed, the less the failings of the Home Secretary will be.
Braverman is appalling in all respects, but it’s not not really clear to me that there’s a deliberate attempt at delay from this article. The whole system of police dismissal *is* complex and byzantine, but it is has been built up as protections in response to things like police being unable to strike. Unpicking that lot is going to complex. The Home Office has promised to publish proposals in May – lets see what they come up with.
Why? Why aren’t you dealing with a problem that literally everyone wants solving?
I’m sure Suella would love to have an organisation of racist, misogynist stormtroopers that reports directly to her. If anything, she’s likely to relax the Met’s hiring practices with the claim that it needs new recruits.
From reading this article, it seems like they’re criticizing the home sec for……Not getting rid of what few employment rights the police actually have?
Policing is unlike most jobs in terms of what is expected of officers.
– Police officers have forced overtime. If you’re shift comes to an end as you are making an arrest, you don’t get to go home for the next 4/5 hours whilst you deal with that arrest. Doesn’t matter if you need to collect the kids from school, or if you had plans. You will be staying at work.
– Police officers can be forced to cancel their days off at exceptionally short notice. It is fairly common to get a phone call or email to say your day off tomorrow is now cancelled and you have to work. Again, there’s no arguing with it, it doesn’t matter if you had plans. You have to cancel them and work.
– Police officers can’t strike. It is actually illegal for police officers to strike. If police officers don’t like their pay offer, or they want a change in conditions, there is absolutely nothing they can do to fight for those things. They just have to suck it up.
– Police officers have to give up half an hour’s worth of overtime every day. If my shift ends at 3, I won’t be paid any overtime until 330. So if I work until 4, I get 30 minutes. If I work until 329, I get nothing. It doesn’t seem like much, but it can add up to a full 8 hour day worked for free over the course of a month.
The pushback against all of these crap bits of police regulations, is that there are lots of protections in place to secure an officer’s job. The idea behind these protections, is to avoid sacking people for honest mistakes, or minor misconducts. For example, it wouldn’t be proportionate to sack a police officer if they were prosecuted for speeding in their personal car. Nor would it be fair to sack someone for making a genuine mistake during an investigation.
By loosening police regulations, it makes it easier to get rid of the wrongdoers, or the layabouts, or the corrupt officers. But it also makes it easier to get rid of the good cops who make honest, completely human errors. Given that the state of policing over the immediate future will be judged on “How many people did we sack”, I fear that looser regs will mean lots of good police officers will be sacked over petty stuff that could be resolved in other ways.
The recent Casey report made it abundantly clear that underfunding is a huge cause of the issues which has led the the powers that be being unable to appropriately deal with these people who should not be holding the position of constable.
The Met has faced a 18% reduction in funding during a period where their demand has doubled. In order to meet this they have made cuts, most notably to HR departments which would deal with this. Many have been outsourced to companies which do not understand the nuances of police regs, therefore fail to discipline or sack these arseholes. Cuts have also been made to vetting and training, to try and keep more bobbies on the beat. Cuts have consequences and this is very clearly a significant one. But according to Theresa May, we were just scaremongering.
Because she has zero idea how to start, and zero interest in how it works.
Well, we always knew there were witches hiding in plain sight in the government, didn’t we? Suella Braverman has just revealed herself as the wicked witch of Westminster!
Honestly 50-50 chance whether it’s just tactics by Tories or just sheer incompetence by Tories.
Assuming Labour win the next election, you could argue Braverman is delaying attempts to give her successor a nice job to deal with. It is something that will take years to achieve, with hundreds of officers potentially in line for disciplinary action of some sort (including facing the sack). This would also mean that there would have to be a huge recruitment drive to replace officers forced to leave, as well as years spent training up new officers; it would leave the Met in a perilous state and make tackling crime much harder than it currently is. It would be terrible PR for the Tories and so she is saving it for Labour instead.
Total islamaphobe and a racist. Nothing surprises me when it comes to her.
12 comments
Personally, I’d rather see the Met Police clean up the Tory party.
The longer their failings can be discussed, the less the failings of the Home Secretary will be.
Braverman is appalling in all respects, but it’s not not really clear to me that there’s a deliberate attempt at delay from this article. The whole system of police dismissal *is* complex and byzantine, but it is has been built up as protections in response to things like police being unable to strike. Unpicking that lot is going to complex. The Home Office has promised to publish proposals in May – lets see what they come up with.
Why? Why aren’t you dealing with a problem that literally everyone wants solving?
I’m sure Suella would love to have an organisation of racist, misogynist stormtroopers that reports directly to her. If anything, she’s likely to relax the Met’s hiring practices with the claim that it needs new recruits.
From reading this article, it seems like they’re criticizing the home sec for……Not getting rid of what few employment rights the police actually have?
Policing is unlike most jobs in terms of what is expected of officers.
– Police officers have forced overtime. If you’re shift comes to an end as you are making an arrest, you don’t get to go home for the next 4/5 hours whilst you deal with that arrest. Doesn’t matter if you need to collect the kids from school, or if you had plans. You will be staying at work.
– Police officers can be forced to cancel their days off at exceptionally short notice. It is fairly common to get a phone call or email to say your day off tomorrow is now cancelled and you have to work. Again, there’s no arguing with it, it doesn’t matter if you had plans. You have to cancel them and work.
– Police officers can’t strike. It is actually illegal for police officers to strike. If police officers don’t like their pay offer, or they want a change in conditions, there is absolutely nothing they can do to fight for those things. They just have to suck it up.
– Police officers have to give up half an hour’s worth of overtime every day. If my shift ends at 3, I won’t be paid any overtime until 330. So if I work until 4, I get 30 minutes. If I work until 329, I get nothing. It doesn’t seem like much, but it can add up to a full 8 hour day worked for free over the course of a month.
The pushback against all of these crap bits of police regulations, is that there are lots of protections in place to secure an officer’s job. The idea behind these protections, is to avoid sacking people for honest mistakes, or minor misconducts. For example, it wouldn’t be proportionate to sack a police officer if they were prosecuted for speeding in their personal car. Nor would it be fair to sack someone for making a genuine mistake during an investigation.
By loosening police regulations, it makes it easier to get rid of the wrongdoers, or the layabouts, or the corrupt officers. But it also makes it easier to get rid of the good cops who make honest, completely human errors. Given that the state of policing over the immediate future will be judged on “How many people did we sack”, I fear that looser regs will mean lots of good police officers will be sacked over petty stuff that could be resolved in other ways.
The recent Casey report made it abundantly clear that underfunding is a huge cause of the issues which has led the the powers that be being unable to appropriately deal with these people who should not be holding the position of constable.
The Met has faced a 18% reduction in funding during a period where their demand has doubled. In order to meet this they have made cuts, most notably to HR departments which would deal with this. Many have been outsourced to companies which do not understand the nuances of police regs, therefore fail to discipline or sack these arseholes. Cuts have also been made to vetting and training, to try and keep more bobbies on the beat. Cuts have consequences and this is very clearly a significant one. But according to Theresa May, we were just scaremongering.
Because she has zero idea how to start, and zero interest in how it works.
Well, we always knew there were witches hiding in plain sight in the government, didn’t we? Suella Braverman has just revealed herself as the wicked witch of Westminster!
Honestly 50-50 chance whether it’s just tactics by Tories or just sheer incompetence by Tories.
Assuming Labour win the next election, you could argue Braverman is delaying attempts to give her successor a nice job to deal with. It is something that will take years to achieve, with hundreds of officers potentially in line for disciplinary action of some sort (including facing the sack). This would also mean that there would have to be a huge recruitment drive to replace officers forced to leave, as well as years spent training up new officers; it would leave the Met in a perilous state and make tackling crime much harder than it currently is. It would be terrible PR for the Tories and so she is saving it for Labour instead.
Total islamaphobe and a racist. Nothing surprises me when it comes to her.