Good policing or showing ‘citizen focus’?

Inspector Gadget has been writing about the latest load of codswallop that frontline police officers have had poured over them by their senior management teams and politicans, namely the shift to “Citizen Focus” and the need for officers to generate letters from the public to show that they are suitably focused.

Of course, all it means is that a certain kind of officer will simply focus on getting a suitable number of letters instead of doing any real policing, while leaving the real policing to those those officers who believe in what they do and act accordingly.

It’s no different to teachers who teach to the government’s tests, no different to NHS staff who work to narrow targets and no different to civil servants who work to quota.

But I don’t want to go off on yet another rant about petty, target-obsessed apparachiks, whether in uniform or not.

Instead, I want to give a few first-hand examples of good policing that I’ve appreciated without necessarily feeling the need to write effusive letters for senior officers to collect, appraise, analyse and, I suspect, file on a loo roll.

I’ve written before about the police officer who handled the investigation into last year’s hit-run incident, so I’ll skip over that and start with a traffic stop in Aberdeen a couple of years ago.

I was driving our Land Rover Defender along Union Street. I had the whole family aboard, a heavy washing machine in the back, and numerous bits of heavy farm and recovery gear packed around the machine.

I was driving carefully as it had started to mist with rain, the road surface was greasy and the old Defender not only had a heavy load but has drum brakes on the rear and knobbly off-road tyres.

As I was approaching an intersection at about 15mph, the lights went to yellow.

In a lighter, modern car with road tyres and all-round disc brakes, I’d have been able to stop easily and safely.

But as I started to brake the Defender, I realised I couldn’t stop easily on the greasy road and had three options.

If I braked hard, the tyres were going to lose grip and I was going slide with limited or no control through the intersection.

If I braked more gently, I’d maintain control but come to a stop somewhere in the middle of the intersection.

If I accelerated, I’d get through the intersection but on the red. There was a bus waiting to my left, but it was stationary and would take longer to get up to speed, so there was no major danger.

I lifted off the brake and accelerated, with the old truck lumbering through the intersection and the bus crossing behind.

A few seconds later, a police van turned left, positioned itself behind me and flashed its lights.

I pulled over and as the driver approached, I wound the window down.

He recoiled as the air from the Defender hit him. We’d been hauling pigs in it the day before, we’d had the heating on full blast and a visible miasma of warm pig stench had wrapped itself around the poor officer’s head.

“You’re from the country then?”, were his first words.

After asking for my details, my licence and details of the car ownership (it’s in the Other Half’s name), the officer asked if I knew why I’d been stopped.

I said yes, that we’d gone through the intersection as the yellow had changed to red and that the bus had probably been inconvenienced.

The officer said the bus had started to move off but had braked as a precaution. He asked why I’d gone through the light.

I explained the situation, and the officer had a look in the back of the Defender, had a look at the wheels and nodded.

“Would you say you were going too fast?” he asked.

“Normally, no, but that section of road was too greasy for the speed I was doing in the truck with the load, tyres and brakes that it has.” 

“Would you say you made a judgement call specific to the circumstances?”

“Yes. I had three options and picked what I thought was the best.”

“Okay. You can go on your way, but be careful. There’s a lot of oil and diesel on these roads and as you found out, the rain is lifting it up. Nice meeting you, sir.”

I’d have readily accepted a ticket for going through the red light, but both I and the OH were impressed by the officer’s considered, proportionate and reasoned approach.

Did it merit a letter to the police SMT to evidence the officer’s “Citizen Focus”? Of course not.

The officer had more than demonstrated his courtesy, professionalism and policing skills to us, he’d shown that my transgression had been noted, and he’d made a decision that left a good impression while also conveying that in different circumstances the result could (and would) have been very different.

I call that evidence of being a good police officer, which is far more important than demonstrating citizen focus.

I’ll try to give a few more examples later, particularly relating to incidents with a very aggressive gang of would-be home invaders, a peeping tom and a street robber, but I’m out of time for now.