LOSING THE DETECTIVES: VIEWS FROM THE ... - Police Federation

Routine abstractions
In addition to the vacancies discussed above GO CID also have to cope with further
reductions in their strength caused by abstractions through annual leave,
maternity/paternity leave, part-time working, training, court attendance and sickness.
The last of these compounded the workload problem which was itself the cause of
stress-induced sickness absence.
Discussion
The focus groups revealed that a serious and alarming situation has arisen in GO
CID teams across England and Wales: these teams are operating with a fraction of
the detectives they require to service properly the demands made on them. They are
consequently carrying an excessive workload which has obvious implications for the
number of investigations they can satisfactorily complete and the number of
offenders that are taken to court and successfully prosecuted. The operational
resilience of these teams is seriously impaired. In some areas of the country the
situation is critical: there are often no detectives on duty in GO CID for long periods
of the day and only a trainee detective on duty at night.
It has been shown that GO CID has been depleted of its strength of experienced
detectives because the police forces have created new crime squads and enlarged
existing ones. Such specialist squads are not a new phenomenon in policing in the
UK. For decades they have been the police service’s response to specific types of
crime and criminals. ‘Generally speaking, the aim of squads has been to identify and
target key groups or individuals involved in the relevant activities, gathering
intelligence and evidence about their activities and eventually effecting planned
arrests (Maguire, 2003 :374).
As the threat from terrorism has increased and with the promotion of the National
Intelligence Model and intelligence-led policing the squad imperative has developed
a new dynamic.There is little point in investing in intelligence gathering and analysis
through dedicated units, covert human intelligence sources etc if there is not the
capacity to develop fully the intelligence packages and the resources to carry out the
necessary surveillance and other taskings and then finally to execute the planned
arrests. Given these pressures it is easy to understand why ACPO teams and SMTs
have been unable to resist the temptation to strip their GO CID of experienced
detectives, particularly when both sets, and especially the SMTs, are additionally
under pressure to meet their sanction detection targets. As we have seen, this has
resulted in the expansion of squads at BCU level at the expense of GO CID.
The dysfunctional consequences of squad specialisation for other parts of the police
organisation were foreseen by Fitzgerald et al in an earlier study which included
focus groups in the Metropolitan Police Service. They found that:
'The crime fighting focus has also brought growing specialisation,
with the establishment of teams to tackle, for example, burglary,
robbery, drugs, autocrime and hate crime. However, there is a risk
that they may be set up in a way that strips the uniformed patrol
strength of its officers and erodes their job satisfaction and skills.
Our findings suggest this happened.' (Fitzgerald et al, 2002: 142)
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