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

CHAPTER 4
The workload of GO CID and the remits of s pecialist squads
Effects on workload of GO CID
Respondents in the focus groups maintained that, whatever other benefits specialist
squads may bring, their introduction has not provided the relief to GO CID which
might have been expected and has certainly not compensated for the reduction in
numbers they have experienced. GO CID teams have lost experienced detectives to
squads set up at force and regional level to combat terrorism and organised crime.
Although this has not resulted in any reduction in GO CID workload because of the
specialised nature of the work undertaken, the detectives in the groups recognised
that such squads were necessary.
Much of the discussion in the groups focussed, in fact, on other types of specialist
squads, principally the MITs set up at force level but also specialist units in BCUs.
The establishment of these squads to investigate specific types of crime such as
murder, volume crime and particular classes of offenders has relieved GO CID of
some, but by no means all, of the responsibility they had for investigating these
crimes when their departments were much larger and fully resourced. However,
determining which offences fall within the remit of MITs is not as straightforward, in
practice, as it first appears.
Determining the classification of incidents
Given their title, one might have expected to find that the MITs set up at force level
would take responsibility for investigating all the more serious and complex offences
like murders and assaults involving serious injuries, stranger rapes etc. This does
not necessarily follow because the definition of what is a serious offence is not
predetermined but is the product of processes of interpretation and negotiation.
Workload pressure on MITs and their limited resources mean they have to engage in
regular negotiations with GO CID and, sometimes, other specialist teams over
whether a particular incident falls within their remit and, if so, whether it should take
priority over other cases they are investigating. Members of SMTs have had to
adjudicate in disputes between heads of specialist squads as to the ‘correct’
definition of an incident in order to decide whether GO CID or a specialist squad
should take on the investigation and if the latter, which specialist squad.
As Innes found in his research on murder investigations, determining the ‘correct’
definition to apply to an incident is not as straightforward as it might appear:
'The work of the police in terms of deciding upon which is the
correct definition to apply to an incident is often not clear cut.
Overall, the qualitative distinctions between different crimes, and
between crimes and non-crimes, are often more subtle than is
generally understood.' (Innes, 2003: 60).
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