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

FOREWORD
The Joint Central Committee (JCC) of the Police Federation of England and Wales
was becoming increasingly concerned by a barrage of reports it was receiving from
the Detectives' Forum and Joint Branch Boards around the country that the
resilience of General Office CID was being severely diminished and that there was a
debilitating shortage of trained and experienced detectives. The reported
consequence was that some serious crime was not being properly investigated and
detected.
The JCC therefore commissioned Dr Michael Chatterton to conduct an independent
study into General Office CID to examine the issues of resilience, workload and
training and to identify the consequences. This follows an earlier report 'Response
Policing in the Modern Police Organisation - Views from the Frontline' (Chatterton
and Bingham, 2006).
There is much common ground between the two reports: both identify the
detrimental effects of the sanctions detection regime and the excessively rigid and
bureaucratic approach to targets and performance management. A combination of
these is having a pernicious and perverse effect on police operations. They are:
•&diverting police priorities from serious crime to chasing minor
offences;
•&criminalising members of the public who are not criminals in
the accepted sense;
• giving the public a false sense of security that serious crime is
being detected with increasing effectiveness by the police;
and
•&undermining the discretion necessary for the impartial
discharge of the office of constable.
There is no change in Government and senior police management policy which is at
once more urgent and important than this.
This report reveals that there is a serious skills and experience deficit in General
Office CID. Detectives are simply not being fully trained. It is vital for chief officers
to facilitate and support the Professional ising Criminal Investigation Programme
(PIP). We call upon the Government, as an immediate response to this situation, to
specify a minimum number of fully trained detectives that each force should maintain
as a proportion of its police officer complement.