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

The GO CID focus groups recognised this as the reason why their own
subsequent investigations into these incidents were made more difficult and timeconsuming.
[It's] because of pressure from their inspector and sergeants. They
are told ‘Right, you’ve arrested them for burglary. OK. CID will deal
with it in the morning, you get back out on the streets now. We can’t
allow you to go to somebody’s house and spend an hour taking a
statement or going and finding a witness and taking a statement off
them 'cos we’ve only got two officers out on nights’.
In the 2006 report it was predicted that the introduction of Neighbourhood Policing
would impose additional workload pressures on the 24/7 response reliefs, further
depleting them of experienced officers. In the CID focus groups repeated reference
was made to how Neighbourhood Policing has taken experienced first line
supervisors away from the 24/7 response reliefs. This has increased the supervisory
workload of sergeants, in some areas, by making them responsible for both
Neighbourhood Policing Teams and response teams. In others it has resulted in a
shortage of patrol sergeants as many of the vacated posts have not been filled.
The CID groups claimed that many uniformed sergeants, particularly those without
CID experience and those who are acting up, are struggling to combine their frontline
supervisory responsibilities with those of a first-line manager. This is not
surprising in light of the findings of a recent national study of the role of the patrol
sergeant which found that sergeants do not have sufficient time to perform their core
supervisory tasks adequately:
'Sergeants have identified a range of difficulties in performing this
complex dual role [of first line manager and front line supervisor].
They have expressed a variety of specific concerns about their
numerous and various roles and responsibilities. However, their most
persistent concern relates to the increased and increasing demands
on their time. This means that, across the range of their work
responsibilities, there is often insufficient time to complete tasks to a
standard which satisfies them as Sergeants.' (WMG Associates:
2006 19).
When the GO CID focus groups discussed factors that had led to increases in their
workload, specific reference was made to the following interrelated issues. Each is
symptomatic of the under-resourcing of 24/7 response policing:
• the increasing use of handover packages, resulting in the
deskilling of uniformed officers, lack of ownership of cases
leading to lack of interest and motivation and packages of
evidence that are of poor quality;
• the loss of investigatory opportunities because the initial
response to incidents and actions taken at the scene misses
evidence and sometimes contaminates it;
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