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

are a powerful incentive to ensure a case is handled competently from the outset
and they give the officer in the case ownership of the investigation. They are also
valuable learning experiences. Officers learn the points that need to be covered in
evidence and how actions of commission or omission at an early stage can
undermine a case much later in the process.
Too many section officers don’t see beyond the arrest phase, that’s
the problem. They don’t think of Crown Court in six months' time.
They don’t think of continuity, they don’t think of seizing clothing, of
scene preservation. It’s an arrest, a tick in the box. He’s in the cells,
there’s my arrest statement, thank you very much.’
One of the consequences is that the skeleton teams in GO CID have had to take on
an increased amount of retrieval and damage-limitation work.
I dealt with a serious assault where the person had been arrested
and he’d been in custody for 20 hours and hadn’t been spoken to.
The inexperience of uniformed staff is a big frustration. We spend a
considerable amount of time correcting mistakes they’ve made. It’s
their training. The level of experience on the rotas is very poor and
that goes for the majority of the uniformed sergeants now. It’s very
poor.
Increased workload through the absence of appropriate first-line supervision
There were numerous negative references to the quality of supervision provided by
sergeants on the 24/7 response reliefs. Although there are exceptions, particularly if
the sergeant has previously worked in the CID, many first line supervisors were
described as so junior in service that they lack the experience necessary to enable
them to give their constables appropriate advice. Even those with the requisite
knowledge struggle to find the time to help their constables with their paper work.
So what we’ve got is inexperienced probationers, or people recently
out of probation, making up most of the shifts. They are not
supervised very often because the uniformed sergeants simply aren’t
there. Either because of gaps left by the setting up of the
Neighbourhood Policing Teams or because there aren’t enough
sergeants putting themselves forward for promotion or because they
are doing other things and are not out there on the streets
supervising. And many sergeants are inexperienced with only three
or four years' service and so they really don’t have the know-how.
I’ve got my hit list of sergeants - their supervision is shocking and it
shows in what comes in from their PCs. The quality of too many of
the packages that we see in the Office is poor and I’m not frightened
to use my fountain pen and return them with black ink all over them.
But it goes right back to basics, where you have PCs being tutored
by newly accredited PCs and sergeants with a total of three or four
years' service in, doing the supervision.
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