Police are lacking in investigative skills, writes Jim Gannon.
Fifty years ago on April 1, 1968 the Thames Valley Police force was born out of the amalgamation of five police forces: Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Reading Borough and Oxford City. As a young detective in Oxford with only six years service, I remember well the impact it had on our small proud force of around 220 officers who had been used to the best of everything from police houses, equipment, training and the way we were managed on a day to day basis.
Expectations
Being a university city and the home of the British Motor Corporation we were never aware there was any shortage of funds to police our world-renowned city in a way expected by our city businesses, colleges and community. At the time we were being told by the authorities and politicians that this exercise was going to be repeated across England and Wales as greater operational efficiencies were being sought. This would also lead to significant cost reductions. Predictions were being made in the media as to which forces might next fall under the chopper but general consensus was that individual police forces would fall by up to half over the following ten to 20 years with the smaller forces being swallowed up in the wake of further amalgamations. How wrong did all that turn out to be and was there something in the date which should have given us a clue.
Training
As a young detective I was given the best training that money could buy and with only five years’ service my force sent me to the Metropolitan Detective Training School in Chelsea for three months of intensive training given by officers whose experience came from working on the front line including major crime investigation. In my force I had the additional benefit of working along the side of seasoned detective officers most of whom already had 15-plus years of service. Add to this a dedicated ‘scenes of crime’ department whose officers attended all crime scenes where evidence could be collected; so no wonder our crime detection figures were so good.
Lack of investigative skills
A good feature by Tom Harper the Home Affairs correspondent for the Sunday Times in April, prompted me to write this after comments by Shaun Sawyer the Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall police and the national lead for ‘modern slavery’, another subject which I have written about. Shaun Sawyer has commented that not enough rank and file officers know how to investigate crime and that too many officers operated as quasi-social workers, lacking the knowledge of how to gain victim’s confidence to obtain evidence for use in police prosecution cases.
Sawyer the former elite head of counter terrorism at Scotland Yard was quoted as saying that the huge terror threat of recent years had diverted a generation of brilliant investigators away from front line policing. This of course is not the only reason as work-life balance plays a major part.
There is a real shortage of national detectives; he felt it was no longer attractive to officers to pursue the detective pathway where there is less likelihood of promotion and more likelihood of a complaint.
Memories
I remember well my visit to the Chief Constable’s office at Thames Valley Police headquarters way back in November 1975, having passed my sergeant’s promotion exam whilst serving in the TVP Fraud Squad. Six officers in front of me turned down the opportunity to be promoted to uniformed sergeant because they did not like the posting location offered. Then it was my turn and I was offered Maidenhead and I accepted. I had not been in uniform for ten years but I thought this may be for only 12 months and I had the No5 Regional Crime Squad office on my doorstep at Reading. Fortunately I made it in ten.
National crisis
Tom Harper’s story outlines how the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary 2017 report said that the shortage of detectives was a national crisis. They should oversee the majority of serious crime investigation including crimes involving violence, murder, rape, fraud, burglary and now modern day slavery. In my days it was not normal to get into CID with less than eight years service and you were picked after a period of CID attachment followed by comprehensive residential training courses. According to recent reports some of these tasks are now being undertaken by special constables and inexperienced officers.
Modern slavery report
Shaun Sawyer was in fact speaking at the launch of a modern day slavery report in March in which he revealed that police forces across the country were now involved in 568 operations against modern day slavers which is three times the number of investigations during 2015. He warned that some of these inquiries would fall apart because of the lack of what he described as elite detectives. He was quoted as saying, when you are dealing with victims of modern slavery, who are the most wary people in the world, you’ve got one chance to get the best evidence.
Police under pressure
In conclusion we must not overlook the fact that our UK police forces are all under enormous pressure from every angle driven by forced financial cuts to their budgets, rising crime, social and economic changes and the fall in officer numbers. This continues to pile on the pressure on chief officers and Police Crime Commissioners (PCCs) whilst they seek solutions to come up with the right answers to satisfy the demands being placed on the police. The private security industry has never under-estimated this task in an ever-changing society which presents challenges for us all every day in our own quest to prevent and detect crime.
