Had a busy week this week, as we ran large courses in both Southampton and Hatfield. However, when I logge donto my email this morning, I fund the below comment one delegate had obvioulsy shot home and done. We are all very proud of Talking Blues and the success our people have, but the below does make us all feel that we are very god at what we do: Forgive me for blowing our own trumpet, but this comment sums up the company ethos for me. yes, we all go to work to get paid (including you dear reader and me), but we try to get across our passion as well, and clearly here we have. This is why we are so successful in the police recruitment field.

John,

I would like to send you both my utmost gratitude, for the wonderful course you provided yesterday 03/05/09 in Hatfield. I have to be honest your course was fantastic, informative, humorous, a real eye opener. It has been without a shadow of a doubt a) The best £145 I have ever spent and b) The best 10hrs I have ever given time to. The day went really quick and I could have stayed on listening to the wise words. I have to admit I am now quietly confident I will do well on my assessment day, I say quietly because I don’t want to assume. In the weeks leading to my assessment I will be working hard to dissect all the information provided by yourselves and within your guide all the while remembering ‘’Piss poor preparation leads to piss poor performance” Again thank you, and I will keep you guys updated on my progression.

Warm Regards
XX

That kind of comment works for me!
We actually get loads of stuff like that on our feedback sheets, just maybe not quite as eloquent.
Made my day anyway
John

Following on from the last blog entry, many of you have emailed me saying you are not entirely convinced by the story about integrity. That’s okay, it is good to be a cynic, but ask most operational officers and they will be aware of similar stories. I had one officer on my shift in Cheshire Police who moved to another shift for career development. Within a week, he and a “colleague” locked up a drunk in the town. In the cells, something happened, and the drunk received a facial injury. The result of this was that the officer (who had an outstanding arrest record, and was a person you wanted next to you in a disorder environment) ended up in crown court on a very serious assault charge. He was cleared. Cheshire however then put him in front of a discipline panel, and sacked him on the basis that he had asked other officers to lie for him. As a crown court jury had found him not guilty of the crime to begin with, I am uncertain how he could have asked others to lie (as he had not done anything wrong to begin with), but such is life at police discipline panels!

This same double think is carried on in police recruitment. Using Cheshire as an example again, a few months ago one candidate got fed up (not unreasonably) with waiting for an assessment date and being fobbed off by recruiting. He expressed this frustration on one of the unofficial police forums, such as www.police-information.co.uk, calling Cheshire recruitment arrogant and unhelpful. When he phoned again a few weeks later to see if there was any update, they informed him that his application had been terminated. When he asked why, it was because of his comment on the forum! Naturally, no one in Cheshire recruiting had the courage or decency to call him and tell him this! Personally, whilst he was unwise to put enough information in his forum entry to identify himself, I think he was another victim of high handed bullying. This is why the same force lost 11 recruits a while back, ten of whom were female. This caused such concern that the Police Federation actually highlighted the issue in their magazine. It is a problem in some small forces, the bigger ones tend to be fairer and even handed. Cheshire never saw the link to this, which is probably why in my time with Cheshire I only ever saw two black officers. A staff survey the same year in Cheshire showed 75% of staff felt they were not valued (this was quietly buried after a big fanfare about how important it was to take part and have a say in the future of the force.)

In my time in the job, I cannot ever recall officers coming in and complaining about the residents in such a place, or the attitude of the criminals. No one minded agro from them, it is after all part of the job. What everyone complains about however is the attitude of bosses sometimes, especially those who have never spent any time on the streets.

Still, one can only be thankful that there are still people willing to do the job, not because of the leadership, but in spite of it!

Two incidents this week throughout the national press which made me think. Firstly, the death of the guy in London at G20, after being pushed by a bobby. I clearly was not there, but I wonder if the scenario went like this. I wonder if this guy was giving the officers a bit of stick, and instead of being locked up as would happen normally, bearing in mind they were in the middle of a public order situation, the officers have pushed him out of the way instead (a legitimate public order tactic). They cannot just walk past him, as the first rule of public order policing is NEVER leave potential hostile sbehind you ( as they have a tendency to throw things at you). So, the officer pushed him (another legitimate public order tactic), and the net effect is he falls over. Big deal. Unfortnately, as he is an alcoholic, his heart can’t stand up to the sress (that he himself created by geting involved in, or at least not going away from the scene) and he dies. If there ha dbeen no underlying medical conditon, this would not have been of any consequence at all. Never the less, I bet this officer gets crucified. he has aparanetly gone off sick, probably with stress, and there will be criticism over that. If you were on duty, gave someone a push, and suddenly found yourself being blamed nationally for someones death, would you not be stressed?

On another point, Newcastle crown court this week found an officer guilty of causing death  by dangerous driving, He hit a girl travelling at 70MPh trying to catch up with a suspect vehicle that had come up on anpr. he had shortly before been ravelling at 94MPH. I do not know the full facts of this tragedy, but wonder if the reason he was not using blues and twos was because he was trying to catch up with the car without warning it he was coming after it. A bad decision in hindsight, but one that bobbies make all the time. I also don’t know whether 94 was safe to travel at through a 30. Some 30’s you can do a hundred through safely, some you cannot. On that basis, maybe the conviction was fair, I do not know. What I do now is that the officer was remanded in custody, and told he faces prison.  This is what I object to. Some scumbag car thief kills someone and may or may not be given prison. A lorry driver watching a DVD on a laptop drives into the back of a family of 6, killing them all, on the M6 and gets 2 years, but will not be remanded in custody at his trial. The officer here may have been misguided, or foolish, or over eager. They will however live with what they have done, as most cops care about the community they serve. His career had ended, he is sacked, he faces all the mental consequences, none of which I accept makes up for the girls death. I just question whether prison was necessary. Had he been a speeding, disqualified driver who has no insurance and never passed a test, he would probably have got away with careless driving. I accept the police must abide by higher standards than everyone else, but this crucifixion of officers is unjust beyond boundaries. problem is, the public just do not care.

But just another story about the cops in the Mail this sunday which should make us think. A firearms officer blocks in a car after a six mile chase, which then rams him. he is currently in hospital with serious head injuries. Aparently he did shout stop armed police before he got hit. I wonder if if the thought went through his mind that if he pulls the trigger, he will face a huge investigation, and have the press hounding him in the same way as the above two examples. I wonder if he spent a second weighing up his options, and in that time was hit by the car. If so, society should be ashamed of itself. In America, officers would have opened fire staright away. Here, fire, and you are effectively teh subject of a murder (or attempted murder) investigation. This is why i was never interested in being a firearms officer. One can only hope that there remain enough officers willing to take the risk, or else that society recognises that split second decisions by people trying to do their best need backing, not villification if things do not go right.

Integrity is an issue that crops up all the time in the police recruitment process (and indeed the police). Whether at the police national assessment process, or at a final police interview, the issue is constantly being monitored. The theory is that any behaviour that is unethical is completely unacceptable, and that is what you must strive for. The reality in many forces is a bit more flexible. In Cheshire police, a little while back, images from the LAPD were circulated around the force by a control room operator. The images were LAPD crime scene photos of an incident where someone was being chased by the police, and had jumped off an elevated freeway to try and escape. Regrettably, they had missed the other freeway they were trying to jump onto, and fallen. In doing so, they had fallen onto a metal spiked fence, like that outside a park or church. The photos showed the persons head actually mounted in effect on the spike from the fall. The body was sitting at the base of the fence. The guy didn’t have a long neck, the fall had detached his head from his body. To make matters worse, he happened to be black. Another force had quickly taken action against everyone who had received this email. Cheshire however in the main had quiet words with people (the original source in the control room resigned). The point is that Cheshire Police took a very softly, softly approach to this, presumably hoping that they would get away without any adverse publicity (which they did). Other forces who were more honest about what had happened caught a lot of publicity. There was a rumour going about at the time that the main reason for this was that one of the control room operators involved was the daughter of a very senior officer (hence informal and non career damaging advice), but even I am not convinced that the force would be this blatant!

My point is that in police role plays and in interview, you need to be seen to be actively challenging inappropriate behaviour of any kind. If you do not (unless your dad is a senior officer), then you will be on your way to failing.

I have had two people this week sending me their own analysis of how they think they have done after leaving the police assessment centre, and asking me basically for a bit of comfort. I never make a comment until they have actually got their marks, and the reason for this is shown in the below exchange. Have a read, and it may make you feel better when you walk out of your assessment. As it is an email exchange, the most recent email is at the top. Any typos were i the original exchange!

Hiya John,
You were right not to do an autopsy as I got my results and I passed!!!!
I only just scraped through with xx% (I think if I had not messed up I would have done a lot better), but who cares, a pass is a pass so I’m happy!!
I know for sure that if I had not attended Talking Blues I would definitely not have passed so thank you so much for everything.

Thanks again John

From: john.mctaggart@talkingblues.co.uk

I never hold autopsies until the body is dead!

Let me know what the results are and we can talk then,

John

To:john.mctaggart@talkingblues.co.uk
Subject: Day 1 today
Hiya John,
I hope you don’t mind me mailing you, I came to the Hatfield briefing on 1st of Feb and I had my day 1 toady. Unfortunately I am pretty sure that I have messed things right up and I wondered if you wouldn’t mind giving me your thoughts on whether you feel I could still pass as I have got a long three week wait for the results.

The morning session went really really well, I did the written reports really well, set out the issues and my proposals and recommendations. The numerical and logical reasoning tests also went really well and I was full of confidence going into the afternoon, sadly then everything went a bit wrong.

I completed three of the roleplays fine, but the one where I had to challenge the security guard for being over the top I feel I did not challenge her enough, She said that ………..and that threw me a bit as it did not say that in the prep, I said I thought she was being a bit harsh on the youths and that I felt it was inappropriate when she said something but that was it. I didn’t realize that I had used so much time questioning and the buzzer sounded before I came to any conclusion. Would I have failed that one??

Unfortunately the interview was even worse, I got so nervous I could hardly speak, In the question about XX I went off on a tangent and I don’t think that I really made much sense. Then I said ‘I’m not really answering the question you’ve asked’, which I probably should have kept to myself!! Also the time ended before I had finished 2 of the questions so I didn’t get the conclusion or what I had learnt in. I also kept going errr, will that go against me because we were being assessed on our oral communication?? My mouth has never been so dry and I had to keep drinking water, I must have looked so nervous and the assessment centre is all about staying cool ubder pressure so I thought that might go against me as well??

I just wondered if these muck-ups will be enough for me to fail, I don’t want to carry on running and doing fitness every day if I’m gonna find out in three weeks that I failed anyway.

I hope you don’t mind me mailing you, it’s just that I thought if anyone will know if that would cause me to fail it will be you.

I do want to say though that Talking Blies was brilliant preperation and I know I would have messed things up a lot more if it wasn’t for you guys so thank you for that.