A coppers lot.

its not a bit of a stretch, believe me

andymc06 – Member
We joined because we wanted to do something worthwhile and help others in society.

That may well be the case for you but I can’t imagine such altruism runs throughout the force. There’s loads of reasons why people join up and ‘doing good’ isn’t always at the top of the list.

ScottChegg

It’s not a free lunch. I’ve paid 11% of my earnings for 11 years and sacrificed an untold amount mentally, emotionally and physically. I’d be interested to know what you do for a living. You have no idea about policing.

@andymc. Leave, get another job. My pension was raided after paying in for 18 years and I was pissed off with my employer. I moved on. If you’re that pee’d off, so should you.

Boblo

Sure not everyone. However most I know joined for altruistic reasons but the job can turn people cynical very quickly.

The deal has been changed. Hope it does not change any more.

You’re joking aren’t you? This is only the start. I reckon if you’re under 40 you’ll be working until you drop. Its going to be like Catch 22 where they keep raising the number of missions, as Yossarian completes them.

By the time we get to ‘retirement’ age, its going to be a dusty relic, a quaint little thing they used to do in the late 20th century. A life of subsistence level poverty awaits most I would imagine. And I say that as someone with two (private) pensions, who knows what they’ll actually pay me. Next to **** all!!!

11% of my earnings

Is that so you get a full pension after 30 years, could you start in police at 19 and retire on full pension at 49?

Also i am now planning for the future based on the changes. The police service and the public will lose out as many skilled officers look to do the same. I think that that is rather a shame.

Not me but the wife..

spat on/at – yep
punched – yep
stabbed – not personally, but a colleague yes.
Viciously attacked leading to broken bones – Yep
shot – nope,
killed – I do believe school staff have been killed (although not at her school).

And all for about minimum wage (She’s a TA).

A view from a public sector (civvy) worker.

It’s not just the police who are at risk in our communities. 3 members of my security staff successfully disarmed a mentally ill student with a knife yesterday. Due to staffing cuts, the police response time where I work is pathetically bad. After a previous incident involving a similar situation I was told by a senior officer that frontline staffing levels were at critical levels and we should plan according. So we have. I have to say that my experiences of the police in part of my job are mixed at best.

As for the comments relating to unprofessional behaviour by serving police officers and the neutrality of the IPCC and the CPS well….hillsborough, Tomlinson & Mark Kennedy/Bob Lambert are all recent examples of duplicity. I’m positive that for every allegation of misconduct that is upheld there are a hundred that are rejected as the officer has been shown to be entirely inocent of wrongdoing. The trouble is that there is a perception that police are liable to cover up their mistakes, indeed there is recent proof that they do. Comments above that serving officers need to stick even more closely together worry me. It’s entirely understandable that an organisation that perceives itself to be under threat should close ranks, however I hope this doesn’t lead to a widening gulf in trust between the police and the public.

Re-reading the above makes me sound like I don’t value the job the police do. That’s not the case. It seems that the role has become far more difficult, far more scrutinised, and perhaps the service as a whole hasn’t adapted the changing landscape as quickly as our expectations have changed.

In the one and only occasion that I’ve need to call 999 at home (we had an intruder in the house – in my 3 year old’s bedroom) they were fantastic. Arrived in seconds, dog teams onsite and caught and detained the fella hiding nearby. Probably saved me from a manslaughter charge also 😉

Dobbo,

Not any more. I’ll be doing 41 years. Imagine a 60 year old patrolling your city centre on a Friday or Saturday night….

slow hand clap for all the public servants infighting, mostly without the full true facts or any real understanding of other sectors work or conditions, save that reported…

however you look at it, you gotta hand it to the powers that be, divide and conquer.

Dobbo. Yes. That is what i based my life decisions on.

andymc06 – Member
Also i am now planning for the future based on the changes. The police service and the public will lose out as many skilled officers look to do the same. I think that that is rather a shame.

And so you should not least because there’s no place for cynical malcontents (I.e. not 100% committed to ‘the’ cause) in that sort of job. ‘They’ don’t seem to care about haemorrhaging skills and experience, ‘they’ just see head count and cost. This is because business management has found it’s way into managing public services. Presumably if I get arrested, I’m now a ‘customer’ in the same way I’m no longer a patient to the NHS?

.

No longer the case however!!!

scotchegg do you still have to pay 11% as well then?

And so you should Boblo? How patronising. What do you? Because I voice my concerns about my pay and conditions being decimated I’m a cynical malcontent?

Always fancied joining up but this thread is certainly food for thought. (not that I can find any one recruiting anyway)

http://www.socahighpotential.co.uk/

not quite the police service but might be of interest

ScottChegg – Member

Yet it was Gordon and Tony who initially set the Pension business wobbling by raiding every Pension fund in the land. Except the Public sector Pension, which is paid for by taxpayers. Maybe Snooty is just evening the playing field?

it was nigel lawson that came up with the idea of pension holidays and taxing pension surplusses

that was the moment all pensions started their decline

granted nulabour were no better but if theres one man who is to blame its him (incidently his pension pot wouldve been huge and mostly funded by the taxpayer)

That may well be the case for you but I can’t imagine such altruism runs throughout the force. There’s loads of reasons why people join up and ‘doing good’ isn’t always at the top of the list.

To be fair, with the exception of one lad who had strong ties with a particularly unsavoury crime group, I don’t know anyone who Didn’t join for that reason.

Nope about 14% now.

I gave up the prospects of further education to join the police. I am 28 with 9 years service. I have no qualifications that can be utilised outside of policing.

I love the job. But wish I had made some different decisions in my life.

Soca would be a great career

how many police took early retirement whilst awaiting disciplinary action, —- accountability is key for all services, with the police we certainly need a robust independent authority, not as at present where investigations are often in house, or by other ‘forces’

We had a chief constable who was way ahead of his time (n wales)– he knew a cultural change was needed amongst his own, he has since retired, but met him a couple of times, the guy was straight down the line, very hard on the motorist, was big on community policing, and beleived drug policy should be a health not criminal matter.

To all my colleagues: good luck in the future whatever it brings. Stay safe.

andymc06 – Member
And so you should Boblo? How patronising. What do you? Because I voice my concerns about my pay and conditions being decimated I’m a cynical malcontent?

Sorry, that wasn’t meant to be as offensive as it sounds. You said you were making alternative plans and someone up there ^ mentioned cynicism, I was responding to that. What I meant (but expressed badly) is unless you’re 100% on it, I would imagine being elsewhere is a much better bet.

As for me, I reinforce the STW stereotype alas (apart from the mandatory tubbyness)

Ah Brunstrom. What a **** he was. Even most welsh people hated him.

.

We had a chief constable who was way ahead of his time (n wales)– he knew a cultural change was needed amongst his own, he has since retired, but met him a couple of times, the guy was straight down the line, very hard on the motorist, was big on community policing, and beleived drug policy should be a health not criminal matter.

I think he was also considered a bit of a ‘Joke’ by the residents of N.Wales. Very unpopular and lacked respect from the public – penalising otherwise law abiding motorists for straying a few mph over the speed limit rather than chasing criminals was the common perception. Lots of locals residents could breathe a big sign of relief when he left, no longer having to fear being caught going about their daily business by police officers with spy cameras hiding inside horse boxes.

Fair enough Boblo.

ill informed crap as ever, Brunstrum – he was ahead of his time, 67 road deaths in one year, he said most were ‘preventable’– speed plays a huge part in most of those, if there were 67 murders on his patch there would be an outcry….

speed plays a huge part in most of those

Rubbish, speed does not cause accidents – ‘bad driving’ does. Brunstrom’s hate campaign against speeders just reinforced the mentality that so long as you don’t speed then you must be a safe driver. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

i love speeding motorists, its always someone else not them who are the problem !

the horse box, was placed at a notorious stretch of the A470, where there have been a number of fatalities, a well known speed area, so what defence should you have if you are endangering others by your actions ?

people driving to fast for the prevailing conditions if you want another wording, you lose control you are by definition going too fast–

This thread is not about speeding….

guns don’t kill- its the people with them……

where did he say you were a safe driver by not speeding? thats just claptrap, a false premise used by the roadhogs, me i’m great its all the others who can’t drive……

Not to drag this further offtopic, but ask Mark Gibney’s family what they think of Brunstrom.

But every job has its bad apples and to hold up one crap chief constable in a thread about the service in general is a bit poor IMO.

Bregante – that was a very interesting OP and I am sure very helpful to the recipient. It was also very heartfelt given the appalling news yesterday. But so many things captured there, its almost too much to take in.

I guess there is pretty broad support for the amazing jobs that you do and the extremely difficult conditions that you face. Most of us cannot comprehend them, nor the daily challenges of potentially facing extreme danger and having to play by somewhat artificial rules when addressing them. Of course, there are some here and in society who are less supportive, but I think they are in the minority.

But then there is separate issue that you raise about pay and conditions. And even that is not straightforward. So Andymc06 argues that…

All we are asking for, irrespective of what is happening to others, is what we signed up to.

…which is true for most people across most professions and sectors. So the crux comes in his later point…

It’s excessive given what we sacrifice and are prepared to sacrifice every day for strangers and society as a whole.

…that’s the real nub and frankly not an easy one to answer. But good to have a separate thread to debate it.

As its a cycle forum, I will leave it with a “chapeau” to you and your colleagues.

policing requires consent to be effective, and in some parts of the country that has obviously broken down.

Having worked alongside police, like others on here, with the most disadvantaged,and vulnerable parts of society, it can blinker your view of life.

Look on the bright side.
All of the police on here will be working for G4S soon. 😀