Patronise #MeToo

[cromwell]

They used to call PCSO's "plastic bobbies" around here. It was an attempt to try and do the job of a PC on the cheap.
I fully agree about the need for the police to be visible.

[Suff]

The Carabinieri and the Gendarmes in France are Military police. They are a totally different branch and report to the military rather than civil authorities.

In cities in France they have the "Police" which are a civil authority but they only have authority in the cities and not beyond the limits.

For local towns like ours they have the Guard Champetre (otherwise known as the mayor's flunkies), who can levy parking fines and send nagging letters from the Mayor. But have no real powers other than the fact that if you ignore them the full force of the Mayor falls on your head (Fairly considerable in France).

It is the Gerndarmerie who police the roads and the motorways and are national in scope. It is also interesting as they are listed as "forces" in their army roster. So when you see the size of the French army you have to factor in both the policing and medical staff who are rostered with the Army but are actually Civil French only.

The problem with the Police, in my experience, is cost. #1 son has been in for quite a long time now, still a PC, happy to stay there. Of course his pay grade continued to rise with seniority and is comprehensive. At one point he looked at getting out locally and started to look for jobs. That's when he realised that he was being paid a middle management to senior management (depending on the size of the company), wage for a non Police job.

And there is the issue. OK this is exacerbated with North Scotland wages, but a constable who has completed 9 years of service gets £41,300 per year. More interestingly a constable with 9 years of experience gets just under 2/3 of a Chief Inspectors pay.

Just how you can have the streets flooded with coppers when their pay is at these levels escapes me. Double up two 9 year service PC's and you have £82,600 a year walking around the streets generally being "preventative". With a scale which rises so fast simply with "in service" time, it is guaranteed that PC's will rapidly outprice themselves for walking the streets and it is unreasonable to expect that a PC will suddenly walk away after 9 years and take all that knowledge away with them.

Solution? Something but what?

[Workingman]

I was using the Carabinieri and Gendarmerie as first-thought alternative policing systems to ours; there are plenty of others - Spain, the States, India and so on. Then you have the different command structures such as centralised, decentralised, coordinated etc.

I do not have any real answer but we do need to have a look at how thigs operate or could operate. The current system is broken somewhat.

[Suff]

The current system is broken somewhat.

A bit more than that.

[Workingman]

This just gets sillier.

BT has come up with an app to make women safer. It follows you via GPS from any A to B you enter. It then calculates a time for you to reach your destination and if you do not it triggers an alert - to others - to let them know.

A couple of things spring to mind. The first is that if a woman does not reach her destination at the allotted time she might already have been murdered. Another is that prospective murderers will now assume that all women have the app and that it is turned on. Once the woman is overpowered the app can be used to see where she was going and by what time. It gives the murderer all the information they need to make their getaway.

It is a tool to make women "feel" safer but does nothing to make them so. It might also lead to women taking riskier routes than they normally would thus putting them in greater danger.

[Workingman]

Just to add...

We are one of the most surveilled nations on Earth through public and private CCTV and ANPR cameras yet crimes still happen, more of them. The cameras might help in catching the criminals but they do not stop them.

This app will go the same way because, as some say, it is a sticking plaster when we need to be doing more to address the underlying problems. That will not be easy but we have tor try.