The Consultancy Caper……

Advice for working with Policing Consultants

Police forces in the UK spend a lot of money on consultants, a LOT of money. For better or worse over the years I have worked with many on a number of short & longer term policing projects.

I’ll also confess up front to being one for a period of time before I joined the job, albeit in a related industry, so I feel I have a decent sense of where they come from.

I appreciate the following will come across as perhaps a little cynical at times but it is drawn from lessons I have learned. I hasten to add as well it’s nothing personal as most of the consultants I have worked with are lovely folk, though clueless about policing in many instances.

Modus Operandi

Let’s cover a few key areas to be aware of with regards to how your consultants may work:

• If they have worked a similar policing consultancy elsewhere you can expect them to discretely template the work. Remember for many this is the only actual policing exposure & experience they have.

• They will trawl your own organisational files & you will see them pulling together half developed ideas previously considered but not implemented in your own force area. They may take advantage of a force’s previous timidity in program change and risk.

• They will seek to work with project leads rather than those actually working the product.

• They will undertake a lot of ‘development work’ which does not necessarily contribute directly to you producing desired outcomes.

• They favour style over substance. Their docs will often look pretty & be full of buzz word-like concepts with little depth underneath.

• They will look to up-sell. They know the contact limit of liability as well as what they signed on for initially. They may look to generate more revenue from within the limit of liability by ‘bringing in’ additional ‘experts’ as well as running ‘workshops’ at additional cost.

Advice & Tips

So given the above can I offer the following tips as to how to work with them:

• First, ask yourself what you need them for. Before deciding on a consultant solution you should ensure you exhaust internal consultancy options. Cops come from all walks of life. Chances are you already have folk with many of these skill sets in your force who you can call on to get the outcomes you desire. They’ll do it faster, cheaper and are already in tune with the force.

• To do this however you need to look past rank and acknowledge the skill set. That constable that was in marketing for 10 years before they joined the job 2 years ago? Yeah, they know more about it than you…..

• Ask yourself also how committed is the force to this change? You’re about to spend a lot of money. You should be sure that there will be value for this money and that the product isn’t going to sit in a drawer.

• If you do decide on a Consultancy look for one that focuses on what you specifically need. All to often we provide large contracts to large firms based off a 50 page (template) tender document. Smaller, more specialised consultants can often be more suitable and more cost effective to boot. Look to place your contract with the leaner, hungrier Consultancy.

• Also, look further than their record of previous policing projects. Did the project they work on actually achieve what they are claiming? Compare their tender document to their previous work. Are they really putting together a bespoke offer or just dressing up previous projects?

• Keep the contract tight and specific to where you want them placed and the key expertise you require. This seems to go without saying but we see generic, large Consultancy teams offered to police that whilst look great on paper often spend a lot of time needing to get up to speed on organisational need and containing a number of junior, intelligent young men and women with no basis in the realities of policing.

• Once the contract is let ensure the consultants are working with the team members actually producing content and product. Don’t let them cosset up to the senior team leaders. If they do this they just become ‘reviewers’ of the work your staff are already doing rather than contributing at the coal face.

• Alongside this, avoid formalised back-briefs and presentations to project sponsors. These invariably involve shiny PowerPoint presentations overseen by the consultants which result in project sponsors failing to get to grips with the detail. This creates confusion and delay. If you look up and more of your team are working on PowerPoints than product you’re doing it wrong.

• If you are a project sponsor, insist on sitting down with the staff doing the work and engage yourself in depth. Nice back-briefs with pretty slides are a poor substitute and detract from the time your team is actually working the problem. If it’s important enough for you to commission it’s important enough to get your hands dirty.

• Be pragmatic. Change projects are a hard slog. Constantly ask yourself what the key themes and phrases being offered by the consultants really mean in practical terms. Ask also if what is being proposed is genuinely feasible in the timeframes allotted. What does success, in pragmatic terms, look like. This is probably one area I would perhaps go against own instincts and suggest being conservative with regards to what can be achieved. Plenty of serious improvements can come from numerous marginal gains.

I don’t need to tell you how tight money is at the moment in policing. Consultancies can be a useful, short term filler for gaps in an organisation, but they can also become an organisational sea-anchor if not tightly framed, managed and held to account.

You’ll waste a lot of time and money if you let them drive the project rather than drive them to produce the outcomes they are contracted to.

Reflections of a White Belt Cop

There’s a lot written about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and its applicability to policing and its easy to perhaps write it off at the latest fad across the officer safety training community. 

I’ve spent a good portion of my early career teaching and developing operational safety related training, delivering use of force instruction and unarmed combat training and I now have a vested interest in keeping abreast of the latest developments in this field through my current work.

Because of that (and wanting to start training externally again after years of being away from martial arts) I wanted to learn more about BJJ in particular.

I’ve now spent a few months back in training 2-3 times a week, having originally also had my curiosity peaked by completing a 4 day Gracie Survival Tactics seminar (a law enforcement focussed BJJ course) last year. 

These are my reflections on what I have learned, what I feel I have gained and finally how I see it fitting into operational safety training. 

First, personally. 

Being a BJJ white belt is a tough gig! I am a fan of Chad Lyman’s philosophy of seeking out hard days with hard people and it certainly applies to BJJ. As a white belt you learn basics of defence (mostly but not exclusively on the ground) then spend time in sessions ‘rolling’ or wrestling with other class members.

The people you train with of course know more than you and you end up spending a lot of time in uncomfortable positions getting ‘tapped out’ ie stopping the roll as you are in a position you can’t get out of. You slowly start to pick up certain principles and apply them (and get great advice from other students and instructors). 

The best and most consistent advice I’ve received was to be patient while adjusting to such an unusual environment, try not to take in too much and focus on basics. 

What have I gained to date? Well a few months in I am definitely more confident in training. 

I still know relatively very little, but I know a lot more that anyone who doesn’t train (more of this later)!

My cardiovascular fitness has increased, as has my strength endurance. Given I previously spent little time on these aspects of my fitness in lieu of strength training, its provided a better balance to my training routine.

I’ve lost weight and I’m not alone. A colleague has been training a few months longer than me and has lost 5+ stone. 

I focus more on mobility in between BJJ training than I did in order to ensure I keep injury free and to combat the effect of what are hard training sessions (no bad thing given I just hit 50).

Its an excellent activity for my mental health. When I’m training I’m focussed and only thinking of one thing. I don’t think about work or any other stressor and feel invigorated and buzzed at the end of it.

Turning to what I think professionally. 

Firstly a couple of thematic comments on the potential training value to cops:

BJJ puts you in uncomfortable positions and conditions you to them. The concept of ‘getting comfortable with being uncomfortable’ is central. When cops are in uncomfortable positions with offenders it’s a definite positive to be able to retain your composure, get your breathing under control and move to put yourself in a safe position and go from there. Its drills an ethos that you are never out of the fight and gives you options to protect yourself.

BJJ is more focussed on control as opposed to striking. The focus on gaining competence in controlling another human who doesn’t want to be controlled is as central to BJJ as it is to policing. Having officers whom are comfortable in being able to engage and rapidly control a subject without necessarily resorting to repeated striking is to everyone’s advantage. Even after a short period training officers will increase in both confidence and competence in how they do this. If you want to see more about how this might apply to cops look up the work of Jay Wadsworth and Chad Lyman on youtube and instagram for some ideas.

My overall assessment of the wider benefits of BJJ training to cops in general is that a BJJ trained cop will absolutely be more fit, strong, confident and competent in managing use of force scenarios and securing offenders.

Some thoughts on integrating BJJ into Operational / Personal Safety Training:

I’ve maintained a basic but consistent philosophy in my approach to any OST / PST programming:

·      Less ‘techniques’, more repetition: Drill, drill, drill!

·      More gross motor skills, less fine motor skills.

·      Understand what each member of the team needs to do.

·      Spend twice the time in simulation / scenario based training than you do in technique instruction.

· Integrate your de-escalation techniques across your training system.

There is a whole school of law enforcement BJJ developing (like we see from Lyman and Wadsworth, as well as the Gracies) but all have a series of baseline techniques that can be slotted into the above philosophy.

There is little point us replacing one complex system for another though. A selection of integrated, baseline techniques combined with effective scenario based training will increase confidence and competence and make use of force and restraint safer for both officers and subjects.

Finally, if you are interested in trying BJJ in a welcoming environment a lot of forces now have their own Team Police UK BJJ clubs where cops train with cops and run great taster sessions as well as regular training.

You’ll be fitter, stronger and a better frontline cop for it.

Training to Fail

Are we getting operational safety training wrong?

I’m going to go out on a limb here right off the bat. We are setting our officers up for failure when it comes to operational safety training (OST) by making some basic mistakes in failing to account for how our body reacts under stress.

For many years I spent a lot of my time researching and training people to use force of various types using various weapons and none. These days I spend more time applying tactics and techniques as opposed to teaching them but the lessons still ring true to me.

When I joined my present job like everyone I went through basic officer safety training. It was run over a week split into the usual 45 minute classes and at the end of it I was qualified in use of force theory, empty hand, handcuff, baton and spray techniques. I recently had a look at the OST syllabus at that time and at a rough count I learned approximately:

• 8 x restraint techniques.
• 8 x strikes.
• 3 x blocks.
• 20 x breakaway / anti-choke techniques
• 4 x handcuffing techniques (plus a takedown).
• 3 x handcuff removal techniques.
• Fast strap application.
• 2 x prisoner team techniques.
• 3 x baton carry positions.
• 3 x baton draw positions.
• 4  x baton strikes.
• 2 x baton retention techniques
• 5 x baton blocks.
• A baton knife defence technique.
• 3 x spray draws
• 2 x spray carry positions.
• 4 x spray techniques.

I revise all of these as well as our police first aid training on one day a year. There are significantly less techniques in the syllabus now fortunately but its still a packed day and on average I ‘practice’ each technique for a minute or two. It doesn’t take a scientist to see that this is a lot of techniques to take in and become effective in: but for argument’s sake lets take a look at some basic science as to why the theory of teaching a lot of techniques so officers can choose which suits them best is flawed.

The Science

A seminal work on this is a book that is quite old now but still influential: ‘Sharpening the Warrior’s Edge’ by Bruce K. Siddle. I’ve drawn from this in summarising below but if this stuff interests you I’d grab a copy. Its as good today as it was when published. You can research the individual elements of this brief explanation seperately if you wish to find out the background and details but for now, to keep it concise, I will summarise:

Motor Skill Performance Decreases as Heart Rate Rises. Putting it simply, as your heart rate rises (as it does in a use of force incident) your ability to perform anything but gross motor skills deteriorates to the point of being unable to accomplish the task. Think about how hard it can be sometimes to lock off handcuffs by lining up the key and hole after a tough struggle to get the idea.

Add more than one ‘option’ you increase reaction time by double. So if it take says .183 miliseconds to react to block a punch with one taught technique, add another and it takes .481 miliseconds (look up Hick’s Law for more on this).

The more complex the technique the longer the reaction time. A series of actions, actions involving more than one limb or prolonged actions take longer to react, select and execute. (see Henry-Rogers experiment for more on this).

Learning the technique in isolation of identifying a threat stimulus limits effectiveness. If techniques are taught in isolation to the circumstance they need to be used in Officers are less likely to react effectively.

There is a lot more to the science than just these 3 rules but they are a great filter to examine how our current multi option syllabus may be very well letting us down.

Rules for Use of Force Programming.

There are a number of deductions we can draw from the above which have direct implications for the improvement of OST:

• Officer Safety techniques need to be based on gross motor skills where practical. Complex motor skill tasks should be reduced to that which are absolutely necessary and generally needed at a ‘working heart rate’ level and fine motor skills may as well be thrown out with the trash. Perceived technique ‘effectiveness’ may need to be traded off against a more consistent, gross motor skill based response.
• Techniques need to be stripped back to limit options to bare essentials that compliment and reinforce each other; for example striking techniques should be the same standing as on the ground where possible.
• The stripped back techniques should be practiced against the most likely threat stimuli that would entail their use and in the most likely of circumstances. This also means training as a team for techniques such as handcuffing where double crewing is the norm.

Our approach to officer safety training should recognise the limits of what can be achieved with the time we presently allocate. More time would be great, but in its absence we need to make the very best of what time we have.

Our current training model fails to keep cops safe & the solution is in the science.

‘It’s Our Protocol’

Challenging the Hospital ‘Missing Person’

Question: When is a missing person not really a missing person?

Answer: Well, that’s a little more complicated but am sure by the end of this blog we can agree on at least one thing:

If the only reason an agency is reporting a person ‘missing’ is because of a ‘protocol’ then they are probably not missing…. and we should be robust enough to challenge that.

A number of agencies report people ‘missing’ in accordance with a protocol: Care homes when children miss their designated curfew, drug and alcohol counsellors when they can’t get in contact with a service user, and the agency we will deal with today, the NHS when they can’t find a patient.

Let me say from the off, there are times when the NHS report genuine missing persons to us. Detained patients that have managed to abscond from their ward for instance, or suicidal patients that have waited so long to be seen that they have gotten frustrated and walked out and are reported to us to now find.

Essentially it comes down to us risk assessing each circumstance as to whether they are really ‘missing’ or not. It would be good however if this policy on assessing risk was perhaps done by the NHS before attempting to pass responsibility for these individuals to the police.

Because there is a particular category of NHS ‘missing’ that we need to push back against: Those that are reported because ‘it’s protocol’. These involve some combination of the following:

• Voluntarily absconded from a ward.
• Checked out without signing discharge paperwork
• Left with a cannula still in their arm.

The police are requested to ‘Bring them back to the ward’.

The observant amongst you will start to see the issue here:

Where is the risk? And more importantly….

What can or should the police do about it?

Lets deal with risk first. More often than not the call log doesn’t offer enough information to assess risk. This requires the frontline leader to call the reporter to ask questions about the patient.

This quick call to the reporter, often the charge nurse on the reporting ward, regularly establishes the following:

• No immediate concerns for the misper.
• No risk to life.
• No chance of catastrophic bleeding if they remove the cannula.
• No requirement for police to call an ambulance to get them medical treatment when found.
• No issue of capacity.
• No order in place to require a return to hospital.

The conversation invariably leads to the question: ‘Why are you reporting them missing?’ to which the answer is:

‘It’s our protocol..’

What do we think of this? Is this sounding like a missing person that should have police asset assigned to locate?

Turning to what the police can do about it. Well, not much really. There is no order in place to return the patient. There is no requirement for medical treatment. So essentially the NHS are asking us to find a patient that has decided to leave the hospital and has the capacity to make that decision and ask them to return…….

Is this really what we would consider a missing person? Those non-police reading the blog probably think the circumstances I have outlined above are few and far between. Not the case. The above example and variations of it make up a high percentage of missing person calls we receive from the NHS.

Police NHS liaison officers would do well to work with their local trusts to review these policies in order to tighten up the reporting circumstances and require a reasonable risk assessment to be conducted prior to reporting with a clear idea of what actions police are requested to take, mindful of the limitations of police involvement.

Until then frontline police leaders should be robustly challenging and documenting discussions with the NHS reporters rather than simply accepting the misper call and actioning limited police resources to it.

There will always be times when we move rapidly to establish the whereabouts of missing patients when the risk presents. However a policy to report patients who have voluntarily left the hospital due to protocol wastes everybody’s time and resources.

“Maximising the Safety of Officers”

… and the Fallacy of the ‘Stay Safe’ Message

Serving officers will be familiar with the title of this one; it’s the phrase often used in working strategies regarding the management of incidents that accounts for the requirement to ensure cops are safe at calls.

Increasingly however it seems that the when it comes to incidents where the suspect may be armed with edged weapons or firearms, the only tactic employed in order to satisfy this part of the working strategy is what cops know as the ‘Stay Safe‘ message.

For those who don’t know what this is it basically consists of a text to be read by controllers to responding unarmed officers when incidents are considered ‘low risk’.

‘Low risk’ in this instance might mean a couple of people have called police and reported a sighting of a male with a sword, or someone has called police claiming to have an axe and a machete and is going to use them on people and police.

Once a ‘low risk’ assessment is made the controller reads us a message that basically says:

• Approach with caution.
• Continue to ‘dynamically risk assess’ the situation.
• Back off if the threat increases and report it.

That’s it…. That’s ‘maximising the safety of officers’ in a nutshell, box ticked, send in the unarmed cops. There are problems with this as you might imagine.

The ‘Stay Safe’ Fallacy

In reality where the unarmed cops attend an incident of this nature a few things can happen:

• The report can turn out to be false or mistaken – excellent, officers are safe and no harm done.
• The report can turn out to be accurate and officers are then faced with a number of operational problems rapidly unfolding in front of them:
• • If the subject chooses to press an attack against the officers, they are often not in a position to retreat, report and wait for support of specialist assets. It’s just not practical.
  • In any event, assets such as Armed Response Vehicles, even if they are ‘pre-positioned’ away from the incident but allegedly close enough to react, are minutes away. This can take too long to attend and continues to put officers at risk of injury or death.
  • Often when the threat materialises as reported, unarmed officers are placed in the impossible position of making a decision to intervene or not when the threat to members of the public remains present, or risk them, retreat and wait for specialist support. Invariably unarmed cops act, risk themselves and attempt to intervene. We’ve seen this numerous times in the last year whereby cops have been stabbed or slashed having to make this very decision. It’s not reasonable to expect them to stand off and see members of the public harmed. It’s not in their nature to do so.

What good has the ‘Stay Safe’ message done these officers?

What positive effect has it had on implementing the part of the working strategy that requires us to ‘maximise the safety of officers’?

Perhaps it’s time to review the options that we regularly employ to enable this element of the strategy. It doesn’t work in it’s current form.

Reviewing the ‘Maximising the Safety of Officers’ Methodology

I am always mystified that we spend so much time training our armed officers to such a high standard yet refuse to deploy them fast, forward and foremost:

Fast. We need to cut the time taken to get these assets to a scene. That means early deployment. My armed colleagues are constantly frustrated at listening to roam channels to an ongoing incident and not being tasked to make their way to it while the deployment authorities are reviewed. Early deployment will speed up response times and not, as happens now, result in unarmed officers having to intervene before specialist assets, even when authorised, get there too late.

Forward. Time to also review ‘forward deployment’ and what that means in practice. Do forward RV’s really work or should we be direct authorising to the scene way more often than we are now? When seconds count we can’t have the specialist asset minutes away…..

Foremost. Lets go back to first principles here. If we get a call to a man in the street with a sword what do we lose by using the exceptionally trained and multi-optioned ARV as the primary responder rather than the ‘support’ to unarmed officers? Send them first. Let them confirm all is safe (or make it so if the threat materialises’) and hand over to unarmed cops. This deploys the most appropriate, highly trained asset and ‘maximises the safety of officers’.

Maximising the safety of officers should not be a box ticking exercise that ends when the stay safe message is read out. It’s little wonder we have seen a number of officers injured over these last months.

Our operational tactics in support of this element of the working strategy are too conservative and don’t account for the dynamic nature of the incidents that unarmed cops are being sent to deal with. Lets become more dynamic, earlier in the threat review process and get better at protecting our unarmed officers.

The Edged Weapon Blind Spot

How we are putting unarmed cops at risk

Over the past few days I’ve enjoyed some great twitter exchanges with folk about routine arming of officers and of late, specifically the use of unarmed officers to deal with edged weapon threats.

I was saddened, but not surprised to learn in a twitter poll I published that 88% of the 450 odd officers that had voted had been required to arrest an offender when it was known they were in possession of edged weapons. Some may have no issue with this, I very much do (having done it a number of times myself).

I have conveyed my views piecemeal over 147 characters but today want to lay out clearly why I feel as I do. So best start with my premise and work from there:

Armed officers should attend any call where there is an edged weapon suspected to ensure the safety of officers attending.

Let me outline my rationale for this as succinctly as I can:

• Edged weapons pose a lethal threat to officers.
• There is presently no authorised tactic for an unarmed officer to arrest an offender armed with an edged weapon.
• Unarmed officers are not equipped with any option to stand off outside the reactionary arc of an armed offender yet retain control of the situation, whether the edged weapon threat is active or passive at the time of officer contact.

I don’t think the above rationale is particularly controversial but very happy to be challenged on it. Yet despite the above we consistently send officers to these calls.

How did we get to a situation so at odds with the rest of the Western world when it comes to dealing with edged weapons as a threat? And let’s be clear, we are definitely swimming against the officer safety tide on this one in my experience.

If you only have a hammer every problem looks like a nail….

When you only have officers armed with spray and baton then who else are you going to send to edged weapon calls? The paucity of armed coverage across the wider UK is well documented. Added to this we have allowed the armed policing debate to revolve around a firearm threat, completely ignoring that arguably the greater threat to officers comes from edged weapons.

Dangerously, we are now allowing public opinion to form that issuing Taser alone to officers would be a solution to edged weapon threats. This needs to be challenged. Taser is certainly an option to attempt to resolve an edged weapon incident (as are excellent public order tactics when time / circumstances allow) but if it fails it must be supported by firearms, less the officers involved are exposed to a lethal threat.

Additionally, despite having the best trained armed officers available to deploy to these incidents (UK training for AFO / ARV exceeds the bulk of international routinely armed training), we trust them the least to deploy and actually do their  job. This mystifies me. We are highly reluctant to send armed officers to calls initially, preferring to send unarmed officers to ‘confirm’ the presence of weapons.

In employing this model we are saying that risking an unarmed officer is more acceptable than having a highly trained armed officer, equipped to deal from the outset, attend and get the job done, or stand down immediately on assuring it is safe to do so. To my mind there can be no justification for this.

I am always cognisant that when the control room asks me to acknowledge a ‘Stay Safe’ message it shouldn’t be an unarmed officer call.

What to do?

You’ll probably not be surprised to know I am a supporter of routine arming (I will cover my thoughts on this in a following blog).

But for now perhaps its time to rapidly revise our views on this and provide specific guidance for our control rooms and Tactical Firearms Commanders that changes our deployment model. We should ensure that the safety of officers and members of the public come before concerns about the potential outcome or image of sending firearms officers to edged weapons calls. Armed officers should be the default resource  considered to attend edged weapon incidents.

I trust our exceptional AFOs to make the right decisions on arrival knowing they will keep my officers and I safe at these calls, standing down when suitable and allowing us to get on with the job.

Who knows? Perhaps UK policing is right on this and the rest of the Western world wrong when it comes to edged weapon threat? From my experience both before this job and now within it, we are sitting on the wrong side of the ledger.

Logistics is not a dirty word….

Police Logistics Planning

I am not a professional Logistician, but I run a support headquarters at the moment where I have 4 highly experienced senior logisticians working for me plus their staff.
Upon hearing today that the Met Police failed to arrange supporting logistics for their officers by means of water and food during the ‘Day of Rage’ demonstrations I asked these logisticians what they thought about that. I can’t print their replies.

Suffice to say a failure of this nature is an absolute failure of leadership. It is a leader’s responsibility to ensure that the welfare of their team is taken care of, irrespective of how big or small that team is.

I’d like to think that this is an isolated incident but sadly my own experiences in this area have been less than desirable. On one occasion as a junior cop I stood on a cordon of a large fire, smoke billowing over me for hours, no water, no relief, no comfort break and not one leader checking on me.

After this incident I took the time to review our major incident SOP and wasn’t surprised to discover that logistics and planning guidance played little part in the document.

More recently my cops had to look after a long term locus that was to run for some months under the direction of a major incident team. My fellow Sgts and I had to constantly lobby for the most basic of facilities to be provided for officers who were required to resource the locus to keep them safe, out of the elements and provide a measure of basic comfort and sustenance to officers there 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week in all weathers.

I’m sure all of you would have your own experiences of poor logistical support on a day to day basis, let alone for major events or incidents.

Frankly, we need to pay more attention to how we support policing operations. It starts with logistic planning considerations that should be understood and actively considered by our ops planning staff.

We also need to establish minimum support standards for operations and not deviate from those. Running police operations come at a cost and basic logistics support needs to be factored into those costs. A set scale of support that can be expected by officers based on incident size, duration and climatic conditions is the minimum we should expect. Officers should be assigned in the specific role of providing logistic support and supervision in operations orders. This should not be combined in the execution phase with the commander. A separate officer should retain logistics as their sole focus.

Built into this is the requirement to assign correct staffing levels to the incident. 10 points on a cordon does not make for 10 officers required. It makes for 10 officers plus a relief that can be rotated through those officers to allow for suitable breaks and shelter from the elements where required.

It’s not like it’s hard to find this stuff either. A simple google search on ‘tactical logistics’ will find you a myriad of staff estimates, principals and guides to use if you are logistically illiterate. There are examples across the piece at all levels of operation that can be reviewed for inspiration. Perhaps we should look to the Fire Service for ideas as they seem to do this a lot better than us at the moment.

I suspect however there is a lot of logistics guidance floating about policing organisations, it’s just not followed.

Police leaders and planners must engage with and understand logistic principles and ensure they are enshrined in our operational construct. They cannot be seen as an afterthought or paid lip-service as they too often are now. A detailed understanding is required in order to ensure operational success and critically, the health, safety and welfare of our officers.

Logistics is leader’s business.
 

 

Everybody Fights…

Developing Tactical Policing Reserves

The concept of maintaining a reserve isn’t new. In military circles factoring in a reserve into planning is crucial to provide the commander with flexibility to ensure mission success.

Over the last few weeks I’ve watched from the side lines as cops from around the country have switched to 12 hrs shifts, combined with multiple cancelled rest days in order to meet major incident demands.

 We are now seeing an increase in concerns raised by commanders on social media with regards to the effect of these long hours on sustainability and resilience. It reminded me of a concept I had been considering last year – how we develop tactical policing reserves.

What is a reserve?

To make it clear, in this instance I am talking about reserves not in terms of part time resources such as SC or auxiliary forces. A tactical (or operational) policing reserve in this case is:

A group of policing personnel who are initially not committed to frontline operations that are available to address unforeseen situations or exploit sudden opportunities. Such forces may be committed to reinforce existing operations or to serve as relief for officers already committed.

Reserve Tasks

Policing Reserves can be used to reinforce standing operational officers for planned or exigent operations or relieve in place standing operational officers that require rest and recuperation. They can be used for short term, regular deployment (generally with minimal impact on their own daily operations) or for longer term deployments, acknowledging that this can impact on the policing services that they normally provide, which are prioritised against the greater operational need.

Where can they be drawn from?

All police forces have uniformed officers that undertake duties that whilst important, are not necessarily operationally essential. If I was to use as an example from my own force construct; our Corporate Headquarters on the West Coast of Scotland likely contains up to 100 uniformed officers. These officers resource departments such as licensing, organisational development, project offices, human resources etc.

Additionally when I look to Divisional headquarters, and our national and regional training centres again we see officers involved in various similar functions that keep the wheels turning but may be able to be reduced temporarily to support regional operations. We also have officers in various stages of training. 

Deployment Model

Generating a reserve like this can be done by organising identified cops from these departmental areas into regional resources based on standing reserve teams. Teams of Inspectors (and above), Sgts and Cops can be taken from across functional areas in a manner that doesn’t strip a single area necessarily of its entire capability. 4 such ‘shifts’ of multiple smaller teams can then undertake one week a month as the designated on call regional reserve, able to be deployed by local commanders to both short and longer terms tasks in the numbers required to complete frontline duties to manage contingencies.

To quantify the potential for such a reserve, take my own force of 17,000+ officers: the ability to identify say, 80 all ranks officers per command as a tactical reserve gives each regional command 4 shifts of 20 officers per week to be deployed within the region, or in our terms, 10 additional crews per command available if the ‘on call’ reserve is to be deployed, or 40 additional crews to be deployed on a ‘full’ regional reserve call out, concentrated or spread by shift and locality as required.

There are opportunities for smaller forces already cooperating across operational lines to pool regional reserves to generate efficiencies.

The deployment scale and methods are numerous and can be tailored to the circumstance and task required. The mechanics and methodology of call out are not insurmountable, relying on local ICT where it is available and looking at local policies to cover areas such as reporting, carriage of PPE, transport and terms and conditions of service. 

Police Federations can participate in the formulation of terms and conditions knowing that the outcome is better resilience for their frontline officers

Examples of Reserve Deployments.

A tactical reserve can be used for both planned and exigent operations at the discretion of the commander and in line with local policies, with the express intent of supplementing or supporting existing frontline resource. Some examples might be:

· Reinforce local areas for a single shift when local tasking exceeds response capacity.

· Major incident reinforcement over a specified period of time.

· Relieve in place of frontline teams for long term sustainment of major incident resourcing in order to allow those officers to rest and recuperate – with the potential to even temporarily redeploy those frontline officers in rear supporting tasks from which the reserve was drawn once rested in order to increase opportunity to recuperate prior to engagement back into the frontline.

· Planned reserve deployment to cover events / marches.

We have actually completed operations like this on an ad-hoc basis for major events such as the London Olympics and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. This would put that concept on a firmer footing and likely make planning future operations like these easier.

In my own force these duties would replace the current Local Day of Action / Campaign Against Violence one a month shift that non-operational officers complete at this time.

It might also be argued that more regular exposure to frontline duties ensures that non-operational officers retain suitable skills currency and a better perspective of frontline conditions which positively influence policy making. 

To quote one of my favourite movies… Starship Troopers:

‘Everyone fights…. Nobody quits’

– Jonny Rico, Mobile Infantry

All cops should remain a potential operational asset, regardless of their current post.

If we do what we always do we will get what we’ve always gotten…

….and in this case that is tired and broken officers trying to do all of their traditional taskings whilst resourcing major incident after major incident. It is unsustainable and as leaders it is our job to work out how to do this better, make the most of our uniformed resource and, where required, make the tough calls on what tasks temporarily take the hit.

If your force is not already doing something like this then you have to ask why it hasn’t been considered. 

The wellbeing of our officers and the effectiveness of sustained policing operations depend on us finding a solution to this problem. We are not going to be any less busy in the coming years.

 
 

‘Grafting Out The Win’

One thing I’ve learned so far about leading a support headquarters is it’s not ‘sexy’.

Problems solved are more likely the result of critical analysis, detailed staff work and selection of the best option within the limited resources (financial, logistical, equipment) you have at your disposal.

Its often about making choices as to where to focus your efforts. 

Gains are marginal at best but important nonetheless.

Solutions arise from working with experts as far forward to the frontline as you can to get a realistic picture of both the art of the possible and the impact of your decisions. They are often not easy solutions in the sense that they can be unpopular with those who don’t understand the nature of your work, but they are made with the best intent, balancing team, task and individual.

Knowing this I was disappointed to hear the Met Police are introducing a direct entry pathway for Detectives. It seems to be the latest venture into solving complex problems by throwing ‘money and glitter’ at an issue rather than doing the grafting work of coming up with solutions that drive at the heart of issues which led to the problems in the first place.

Do you have senior leaders not rounded enough to cope with the demands of leading large organisations? We’ll buy in the expertise rather than focus on how we better develop pathways for them to attain the necessary skill sets on the way up.

Are your frontline leaders not considered to have a broad enough perspective on their job? Never mind the current neglected talent pool, we’ll throw money at it and start a new program to bring in folk from outside, writing off the folk who have worked hard within the current system to get into position to promote – the ones that are currently keeping the lid on despite huge cut backs and resource limitations.

Its apparently too much like hard graft to pick and develop the exceptional from that large and already capable pool of talent.

In the latest guise we discovered there was a lack of uniformed officers wanting to be detectives. We let this get to ‘crisis’ proportions without making tough decisions to fix it. 

Do we explore why this is the case and work as a priority to deal with the very serious issues that are stopping cops applying? No, we’ll prioritise just paying for a new program to bring in folk that don’t know any better and ignore the deep, troubling issues that are stopping qualified in-service folk stepping up.

I have no issue with trying something new. I genuinely like innovation. What I think is really disappointing however is that at a time of unprecedented financial limitations we consistently seem to pour money into these projects rather than do the hard yards and invest in the amazing talent we have within our police. They deserve to be the focus of our innovation, investment and development when funds are tight.

Working these complex problems isn’t easy. It takes leaders to genuinely listen and act on frontline concerns and recognise that the solutions likely lie within their current talent pool: not the paid consultancies that soak up money, repackaging old programs that likely failed in their previous guise anyway.   

It also takes more than just saying ‘we are consulting’ with the frontline. You actually have to do something positive with what you find.

It’s certainly not as sexy as launching a ‘new exciting opportunity to be involved in improving your community’ (otherwise known as being a cop to you and I) but it garners headlines, attracts funding from the Home Office and no doubt makes for a great 250 words on a promotion form.

Long after these programs suck up the cash and deliver less than the value of the resources we sink into them, for few ‘new’ programs truly deliver the revolutionary change that they promise, it’s the marginal gains won by leaders who have consistently listened, grafted away and implemented real, meaningful, positive change that will have made the difference.

Perhaps it’s those leaders we should be investing in.

 

 

‘Don’t Screw the GI’

Making the Hard Calls for the Right Reasons

I was recently speaking to a relatively senior American Military Officer who lamented to me of his senior leaders ‘If they can make a decision that screws the GI, they will…’ I was a little shocked by the candid nature of his comments. He went on to list a number of examples, particularly in the area of operational welfare, that got me thinking about the parallels to policing leadership.

I’ve worked for some genuinely impressive army leaders over the years. Men and women who instinctively knew what was fair and right when it came to their people and often with great moral courage, advocated for it without compromising the completion of the mission.

They decided that the implications of inaction far outweighed any concern for personal gain. 

I have been reflecting on this as each day passed this week during our ‘CRITICAL’ alert phase. I kept hearing what I consider to be the somewhat disingenuous statements from senior police leaders that they have deployed ‘extra police’ when we know the reality is that they have simply switched assets to 12 hours shifts, cancelled rest days and kept folk past their shift end times repeatedly to ensure police are ‘seen’; the bulk of whom can do little to counter any renewed terrorist attack in any event due to their arming state & training. 

Despite the strain on officers we appear to fail to examine the second order consequences of ‘show deployments’; of ‘increased’ unarmed patrols, unarmed officers searching at the front of police stations or sending unarmed stations to ‘confirm’ firearms related incidents. All of this required despite Op TEMPERER deployments.

At what point do senior police leaders say enough is enough? If we are unable to cope with raising our alert state to its highest level without breaking the service and its officers isn’t it time for the Association of Police Chiefs to stand up and be counted? 

Cops deserve leaders that put themselves metaphorically on the line to make hard edged operational decisions that will set our police service on the path to sustainable deployment, preferably without the use of the British Army and absolutely not at the expense of the frontline officer. 

I genuinely don’t believe any senior police officer deliberately sets out to ‘screw the cop’. They were all frontline officers themselves once and have been through the similar trials and hardships within their own context. Frankly, if any take any joy from making decisions that adversely affect officers they are no leader in any context.

Rather, I believe that distance from the frontline has caused an imbalance for some in their understanding of the concepts of ‘team, task and individual’ whereby the task is achieved at all costs, especially to the individual.

This is ‘short termism’ at its worst. Its results can be seen in attitude surveys amongst officers across the UK. By and large, with some notable exceptions, frontline officers do not trust their senior leadership to make the right decisions.  I certainly don’t expect my senior leaders to give up on the morale of their officers. I expect them to fight to improve the morale of those they lead knowing that it is a vital component of police effectiveness. I expect them to make a difference. 

I guess some would say that it’s our job to occasionally have to exceed our capabilities to deal with unexpected situations. I completely agree. It’s our commitment to service that enables us to do this. We are good at it and it’s something to be proud of. But I would expect that this is the exception not the default position. Once identified the first time, the next time a similar scenario comes around a good leader has mitigated for it. 

It is a leader’s job to correctly assess troops to task for both most likely and most dangerous scenarios. Any plan that sees us continually rely on working officers to the bone to ambiguous effect is not a good one. Tasks should be ruthlessly assessed for necessity and effect when resources are tight. 

Perhaps an additional contributing factor is the lack of a consistent and robust planning process that our ops planning teams can use to effectively assess missions and tasks and resource them accordingly. Too often the answer to the next deployment is to pull out a similar order from the last one without a detailed mission analysis & examination of the effects we are looking to achieve. We all have examples of wondering why resourcing for Christmas and New Year seems such a challenge to get right every year! It is a leader’s job to ensure planning is effective.

Our current response to enhanced threat states requires a root and branch review: Resources required, how they are tasked and how they are equipped to respond to the task. The British Army, like the Police, will do as ordered and do it well. The Army will always be there to secure the British People at home and abroad. But even Op TEMPERER hasn’t mitigated the strain on officers sufficiently.

It’s all well & good to keep saying ‘We have to have a conversation with partners & the public about what police do.’ Its past time to be taking tough decisions with regards to what drops off to deal with higher priority risks. We cannot keep resorting to directing the teams to simply work harder. 

The phrase ‘we’ll just get the cops to…’ just doesn’t cut it anymore. It will take leaders with significant moral courage to redress the situation. Now is the time for bold and fearless police leadership. The long term health & welfare of our officers, & the subsequent effectiveness of policing in the UK depends on it. 

I haven’t blogged for a while, as many of you know I am away at the moment working overseas with the fantastic support of my force back home. I see many parallels between military operations and leadership and how we lead cops on a day to day basis where every call is ‘operational’. I hope to reflect some of these occasionally while I am away.