One in ten police .....

Channel four news and others are talking about Dennis O'Connors report (PDF) on 'Policing in an age of austerity'. In amongst some very sensible points about, for example, archaic shift patters that ensure less people are on duty on Friday night than on Monday morning, there's one of those really annoying media factlets that always seem to grab the headlines and wind up anyone who thinks about them for more than 30 seconds.

This time it's this:

At present just one in every 10 of all police officers is "visible and available" to the public at any one time, the report warns, despite the fact that policing has enjoyed year-on-year budget increases over the past 40 years.


Seems terrible, no? What are they all doing? Skiving? Filling in forms? Both? Well the clue is that this really does mean one in every ten of ALL police officers (see page 14 of the report). Around half of the total of  police officers and PCSOs are in neighbourhood or response teams - these are the police who are 'available' to the public (the rest are doing other stuff - you know, investigating serious crimes, things like that; some probably are filling in forms, although they might call some of them 'evidence' or 'statements').  Of that 50 per cent, subtract the approximately two thirds not on duty, the others who are on holiday, sick, in training etc, and in turns out that three quarters or more frontline staff who could be 'public facing' at any one time actually are. Not quite so shocking, is it?

No wonder the public are so obsessed with bobbies on the beat - stories like this just inform them that most police aren't doing anything at all. You have to wonder what the report writers were thinking, going with this in their executive summary. Some internal politics here, possibly?