Ok it was mentioned there is not a thread for Law Enforcement Officers (LEO for short)and other similar jobs for discussion.
This is for discussing the actual jobs, ranks, training, culture, relations to military bodies that exist, and any other variety of topics that can arise pertaining to the World of Policing.
I'm with Barkey on this one. Experience -pushing your way up- ought to be the only route to leadership. Those who would rule must first serve.
Let me put this in a way most of you non-military/LEO types will understand. Most of us have held crappy jobs at some point in our lives. Remember all those silly policies you had to deal with, handed down from on high? Remember how annoying, nonsensical and detrimental to getting your job done they were?
That's because they were written by someone who had never done your job. Like as not they were written by some guy with a business degree who has never touched a register, a mop or a fryer handle in his life.
I count myself very fortunate to work for a company where the boss does the same work I do. He works alongside his employees, and is not too proud to sweep floors or organize tools if that is the job that needs doing. Sure, we try to spare him these tasks...but that's because his expertise is valuable to us, not because he thinks he is too "good" to do such things.
He does not ask anyone to do anything he is not prepared to do himself. His authority does not come from a piece of paper mounted on his wall, but from the fact that he's put in 50 years as a builder and knows what the hell he is talking about. That's called credibility, and you don't earn it in college.
As a very wise friend of mine once put it, "There's lots of ways to impress the boss, but only one way to impress the crew."
I think that's what Barkey and Tuefel are talking about here.
If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~LRPD uses 3 years. After 3 years of patrol you can try for SWAT, Dectectives, Narc, whatever. If you can pass the tests, you get the job. If you have a degree, there are minor pay advances, but you're not a shoe in for anything but admin. My dad got a minor advance due to him having some college credit, but it was his seniority that gave him his ability to choose shifts, transfer, etc. They rank seniority based on patrol years first, department years second.
"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - AszurYou do.
Under this scheme you're expected to undergo a year and a half before you're put into promotion. To be fair you're going to lose six months of that to training. But a year in what I'm almost certain are going to be the top flight 'basic teams' (response, and a couple others I won't name) in one of the best services in the world is worth significantly more then two years as SNT or STT in Cambridgeshire or something.
And whilst you need that basing I agree, the skills you need to be a good cop aren't necessarily those you need to make a good leader. We've all seen good coppers turn into shit Sergeants and vice versa. We certainly should keep up promotions straight from the rank and file, but as touched upon earlier this also has a range of issues.
A combination of both methods seems perfectly serviceable.
"When you cut your finger, I do not bleed." Response of a man who lived on the outskirts of a concentration camp.I just don't feel that a college degree has anything to do with being a leader. That's my main gripe with the entire system. We need to identify good leadership qualities, and elevate those people to leaders, not just take a gamble with people we don't know anything about.
It's why I'm into the whole bottom up idea. I don't want to assfuck all the hard working officers who don't have a degree, and likely won't get one soon because being a police officer requires really weird/long hours, lots of unplanned overtime, et cetera. Going to college as a cop is hard. I don't think it's right or effective to just look at people with a degree and say "Oh, we'll put you in our leadership program."
A degree should make you a good pick for Administration, but it shouldn't be guaranteed. The type of people who would ass out and not become cops unless they were promised extra pay and career advancement for their degrees don't deserve to be cops anyway.
This issue could also distantly represent problems arising from the college environment itself. College campuses are not as conducive to individual responsibility as they once were, and there are a variety of reasons for this. Before the recession gave many people a sobering reality, one of the prevailing attitudes with college is that you pay for a service rather than earning a degree in exchange for your hard work and research. That is, you don't work toward the degree so much as you believe you are entitled to it by virtue of having given the school money for classes. The administrations on campus are partly to blame for this as well because collegiate activities have become big business. ROTC and criminal justice students are not immune to this by any stretch of the imagination.
I've seen this mentality manifest itself through the freshman and sophomore years, as many young people enter college with the improper attitude of what is expected of them. Sleeping and texting during class or asking for extensions on papers when they had plenty of time to prepare their thesis is not reflective of the kind of leadership skills needed to operate in a military or law enforcement capacity. I know the officer hierarchy is heavily despised among enlisted ranks in the military (an understatement, I know), but a lot of this might have to do with the quality of education and responsibility being given to the student while they're pursuing the degree in question. Ideally, the whole concept of officer achievement stems from the idea that if you can bust your butt for four to eight years in college, you have at least demonstrated the potential for leadership roles in law enforcement. But this is the ideal, not the reality.
Sad news today from Manchester. Two young female police officers, on what has been described as a "routine" operation, whatever the fuck that means, have been killed in a gun and grenade attack, by what seems to have been a man who is the subject of the most expensive and extensive manhunts in the Greater Manchester Police Force's recent history. The man suspected of the killings has handed himself into police custody at a local station.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19635239
has more details.
The names of the officers killed have been released as Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes. No word yet on their ages.
edited 18th Sep '12 7:55:20 AM by TamH70
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What greeny says. It is also the first time that we have lost two female officers in the one attack. We have lost others of course, most famously Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy decades ago, and most recently Sharon Beshenivsky, but not more than one per incident. The higher-ups are trying frantically to downplay the fact that they were female, of course, but that isn't washing with the various commentators, and quite right too.
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Maybe, but it turns out the person who did the shootings was already a wanted Criminal, who had already committed two murders in Manchester, a son and then his father. As well, it appears that they were responding to a fake "burglary". And before it's asked, having Beat Officers armed is against the Founding Principles of British Policing, which is still taken seriously.
...and here are the Founding Principles:
1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
And the Founding Principles of the Metropolitan Police:
The Nine Principles by Sir Richard Mayne:
1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
edited 18th Sep '12 2:38:11 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnWhat is annoying is that it took the guy handing himself in for this series of killings to stop. The guy had been at it since May last year. And he has been in the area of the killings all that time. This man should have been found and taken down by a few Armed Response units ages ago, it shouldn't have been two young WP Cs, unarmed, and responding to a "routine" burglary (which seems to have been in actual fact a deliberate ambush) that stumbled into him.
It is a complete failure of the Greater Manchester Constabulary's intelligence operations in the local area for him not to have been found up until today, with such tragic consequences.
Well capturing wanted armed suspects with unarmed police being the norm is obviously difficult, given that as soon as they are noticed it becomes an officer safety issue to watch the suspects at a distance.
The armed teams can't be everywhere at once.
Do the British equivalent of Detectives carry arms?
I find it odd that a run-of-the-mill British police officer isn't carrying a sidearm, actually. True, the crimerates and such are probably apples to oranges to what we have here in The States, but still - it strikes me as odd.
Can some of you British guys attempt to explain the methedology and mindset behind that? I'm genuinely curious.
edited 18th Sep '12 3:05:48 PM by pvtnum11
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.@ pvtnum 11: For the mindset, see the quotes in post #318. Those are from the founders of British Policing.
Basically, it's Police by public consent; the People are the Police and the Police are the People — the people aren't armed, so neither are the Police. And an article from The BBC: Why British police don’t have guns
edited 19th Sep '12 8:44:31 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnThe biggest opponents to police being routinely armed are the police themselves, as that article notes - over eighty per cent of them would be opposed to such a move. Public opinion is about 50/50.
With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

I think it's fine to use education as part of the metric for who to invest in and put into academy, and who to later promote, but what I'm saying is that they shouldn't get you out of academy and automatically throw you into administration. You're no good as a leader if you don't have any tangible LE experience.
2 years on the street is kind of the limit I have in mind. If you've spent 2 years on the street or more, you're a legitimate cop who has done legitimate work, and capable of going to an administrative post and understanding what other officers are dealing with. Any less than that and you shouldn't be leading cops or having authority over them.
My entire point is that you can never forgo experience. Even if education results in increased performance, there are also educated people who do not perform as well as uneducated people in some careers.(meaning there are obvious exceptions) So give the benefits and bonuses to the people achieving the results and not just giving them a silver spoon because of a degree.
edited 23rd Aug '12 4:37:03 PM by Barkey