When you first go to join the Police you are told that there are many opportunities to join other departments and move around the Police. In reality the options are very limited as i am finding out.
Some of you may recall i applied for Roads Policing a few months ago and i was paper sifted out the reason being "length of service". To be honest i didn't expect to get in but at the least i would have liked to be able to board for the position (boarding is a form of job interview) and given the reasons i couldn't quite understand how i didn't get a board.
A few things came to light recently.
The current big thing in the police is neighbourhood policing, this is where we work with partner agencies closely and provide a more personal approach to the members of the public. This requires more neighbourhood policing officers (they used to be called area beat officers of ABO's)
The second big thing is Priority Crime Team, this is a unit setup to tackle the forces priority crimes such as vehicle crime, drugs etc and is a sub department of CID.
What i have noticed is that people on shift are going to these departments on attachments of 3 - 6 months with no application and no boarding, and after the attachment is up you can stay if you like. Fair play to the people who wish to work in those areas and best of luck to them but what annoys me is that these people are now specialising in areas where they have less service than me.
So the logical step would be to ask for a traffic attachment.
Well "I'm sorry but we do not have sufficient number on shift to release you" so please explain to me how a week ago we could afford to loose one to ABO's and now in 2 weeks we loose a second person to PCT.
So roads policing isn't an area priority, no great surprises there. But another factor is that RPD is a force roamer role and not dedicated to one police area so they aren't really that bothered.
Its a pain in the backside for me especially where i keep getting asked to join other local departments as it would "Benefit my career" but cant even board to join the department i want to join. I would go to another department if it actually interested me and would help my application but sadly the roles such as PCT or ABO would not benefit me one bit so sorry...
One thing i did decide though is ill keep plugging in the applications every 6 months or so until i get in.
As frustrating as it seems i am quite enjoying myself at the moment on shift and everything seems to be going well so far, but I'm not sure if this is the lull before the storm to be honest as shift numbers get depleted further to fund these "departments" will only lead to more dangers to the front line staff, but that's another topic.
Roll on Roads Policing, at least this gives me the time to get to know some of the traffic guys and i'm already getting talked about by them (in a good way i might add for a change)and I'm getting a reputation for doing good traffic work.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A look into the job of a Reactive Shift officer working in a mix of sleepy villages and nightmare towns. All names / locations have been changed and the views expressed are my own and not of the Police Service. Enjoy! (All views may not exactly reflect official policy)
6 comments:
Its the same as our place. As its PDR time again, no doubt I will be asked. "what about CID?" I will again reply "no thankyou dosen't interest me." I will then be glared at for a few seconds.
I think i will just change the dates on my last PDR and resubmit that and see if anyone notices.
Same here, I really need to do some PDR at some point.
Its a shame your priorities are viewed differently to the forces for career development.
And if you dont want to do those roles you are seen as "not a team player, why does he not want to help the BCU"
Makes me chuckle.
Something I noticed was that the regular officers couldn't wait to get out of the mundain core\response teams as soon as their probation had finished. The net effect was that there were very few long in service PCs with experience on team. Perhaps if all the paperwork\domestics\social service calls was taken away and some interesting specialist work remained on shift then officers might stay?
That's strange, i got on to roads policing at my first attempt with less than 2 years in the job. Do you think that it could be because I am a woman?! I have more than proved myself on the unit since joining, passing all my courses first time, but it seems mighty unfair that women get an advantage because they are underepresented. it gives the females (all 5 out of 40 of us) a bad name, as we all work hard, but we did have a large advantage in the first place (well in my case not that large, but i am sure you get my drift). Good luck, I hope you make it!
VSR;
Thanks for the comment and yes i hope it all works out soon for me.
I think personally sex and ethnicity makes a big difference to your application into promotion or specialist posts. Even though i am sure that regardless of that issue alot of people are very deserving of the promotion / role change i also think the PC side of things has allowed people who are not best fit for the role to be able to move at the expense of officers who are maybe better qualified.
Lennie;
I agree, i enjoy core shift work, its just i know where i want to go and what i want to do. If the powers that be would take on board what alot of officers are saying which ill post about shortly then the experiance on shift would remain as the specialisms would become a part of core shift rather than a seperate entity, which in turn would promote a better service to the public.
By the sound of some of the abbreviations you've used I guess your in Thames Valley (like myself.) I've heard this problem before, its a common problem if you work on a busy under-strength core shift. Keep plugging away, get yourself known to roads policing, volunteer to attend RTC'c even if it's just to help out, the current big thing is section 165 seizures of vehicles for no insurance and/or driving licence. If you find one ask for a roads policing section 165 seizure officer. You'll get your face/name known and it won't cause you any paperwork. One last piece of advice try and transfer to a rural station, it may seem strange but it helps on 3 levels-
1/You get to deal with RTC's as roads policing are usually to far away.
2/You get more time to deal with pro-active stuff, not just traffic but stop-checks,searches etc.
3/You get used to working on your own and making your own decisons.
All this is useful stuff on boards. Good luck!
Post a Comment