Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Back to basics
I read something in yesterday's DT about how if we only have 1 policeman out of 10 on the streets at any one time we have clearly lost our way. Time to sack all the chief constables and try again with another lot. Which prompted me to wonder whether the DT writers are about as bad at sums as they seem to think all those likely lads and lasses coming out of bog-standard comprehensives are.
My sums go like this.
Let's start with 10 policemen.
There are 168 hours in a week and we like our policemen to work 40 hours a week. So if we want 1 policeman on the beat all the time and two some of the time we need 5 of our 10 policemen.
Most personnel people think that other people ought to have both holiday leave and sick leave. Policing is a fairly high stress business so let's allow 40 days per policeman per working year for leave. That's another policeman.
Most managers think that there ought to be management, administration and paperwork. Making sure that Fred is not dossing in some pub all day when he is supposed to be out pounding the streets. Keeping proper records of incidents. Writing out charge sheets that will stand up to an unfriendly QC in court. That sort of thing. Not really the thing to be subbed out to half-baked civilians, so let's allow another policeman to do that. Taking the total so far to 7.
Custom says that 50% of policework is glorified social work. Attending to domestic assaults & skirmishes, deaths and the deranged. Presumably custom means 50% of what is left after overheads. Say 4. Which takes us well over the top to 11. And we have not yet done traffic, forensics, scene of crime, crime detection (the Sherlock Holmes end of the business), the rest of crime prevention or public relations.
So not quite as easy as the DT would have us believe.
# posted by Jim @ 3:38 AM 
