Where Responsibility Rests

Dennis Batten argues that today’s police are ill equipped and inexperienced – and cannot be expected to deal successfully with domestic violence

By chance, I caught the tail end of a news item on television. A woman in her twenties was being interviewed on the subject of domestic violence and the part played by Victim Support in assisting her to cope with a violent male partner.

She had nothing but praise for the support she had received, except for her comments on police, which to me were surprising. She said that Victim Support had treated her with kindness and concern whereas she had found the police officers who were dealing with her violent partner, to be intimidating and, in her view, more concerned with the arrest and detention of her attacker than supporting her when she was in a highly emotional state and required their support.

She then went into some detail regarding subsequent counselling and support meetings. The interviewer spoke at length regarding how domestic violence victims were mentally scarred and were in need of help and understanding.

I am fully aware that since I served, the attitudes to domestic violence have rightly changed.

Whilst we were discouraged to become too involved in such matters, today the opposite applies. So often police are and were called to domestic disputes only to suddenly find the victim supporting her attacker and even venting her anger on the police and even entering complaints. Here again it seems that you are damned if you do and equally damned if you don’t. Allowing for the fact that the victim in this case may have been treated less than sympathetically, a situation we would all abhor, what in fairness does she expect from the police? They are called to a case of domestic violence and are likely upon arrival to be confronted by the attacker at the height of his anger and a victim who is crying and emotional at the very least.

Is the officer in a position to immediately don the guise of mediator, or should he take the control and exercise that control until the immediate possibility of further violence is contained; time enough then to soften the approach?

I have not had the benefit of the latest training and the policies now in effect respecting domestic violence, but I do know how difficult it must be for officers – many of whom are young in years themselves – to be expected to attend such incidents and then dole out the wisdom of Solomon to persons probably more experienced than they are. How easy it is for the television news to leave this throwaway comment critical of the police unanswered and, by doing so, adding to what is already an almost impossible and insoluble problem.

Unlike most of us who served when authority was respected to a much greater degree, the modern officer finds he is called upon to deal with an ever-increasing incidence of domestic based violence and dispute.

There are few response-or-neighbourhood based officers in urban areas, who are not called several times a day to these incidents. They range from hysterical teenagers, screeching, biting and scratching while they lay about each other during some argument based on a Facebook comment about some spoty, inarticulate youth, to a machete-wielding addict who wants to take on all comers.

I, for one, would not relish having to deal with this increasing underclass which appears to be hell-bent on its own destruction. Meanwhile expecting as a right the full attention and support of the State: it must be mind-numbing to deal daily with the self-inflicted ills of many who cannot accept that their own salvation rests with their own actions.

But here we are, as ‘Police Service’, daily patching the fabric of society which is beginning to tear apart at the seams. One the one hand expected to provide advice and support to an ungrateful section of the public, on the other being spat on by some binge-drinking idiot who is covered in his own vomit.

So where should you have the police force; should they take a no-nonsense approach, concentrating on detaining the offender and in doing so automatically preventing further violence? O should they concentrate on giving succour to the victim? In passing, one should remember that the apparent victim might well have meted out violence themselves at the outset. An officer might find his sympathy has been misdirected.

So where does responsibility rest? We have the Home Secretary telling us that police to concentrate their efforts in dealing with crime, whilst the police’s so-named ‘partners’ see nothing amiss when police are continually expected to don the garb of a ‘Social Service’.

Speak if you will with the officers themselves and ask them. They will tell you of a day taken up with children and teenagers reported missing from ‘care homes’; of mentally ill persons let loose on the street by a ‘caring’ Health Service; of inadequate persons held in custody at weekends because of the lack of available suitable places an where staff is off duty.

From conversations I have had with serving officers, it seems to me that that too often social care means that police fill the gaps where appropriate service fails, so ask the police officer where the responsibility finally comes to rest.

One cannot help but ponder how these matters have evolved. When my generation joined the police post-War, the boundaries were clearly defined. Police duties and responsibilities had a history upon which we relied. Much emphasis was placed upon the self-discipline and individual decisions of the officer as to how he performed his duty; we were not unaware that there were some whose behaviour was questionable and it was obvious there would have to be a reckoning.

Nevertheless, these matters were duly dealt with, but we were then left with a pendulum which had swung too far. In the effort to rid the service of bad practice, so much was lost which was of value and the office of Constable was diminished.

The result was that over a period of 50 years or so, each piece of legislation brought with it, its own safeguard and fall-back position. Government required each force to micro-manage police duties and as a result there evolved the Police Service with a bureaucracy that was target-driven and out-numbered the street policemen. During this time, the senior ranks, which had been practitioner based, became dominated by the theorist and the fast-tracked academic. Out has gone the baby with the bathwater.

As I write, we stand again at the beginning of the year, which usually starts with The Commissioner for the Metropolis’s annual written message to The Police Family. I seem to have missed this year’s greeting or, don’t tell me, Sir H-H decided not to write in order to save a few quid to better spend on some management consultant’s fee, or the odd IT fiasco.

2013 was a funny old year, people I knew and respected have joined the back page list [obit page – FP] at an alarming rate – some I knew and keep in touch with for over 60 years; that’s a lot of water under the bridge and a lot of memories.

We have had the closure of Gadget’s Blog, the so-called election of Police and Crime Commissioners; Winsor’s Fairy Tales; the HMC’s New Clothes. (The lady has continued to sport fancy footwear and her junior Ministers have continued to say one thing and do another). Confusion reigns and the Constable keeps patching the holes in the dyke as always.

For myself, you know where I stand; I am anti Community support Officers, anti-privatisation of police in all its forms. I am no supporter of fast-track promotions – I am for the practitioners and against the theorists. Peel and Mayne are my historical heroes and I have an obstinate objection to slovenly uniforms and I am pro-helmet and advocate the liberal use of boot Polish and Steam Irons.

I have written an article for every issue of LPP over the past nine years; during this time you have written to me and telephoned too. You have often disagreed with me but more often shared my views. I wish you all good health.

[ends].

I can only applaud a timely piece from a kindly member of a fast-dying breed that will never be replaced and I wish him, too, good health and an even longer retirement. Provided by the efforts of Frank P.

© London Police Pensioner Magazine. March 2014