Doing It To Ourselves

This post is in support of colleagues who have single vehicle crewing imposed in rural areas. We don't do it where I work for response cars probably because we are more sensible*. I therefore suspect this could be a self imposed policy by police management. I understand each Division has their own patrolling policy which is up to them to draft. We do have a default position for single foot patrol, which as I've stated before I don't really have a problem with as help is never that far away. We never have sufficient officers to patrol on foot so this only really affects community teams. Regular readers will be aware I was nearly crippled whilst on lone foot patrol attempting an arrest and it still hurts, but that's part of the job and down to bad luck rather than a single patrol policy.

The centre has got rather anal about the single patrol policy wanting to measure who is complying or not. They have of course created a department to cover this and it will include spot checks. The only thing I've noticed is the demise of the policy where officers from HQ used to come out for a few hours of patrol to "keep in touch" once a month or so, pairing up with a local officer. This might well reappear once the weather warms up and I await to see if a lone patrol is order of the day.

Loved the story I heard the other day of an Inspector who was out on foot patrol at 3am with a probationer to do a few stops. A car pulls up with the on call Superintendo who then enquires why they weren't on lone patrol. Despite the Inspector's best efforts to point out he was developing his young charge he still had a lecture about single patrol. The Superintendo was of course being driven by a PC. Great for morale and the Superintendo obviously destined for the very top. This was a first hand account by the way.

Get Well Soon Fran Croucher - (whatever's wrong with you) * Did I title this post correctly or what?

* Update * We are stupid and are bringing it in too - orders from the centre, not from those who are responsible locally.