It is not just how many officers there are, it is how they are used.
Police staff carry out tasks which do not require fully trained officers. In military terms, they would be described as a "force multiplier". They specialise in certain types of work, releasing officers to spend more time on the streets interacting with the public.
For example, if somebody is prosecuted for an assault there needs to be a case file produced for court. Certain parts of the file need to go to some people and be withheld from others. Building such a file can take hours of work depending on how complex is the case. This work is office-based, so it is more efficient for a member of police staff to do this instead of an officer. They will be cheaper to train and most likely be paid less. They will be much better at preparing a file than a street officer because they can become expert in this skill. One file clerk can support many officers. Once the file is submitted there will often be queries at odd intervals, which need to be processed. The clerk can do this instead of constantly interrupting officer tasks.
To save money but also save face, some police staff will be cut along with officers. The force can then truthfully state that less officers have been cut than they would otherwise have to. The real picture is that the remaining officers are burdened with more station-based tasks and spend less time out and about.
A simple head count of how many officers there are is a very misleading statistic. A better statistic would be to divide officer time into two parts - productive work time and support time. The public could be shocked to see how much police time they actually get. For example, consider a police station with around 200 officers. On a typical midweek night shift there might well be only about 8 available to answer emergency calls. If the shift is 8 hours long that gives a theoretical total of 64 hours work available. Around half of that will be station-based activities, possibly more. In man-hours this means you get the equivalent of about 4 officers answering emergency calls at any one time. Increasing this pulls officers off other tasks which will have to be done another time.
Cuts in custody staff mean that a street officer takes longer in the police station to cycle through the custody procedure each time they arrest somebody. Cuts in property clerks mean that street officers spend longer in the station dealing with found/stolen/evidential property than being out and about. The list goes on and it all adds up.
Basically each time you cut a member of police staff the hours of work that they used to do have to be passed on to somebody else. Some of that work will be absorbed by the remaining members of police staff, but this can only be done up to a point. A small amount will just be quietly abandoned, and the rest will get dumped on the officers reducing their time out the station.
The only way to deal with all this is to divide work tasks into three categories according to how important they are: must-do, should-do, could-do. The must-do jobs get the prime time. The should-do jobs get squeezed in where there are gaps, often being spread over a few days. The could-do jobs get last priority or even no priority at all. A few years ago a law was introduced banning smoking in cars where children were present. One force had to admit after some time that there had been no prosecutions for this offence. Now you know why.
Police staff carry out tasks which do not require fully trained officers. In military terms, they would be described as a "force multiplier". They specialise in certain types of work, releasing officers to spend more time on the streets interacting with the public.
For example, if somebody is prosecuted for an assault there needs to be a case file produced for court. Certain parts of the file need to go to some people and be withheld from others. Building such a file can take hours of work depending on how complex is the case. This work is office-based, so it is more efficient for a member of police staff to do this instead of an officer. They will be cheaper to train and most likely be paid less. They will be much better at preparing a file than a street officer because they can become expert in this skill. One file clerk can support many officers. Once the file is submitted there will often be queries at odd intervals, which need to be processed. The clerk can do this instead of constantly interrupting officer tasks.
To save money but also save face, some police staff will be cut along with officers. The force can then truthfully state that less officers have been cut than they would otherwise have to. The real picture is that the remaining officers are burdened with more station-based tasks and spend less time out and about.
A simple head count of how many officers there are is a very misleading statistic. A better statistic would be to divide officer time into two parts - productive work time and support time. The public could be shocked to see how much police time they actually get. For example, consider a police station with around 200 officers. On a typical midweek night shift there might well be only about 8 available to answer emergency calls. If the shift is 8 hours long that gives a theoretical total of 64 hours work available. Around half of that will be station-based activities, possibly more. In man-hours this means you get the equivalent of about 4 officers answering emergency calls at any one time. Increasing this pulls officers off other tasks which will have to be done another time.
Cuts in custody staff mean that a street officer takes longer in the police station to cycle through the custody procedure each time they arrest somebody. Cuts in property clerks mean that street officers spend longer in the station dealing with found/stolen/evidential property than being out and about. The list goes on and it all adds up.
Basically each time you cut a member of police staff the hours of work that they used to do have to be passed on to somebody else. Some of that work will be absorbed by the remaining members of police staff, but this can only be done up to a point. A small amount will just be quietly abandoned, and the rest will get dumped on the officers reducing their time out the station.
The only way to deal with all this is to divide work tasks into three categories according to how important they are: must-do, should-do, could-do. The must-do jobs get the prime time. The should-do jobs get squeezed in where there are gaps, often being spread over a few days. The could-do jobs get last priority or even no priority at all. A few years ago a law was introduced banning smoking in cars where children were present. One force had to admit after some time that there had been no prosecutions for this offence. Now you know why.
No true N gear which is why they can't be towed either and switching off results in no brake assist, no power stearing and a lack of proper control./
