I feel sorry for our Detective Chief Inspector. I assume that to have made DCI he was once a successful and experienced detective. I know that in today’s police service that is a bit of a leap in faith; he may have just kissed the right arses, who knows. But whatever his background, he came to F Division to supervise investigations into serious crimes, to provide strategic direction for CID as a whole and to add experience to the SMT.
I imagine that he is fairly humiliated to find himself as a glorified accountant. Known as the Divisional Crime Performance Manager, he is now reduced to sending out regular motivational emails about the sanctioned detected rates.
‘only 40 more detected crimes in the next two weeks to reach our target – that’s 4 per day – keep up the pressure folks – you know we can do it’.
The only interest I have in this email is the admission that CID regard a week as consisting of five days. And what’s all this ‘we’ business?
As we get closer to the end of the month, these emails are faintly embarrassing. Watching a previously highly regarded professional become increasingly desperate is never nice. Especially when you are at the management meetings that precede the emails. Especially when you hear how the Divisional Crime Management Unit ‘validate’ crime reports. Especially when you can taste the contempt these people feel for themselves for playing this game.
Has it really come to this? A DCI whose main reason for being in the building is to ‘manage’ the government’s latest crackpot way of measuring police performance?
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