So there is over 500 crimes taking place A DAY and they have to catch 5 a month!! Surly it should be 5 a day!

Wouldn't waste your time asking for police help in future just in case you get one that has made his 5 arrest for that month!!

They breed quicker than that.....

Come on Mr Griggs this is giving your officers a chance to be lazy and not work, if the crime is high surely it should be 5 a week.Perhaps you should look into what the SNT do. You are giving the red light to criminals 5 a month ...what next

So, How many arrests a month does Mr Grigg get!. No doubt he could easily achieve five arrests as well as he goes about his duties across the borough. There is more to policing than making arrests...

Hmm wrote:
So there is over 500 crimes taking place A DAY and they have to catch 5 a month!! Surly it should be 5 a day! Wouldn't waste your time asking for police help in future just in case you get one that has made his 5 arrest for that month!!

shocked wrote:Come on Mr Griggs this is giving your officers a chance to be lazy and not work, if the crime is high surely it should be 5 a week.Perhaps you should look into what the SNT do. You are giving the red light to criminals 5 a month ...what next

Oh dear, the less than gifted have come out to play.

It is sometimes difficult to do a decent job amongst so much critism, frankly it is irksome!

The Safer Neighbourhood Teams (SNT) are generally your everyday ‘bobby on the beat’ type officer, giving the areas that they police a ‘regular’ contact and known face. They meet regularly with the local community and strive to nip issues in the bud as opposed to allowing them to blossom into full blown community problems.

There more than 20 SNTs across the Borough and these are usually made up of one sector sergeant, one police constable and two or three PCSO’s. PCSO do not make arrests!

The Borough is policed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by ‘response’ teams, who apart from answering ‘999’ calls (front line policing), also carry out proactive duties. They are supported by numerous officers and civilian staff within and outside the Borough to facilitate public response and investigations. SNTs are in addition to these resources.

I have personal knowledge of exceptional officers that have achieved in excess of 20 arrests in a 17 day work period – fact not fiction!

…and yes there is more to policing than arrests!

So the SN Teams have a target of 110 arrests over 4 weeks. Thats okay - add that to the figures from the 350 or so other police officers on the borough and you have a healthy figure against a population of 295k over 52sq miles.
We live in a nice, leafy borough with crime generally down. This drive will push it down further.

It's more about what happens after the arrest.
Stupid Courts, then let the arrested off with a silly sentence.

Dear Residents, Supt Griggs,
As a Magistrate I'm surprised to hear Bromley' mosts senior officer making comments about targets he himself would probably be unable to hit,( if he has as a Pc or Ps, I would be very happy to look at his figures, to examine and for what offences.( Let me point out I would not accept 5 arrests per month for Drunks in a public Place) As the senior officer I would like to set him some figures to achieve, for example I would ask him to use the press to let Bromley residents know that he will target at least one public house per month where he turns-up totally unexpected with a number of officers, each person in the pub is searched (As they exit) for knives/drugs etc, of course I accept most of the items will be found on the floor, but its a start, to sending out the right message, IT WILL REDUCE KNIFE CRIME, and subsequently more serious crime and keep more of Bromley residents safe, Its not rocket science! Let me give you another good reason why officers should not be set arrest targets, from personal experience whilst serving as an officer I was once set a target of one arrest per week, but in my case they also had to be charged. ( Set of case papers to the CPS) At the end of the week some officers would get quite desparate, and on one occasion I assisted an collegue where we had to call for urgent assistance afer entering a public house following the observation of a drugs deal taking place outside, (in order to arrest the dealer,) then, as now, such targets can put an officers safety and other lives at RISK. As a supervising officer he should be leaving arrest figures to his sargeants to identify officers on their teams who lack arrest experience, ( and if necssary) by giving them a posting on the shop-lifting teams or similar schemes where high arrests normally take place. Speaking as a Bromley resident, I would prefer Mr Griggs gave all his officers targets of walking the beat for at least 5 hours per week! When are you going to realise its what the public want! more contact, more assurance and more sight of the police, we all accept they can't walk about all day for 8 hours, and we don't want to see the ridiculous sight of seeing 12 officers in pairs walking up and down the A21, so that a chief superintendent sitting in an office somewhere can get his next promotion by stating he's re-assured his local public.
It was re-assuring to hear C/ins Gallehawk was more in touch, not only with his officers, but also with the concerns of the residents of Bromley, and therefore I would also ask C/Supt Griggs to assign each officer 2 crimes per month which they sign for as in -vestingating officers, (and see through to the end) these can be looked at during the more quieter times of shift work, or when they are carring out there 5 hours of walking, in order that they have a purpose and target whilst doing so! Therefore achieving a number of goals and targets at the same time.
The people of LONDON and Bromley do not want ridiculous targets like this, and wrapping it up in a " Borough commander sets safer neighbourhood target" is treating the Bromley residents as fools, forget about your next promotion and concentrate on the needs of your community, listen to us and your junior officers, Safer Neighbourhood policing, ALL POLICING, is about detecting crime, bringing people to justice, these aims will be reduced if you give officers pathetic targets, the public need more re-assurance, of course the police should have targets, but lets give them targets where they also enjoy their job, and most importantly meet the needs of the community they serve.

Ps, Very happy to take emails critising Magistrates
JM

Can we have the arrest figures for every police officer in Bromley for the last year?
with names and shoulder numbers,

Month by Month please,

It should make very interesting reading with the ladies that lunch, over our tea and tarts

Well, Mr Miller, it's the clowns like you that are totally to blame for the rise of crime in this country. You people constantly ignore sentencing guidelines and give sentences that are absolutely no deterrant to the criminals - in fact they give them the green light that it's OK to carry on committing crime. Pathetic sanctions like picking up leaves are not a deterrent to yobbery.

The action that needs to be taken to get this country back on the right track is for the discretionary powers that you Magistrates and Judges have to be removed entirely. There should be a mandatory sentence for each crime - and probation should be abolished totally. We should have truth in sentencing. If you commit a crime and the sentence is ten years, you should serve ten years and not a day less. There should be no 'time off for good behaviour', instead there should be an increase in sentence for bad behaviour.

Probation was developed to scale back the jail population and sponsor rehabilitation, but it has been shown that recidivism among those released on probation is no different than those who get out of prison after serving a full sentence. There are people who are genuinely a threat to society and society has every right to protect itself from them.

Judges and Magistrates need to be accountable. If the police or social services fail to deal with someone who goes on to kill there would quite rightly be serious repurcusssions. But time and again we have seen Judges and Magistrates do this without comeback. And when this is challenged they throw up their hands in horror and look with disdain upon those who call for them to be reprimanded or removed from the bench.

If the courts were a deterrant, people would think twice before offending. If a child touches a hot oven, he very soon learns not to do it again. This is because there are serious, non-negotiable,immut

able and immediate consequences to that action. Whether he comes from a broken home or whether his mother once smacked his hand are an utter irrelevance.

People in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones. There's one very glaring weakness in the criminal justice system - people like you.

Buck up your ideas and start sentencing people properly.

Well said Excalibur!!

I am prepared to take Mr Miller's word that he was a serving officer but I wonder for how long he served. The reason I ask is that his time in the police did not enable him to learn how to spell the word "sergeant". Perhaps he never got promoted?

I totally endorse the concept of arresting criminals and detecting crime. How can Mr Miller or anyone object?

I also note that Mr Miller wants police to raid pubs once a week to keep knife crime down. Sadly, he provides no intelligence to suggest that this would be a successful tactic. How would this deter a 14 year old from carrying a knife?

Ch Supt Griggs has an excellent record as Borough Commander at Bromley. He is now clearly looking to ensure that his Safer Neighbourhood Teams make Bromley even safer. He's the expert with the proven track record. Quit the criticism, let's get behind him!

Well said, Peter. And just to reinforce his stupidity, Miller's managed to spell his own christian name wrong too.

Either he's your typical permanantely sozzled old soak of a magistrate or he's a product of the Labour party's educational system (actually, reading his post, I'd bet on the latter - poor spelling and dreadful grammar, to name the most obvious).

Either way he's unfit to be a magistrate - but then again, so are most of the liberal do-gooders who are magistrates.

Magistrates are the ones that are the root cause of all this country's problems. If they sentenced criminals properly, then we'd actually need fewer police as the majority of criminals would be in prison. And the stupid suggestion that police should raid pubs - how many of the youths that have been killed in london recently have been killed in or around pubs? You're so out of touch Miller. Leave the policing to the professionals like Griggs and you start sentencing people properly. It's not rocket science Miller!

As a serving Police Officer of 12 years I must say I tend to agree with Mr. Miller.
I have just resigned! I was on an SNT. It turned out not to be what I had signed up for suprise suprise! I should have been the local 'beat bobby' which is why SNTs were invented, to reassure the public and deal with 'low level' crime and issues which affect the community. Ok so arrest if arrest is needed, but we were told to go off our 'patch' and find people to arrest because there were targets to be reached, this included standing on street corners for the day giving out Road traffic tickets! Targets, targets, targets, thats all they want. SNTs are basically being 'used' to forfill Borough's targets, SNTs also have to deal with their own prisoners so thats a whole 8 hrs off the road for one arrest! So I wish Bromley borough all the best for their 5 a month targets cause they will need it. So if you get burgled and wonder where your Safer Neighbourhood Team is, they are probably on another Borough trying to nick people that dont really need nicking!! I just couldnt work for an organisation that I did not believe in any more and quite frankly its a joke!
No wonder Sir Ian Blair left, Im with him!

Totally agree with Excalibur.Sentences handed out by Magistrates, are a joke.

No real view on this particular story.

Do though have to observe that there seems to be a growing Police supporters club
amongst some of the regular contributors here.

Excalibur and Rattler 17 spring immediately to mind.

Do they have a hidden agenda ?

hidden agenda? or not so hidden day job?

SNTs are basically being 'used' to forfill Borough's targets

The word you were looking for is actually fulfil.

Sounds like you were looking for a cushy number to me, Mandy, and when the realisation dawned that you might have to do some work........

Good of you to take the old adage "If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen" so literally though.

BTW - I don't think Sir Ian Blair left voluntarily.

Gelert wrote:
hidden agenda? or not so hidden day job?

Sisyphus, long time no hear - I thought you'd bored yourself into a coma!

No hidden agenda, just looking to see that justice is served. Unfortunately Magistrates are very good at sounding off, but not very good when it comes to their job of giving people appropriate sentences for the crimes they've committed.

The problem as I see it is that Magistrates have too many hidden agendas - if we were, for example, to ban any magistrate from simultaneously holding a political post (and a very high number of magistrates throughout the country serve on local councils) this would make them appear more far more transparent. As it is they currently lay themselves open to all sorts of allegations of malfeasance.

Oh dear Kate...you really have no idea do you?? There is now a vacancy if you think you could do a better job, but I doubt it.....BTW - Im glad I got out, I actually have a life!

One problem with this Mt Griggs. Your lazy arsed officers will have to come out of their warm little stations and do some work!

Zzzzzzzz. I think we've found the new cassie.

One problem with this Mt Griggs.

I know he's got some chubby little cheeks on him, but to equate him to a mountain's a bit harsh!