Storm Troopers

did they have warrants for every single house on a street? - what grounds were given? - was there any resistance? - any more background to this very worrying incident?

been told bbc tv nwest local news is running the story.It is concering.One wonders how warrents were obtained,if.

just the begining

they will seize your assets

impound your children

force you to carry your 'papers' (adopt nazi voice here)

the civil service is no longer civil

express your anger upon these jumped up beaurocrats

or else let 'em continue and expand their oppression of you

people talking about arming themselves.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Dante of the Gulag, had a long time to lament the passivity with which he and his fellow political prisoners had allowed themselves to be seized in the middle of the night by Stalin's secret police. He realized and wrote that if every time the feared knock was heard the people inside had taken up their axes or pokers or sticks and defended themselves to the death, soon it would have been very hard to find police willing to spend their nights rounding people up. This is a metaphor of the stark reality we face. We need to be ready to fight back, perhaps physically, perhaps tonight. If we do, we can put an end to the deadly future being planned against us.

The PR term Total Policing reminded me of Total Football, a style of football where players can play in multiple positions and move into the gaps left by their team mates. I thought I was underestimating the police PR but it turns out that is where they got the term. In effect these coppers are uniformed football thugs.

“We’d been developing the idea here for about 15 months and it is based on two things – a total war on crime and total care from victims.” I don't know if the moron is aware of his Freudian slip, 'care from victims' rather than 'care of victims'.

Anyway, I'd suggest a response of Total Anarchy. Link up every national campaign ( Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, No Borders, anti-CCTV etc ), flood Liverpool with anarchists and activists for a few weeks and use the police tactics against them and their 'allies' (the Benifits Agency, DVLA, NPower, British Gas and the housing association). They use the internet ? We use it better. They use CCTV ? We bug their offices and homes and steal their files. They charge into a street in numbers geared up for a fight ? We charge into their vehicle compounds and trash them.



Criminal Justice Management Mar 2006

total policing


Those of us old enough to remember the 1974 World Cup in Germany (and it frightens me somewhat to think that is more than 30 years ago now) will have fond memories of Johann Cruyff’s Holland team and their concept of Total Football. All the highly skilled members of the squad could do the jobs of the others and all played for each other, to produce one of the most effective and entertaining football teams in World Cup history.
Now, Bernard Hogan-Howe, Chief Constable of Merseyside, would not claim to be the Johan Cruyff of policing (although, in his footballing days, he bore a remarkable likeness in style to the Dutch maestro) but he has taken Cruyff’s principles of mutual support and effort and applied it to his force. “On 30 January this year, we launched what we call Total Policing,” he said. “We’d been developing the idea here for about 15 months and it is based on two things – a total war on crime and total care from victims.”
Hogan-Howe is very clear in his mind that the first role of the police is to enforce the law. “That’s what the public keep telling us they want,” he continued. “They’re quite happy for us to do other things as well, but if we let them down on this one they think we’re not doing our job. Of course, we also work on crime prevention and reduction. And we’re here to help people in emergencies even if there’s no crime involved.”
Merseyside’s initiative breaks down into three major elements. On the ground, the force is continuing to develop neighbourhood policing. The Chief Constable stressed that this was not just about walking the beat. Before the introduction of Total Policing, area teams generally drove around and covered larger areas. Now, he has dedicated patrol officers to walk smaller areas, where they can really get to know their patch and build trusted relationships with local people and with schools, places of faith and even parts of the health sector. “This is all about delivering a service and when people complain about crime, doing something about it. It also means that we’re going to have to have more people available particularly in the evening to challenge anti-social behaviour.”
At the second level the Matrix Team deals with that group of organised criminals who still commit crimes themselves – offenders that Hogan-Howe characterises as having “direct access to drugs and the money that comes from them or who carry weapons”.
Finally, the Force Organised Crime Unit targets the top level of organised criminal, those who have “put some distance between the crime and their profit from it”.
“With this group,” Hogan-Howe explained, “it can take a long time to build a case. We don’t just want to put these people in prison – in all cases we are going after their assets, working closely with Asset Recovery Agency. Within the last three months, we have brought in two members of the Courts Service to work within this Organised Crime group and I don’t think this has been done anywhere else.”
The force puts a lot of effort into getting Court Orders confiscating the assets of criminals and was finding that sometimes the system broke down when the Courts then tried to enforce them. “But we’ve got some enforcement skills,” he continued, “so, by working together with the CPS and the courts, we can enforce the law better. We’ve always recognised that one of the most effective ways of attacking criminals is to attack their profits so that partnership is vital. And, frankly, there is a benefit to all of our organisations, as we get some of the benefits of the recovered proceeds of crime.”
In support of Total Policing, Merseyside is maximising its use of technology as an enabler. The force has spent £5 million on installing mobile automatic number plate recognition in its vehicles and is investing in automatic vehicle location, mobile fingerprint recognition and mobile data access and recording systems.
“We’ve also done a lot of work with our internet site,” said Hogan-Howe. “As part of engaging with our public, I hold regular monthly internet forums. They last for an hour and we encourage people to email us with their questions and concerns. We will then send round the local Inspector to see what the problem is and what we can do about it.”
Public responses have covered everything from arming the police to retention of the traditional police helmet. “The number of people emailing is increasing and we’re opening up a debate – 50 per cent of the people on Merseyside have access to the internet. The public has got a chance to challenge me as the head of the organisation.
“The second thing we started is that I do a three-minute web broadcast, speaking directly to the million-and-a-half people on Merseyside and giving our view on a topic of the day. The last was my reaction to the release of a child killer which I was against and I said clearly why – most people agree with me but now they’ve heard it from the horses mouth.”
This is another part of Hogan-Howe’s drive to build a better relationship with his constituency and he believes that it gives them a greater understanding than they could get from the usual ten-second sound bite in the local media. “Sometimes, of course, I have to defend decisions that the public disagrees with – so it works both ways. It may be an opportunity to apologise for something or to provide a bit more background information about a decision.”
The internet is also being used to speed up the process of identification of offenders. Many crime scenes are now covered by CCTV and recovered images are distributed over the Force intranet. “In this way, we can consult 4500 colleagues almost instantly, to see if anyone recognises the offender,” he said. “And if that fails, we can then put images on the internet and hope that a member of the public can identify them.”
Many forces have come under severe recent criticism for their records in handling calls from the public. “This is where probably 80 per cent of people get their view of the force from,” Hogan-Howe explained, “so we have to get that right. We get overall nearly three million calls a year, but one of the things I’ve insisted on is that the phone is answered on time. That’s been a real challenge but we’ve got much better at it in the last year. The second problem was with logs of calls promptly answered but where we didn’t deal with the problem immediately. By very tight management, we’ve been able to cut the outstanding logs by two-thirds over the last twelve months and I get a report on them every seven days.”
Hogan-Howe is very much aware that the quality of response to calls from the public is as important as the promptness. “We have to make some very tough decisions when we know we don’t have enough people to respond,” he said. “In the past, if they knew that it was not an emergency, our operators might try to discourage the callers from having the service then and there. Too often we’ve said to people ‘This isn’t an emergency. Can we call tomorrow?’ And the people agreed but say that they’re worried – it’s not life threatening but their life’s a misery. We’ve got to get there more quickly to stop people having a miserable life.”
He has doubled the number of officers available to respond to both emergency and non-emergency calls and the force attends more incidents more quickly. “At the end of the day, if a victim says ‘I need to see you now’ we have to live with that. As an emergency service, we are always at the risk of being potentially overwhelmed – but we can succeed more often.”
Holland’s Total Football didn’t win the World Cup in 1974. They were beaten 2-1 in the final by West Germany – but very few remember anything about that German team. Bernard Hogan-Howe is determined that his Total Policing will be beaten by no one.
“We are here to enforce the law and we won’t apologise for that,” he said. “We don’t need to put every one in prison but I think it is appropriate to challenge people about their behaviour – and it’s their response to that challenge that determines where we go next. Looking back to the time of one of my predecessors, Ken Oxford, I don’t think behaviour and criminality have become worse and the statistics support that.
“But there’s no doubt that public expectation of the police is going up – and accessibility certainly is. When I joined the service, phone coverage was a lot lower. People wouldn’t always go to the call box at the end of the road to report bad behaviour. Now, most houses have a landline and very many people have mobiles, so it is easier to contact us.”
Merseyside Police will not tolerate bad behaviour, Hogan-Howe concluded. Total Policing will be just that, a comprehensive and coherent service to the citizens of Merseyside. n

“We’ve always recognised that one of the most effective ways of attacking criminals is to attack their profits”

In support of Total Policing, Merseyside is maximising its use of technology as an enabler

Bernard Hogan-Howe, Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, spoke with Colin Graham
 http://www.govnet.co.uk/heading.php?magazine=1&ID=707&PHPSESSID=151d9166c41c442bd8e5cbebd4fe2750