UKPoacher Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 ...and there is the view of an officer of the law i'm sure (and if you are, what an odd choice in forum name...) I was aiming the remark more at the "...Call me old fashioned but why the hell would you want to do a job and not be paid?..." statement. I find it quite narrow minded. I do lots of charity/volunteer work that takes up many hours a week. I don't really have money to give local charities and community projects, so what I do give is my time. It's not always cash that's needed. Sometimes a few hours work goes a lot further than some money! Also, I know a lot of 'specials' and 'regulars'. In general, they all seem to get on fine and have only good things to say about each other (in fact, some of the regulars cannot believe people give up their time to be abused, spat at etc.. from the general public...and not get paid!). I appreciate what you are saying with regards to costs...but I can only imagine you are not quite right with your figures. Regardless, surely 'every little helps' when it comes to taking some of the burden off the shoulders of the real police? I just read a post by yourself, it went like this... "...If it's anything like our area the police are run off their feet dealing with Facebook threats and petty domestics to have time to deal with real crime..." - a casing point. Now I fully understand times have moved on, Policing isn't 'walking the beat' like when I were a lad (i was scared of a clip round the earole from PC Sam...and i'm only just 30). Times are a changing, your times a wasting. But think how much more time would be wasted if the 'specials' weren't offloading some of that.. huffhuff-a-roo Good points made except that in my experience, and other forces may differ, the majority of Specials were passengers that went with regulars, rather than instead of them. IF we could have hived off the Facebook schite to Specials I might have had a different viewpoint, but they don't usually come to work with us during the day and rarely venture out alone anyway. This may be a failing of my own force. Other forces might use them differently in the same way that PCSOs in our force don't work nights or weekends yet in other forces they work 24/7. Taking the point about the cost of Specials; I once asked the Stores for a breakdown on the cost of uniform and at the same time asked the officer in charge of Specials to let me have the average number of hours worked per month and the average career time of a Special. The average time per month was around 11 hours and their average career spanned just over two years. They all had been recruited, trained and issued with full uniform including personal safety equipment and they all had to have annual First Aid and Self Defence Training. It actually worked out more costly to run a Special than the average cost of running a regular PC per annum. And, the regular PC has to come to work at the set time, has to do whatever is asked of them and has to work overtime if necessary. Specials can come and go when they please. Who would you employ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
huffhuff Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 (edited) Good points made except that in my experience, and other forces may differ, the majority of Specials were passengers that went with regulars, rather than instead of them. IF we could have hived off the Facebook schite to Specials I might have had a different viewpoint, but they don't usually come to work with us during the day and rarely venture out alone anyway. This may be a failing of my own force. Other forces might use them differently in the same way that PCSOs in our force don't work nights or weekends yet in other forces they work 24/7. Taking the point about the cost of Specials; I once asked the Stores for a breakdown on the cost of uniform and at the same time asked the officer in charge of Specials to let me have the average number of hours worked per month and the average career time of a Special. The average time per month was around 11 hours and their average career spanned just over two years. They all had been recruited, trained and issued with full uniform including personal safety equipment and they all had to have annual First Aid and Self Defence Training. It actually worked out more costly to run a Special than the average cost of running a regular PC per annum. And, the regular PC has to come to work at the set time, has to do whatever is asked of them and has to work overtime if necessary. Specials can come and go when they please. Who would you employ? Don't get me wrong UKPoacher, I have complete and utmost respect for the Police and yourself. I wouldn't be able to do what you do (mainly cos i'm a short scaredy-cat). I was just trying to make the point that surely some help is better than no help?!? I think you may have also contradicted yourself. One minute saying "...how can you expect someone to do the same job with a fraction of the training and experience when they can just pop in and out when it suits them?..." but then later saying "...the majority of Specials were passengers that went with regulars, rather than instead of them. IF we could have hived off the Facebook schite to Specials I might have had a different viewpoint, but they don't usually come to work with us during the day and rarely venture out alone anyway...What other trade allows barely trained volunteers?...". So, it seems they are in fact sending them out with the full time, well experienced and fully trained up Police. Sounds a bit like how any tradesman first learns the ropes to me?!? I see what you are saying about equipment/training versus hours worked. But if it was more cost effective to employ fulltime regulars (especially in these financial times and with all the cutbacks) then they would do. Surely shirley?!? It's not just about training and tangible items though. It's all the other behind-the-scene costs that an employer has to pay out (national insurance, salary, overtime, holiday, sick pay, maternity/paternity pay blah blah blah). You don't have any of that with a volunteer! I don't want to argue at all, my initial comment was about volunteering in general. Maybe it was the wrong thread to bring it up in. But as we are off on a tangent, why is a respectable officer of the louaaar using a name commonly given to somebody that hunts illegally Edited October 25, 2011 by huffhuff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muddy Funker Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 I'm a regular and have been for five years now. In my opinion specials are worthwhile, my force will generally put them out together and they will deal with the usual friday and sat night town centre stuff and anti social behaviour from the feral kids which actually puts a huge burden on regulars, especially during school holidays. They will never go out alone and take the place of a regular. But that doesn't stop them from being able to deal with a lot of things. One aligned to my rota has nearly ten years service and is as good as any regular I've seen, it just takes longer for them to get up to speed due to the hours they put in. My hat goes off to them in general because as another has said, I wouldn't put up with what most front line police go through for free, **** that. Best of luck to the op. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaxiDriver Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 I guess I was lucky, Within the force I served with, different areas used the 'specials' differently. Where I was not only did we provide policing for special events (Carnivals etc etc) which would maybe have not gone ahead without cover, or the cover of Paid regulars from other towns, But we were able to work along side a shift, doing exactly what the regulars do, (with some exceptions) 'Specials' were used to supplement regulars numbers, enabling cars to be out double crewed, foot patrols in pairs around town on a Fri/Sat night. And on occassions some of the mundane dross was passed over to the Specials, thereby freeing up more highly skilled regulars for more specialist tasks. 10 miles down the road, Specials only did fetes and carnivals and traffic control, never went out singularly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garygreengrass Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Respect to anyone who does volunteering work, Good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentKill Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 An interesting debate and conversation... Ive been a special in Herts for a few years now and i love it, especially the rural side of the Job! I'm in the process of transferring to Wiltshire and the forces do vary greatly. A lot of opinions from Regs and Specials, but in fairness when you first start out as a special you rely on teaming up with Regs for Training and guidance, and its fair to say there are some very Lazy and useless coppers out there who are unwilling to train or help specials and see them as a hinderance to their job when they could help them and lighten their own workload.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kyska Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Good points made except that in my experience, and other forces may differ, the majority of Specials were passengers that went with regulars, rather than instead of them. IF we could have hived off the Facebook schite to Specials I might have had a different viewpoint, but they don't usually come to work with us during the day and rarely venture out alone anyway. This may be a failing of my own force. Other forces might use them differently in the same way that PCSOs in our force don't work nights or weekends yet in other forces they work 24/7. This has been discussed before, and as I've said to you Clive that its a shame you felt that way about specials. I specialed for many a year, and I did exactly what my forces (Leicestershire) remit was for specials and had really good, friendly feedback from regs. I pretty much policed as a parish constable, I was independent so used to do day shifts (my work allowed me 4 weeks paid time off) when the community officer was on rest days, I took the bus around, dealt mainly with anti social behaviour, pain in the *** kids, nusuiance off road bikes, neighbourhood watch meetings and generally plodded the streets making a presence, sounds rubbish but I found it extremely rewarding. Myself and my SC partner got many a mention in the local rag, as we worked on local initiatives, we had no problems shouting up when **** jobs came in, and the airwaves went silent when control shouted for a crew to attend the theft of some carrots from an allotment, many a reg thanked us at the end of the shift for doing the not so exciting jobs. Very rarely did I go blues and two'ing, the only time was when we were asked to give the public order serials a planned leg up, when the fair came to our nearest town, fresher week and such like. We all knew what our level of competence was, we just wouldn't attend a job that we obviously didn't have the skill sets for, the duty sgt get tabs on what we were up to, and wouldn't ask us to do anything that out of our remit, unless we were needed for traffic control, or prisoner transport. It also matters not a jot, whether you're a reg or sc when the orange button is pushed, we've been first on scene to help out a reg in the ****, didn't have one single comment that they'd prefer to wait for a regular to stop someone from kicking their head in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKPoacher Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Regards the last two posts; I agree that there are some lazy coppers about and if they were sorted there would be no need for Specials. Specials in general do not lighten any officers workload, not in my experience anyway. I have worked with three or four who can to a degree contribute at the scene and at the station, but the overwhelming majority are passengers and actually add to the officers burden in that they have to be nurse maided about. As previously said; they may make more use out of them in other force areas. I'm only speaking from my own experience. Kyska, getting in the local papers is nothing to shout about. I worked with a bobby who always got in the papers, always was the first to embrace new policies, shouted about it from the rooftops then did s0d all for months at a time. He was that good at self-promotion he actually got promoted, yet his workload was a fraction of his colleagues. We found a load of abandoned work from months back stuffed in an old filing cabinet when he had gone. And, historically the local community bobbies always get more praise than the response team because they have time to bull-poo the worthy members of the public who are likely to sing their praises, whilst the beat team are rolling around on the floor with the scumbags who aren't likely to write in to thank them. You work in a veterinary field. Would you let a Saturday girl perform a procedure on your dog? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kyska Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 You work in a veterinary field. Would you let a Saturday girl perform a procedure on your dog? That sir, wouldn't entirely depend on the size of her honkers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentKill Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Honkers aside.... There are more than a few specials worth their weight in gold. For example when the Riots were on our regs in Intervention had to be deployed into north london, we took over intervention for the weekend in 4 towns. How can you say there would be no need for specials, imagine a world where a reg would actually have to do some community work and physically attend a fete or carnival, or have to scene guard for hours on end, god forbid they do any of the mundane jobs! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKPoacher Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Honkers aside.... There are more than a few specials worth their weight in gold. For example when the Riots were on our regs in Intervention had to be deployed into north london, we took over intervention for the weekend in 4 towns. How can you say there would be no need for specials, imagine a world where a reg would actually have to do some community work and physically attend a fete or carnival, or have to scene guard for hours on end, god forbid they do any of the mundane jobs! Where I worked Community Constables and PCSOs usually attend local community events and regular police officers have to do scene supervision, prisoner supervision, hospital supervision and all the other mundane jobs. The last time I worked, if you can call it that, a village event was the Kiverton Gala circa 1999 - 2000, when they tried to close the beer tent early. :o There were seven Specials on duty at the event as all the regulars were on football duties. I was the only bobby there for over twenty minutes. The dog had five bites. I got two bottles on my head, three prisoners and a complaint from a guy the dog didn't bite, but got a kick in the goolies for his trouble. The Specials disappeared up their own backsides. Happy days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentKill Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Where I worked Community Constables and PCSOs usually attend local community events and regular police officers have to do scene supervision, prisoner supervision, hospital supervision and all the other mundane jobs. The last time I worked, if you can call it that, a village event was the Kiverton Gala circa 1999 - 2000, when they tried to close the beer tent early. :o There were seven Specials on duty at the event as all the regulars were on football duties. I was the only bobby there for over twenty minutes. The dog had five bites. I got two bottles on my head, three prisoners and a complaint from a guy the dog didn't bite, but got a kick in the goolies for his trouble. The Specials disappeared up their own backsides. Happy days. Times have changed since then! ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buckaroo23 Posted October 25, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 well some good points made, had an email from the police missed the clasing date by a few days, but tgere will be taking on again at the start of next year so they will contact me, so it gives me a few months to lose a bit of flab and get back at the gym, thanks for thr surport guys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKPoacher Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Times have changed since then! ;-) Not in Kiverton they haven't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaun4860 Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 (edited) Where I worked Community Constables and PCSOs usually attend local community events and regular police officers have to do scene supervision, prisoner supervision, hospital supervision and all the other mundane jobs. The last time I worked, if you can call it that, a village event was the Kiverton Gala circa 1999 - 2000, when they tried to close the beer tent early. :o There were seven Specials on duty at the event as all the regulars were on football duties. I was the only bobby there for over twenty minutes. The dog had five bites. I got two bottles on my head, three prisoners and a complaint from a guy the dog didn't bite, but got a kick in the goolies for his trouble. The Specials disappeared up their own backsides. Happy days. wow, rough place if they bite dogs :o Edited October 25, 2011 by shaun4860 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deershooter Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 (edited) UK Poacher It seems that the training offered in your area is insufficient, and senior management is lacking in man management skills out of an average no of approx 30 specials in my small town I can name at least 12 with long service medals for over 9 years service we have some with 16=20 years .But thats those that just want to be specials not regulars . Over the last few years the police in general have been requesting that people join the specials before joining the regulars therefore you have people who are doing an unpaid job who really do not wish to work for nothing. There is also lots of regular policemen out there in all constabularies who if you gave them two ball bearings they would break one and loose the other. Edited October 25, 2011 by deershooter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UKPoacher Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 UK Poacher It seems that the training offered in your area is insufficient, and senior management is lacking in man management skills Yep! You got it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CZ550Kevlar Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Put my name down for a pre-screening call back from Kent police on Friday for the specials. Is there an age or weight limit? what does this pre-screening call consist of? anyone know? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kyska Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Put my name down for a pre-screening call back from Kent police on Friday for the specials. Is there an age or weight limit? what does this pre-screening call consist of? anyone know? If you've applied you should know! You need to fit for purpose, if you're so overweight you can't at least do the job you'll struggle, the UDT is tough, but you need to think whether you can keep with pace. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maidment78 Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 Sure this is the right job path? Do not mean to be rude but if your feeling depressed already the stress of police work will break you. Your origional post made me concerned that's all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CZ550Kevlar Posted October 25, 2011 Report Share Posted October 25, 2011 If you've applied you should know! You need to fit for purpose, if you're so overweight you can't at least do the job you'll struggle, the UDT is tough, but you need to think whether you can keep with pace. It doesn`t actually quote any info on age or weight so i guess i`m clear, watched the info video on the fitness test and i could do it easy, the push and pull test at 34kg i could do with my little fingers, the shuttle run looks like a stroll in the park, and i`m not the fittest person ever. I expected worse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buckaroo23 Posted October 26, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 26, 2011 Sure this is the right job path? Do not mean to be rude but if your feeling depressed already the stress of police work will break you. Your origional post made me concerned that's all. the reason i feel stressed and depressed is because i work for jokers, in the last four years ive done every thing i was asked went to different depots done days,lates,nights in the week and then worked the weekend, but since i stood my ground its been a big fall, day to day i dnt get stress in fact i love it ehen im busy, under staffed snd most of the time behind ,if i was at the piont where stress or depression was becoming a problem then i would not be working. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silverhawk Posted October 26, 2011 Report Share Posted October 26, 2011 A friend i used to know did the psco thing.Always teeling me rubbish about how he was involved in under cover drug operations and chasing criminals in a squad car .He watched To much sweeney i think :blink:. He even ended up getting 2 warnings one for throwing evidence away and another for flashing hes pcso card around everywhere and i mean everywhere.Even trying to get discount in shops still kept hes job though.I stopped contact with him as he said he found out i had a caution years back and he knew every detail.Im pretty sure he should not be allowed run a check on me . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buckaroo23 Posted October 26, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 26, 2011 A friend i used to know did the psco thing.Always teeling me rubbish about how he was involved in under cover drug operations and chasing criminals in a squad car .He watched To much sweeney i think :blink:. He even ended up getting 2 warnings one for throwing evidence away and another for flashing hes pcso card around everywhere and i mean everywhere.Even trying to get discount in shops still kept hes job though.I stopped contact with him as he said he found out i had a caution years back and he knew every detail.Im pretty sure he should not be allowed run a check on me : no hes not allowed to do that, if you had complained he would of been up for it, more than likley sacked Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacksdad Posted October 26, 2011 Report Share Posted October 26, 2011 I'm thinking that all the Police forces in the country are facing massive cutbacks, and making redundancies? I'd be looking for a career in an expanding field myself: best of luck though, we'd be stuck without our Police! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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