Rochdale police column: Making difficult decisions - what if you were the Rochdale East Neighbourhood Inspector?

Inspector Robert MacGregor, of the Rochdale East Neighbourhood Policing Team, on what the police are doing to tackle local issues across the borough.

This week, he asks "what would you do if you were the Rochdale East Neighbourhood Inspector" in relation to making difficult policing decisions.

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I was in a meeting last year with a few Inspectors from different areas. We were discussing burglaries in the area and one inspector said that a police officer should be making a personal visit to every victim of burglary. I completely agree with this; they absolutely should be. Based on my time in the job – and as a victim of burglary – the impact that burglary has on victims is huge.

However, even knowing this, I do not demand that a neighbourhood PC attend every burglary. This is due to the need to balance what I would like to deliver the public against the best use of the finite resources I have available.

With every decision on allocating incidents and crimes I have to ask myself if this is the best way I can keep the community safe. Sometimes that means making decisions that do not feel good, and as someone who loves my job and joined to help people, those choices can be tough-going.

I want neighbourhood officers to be preventing crime, protecting vulnerable people, and keeping the community safe. It is my responsibility to give them the freedom and time to do all three of those activities.

When I first joined the police, my previous force had an ‘all crime attendance policy’ where we would attend in person at any report of crime. In truth, this was probably not a sensible use of resources at the time and in the current climate it would be impossible.

I know that the message of policing having to prioritise and to ‘make difficult decisions’ becomes tiresome to hear, so I thought I might put you in my shoes and give some examples of everyday decisions that I am referring to when I speak about difficult decisions so you can consider whether you would have made different choices.

You have two neighbourhood sergeants, six neighbourhood police constables and twelve PCSOs covering Rochdale East (Kingsway, Kirkholt, Balderstone, Castleton, and the Pennines). There are teams of response officers who deal with emergency calls but your officers will routinely be needed to assist with those demands when the list of outstanding incidents threatens to overwhelm the response teams.

In the previous week you have attended community meetings and received letters from local elected members. A consistent theme in these is the demand for a greater visible police presence in a variety of different residential areas.

You have also received complaints from the retail park that more needs to be done in relation to shoplifting, with a request for staff to be moved from their neighbourhoods to police the businesses in that area. Owing to a significant crime the previous week, there are two scene guards in police on properties in the area which four of your PCSOs are required to be on for the duration of their shift.

As the staff on your team work different shift patterns and, due to training, you have one sergeant, three PCs and six PCSOs on duty. Four of your PCSOs will be committed on the scene guard for the day.

You have received an email from the district crime analysts who have produced the weekly district patrol plan for your officers so that they are in the places where the data suggests they have the greatest chance of preventing crime from occurring. None of these hotspot areas cover the areas where you have received complaints from residents demanding greater visibility. If you deviate from the patrol plans you will reduce your team’s effectiveness at reducing crime.

However, the community are telling you that they feel unsafe as they don’t see their local officers on foot patrol, and you want to give the community confidence in their local police.

Do you follow the patrol plans informed by data and analysis, or do you reduce the effectiveness of your patrols to address community confidence?

As you review the crime from the previous few days, you become aware of a series of crimes which have occurred in Littleborough. A few of them have no forensic evidence, no witnesses, and no CCTV. Some others have loose potential lines of enquiry where a neighbour ‘might have CCTV’.

As you are going through these crimes, you receive a call from social services advising you that an urgent strategy meeting is taking place that morning for a child who is at high risk of abuse. The neighbourhood PC for the area is requested to attend.

Protecting vulnerable people and working with partners is crucial for neighbourhood policing, so you task them to do some research on the case and attend the meeting.

You return to the crime series in Littleborough. The PCSO for the area asks you if they should go to all the incidents, just the ones with possible lines of enquiry, or keep to the patrol plan you set them.

They suggest that they could call the victims who have mentioned CCTV and ask if they could check with the neighbours whether their CCTV has caught an offender. What would you decide to do?

One of your PCs has been reviewing crime on their beat and notices that care homes in the area appear to be getting targeted for burglary. This concerns the officer as it is a crime aimed at vulnerable people and they ask to be allowed to concentrate on these investigations and to warn care homes in the area about this possible crime series. You agree to give them the time to carry out these enquiries rather than carry out their planned patrols.

Meanwhile, the victim who has been called by your PCSO has managed to check the neighbour’s CCTV. It has captured some footage but the neighbour can’t use their CCTV system and asks for an officer to go round and operate it for them. Your PCSO is now on a scene guard following an incident off their beat which needed to be staffed, and they will be unavailable all day.

Do you tell the PC to leave the care home investigation to attend and download the CCTV, do you tell the victim to wait and hope that tomorrow is an easier day for resourcing and risk delaying it by day after day with a risk of the suspects committing more offences, or do you ask the victim to find someone tech-savvy who can download that footage and bring it in to the police station?

You then look at the staffing and plans for the following day. You have arranged a traffic policing operation in Castleton the following week following numerous complaints about inconsiderate driving in the area. Half a dozen other agencies are also attending, and you have been planning it for a month.

Your sergeant speaks to you as they have been putting off two drug warrants for houses in the area due to other priorities, but the warrants are going to imminently expire. If they are going to get done, then they need the staff who would be doing the traffic operation in order to do it safely on the same day. Do you staff the traffic operation as planned, and let the warrants lapse, or do the warrants and fail to deliver the traffic operation?

It can be easy to come up with impossible hypothetical situations, but this was just part of my day on an unremarkable Wednesday earlier this month. Similar decisions were needed on nearly every one of the neighbourhoods we cover. I made decisions for each of these questions, occasionally not feeling proud of myself whilst making them but trying to do the right thing with the resources that I have.

Each of the neighbourhood officers are making their own ‘difficult decisions’ every day and they are all doing their absolute best in the most challenging times this job has ever known.

I spoke to a journalist about the Milnrow and Newhey Street Watch scheme last week. They asked me whether I thought it made the police look bad that the public were doing what they expected the police to be doing.

I don’t see it that way, and even if I did – it is irrelevant. My role isn’t to look good – it is to keep the community as safe as I can. I would be failing the residents of the areas I am responsible for if I were to make decisions based on what made me look good.

Thank you as always for your support, and please post replies on the Rochdale Online Facebook link with any thoughts.