Honestly every time a true crime doc I’m watching has happened to be in the UK the cops have astounded me with how painfully, brain shatteringly incompetent they are. And I’m a fuckin american 😅
Between burnout, and underpay, they lose the more intelligent ones quite quickly.
A few years back, I did some work for a UK police force, as a (sub)contractor. One of the other guys actually asked the Chief constable why they were using us, not doing it in-house. It turned out they tried. Every time they trained up officers to do it, they quickly jumped ship to the private sector.
Plus side, excessive machoism is discouraged too, so the police tend to be a lot more polite than American police. Effectiveness is another story.
From what I gathered. It’s mostly a bunch of decrees coming down from central government. “Cost savings” from people who don’t have day to day interactions with the police ok the street.
E.g. buying a dedicated forensics vehicle, in one hit was not allowed. They cost too much. However, contracting for 1, on a case by case basis is fine. Despite the average cost being 1-2x the cost of a new one per year (they apparently last at least 10 years).
Wage pressure also makes them choose between more officers or paying the existing ones better. When there is a hard limit of the number of officers needed, the officers get screwed.
Honestly every time a true crime doc I’m watching has happened to be in the UK the cops have astounded me with how painfully, brain shatteringly incompetent they are. And I’m a fuckin american 😅
Between burnout, and underpay, they lose the more intelligent ones quite quickly.
A few years back, I did some work for a UK police force, as a (sub)contractor. One of the other guys actually asked the Chief constable why they were using us, not doing it in-house. It turned out they tried. Every time they trained up officers to do it, they quickly jumped ship to the private sector.
Plus side, excessive machoism is discouraged too, so the police tend to be a lot more polite than American police. Effectiveness is another story.
Thanks for the insight! Always interesting to hear from people with actual perspective
From what I gathered. It’s mostly a bunch of decrees coming down from central government. “Cost savings” from people who don’t have day to day interactions with the police ok the street.
E.g. buying a dedicated forensics vehicle, in one hit was not allowed. They cost too much. However, contracting for 1, on a case by case basis is fine. Despite the average cost being 1-2x the cost of a new one per year (they apparently last at least 10 years).
Wage pressure also makes them choose between more officers or paying the existing ones better. When there is a hard limit of the number of officers needed, the officers get screwed.