Police Now – A Slight Reprise

Last updated on July 23rd, 2023 at 12:30 pm

Reading Time: 2 minutes

It hasn’t been long since my last critique of Police Now and, in my opinion, not much has changed and nothing has improved. The constant conversations going on over Social Media served nothing more than to make me realise that the situation was even worse than I feared and that my Impact Assessment required updating.

In my last post on the subject I pointed out that Police Now is a Registered Charity and as of their last published accounts had approx £6 Million in the bank. Recently I remembered that Central Government had additionally allocated monies to this charity. In 2016 the then Home Secretary allocated £5 Million to Police Now to fund their ‘expansion’. That possibly represents the majority of the £6 Million in the bank, possibly.

In December 2018 the Home Office allocated them a further £3.5 Million ” to attract excellent new talent, while introducing technology that saves time

All of this funding at a time when PCCs are having to increase the precept for Policing to make ends meet.

And then I re-read a Police Now document from 2014. Police Now – The Case For Change

 

What a wonderful, insightful, document this is. It’s 32 pages in length and so I won’t bore you with all of it, but it includes wonderful, eloquents phrases such as

Police Now has the potential to build on the inherent appeal of policing to attract a cohort of elite, diverse graduates and so prompt a significant shift in graduate perceptions of policing, as well as those
of influential adults, employers, and society more widely.

And

Following completion of the two year programme, Police Now Ambassadors will go on to improve the accountability of policing whether they continue their careers within or beyond policing. Within policing, whether as senior leaders, specialist detectives or experienced uniformed officers, they will have a grounding in accountable, public facing community policing. Those who work outside of policing (perhaps as MPs, journalists or leaders in the corporate, public or voluntary sector) will be able to effectively hold the police service to account and to support policing to continuously improve its service to the public

All of which led me to believe that this is all a government inspired/led process. We have been had over from on high. Firstly, what kind of an organisation thinks that it is a good idea to describe their recruits as ‘elite’, then train them for two years only to expect or encourage them to leave after two years, just as they have qualified, to become Ambassadors for Policing, maybe as an MP or a journalist. How is that an effective use of funding?

Secondly if Her Majesty’s Government are funding this then they must surely approve of the methods and ideologies being used.

Finally, scroll down to the bottom of the document referenced above, Page 27. Here we get an explanation of the Commissioner’s 100.

Police Now was an idea conceived by frontline officers and progressed through the Commissioner’s 100 programme. The Commissioner’s 100 is an initiative whereby officers and staff with ideas for change within the Met are encouraged to put forward their proposals to senior management board members including the Commissioner.

Are we really expected to think that Police Now was the brainchild of 100 ordinary, bog-standard, non-graduate Front Line officers and staff? Well, I for one do not.

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