Six Degrees of Separation 

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Between the College of Policing and Reality.

I thought I would quickly share my views on the proposal.

Is it too early to say “What a load of bollocks”?

Having a degree might well better prepare one  for climbing the greasy pole but in my humble opinion it is not necessary in order to fight crime and disorder (and the multitude of other things) efficiently and effectively on a day to day basis.

Are the College saying or implying that Police Training Establishments are not up to the task of training recruits to the required level?  The ones that haven’t been sold off that is.  Maybe it’s necessary to extend the length of initial training, but surely we should be able to train our own recruits effectively, given the appropriate length of the course.

I’m sure we have all known Graduate Entrants who have been lovely people, quite capable of explaining Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to us, but collapse under the pressure of REAL Policing.  The last one I met was reduced to a sobbing heap when posted as Custody a Officer, and don’t get me wrong, he was a lovely man, I liked him, but he was in the wrong job too soon. Ill prepared, and whose fault is that I ask?

Getting a degree these days normally involves a degree of Student Debt.  Is it really a good idea to post a Probationer to the wicked streets of wherever with £20,000 ish of Student Loans.  The prospect of Corruption immediately springs to mind.

Every recruit will have a degree.  Does that mean that they will all now be eligible for the Accelerated  Promotion Scheme, or will that now be scrapped?

I don’t think that the College has thought this through.

I do think it will bite them on the arse.

Good Day to you.

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7 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation ”

  1. What you need are mature, intelligent, honest, articulate men and women gay or straight and of any race or creed who are most of all endowed with a big dollop of common sense. To focus on just one aspect, academic achievement, shows just how little common sense the person behind this idea has.

  2. The last one I met in the job,an Inspector, used to lock himself in the Police vehicle at an incident and let the young Cop get on with it on his own.His reason was to maintain radio contact.
    Way to go Police Force.

  3. If you judge intelligence by the ability to climb the tree, it makes monkeys very intelligent.
    As pointed out intelligence can’t be judged by the ability to get a degree.
    I’m also a little confused I could have sworn the likes of Windsor & May said policing was blue collar work to justify keeping wages down and now it seems Police are required to be graduates.
    So if police must be graduates do we increase pay one to attract graduates to join the Police, then the question is how do we retain them. As pointed out the accelerated promotion scheme will be defunked in its present form and will need to be renewed in some form at more expense. Then we have all these graduates who will aspire to greater things and with even less opportunity for promotion.
    So then we will have to retain them by offering more incentives! Sounds like more expense!
    What degree qualifies a person to join the Police? As in the past it was any degree. The degree alone being the judge of intelligence.
    This we know is no judge at all.
    We still need to train all these graduates to be Police Officers as they do not come out of Uni as ready made Police Officers. Having been a street duties instructor and seen a high percentage of degree entry probationers struggle with real policing. Academia had not prepared them for life on the streets. Many were extremely likeable people and despite every effort to get them through many were not prepared to put up with the pay, conditions, risk and abuse they faced as a Police Officer. Not when a good degree outside of the Police could get them far greater reward in more comfortable surrounding and they would get greater respect in a white collar job rather than a lowly blue collar employee!
    The point you make re student loans is merited.
    It is hardly desirable that all new recruits will enter a profession such as policing in debt. Any debt used to be strongly discouraged.
    The Police have just received a bit of a bashing about failing to recruit minorities (rather in fairly I thought) and now they propose all love be graduates will this not reduce the pool of minorities available!
    This is not a reflection on the intelligence of minorities but an observations that just as the people who dream up these Schemes fail to understand the reasons why minorities are under represented in the Police they fail to understand the reasons why minorities are under represented in higher education.
    They should tackle the social, academic and economic inadequacies of our society that are responsible, but it is far easier to point the finger of blame rather than tackle the real issues.
    Behind as it was stated that the Police should be representative of the society they represent recruiting only graduates seems to be a contradiction. A purely graduate Police Service may be representative of academia but they will never be representative of a greater society.
    I always though the great cross section of people who wished to join the police was a positive benefit to the police in its efforts to represent our society. To sum it up this sounds like an expensive LOB dreamt up by those who have little understanding and who are trying to advance themselves rather than improve Police training

  4. A degree shows a level of academic skill, it does not prove one is more intelligent than another.

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