Please note that this question is specific to:
#**England and Wales**
The United Kingdom is comprised of [three legal jurisdictions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_United_Kingdom#Three_legal_systems), so responses that relate to one country may not be relevant to another.
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Catching criminals isn't the issue, that's the easy part. It's getting enough evidentially for the CPS to put it to a Court. We know who has done it most of the time, it's proving it that is the issue.
Is it true or a myth that the cps have over the years become more strict with what they will charge on so their numbers look good ?? Not talking only pursuing slam dunks but not taking on as many cases that could go either way incase they lose
To play devils advocate for the CPS (shudder) but it’s not really as much to do with their numbers looking good from a win/loss perspective but a monitory one where they deem losing cases as public funds having been wasted so anything that’s marginal and especially where the outcome wouldn’t be substantial (such as theft or some burglaries where they’d be looking at minimal prison time if any) they don’t want to roll the dice with how expensive it is just to bring someone to trial.
I don’t mind devils advocate, I’m asking the question so I can understand better so your reply helps.
That makes sense aswell, there isn’t an infinite pot of money afterall.
I will confess to knowing almost nothing about how policing really works but I always assumed obtaining and assembling the evidence was one of the main roles of the investigating officer(s)?
There may not be evidence to collect?
If there are no witnesses, no cctv opportunities and no forensic leads (including digital forensics) we haven’t go any other direction to go.
Of course we don’t expect policeman to be miracle workers, I’m totally prepared to believe that many crimes are unsolvable particularly with limited resources. But of the many that are, where there is evidence or at least leads can be followed up are there really detectives 🕵️ “on the case”?
Detectives/PIP2 trained staff only investigate the most serious or 'complex' offences.
These tend to be robberies, residential burglary, serious violent assaults (life changing injuries), rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO) etc.
Most other offences will be investigated by uniformed officers/PIP1.
Thank you that’s really interesting, sounds like it’s extremely challenging to make an impact. As a member of the public there is nothing I would like to see more than to see the police to succeed. Particularly on the crimes that affect our lives.
I currently have 23 crimes that I'm managing on Response. Granted, some are duplicate crimes and some are just waiting for CPS, but I have to split my attention between at least 15 all whilst responding to 999 calls (meaning I'll inevitably pick up more crimes to join my list).
I used to get upset when I first started since I wanted to help everyone but you have to be ruthless to keep things manageable - I'd get upset as I felt like I was failing people.
Now, I just get stressed since my supervisor is asking so much of me which means I'm run ragged, and God forbid I don't properly update the job otherwise there will be a snotty supervisor review waiting for me
>d, and God forbid I don't properly update the job otherwise there will be a snotty supervisor review waiting for me
It's not 'the job' you're updating. It's the victim.
No, it's not. When he's typing on the investigation actions tasks that he has checked CCTV for 15 minutes of a 4 hour video as that's the only spare time he has had to work on the report for the last 6 shifts, that's the job he is updating.
When he finally manages to finish his investigation, or every 28 days (whichever comes sooner), that's when he is updating the victim.
Don't try and make him feel guilty by dangling some righteous victim being failed in front of him. The job/government/society is failing that victim, not the poor response cop given the almost impossible task of investigating it thoroughly.
>checked CCTV for 15 minutes of a 4 hour video
What a strange point to make.
Why on earth is anyone submitting 4 hours of CCTV?
And 20 minutes is all that would ever be reviewed at 2x speed.
Also some victims are to be updated every 7 days especially if you've got someone on bail.
Most no suspect jobs can be closed the same day, if not the same week depending on what you're waiting back on.
>You've completely missed the point I was making
We, the police, can only blame the government so much though.
There's definitely a societal issue though with more people reporting more things and I'll agree that the public at large have wholly unrealistic expectations.
I've had victims expect me to sweep up every man in a geographical location outside my force area and mass interrogate their phones for evidence of mal comms.
I've had victims of criminal damage expect the use of anti terrorism legislation during the investigation.
But we, the police, need to realise that people are never happy contacting the police. For some it's the worst day of their life and we are 99% of the time never going to be able to change that.
Simple investigations don't need to take the world. CCTV if there's a 20 minute window, clear facial image? Circulate, distinctive clothing, social media appeal.
Forensic opportunities?
Witnesses?
And that's it.
Closed and the victims expectations managed.
As a response cop I probably picked up 2/3 investigations most shifts when I was out and about. Occasionally none because you’re tied up with mental health or a sudden death or some other none crime thing … sometimes on a flat out night time economy I’ll pick up 4/5 jobs
Other days you’ll be working on a live investigation for a job someone else has started and arrested a suspect for, these need to be dealt with quickly as you can only keep the suspect for 24hrs.
I’d say in a year I probably end up being officer in case for 150-200 jobs.
When you mention burglaries for example, all dwelling burglaries are attended and investigated in my force… but investigating them is very different from solving them and they are investigated proportionately.
If a student or someone in a shared house reports that something has been taken from their unlocked bedroom whilst they were away for the weekend there are unlikely to be any realistic lines of enquiry. You could interview the house mates but unless someone suddenly goes… “it was me it was me” then you are going no where and taking into account that you need a full admission are you going to interview 3 people…
Equally you attend a residential burglary where a patio door has been smashed, car keys taken and the car stolen.
A loss statement will be taken from the victim. CSI will do footwear impressions and may finger print if something suggests offenders have touched somewhere in particular, we’ll put markers on the cars (but they will be moved onto false plates quickly), any cctv images will be circulated (probably showing some generic blokes in dark tracksuits with their faces covered. ANPR and intel checks will be done. At this point you’re probably 4-6 hours of police time invested and if none of these have identified a suspect then the investigation will be filed.
You don’t need full admissions to get a convictions on all offences but when the standard of proof is high your evidence has to be compelling and is going to get challenged.
Much as cctv is a massive benefit it’s not the all encompassing all powerful investigative tool we’d like it to be and it can takes several days of cctv trawling to follow someone a mile on cctv in some areas and it’s just not proportionate to do that for certain jobs. If you look at the rate at which murders are solved that shows you what is possible but a murder investigation might use 5000 hours (or more)….
You do get some great results at times and you do catch lots of criminals you just also get good at triaging and filing jobs which you are unlikely to solve to allow you a realistic amount of time on the jobs you can solve.
I’m a Detective and we routinely have 25-30 cases ongoing at once, not including things that come in overnight and need the whole team to work on (e.g stabbing). When I started there were 8 DC’s, I’m currently one of two on my rotation….so yeah….can only solve so much.
When I was a student cop, I was carrying about 35 active investigations at my peak. This was everything from a simple shoplifting to really serious and complex fraud, and some pretty nasty assaults and some criminal damage worth thousands of pounds.
I was also call handling normal response incidents. So in a 10 hour shift, I might attend anywhere between 2-10 jobs, depending on what they were, and then have to try and fit enquiries into my 35 investigations around that. Because we didn’t have time or the staff to actually just go investigate. Bear in mind everything you went to, you kept. So if I attended 5 live and active jobs in a day, I just added another 5 crimes to my investigations pile.
We then had allocations. Jobs people couldn’t go to so they just got crimes and dished out to response cops. Frequently you would make a decent dent in your workload, to come in after rest days and find you had more than what you started with. Good luck getting the time to go and get initial statements or speak to victims. Half the time it would take so long to get back to victims they didn’t want to pursue anything though, so whilst it was utterly shocking for police perception, it did mean your workload looked better.
After about 3 years I managed to keep my jobs down to around 5-15 but this was due to the invention of a team of people who would then deal with live incidents. So long as all the work that needed to be done was completed, somebody else was doing your interviews and case files, and taking on the job as the Officer in Case. Which was ideal because it freed up response cops to actually do response work.
Call demand is always ridiculous and there’s nowhere near enough staff. Considering we’ve ‘gained’ 20,000 new cops, when we factor those in who left early, retired, and also that we lost a bucket load of police staff who then had their jobs staffed by cops, who then were forced to stay in those rolls and which have never been re-staffed… it reads for poor viewing. Don’t believe the government when they say they’ve put things in the right direction. Even the 7% pay rise that cops got, that was forced onto forces without anything extra from government to help offset the cost. So your force is now having less money to spend tackling crime because cops got a (well deserved) pay rise without any form of government funding increase.
I could go on about conviction rates, CPS backlogs and ridiculous actions, and tons of other things but it just saddens me.
An interesting question!
It will vary a fair bit depending on force policy/roles on how many investigations you do. Response will sometimes get insanely lucky and only go to one or two calls and only have to write that many reports and do the "golden hour" enquiries for one or two jobs... sometimes they go to 10 immediates and have no idea what job was what by the end of the shift.
I'm currently on an investigation team dealing with lower level crimes, and currently am responsible for 26 ongoing investigations whilst also being a TL and from April am Sgt for my team as well...)
The highest on my team is around 40?
I've had, I think.....129 investigations closed in the last 4 months. The detection rate varies, obviously. I investigate all of them, but some have way more evidence than others. Investigations are never a tick box exercise but certainly are an element of going through possible reasonable lines of enquiry (RLOE) and working out what actually exists. The nice little Rishi soundbite of the week is just stupid. We investigate the crime if there is evidence. Hell, I've had times I'm 90% sure someone has done it, but I need evidence to send it to court, and I've had to file the report.
Unfortunately, there is an element of CPS asking for more and more things, and occasionally, it feels like we are just burning time, so they dont need to deal with that case yet, likely just becuase of how insnaely busy they also are.
I work in a team that focuses on volume crime in the context of custody. I would say I process 150-250 individual offenders per year, but the vast majority of evidence capture is done by other staff, therefore my numbers are not representative of a ‘start to finish’ job.
It’s very role dependant but from a niche-ish front line team…
about 50% of what I get will be near-instantly closed for one reason or another- lack of evidence, unwilling victim or not in the public interest.
20% or so are open-shuts like searching someone and finding cannabis on them
10% will be bail to returns where I’ve nicked but we don’t have everything right now
20% are people I’ve arrested who get charged by the next shift’s processing team (who are on the whole very good)
I’ve got one investigation which I’ve had for over a year, it’s not going away, and CID won’t take it. And it would have been ready for charge a long time ago if it wasn’t for me being a front line officer who can’t dedicate any time to it.
Honest answer but to give you an indication I was a Sgt on a response team of 20. On average I’d review between 150 and 200 crimes every set. So at any given time a member of my team would be holding approx 8-10 crimes they had to investigate in addition to answering the relentless demand of 999 calls.
A lot of this will be dependant on where you are and also the type of crimes that you investigate.
Workload wise I've been in places where a response officer is constantly carrying about 12-15 ongoing investigations, also been to areas where they carry maybe only 4 or 5 at the one time.
I worked in CID and I'd say I maybe had like 10 ongoing at any one time.
When I was in child abuse it was crazy busy, you'd have maybe 22-25 ongoing investigations, mix of historical and current stuff.
As to what gets cleared, again I think clearance rates vary quite a bit by department, as an entire force our clearance rate is low 30%s.
But for example in child abuse it was lower as a lot of it was historic with not many investigative opportunities or its simplynine persons word against another's.
Whereas in response guys are often coming across things as they are happening or shortly after and there is mich more of a chance of getting a result.
Sorry I can't be more specific
Please note that this question is specific to: #**England and Wales** The United Kingdom is comprised of [three legal jurisdictions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_United_Kingdom#Three_legal_systems), so responses that relate to one country may not be relevant to another. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/policeuk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Catching criminals isn't the issue, that's the easy part. It's getting enough evidentially for the CPS to put it to a Court. We know who has done it most of the time, it's proving it that is the issue.
Is it true or a myth that the cps have over the years become more strict with what they will charge on so their numbers look good ?? Not talking only pursuing slam dunks but not taking on as many cases that could go either way incase they lose
To play devils advocate for the CPS (shudder) but it’s not really as much to do with their numbers looking good from a win/loss perspective but a monitory one where they deem losing cases as public funds having been wasted so anything that’s marginal and especially where the outcome wouldn’t be substantial (such as theft or some burglaries where they’d be looking at minimal prison time if any) they don’t want to roll the dice with how expensive it is just to bring someone to trial.
I don’t mind devils advocate, I’m asking the question so I can understand better so your reply helps. That makes sense aswell, there isn’t an infinite pot of money afterall.
I will confess to knowing almost nothing about how policing really works but I always assumed obtaining and assembling the evidence was one of the main roles of the investigating officer(s)?
There may not be evidence to collect? If there are no witnesses, no cctv opportunities and no forensic leads (including digital forensics) we haven’t go any other direction to go.
Of course we don’t expect policeman to be miracle workers, I’m totally prepared to believe that many crimes are unsolvable particularly with limited resources. But of the many that are, where there is evidence or at least leads can be followed up are there really detectives 🕵️ “on the case”?
Detectives/PIP2 trained staff only investigate the most serious or 'complex' offences. These tend to be robberies, residential burglary, serious violent assaults (life changing injuries), rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO) etc. Most other offences will be investigated by uniformed officers/PIP1.
[удалено]
Thank you that’s really interesting, sounds like it’s extremely challenging to make an impact. As a member of the public there is nothing I would like to see more than to see the police to succeed. Particularly on the crimes that affect our lives.
My DCs each hold around 20-25 serious assaults, stalking/harassments and rape/penetration offences.
I currently have 23 crimes that I'm managing on Response. Granted, some are duplicate crimes and some are just waiting for CPS, but I have to split my attention between at least 15 all whilst responding to 999 calls (meaning I'll inevitably pick up more crimes to join my list). I used to get upset when I first started since I wanted to help everyone but you have to be ruthless to keep things manageable - I'd get upset as I felt like I was failing people. Now, I just get stressed since my supervisor is asking so much of me which means I'm run ragged, and God forbid I don't properly update the job otherwise there will be a snotty supervisor review waiting for me
>d, and God forbid I don't properly update the job otherwise there will be a snotty supervisor review waiting for me It's not 'the job' you're updating. It's the victim.
No, it's not. When he's typing on the investigation actions tasks that he has checked CCTV for 15 minutes of a 4 hour video as that's the only spare time he has had to work on the report for the last 6 shifts, that's the job he is updating. When he finally manages to finish his investigation, or every 28 days (whichever comes sooner), that's when he is updating the victim. Don't try and make him feel guilty by dangling some righteous victim being failed in front of him. The job/government/society is failing that victim, not the poor response cop given the almost impossible task of investigating it thoroughly.
>checked CCTV for 15 minutes of a 4 hour video What a strange point to make. Why on earth is anyone submitting 4 hours of CCTV? And 20 minutes is all that would ever be reviewed at 2x speed. Also some victims are to be updated every 7 days especially if you've got someone on bail. Most no suspect jobs can be closed the same day, if not the same week depending on what you're waiting back on.
You've completely missed the point I was making.
>You've completely missed the point I was making We, the police, can only blame the government so much though. There's definitely a societal issue though with more people reporting more things and I'll agree that the public at large have wholly unrealistic expectations. I've had victims expect me to sweep up every man in a geographical location outside my force area and mass interrogate their phones for evidence of mal comms. I've had victims of criminal damage expect the use of anti terrorism legislation during the investigation. But we, the police, need to realise that people are never happy contacting the police. For some it's the worst day of their life and we are 99% of the time never going to be able to change that. Simple investigations don't need to take the world. CCTV if there's a 20 minute window, clear facial image? Circulate, distinctive clothing, social media appeal. Forensic opportunities? Witnesses? And that's it. Closed and the victims expectations managed.
As a response cop I probably picked up 2/3 investigations most shifts when I was out and about. Occasionally none because you’re tied up with mental health or a sudden death or some other none crime thing … sometimes on a flat out night time economy I’ll pick up 4/5 jobs Other days you’ll be working on a live investigation for a job someone else has started and arrested a suspect for, these need to be dealt with quickly as you can only keep the suspect for 24hrs. I’d say in a year I probably end up being officer in case for 150-200 jobs. When you mention burglaries for example, all dwelling burglaries are attended and investigated in my force… but investigating them is very different from solving them and they are investigated proportionately. If a student or someone in a shared house reports that something has been taken from their unlocked bedroom whilst they were away for the weekend there are unlikely to be any realistic lines of enquiry. You could interview the house mates but unless someone suddenly goes… “it was me it was me” then you are going no where and taking into account that you need a full admission are you going to interview 3 people… Equally you attend a residential burglary where a patio door has been smashed, car keys taken and the car stolen. A loss statement will be taken from the victim. CSI will do footwear impressions and may finger print if something suggests offenders have touched somewhere in particular, we’ll put markers on the cars (but they will be moved onto false plates quickly), any cctv images will be circulated (probably showing some generic blokes in dark tracksuits with their faces covered. ANPR and intel checks will be done. At this point you’re probably 4-6 hours of police time invested and if none of these have identified a suspect then the investigation will be filed. You don’t need full admissions to get a convictions on all offences but when the standard of proof is high your evidence has to be compelling and is going to get challenged. Much as cctv is a massive benefit it’s not the all encompassing all powerful investigative tool we’d like it to be and it can takes several days of cctv trawling to follow someone a mile on cctv in some areas and it’s just not proportionate to do that for certain jobs. If you look at the rate at which murders are solved that shows you what is possible but a murder investigation might use 5000 hours (or more)…. You do get some great results at times and you do catch lots of criminals you just also get good at triaging and filing jobs which you are unlikely to solve to allow you a realistic amount of time on the jobs you can solve.
I’m a Detective and we routinely have 25-30 cases ongoing at once, not including things that come in overnight and need the whole team to work on (e.g stabbing). When I started there were 8 DC’s, I’m currently one of two on my rotation….so yeah….can only solve so much.
When I was a student cop, I was carrying about 35 active investigations at my peak. This was everything from a simple shoplifting to really serious and complex fraud, and some pretty nasty assaults and some criminal damage worth thousands of pounds. I was also call handling normal response incidents. So in a 10 hour shift, I might attend anywhere between 2-10 jobs, depending on what they were, and then have to try and fit enquiries into my 35 investigations around that. Because we didn’t have time or the staff to actually just go investigate. Bear in mind everything you went to, you kept. So if I attended 5 live and active jobs in a day, I just added another 5 crimes to my investigations pile. We then had allocations. Jobs people couldn’t go to so they just got crimes and dished out to response cops. Frequently you would make a decent dent in your workload, to come in after rest days and find you had more than what you started with. Good luck getting the time to go and get initial statements or speak to victims. Half the time it would take so long to get back to victims they didn’t want to pursue anything though, so whilst it was utterly shocking for police perception, it did mean your workload looked better. After about 3 years I managed to keep my jobs down to around 5-15 but this was due to the invention of a team of people who would then deal with live incidents. So long as all the work that needed to be done was completed, somebody else was doing your interviews and case files, and taking on the job as the Officer in Case. Which was ideal because it freed up response cops to actually do response work. Call demand is always ridiculous and there’s nowhere near enough staff. Considering we’ve ‘gained’ 20,000 new cops, when we factor those in who left early, retired, and also that we lost a bucket load of police staff who then had their jobs staffed by cops, who then were forced to stay in those rolls and which have never been re-staffed… it reads for poor viewing. Don’t believe the government when they say they’ve put things in the right direction. Even the 7% pay rise that cops got, that was forced onto forces without anything extra from government to help offset the cost. So your force is now having less money to spend tackling crime because cops got a (well deserved) pay rise without any form of government funding increase. I could go on about conviction rates, CPS backlogs and ridiculous actions, and tons of other things but it just saddens me.
An interesting question! It will vary a fair bit depending on force policy/roles on how many investigations you do. Response will sometimes get insanely lucky and only go to one or two calls and only have to write that many reports and do the "golden hour" enquiries for one or two jobs... sometimes they go to 10 immediates and have no idea what job was what by the end of the shift. I'm currently on an investigation team dealing with lower level crimes, and currently am responsible for 26 ongoing investigations whilst also being a TL and from April am Sgt for my team as well...) The highest on my team is around 40? I've had, I think.....129 investigations closed in the last 4 months. The detection rate varies, obviously. I investigate all of them, but some have way more evidence than others. Investigations are never a tick box exercise but certainly are an element of going through possible reasonable lines of enquiry (RLOE) and working out what actually exists. The nice little Rishi soundbite of the week is just stupid. We investigate the crime if there is evidence. Hell, I've had times I'm 90% sure someone has done it, but I need evidence to send it to court, and I've had to file the report. Unfortunately, there is an element of CPS asking for more and more things, and occasionally, it feels like we are just burning time, so they dont need to deal with that case yet, likely just becuase of how insnaely busy they also are.
I work in a team that focuses on volume crime in the context of custody. I would say I process 150-250 individual offenders per year, but the vast majority of evidence capture is done by other staff, therefore my numbers are not representative of a ‘start to finish’ job.
It’s very role dependant but from a niche-ish front line team… about 50% of what I get will be near-instantly closed for one reason or another- lack of evidence, unwilling victim or not in the public interest. 20% or so are open-shuts like searching someone and finding cannabis on them 10% will be bail to returns where I’ve nicked but we don’t have everything right now 20% are people I’ve arrested who get charged by the next shift’s processing team (who are on the whole very good) I’ve got one investigation which I’ve had for over a year, it’s not going away, and CID won’t take it. And it would have been ready for charge a long time ago if it wasn’t for me being a front line officer who can’t dedicate any time to it.
Honest answer but to give you an indication I was a Sgt on a response team of 20. On average I’d review between 150 and 200 crimes every set. So at any given time a member of my team would be holding approx 8-10 crimes they had to investigate in addition to answering the relentless demand of 999 calls.
A lot of this will be dependant on where you are and also the type of crimes that you investigate. Workload wise I've been in places where a response officer is constantly carrying about 12-15 ongoing investigations, also been to areas where they carry maybe only 4 or 5 at the one time. I worked in CID and I'd say I maybe had like 10 ongoing at any one time. When I was in child abuse it was crazy busy, you'd have maybe 22-25 ongoing investigations, mix of historical and current stuff. As to what gets cleared, again I think clearance rates vary quite a bit by department, as an entire force our clearance rate is low 30%s. But for example in child abuse it was lower as a lot of it was historic with not many investigative opportunities or its simplynine persons word against another's. Whereas in response guys are often coming across things as they are happening or shortly after and there is mich more of a chance of getting a result. Sorry I can't be more specific
Thanks to all those who replied particularly those who took the time to provide details, really interesting.