If you are looking for Glamour, Gadgets and Grissom you won't find them here. Forget what you think you know about 'Forensics', these are the tales of one man and his brush. Of course these views do not represent the views of any Police Force or indeed reflect any Force Policies ya da ya.

Thursday 31 May 2007

Reinforced Support

It seems that Bloggs and Gadget, have both been airing their views in relation to their 'Support Staff', causing a bit of a furore with the replies. Now as a 'Civvie' myself I thought that perhaps I should try attain some form of balance in the differing views. I confess myself that I was in an admin management role in my previous incarnation and to be honest I had no real idea of what 'Policework' was outside of Taggart and The Bill. The problem lies with each side having a very different set of goals to their daily jobs, of which a lot of the objectives for a Civvie are at odds (and sometimes counter-productive) with those of a Police Officer and vice-versa. A Civvie has effectively a 9-5 job, thats their choice,thats the job they agreed to do. There is usually little scope for overtime so if they want to pack up and go off on time then that is entirely up to them. A Police Officer is expected to be more flexible, thats their choice thats the job they agreed to do, so when the wheel falls off they are expected to be more flexible.

A lot of officers degrade the jobs of Civvies, purely because they 'push pieces of paper' or 'count beans', this is because a lot of them have this god-complex that their work is the most important resource in the station (regardless of Response, Neighbourhood, CID etc). When the reality is they are just another area of policing and because of the void between what a average Police Officer does to the work an average Civvie does (by choice may I add again) this causes the tension, jealousy (sometimes) and friction, from both sides.

In a perfect SMTs wet dream we would all be a happy family working in diverse roles for the good of the community, but we know it's not like that and as long as there is that unexpected and ambiguous element to Police work and that rigid conformity and routine in Civvie work, there will always be friction.

25 comments:

PC South West said...

Well I have to admit that I don't really see CSI's as civvies and certainly not as a jobsworth.
You guys are always a welcome site at a crime scene, be it a burglary, murder or whatever.
I have seen some grim sights with a CSI stood there next to me.
Hardly admin is it!!
Good work.

Anonymous said...

I agree with PC south west, soco's are definately frontline staff, hence the fact that one some divisions in the Met they are teamed up with police officers because of the risks and I have a lot of respect for what forensic teams do. As I and many other people have said, its the 'civvies' in non jobs who think they are what the Police is about that are the main gripe, not everyone who isn't a police officer. As you rightly said, there are some total lazy bastards around but as a response PC I object to the god complex bit!!!

I've been reading your blog for a while, keep up the good work and rest assusred the gripes about support staff are not aimed at soco's!!

metcountymounty

Anonymous said...

I'm jumping on the bandwagon too, but I've taken a slightly different approach to you on my blog (plug plug).

Wouldn't be any fun if we all said the same thing, would it?

Personally I don't believe it was Gadget's intention to slate all support staff, certainly I would have thought SOCO etc were far from his mind when he made that post. PC Bloggs I am not so sure about, can't really see what she was trying to add. But it was fairly clear that many of the replies were aimed at "all non-officer employees", so that is what I have responded to.

Anonymous said...

I certainly don't regard SOCO as support staff. I only wrote about one particular person. I cause more trouble than I intend, but then this is a powerful tool (the internet) and I do have 1/2 million readers. Love the Blog and have linked.

CSI:UK said...

My issue wasn't with Gadgets example, that guy is obviously an idiot full of too much self importance. It was the subsequent grand canned worm opening that followed declaring open season on Support Staff.

Its nice that most Officers don't regard us in the same light as most 'Civvies' though.

Unknown said...

Just thought I would say Hi, after coming here from another site (forget which).

My eldest daugther is just finishing a degree in forensics at kingston uni this year. so it's good to hear what the job foretells..

Anonymous said...

Cheers for the reciprocation CSI, I particularly enjoyed the link text :D

I am police staff at the mo but I got my "application received" postcard today, so hopefully I'll be a lot more policey soon.

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