SPF Media Release – Quarterly Strength Returns

About the Share An Hour campaign

On 12 August 1966 three police officers were murdered on duty in London. This brutal crime shocked the nation and prompted the foundation of the Police Dependants’ Trust; a fund to support seriously injured officers and the families of officers killed on duty.

This August, fifty years on from those events, we’re asking you to Share An Hour.

By donating an hour’s pay you will not only mark the sacrifice made by Sergeant Christopher Head and Constables David Wombwell and Geoffrey Fox, but also raise money to support colleagues who find themselves in life-changing situations.

How to Share An Hour

Firstly, work out what an hour’s pay looks like for you. As a rough guide:

£20,000 p/a = £9.62 per hour

£30,000 p/a = £14.42 per hour

£40,000 p/a = £19.23 per hour

£60,000 p/a = £28.85 per hour

Alternatively you can use this handy calculator or give another amount of your choosing.

Once you have decided how much you would like to give, visit our special #ShareAnHour page on Just Giving to make your donation in a few simple clicks. If applicable, Gift Aid will be added to your donation which will make your gift go even further.

Your donations will help to fund the full range of our work. From grants which enable disabled officers to remain in independent in their own home, to help for families who have lost a loved one in the line of duty, to improving support for serving officers suffering from mental health issues, you can be sure your gift will make a difference to your colleagues.

You can read more about our work at www.pdtrust.org

Share An Hour campaign – CEOs Blog

This is an important year for the Police Dependants’ Trust. We are marking 50 years of supporting the police service and police families and have much to celebrate, but of course August offers a sombre reminder of the Trust’s beginnings.

On 12 August 1966, Metropolitan Police Officers Sergeant Christopher Head and Constables David Wombwell and Geoffrey Fox were on duty in West London when they stopped a vehicle close to Wormwood Scrubs prison. They discovered one of the occupants was carrying a gun and there were other weapons in the car.

As witness reports describe, the three officers lost their lives in brutal circumstances. The incident caused outrage across the UK; such was the public mood that a fund was quickly established to support the families of fallen officers: the Police Dependants’ Trust. Donations flooded in.

Much has changed since 1966: the make-up of the service; the nature of the incidents officers and staff deal with; the immense pressure you are under, are all very different now. Some time ago we widened the scope of our work so as to support officers who have suffered physical and psychological injuries on duty. Over the last year we have also widened both our eligibility criteria and the circumstances in which we can help. If you’re not familiar with our grants for individuals, our support for officers dealing with their own mental health issues, or the assistance towards retraining we provide for officers who have retired as a result of an injury on duty, please take a look at our quick guide to the services we offer.

So while the police service has changed, what has remained pretty constant is the demand for the support we offer. Since 1966 we have helped around 7000 officers and families; there’s as much – if not more – of a need for our services now as there ever has been. Officers and staff, especially those who have seen at first hand the life-changing impact our grants have on their colleagues, often ask us how they can help.

So with this in mind we’re hoping you will get behind our Share An Hour campaign this August and donate one hour’s pay to the Trust.

Your donation will not only support our important work, but you will be helping to raise awareness of our services amongst your colleagues and their families – some of whom may be in desperate need of help right now. Christopher Head, David Wombwell and Geoffrey Fox are just three of many officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice. A great many more have suffered life-changing injuries. By committing to Share An Hour we can change lives together.

To find out more about the campaign and how you can Share An Hour for your colleagues, please visit http://www.pdtrust.org/get-involved/share-an-hour/ During August we will share uplifting stories from some of the people we have helped in recent years so you can see the difference your gift will make.

Image: Gill Scott-Moore, CEO of the Police Dependants’ Trust

The Police Service of Scotland (PSoS) is in such dire financial straits that it is sending officers to charity shops to source equipment that you could pick up for a couple of pounds in most supermarkets. That is but one of the ridiculous yet brutal realities of a lack of funding for what is the first and last emergency service; the only service that’s called when others either can’t be contacted or say no; and the only service that can’t say no.

Officers dealing with a child rightly ought to go some way to protect the child from needless intrusion by seeking the purchase of car sun blinds to help screen them from public view whilst making a necessary journey in a police car. Any one of us who has children know these can readily be bought for a couple of pounds but the officers were sent to scour charity shops to see if they could source them cheaper.

Dogs handlers (those we have left) following trails are being told to stop as they approach the end of their shift (lest they incur overtime) and other dog handlers are simply despatched to pick up from where they left off.

General and criminal inquiries are passed from officer to officer to officer, grossly diminishing the care for victims and increasing the likelihood of mistakes being made, evidence being lost and greater costs and abstractions should the issue subsequently progress to court.

Rural communities are seeing their police services diminished and access is very much a post code and bank account lottery. Let us not kid on that decisions to send policing responses are firstly judged on need when a budget built on cuts needs to be balanced.

Ranks are being stripped out and responsibilities are being pushed down without any evaluation of the impact of doing so on either the police service itself or the communities it is expected to serve.

Cash is king and woe betide anyone who isn’t playing their part in making cuts. Theorising on paper that the service will be improved by cutting is a fool’s errand and the public is being misled over the policing realities of today. At a time when so much emphasis is being placed on the cost of policing, it’s long overdue that we had a real conversation about its value.

The police service and police officers operate in an imperfect world. We see and deal with the consequences of the most depraved aspects of human behaviour as well as the after effects of a nation whose love of alcohol appears to show no limits. Violence, injury, death, devastation and sadness are all part and parcel of the issues facing policing and that’s before you even begin to touch on the preventative agenda that makes a difference in ways almost impossible to measure and the justifiable expectations of the public that the police will be there, visible, to provide reassurance when they demand it.

Imagine therefore a police service that is being strangled of the very capability to do what the public expects and what police officers know needs done, and you are now imagining the PSoS today, here and now.

The PSoS deals with over 10,000 calls each day; nearly 4 Million calls a year. That’s more calls for service than there are children in our schools and patients in our hospitals – combined. A few short weeks ago, during the exceptional good weather, Scotland had 10 murders in a 14 day period. In the same period its call demand far exceeded anything that it had ever experienced before and made the traditional high demand of Hogmanay seem like a quiet Sunday morning.

I have heard it said that the pressures on the police budget are no more or no less than anywhere else in the public sector and respectfully suggest that is poppycock. I have no doubt that the hospitals were also busy during the good weather but unlike other services – the police go to the public. I have also yet to hear of a hospital that is expected to treat the dead but police still investigate those no longer able to be questioned about their crimes.

No one really cares if the firefighter coming to put out a fire has a rapport and trust with the person whose house is ablaze but by god they care about knowing and trusting the police officers in their communities – that can only be achieved by being there and not just when something happens. Has anyone ever looked at the mass deployment of police officers to communities AFTER something horrific occurs and wondered why they couldn’t have been there before?

Senior officers, the Scottish Police Authority and Government are happily kidding the public on that everything in the garden is rosy but even the most superficial scratching of the surface reveals a completely different picture. In amongst all the language of “capital – revenue – reform – sustainability

Speaking in response to reports that the Police Service of Scotland would be incurring costs in the region of £190,000 for the policing of the Orange Order Parade in Glasgow over the weekend of the 2nd July Calum Steele, General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation said;

“This is just one example amongst many countless others of the unrelenting nature of demand on the police service which by extension creates a corresponding pressure on an already woefully inadequate police budget.

The SPF fully supports rights of freedom of assembly and expression but believes the current police budget is incapable of delivering all that is demanded of our police service and the inevitable consequence is the public suffer.

Quite simply the police service needs to be funded to ensure it has the capacity and capability to accommodate marches and protests as well as a myriad of other demands, not least amongst them the prevention and detection of crime.”

ENDS

Sgt Jon Harris singing

The Karaoke Cop who has wowed the world – and Gloria Gaynor – with his live rendition of “I Will Survive

Renfrewshire Council – SCs 260516

The Scottish Police Federation represents all police officers in the ranks of constable, sergeant, inspector and chief inspector, police cadets and special constables; over 18,500 people, 98% of all police officers in Scotland.

To:                  Andrew Picken – Sunday Post

Date:              26 May 2016                      

Subject:          Renfrewshire Council – Special Constable

Speaking in response to Renfrewshire Council advertising “traineeship placements” as special constables Calum Steele, General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation said;

“The Scottish Police Federation believes initiatives to improve employment opportunities for anyone should be generally welcomed. However such opportunities must be genuine and not seek to take advantage of anyone who is desperate for work; they also must not undermine long established and nationally agreed working conditions.

We believe this proposal by Renfrewshire Council is more about a cynical attempt to deliver policing on the cheap rather than genuinely creating employment opportunities.

We are also far from convinced the initiative is lawful as it implies the council has authority to not only pay special constables but also to determine their remuneration. We can find no legal basis that would support such a position.

Quite simply if Renfrewshire Council believes there is a need for additional policing resources in the local authority area, they should implore the Police Service of Scotland to either deploy more officers in the area or directly recruit those who pass the national entry standards.

ENDS

Notes for Editors:

• The Renfrewshire Council careers page detailing the trainee placements can be found here http://www.renfrewshire.gov.uk/specialconstable

• The conditions of service for special constables, including appointment and remuneration is determined by regulation http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2013/43/contents/made

Police Rest Days 160516

The Scottish Police Federation represents all police officers in the ranks of constable, sergeant, inspector and chief inspector, police cadets and special constables; over 18,500 people, 98% of all police officers in Scotland.

To:                       News Editor

Date:                  16 May 2016                       

Subject:             Police Rest Days

Providing additional comment following a freedom of information response that revealed police officers in Scotland are due more than 25,000 rest days since the Police Service of Scotland came into existence, Brian Docherty, Chairman of the Scottish Police Federation said;

“The Scottish Police Federation completely and utterly deplores the flagrant exploitation of our members in this manner.

Police officers are as entitled to rest and time off as any other worker. The fact that so many of our members do not receive their rest points to a service that is woefully under resourced and over stretched. Quite simply this is not sustainable.

It is time our leaders (political and police alike) stopped laying platitudes at the feet of police officers and started to do something about a service that desperately needs investment to ensure those charged with protecting the public are themselves protected and fit enough to be able to do so.”

ENDS

Notes for Editors:

• A freedom of information request revealed that in March 2016 and since the Police Service of Scotland was created, police officers in Scotland were due a total of 25,036 rest days.

• The original news story can be accessed at: http://bit.ly/1ThfY5i

• Based on common shift patterns and a standard police 40-hour working week, these rest days are the equivalent of almost 150 years of due rest.

• Using the standard reference point on the Constables’ pay scale (£34,779) and based on common shift patterns, these due days alone equate to a financial liability of just under £4.2 Million. 

Sheku Bayoh anniversary 030516