To borrow unashamedly from Gadget - you couldn't make this up - Derbyshire Police are issuing a handy guide to help officers with writing statements, acronyms, and spelling. It's called Fast Facts for Policing.
Yes, 2009, the world of spell-checks and we need a spelling guide. And times tables. And according the Ilkeston Advertiser it also explains the difference between 'sauce' and 'source'.
I know that - one is brown and goes well in a sausage butty - the other is a fount of unattributed and dodgy criminal intelligence.
As for the rest - we have a state education system, a whole series of police training departments, something that used to be Centrex and the SOLAP system.
But a 28 page booklet will single-handedly improve the future of policing.
I feel better already.
'C'
i wonder how much that cost then,
ReplyDeletecouldnt they just give them a pocket dictionary?
It's not so much the cost - more the principle...
ReplyDeletebut its the way the world is going and not just in the police either.
ReplyDeleteA person aged 22yr old now would have attended all of his secondary education under this dumbing down Nulabour Govt.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was at secondary school from the mid 60s to 1970, we had to spell words correctly. If the teacher spotted that we had made a spelling mistake,he/she would make us write the word three times at the foot of the page. If we made splling mistake with same word later on, we had to write it out twenty times.
This was for all lessons - English, Maths, History; Geography, even French words in the French lessons.
We hated it at the time, but now spelling is not a problem for me.
Splling???
ReplyDeleteI know, I know, it was a typing error,
LOL
The deliberate chemical dumbing down of Western Europe.
ReplyDeletehttp://uk.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=dumbing+down
Police stations across the UK seem to have teams of retired police earning a few bob just taking statements and putting files together. They are all agency employed, although some forces are cottoning on and setting up their own recruiting of these folks. When I asked an old chum about it, he said that a lot of statements he does are re-takes, purely because of the poor standard of spelling and general structure. Is this so?
ReplyDeleteHogday - your old pal will be right about this.
ReplyDeleteSome forces employ some quite senior retired officers as statement takers and investigators in Major Incident Teams.
In some cases, some of the re-takes will be for serving DC's.
Bear in mind a (now deceased) Chief Constable criticised the poor quality of statements in his force...
And I used to despair at the 'six line' arrest statements for public order and disorderly conduct arrests...
Never mind the quality, feel the width...
Do they still do the spelling test to get into the job? Or is it all about 'diversity and equal ops'. I am now a retired Cop and I work in a school. When the older kids ask me about joining the job - the first question I ask is about handwriting and spelling. I tell the tale about being in the box at CC and my orginal statement being brought out to resolve a dispute between the prosecution and defence briefs. The benefit of my education was held up for all the world to see!!!! Thankfully it looked and sounded OK.
ReplyDeleteAndy,
ReplyDeletethe level of literacy and spelling amongst new entrants is awful. Even the write-ups and write offs for incidents on the incident handling system leaves a lot to be desired.
But then again - this represents the community we serve.
Discuss...