Lee Broadbent

@leembroad @sherlock_comms @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder The dream is simple. Just leave us be. Let us go out there and do our jobs that we love doing, being proactive and protecting communities. Stop shoving the differing weekly priority at us and stop the witch hunt of officers because they’re terrified of risk

@JGee2099039 @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder Nope. The job and pfew has done that

@leembroad @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder The government not fully funding pay rises has conditioned people to be thankful when they do. Which is ridiculous

Some of my experiences in policing 👇 We can criticise police leadership, the processes and the individual decisions where appropriate - quite rightly. But we must always give our frontline police officers the backing and support they need to do this extraordinary job.

@JGee2099039 @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder Well that was the PFEW’s point. They withdrew, then went to a membership ballot, then ignored that ballot, then submitted evidence without re-engaging. Zero strategy

@leembroad @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder Then why bother with PRRB?

@JGee2099039 @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder Government didn’t go for a 3.9% award but did go for a fully funded 3.5% which was 1% above their costed recommendation and inline with what chiefs asked for. That tells me they are amenable to movement where there is both good evidence and a credible voice advocating.

@leembroad @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder When the government don’t follow through with PRRB recommendations then pay is an issue

@sherlock_comms @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder Biggest issue in policing at the minute, cops realising that the dream they were promised is largely just that….the leaving in pursuit of the actual dream

@leembroad @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder I'm not an officer any more. The met gave up on me, so I gave up on the met.

@sherlock_comms @Brick_Cop @Jonathan_Hinder Have a look at the PRRB report… who made that point for you or other MET officers? No one….

@Brick_Cop @leembroad @Jonathan_Hinder Nobody can afford to live in London. You'd need to be a couple on 150k a year each to buy one of the terraced family homes where I am. And I'm not even in the most expensive part of town. Unless you're a privileged subset of tech worker, banker, lawyer, or doctor, you're fucked.

Think that’s predominantly a south east issue and to some degree areas with high tourist footfall/second home ownership which drives up house prices. That’s where pay negotiations and awards need to be better targeted and where some of the proposals in the white paper around regionalisation of forces could produce better localised targeted pay. But, for most of the county, police pay is well above average earnings and cops cannot only afford one home - but as business interest submissions will ateast - can sometimes lend towards two or three. Part of my point is that currently, the only representative body we have has not made those nuanced points around pay awards. London weighting and South east weighting is outdated and not fit for purpose. Governemt know this and lean into national averages to their advantage. If we want better outcomes, then we need to think and do differently. Continually doing the same thing in the same way will get the same poor results

@leembroad @Jonathan_Hinder When you can’t afford to buy a home in the city you Police, respectfully, the pay is most definitely bad. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Unpopular… but the pay isn’t bad, especially when factoring in employee pension contributions. Most people would rather see improvements around working day, demand, support and welfare as reflected on pay and morale survey and leavers interviews. All those things as well as better pay are achievable once we have a credible representative voice. The one consistent thing holding policing back is @PFEW_HQ

@Jonathan_Hinder And the pay? 👀

They’ve also currently got a case lodged with the ECHR and are lobbying government. Counterparts in Scotland and across Europe have access to this industrial rights. Government previously argued the justifications were proportionate given PO’s have access to other associations and fair pay arbitration, yet the POA have evidence to suggest their pay body is as bad as ours and rigged by Government. Such a system falls foul on justifications for a wholesale ban on industrial action. Indeed PFEW were pursuing a similar argument when they organised their ballot… that was before they betrayed their position in order to try and stop us from gaining access to choice of representation. I’d never say there’s no chance… if there’s an argument in law, there’s always a chance.

@leembroad Lee, you know we’ll never be given industrial rights amd the right to strike. The prison service have been banned from striking and have challenged this several times unsuccessfully.

No Gov or court will give us the right to strike it’s never going to happen.

Well at the moment, unlike PFEW, we havnt got a mandate or a membership so it’s pointless speculating. But if we did have a membership who instructed us via a ballot we held to pursue industrial rights - we wouldn’t ignore it or submit evidence to the High Court arguing against our membership directions - such a position would be fatal to membership trust and confidence.

@leembroad If the NPA comes to fruition what avenues would you pursue to seek industrial rights or get binding agreement on PRRB decision.

Not to mention the fact that his refused vetting status also impacted on his ability to apply for other jobs and resulted in a knock back when applying to rejoin. 5+yrs investigation, untold damage to reputation, disruption to personal and family life and ultimately a finding of no wrongdoing and an ‘apology.’

It is ropey GM hearings like this which have destroyed morale.

I have put together a bit of a basic explanation of the way that an investigation which ultimately involves a terrorist element can develop and what that means. ninechambers.com/when-does-an-i…

They collectively made a decision not to engage with PRRB process because they argued it was flawed. They then went and obtained a mandate on industrial rights and collective bargaining and received strong support. They have opted to ignore that mandate and even argued against their own position when advancing evidence as an interested party in the Artivle 11 JR. By re-engaging with PRRB, despite still running a campaign arguing against it on grounds of fairness/impartiality etc, they’ve shot themselves in the foot at both a strategic level and membership level. They’re so busy putting out internal fires that they’ve lost grip on the basic delivery of their strategic objectives. What this process has shown is that the government can be persuaded to go above its own position (2.5%) when confronted with solid evidence advanced by a credible voice… in this case police chiefs who argued for a fully funded 3.5%… whilst i admit, PFEW evidence has been of a high quality, what’s sorely lacking is the organisations credibility and from the cheap seats, they’re not doing anything to address that.

@leembroad I agree with some, the industrial rights ballot what’s happened with this? Although I think it’s a waste of time, the members asked for it to explored. Not engaging with the PRRB is slso a mistake. As has been shown the Gov can ignore the decision of the PRRB anyway

How do you suggest they do that? We can’t strike, will never be allowed to strike or discuss striking. Some idiots will talk about working to rule but not even sure what that means

Latest offering deals with the disorder in Edgware Rd (wasn't there but neither were the 1,000's of keyboard warriors), problems around my local area, the social media onslaught on police & the final para 'A WAR OF WORDS THAT IS BEING LOST,' re Police Comms. (link next line). policeoracle.com/article-librar…

1/ As someone who has been in a few murder trials let me just try to explain why the police always ask people not to speculate, (with the caveat that I understand everyone is justifiably angry, saddened and horrified). Murder investigations and trials are very fragile things.

@Chris_Peters01 I don’t believe so, the main points under consideration re Mr Nowak do not relate to use of force (save for handcuffing which is a fairly straightforward justification if 1 of the 5 lawful reasons are met and were reasonably held at the time).

@leembroad This policy change can only help those officers no? policeconduct.gov.uk/news/iopc-poli…

The death of Henry Nowak is a tragedy in every sense, and the public reaction to the body‑worn video is completely understandable. It is painful to watch. It is painful for officers to watch. And it is painful for Henry’s family to know that his final moments were chaotic, confused and shaped by a lie told by the man who killed him. But if we are going to talk about this case, and especially where/if politicians make highly charged statements, I believe it’s important to stay anchored to what was actually established in court. The judge was clear that the responsibility for Henry’s death lies solely with the man who stabbed him. The fatal wound to his chest was described as “catastrophic” and “unsurvivable”, and the pathologist confirmed that no medical intervention, immediate or otherwise, could have saved Henry. That does not erase the distressing nature of the footage, it does not mitigate the seemingly dispassionate response of the officers in attendance, but it does matter when we are trying to understand what happened and what could or could not have changed the outcome. It is also a matter of record that the officers were responding to a 999 call in which the offender falsely claimed he had been the victim of a racist attack and insisted no weapon had been used. That deception shaped the first few minutes on scene. The IOPC has been involved from the outset, and the officers have remained as witnesses throughout. This is an important distinction, as those familiar with post incident procedures can tell you. If there was a shred of doubt or suspicion that the officers actions at the time, when balanced against the information known at the time and their reasonable held beliefs, amounted to potential misconduct, the IOPC must at the earliest opportunity review their status. The IOPC have confirmed that the officers status remains unchanged. That indicates that the officers initial decisions/actions have already been assessed against the information known at the time and is unlikely to now change and amount to misconduct. None of this means the initial assessment was correct. It wasn’t. The officers misread the situation, and the body‑worn video shows that plainly. But policing is full of moments where decisions are made in seconds, under pressure, with incomplete or misleading information. Sometimes those decisions are right. Sometimes they are not. And sometimes…as in this case…the consequences are unbearably tragic even when the mistake does not change the final outcome. What we cannot/should not do is turn this into a proxy battle in a wider culture war. Henry’s family have asked that his death is not used to fuel division, hate or to propagate political agendas. It is possible to hold two truths at once: that the initial response was flawed, sloppy even…and the investigation needs to establish how policy, procedure and relied information impacted those decisions and events; and that despite the officers clear mistakes and compassion fatigue, they did not cause Henry’s death, nor could they have prevented it. Policing is at its worst when it becomes defensive, but it is also at its worst when it becomes a canvas onto which people project their own political battles and/or bitterness. This case, if it is to be a turning point, deserves better than that. We can demand accountability without abandoning fairness. We can acknowledge mistakes without inventing motives. And we can talk honestly about the pressures and imperfections of frontline policing without turning every tragedy into a referendum on the entire profession. That balance is difficult. But, to my mind, it is the only way we avoid repeating the same cycles of outrage, distortion, division and defensiveness that have done so much damage to public trust… and to the people who still turn up, every day, to do a job that is getting harder by the day.

It’s an incredibly selective use of a handful of police contact incidents, to point to a conclusion already adopted to be true by Donna. But if you zoom out and look at the plethora of police interactions across the country, on any given day, I’m fairly certain the conclusion won’t stand up. That’s not to dismiss that there is clearly an issue, even if that issue is more an increasingly growing perception over any reliable evidence base, and policing has to do more to address this. But, as Sir Stephen Watson says, we must not be tempted to keep running down the various political rabbit holes and instead stay focused on ploughing the narrow trench that is demonstrable impartiality.

Provocative thread. Of course, most will deny it. I think there is a lot of truth here. The path to hell and all...