ACPO concerns.

It appears that heads have been above the parapet concerning a variety of statistics that can be wrongly interpretted and Forces unfairly criticised.

If I believe the reports, Chief Constables have raised objections over rules that seem to pander to ethnic minority groups.

Home Office figures allegedly show show that officers spend more than a third of their day attending meetings, preparing evidence of dealing with bureaucracy.

The framework for producing these 'vital' statistics is a comlplex one, somewhat bureaucratic (no surprise there then) costly to Forces to administer and can be misinterpreted.

Police minister Tony McNulty admits that curbing Police Bureaucracy remains a work in progress.

Ken Jones, the ACPO president has many concerns at these published figures but also believes that centrally compiled statistics returns cannot hope to fully reflect concerns that communities may have or the wider complex threats to society. Fair play to you Ken for raising this important issue.

I know this much.

With Government Ministers and some Chief Constables continually claiming to want to reduce bureaucracy, there is no actual reduction in the amount of centrally complied statistics that are submitted by individual officers. The tide of bureaucracy flows ever one increasing way and over the head of individual officers. This is something that we are told to do and is expected from us. Regardless of an individual officer's views, this is what the management want and there is hell to play if forms are not submitted when required, either daily or monthly as the case may be.

The danger is that Chief Constables will see what areas are in the spotlight for hitting the right performance scoring areas in the next tactical or relevant period and deal with these issues to try to avoid being penalised as a result of missing the perceived hot issues. This sounds like political direction as opposed to reacting to needs of society and the community as a whole.