POLICE officers must be allowed to make mistakes if they are to operate effectively, the president of the Superintendents\u2019 Association of England and Wales has said.<\/p>\n
Irene Curtis (pictured) has spoken out against a \u201cblame culture\u201d in the police service where people are \u201cquick to point the finger\u201d and that, she says, prevents the service from learning from mistakes.<\/p>\n
Ch Supt Curtis, who has led the Superintendents\u2019 Association since last year, said: \u201cThere needs to be an acceptance that on occasions police officers, including those in senior leadership positions, will make mistakes. My concern is that there increasingly appears to be a rush to point the finger, and that in that rush we will lose the ability to learn, the confidence to take difficult decisions and the conviction to try something new.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in danger of creating an atmosphere of indecision and reticence, where officers will be afraid to make what they think is the right decision. In a job where split second, life or death or no-going-back decisions frequently have to be made, this could mean that decisions made aren\u2019t necessarily the best for the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lancashire Constabulary officer said there was a difference between \u201cwrong doing and doing the wrong thing\u201d and that \u201cif we accept that the police service should reflect the population as a whole, then that must include the fact that all people are capable of making mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ch Supt Curtis told the Superintendents Association\u2019s annual conference in Warwickshire: \u201cIn any job, people will make mistakes or get things wrong. That\u2019s human nature. More importantly, it\u2019s a really important part of how people learn and get better at their jobs and find ways to improve how things are done.\u201d<\/p>\n
She welcomed the increase in scrutiny over the police service that has emerged over recent years, but warned that disciplinary processes should be reserved for those who are corrupt \u2013 rather than officer who have made \u201cgenuine errors in the course of carrying out a difficult, demanding and dangerous job\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cToo frequently officers are being served with a notice for potential gross misconduct and being subjected to an often gruelling investigation where the outcome is the same as could have been dealt with in a more proportionate manner in the first couple of days. This not only wastes valuable resources that could be serving the public, but adds to that negative culture and makes officers less inclined in the future to put themselves at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
POLICE officers must be allowed to make mistakes if they are to operate effectively, the president of the Superintendents\u2019 Association of England and Wales has said. Irene Curtis (pictured) has\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1361,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions\/1361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}