- Conference
- 2014 Police & Justice Conference
- Date
- 24 June 2014
- Decision
- Carried
Conference will note the increasing demanding nature of police work as a result of austerity related funding cuts, staff shortages and redundancies that have resulted in the expectation of those left behind to do more with less resulting in the workplace being a more stressful environment.
Conference will further note that as a result of politicising policing, members of the public have been conditioned to believe that they are customers and that mistakes, regardless of how minor are never acceptable. And it’s only right that members of the public deserve a police service that is accountable, but who protects the police staff?
It’s against this backdrop that police staff are increasingly being investigated following allegations by detained persons and hostile members of the public. In many cases, the police staff members themselves are victims of criminal acts, yet no action is taken by police who think it’s all part of the job. Police staff are all too often victims of assaults, threats, and hate crimes relating to abusive language involving discrimination to include racial, religious, homophobic, gender, and disability, yet often the police do nothing. Even after prolonged periods of abuse, when our staff react in some way to the abusive treatment, they can find themselves being investigated. Where is the justice in that?
In situations where our members need support they should have it. It is a systemic failure when police staff members are not adequately supported and this leads to increased stress levels, mistakes, and behaving less than professionally.
Conference, our police staff deserve more protection from our employers. Our detention officers, police community support offices (PCSO’s), station clerks and other staff deserve to be treated fairly like other members of the public and in accordance with the law. Of course a thick skin and a bit of tolerance is a necessity to work in a demanding police service, but when a member of the public commits a crime, they should be arrested for it. If it’s an arrestable offence in the high street, it’s arrestable in a police station or cell.
Conference calls on the Service Group Executive (SGE) to:
1)Survey our police staff members and determine how widespread police failures to support our members are and how it affects stress and moral; publishing the findings.
2)Share the findings with the College of Policing and seek assistance in developing guidance to protect police staff.
3)Develop a national UNISON police staff strategy to highlight the problem and assist branches to address the problem locally.