An senior ex-policeman that I know said that nowadays new recruits join up. find a cushy desk job to do their paperwork and sit back for 30 years until they get their (generous) pension!
Ron.
Rowlocks......
The senior ex policeman (like me) paid 11% of his top line into their pension for 30 years.
They (like me) only get their own coin back. NO input from anyone else, eg Govt or golden hedge fund, not one brass razzoo from any other source.
The pension percentage taken today from a serving cop pays out tomorrow to the pensioners (again, like me). No golden bucket somewhere in the Cayman Isles accruing interest. Retirees are simply living longer and creating a draw that cannot be readily refilled.
Hence the financial requirement for current officers to pay an even bigger percentage of their monthly, for far longer, to get less of a pension as final salary pensions are no longer. And ongoing loss of motivation and to see ‘the job’ as just that and not a career.
To continue, said senior ex policeman is out of touch of how policing operates now (unlike me...) as police officers are leaving in droves as they are unable to get said ‘cushy-desk jobs’ as they are now occupied by civilians (possibly ex job, ex senior officers, receiving their pensions already) but who now contribute an even greater percentage to government funds by way of taxes.
Or alternatively, someone has choicely taken parts of reality for a sound bite.
Just for clarification, and to put an alternate view to Bigrons Big Broadbrushing of a public misconception.
That ex-senior officer is certainly out of touch with the modern policing I see, as the situation described by hotel21 is exactly what the situation is with certainly Kent Police, as the front desks, and many of those behind the scenes, are manned by civilians and all the individuals I work with in various departments at the Maidstone Training College and HQ are civilians. It is only senior police officers who I see "at desks", and who issue the commands to us civilians with us giving the support, me as an advisor, and the Police Officers out there, spread extremely thinly, in the field.
Our Crime and Police Commissioner has managed an increase in Kent Police recruitment, with extra Council Tax funding, and 200 front line officers are being trained and placed in the field, at the sharp end, NOT at "cushy desks" (now no such thing). With this recruitment is another 80 CIVILIAN staff, who will do the behind the scenes, in support, work and yes, at desks. The modern, current, Police Force cannot survive with trained, warranted, Police Officers sitting at desks; most nights just 'the few' Officers are covering the whole of Kent, with no reserves, fighting a Battle of Crime. They are stretched, with, patrols shooting from one side of the County 999 call, to the other sides 999; hence why I have noted waits of 2 hours for a "police response" to such calls.
That is why they MUST have back the 20,000 officers, then some, to fight to correct what some are calling a broken justice system.