Never mind hounding out a charity boss for buying artwork with donations, the witch hunt should be against Chief Superintendent Richard Debicki after his latest blast of hot air in the local press. Russ Weaver was shite, but Debicki takes the award for being most utterly pointless policeman in Blackpool’s history.
The man needs sacking, purely and simply, and replacing with a proactive officer that seeks to reassure locals rather than fund a champagne lifestyle through overtime payments. I apologise in advance if this gets all sweary and nasty.
I am sick of seeing Debicki in the paper talking unadulterated bollocks, trying to pretend that his shower of shite is reducing crime by quoting sexed up figures. I’m tired of his stunts that have no effect on crime whatsoever.
Remember that ring of steel affair in August last year that committed 50 highly-trained police officers to surrounding the Raikes Parade and conducting drugs raids on homes? No arrests! Nothing more than a media stunt.
Even the sergeant running the operation, Rick Irvine, (who was probably being paid loads of overtime) agreed;
“The idea is to give criminals nowhere to go. We saw a lot of known targets, people we have identified as those to be on the lookout for – but as word spread we were all over the area we saw them less and less.”
So, you dump 50 highly visible coppers in an area of supposedly known criminals and you expected them to commit crimes in front of you whilst you stood there gossiping? What about if someone elsewhere needed police assistance? Yeah, that’s right, too fucking busy. What a joke.
“We can’t be everywhere all the time.”
- Chief Supt Richard Debicki, September 2009
Yeah you can Rickard, just use your heliwopter. Richard deployed the £3million, £540-an-hour air support with two highly trained officers on board to hunt down someone who had neither been accused of nor committed a crime. In addition to this was the ground support comprising of several more officers who eventually apprehended the innocent man as he hid under a trampoline awaiting a Rodney King style beating.
Maybe this kind of approach is why Richard Debicki can only give us, at most, three coppers in town at any one time? PCSOs do not count.
Residents have taken on Richard Debicki, too. He was slapped at a BSafe seminar because his force took too long to turn up to 999 calls, because of a lack of police on the beat and because of a failure to deal with louts. Check Blackpool on any weekend you will see this failure continues.
According to the Gasjet, at this BSafe seminar the Chief Superintendent revealed lists of figures showing how violent crime had been reducing in Blackpool. The problem is, Home Office figures less than a month later said Blackpool was the violent crime capital of the North West. One of Debicki’s pen-pushers, Superintendent Richard Bayley, tried to pass this off as seasonal variation. That’s all well and good, but when figures come out showing a 50% rise in year-on-year drug crime, it doesn’t look particularly good for you, does it?
In what started out as a noble career in the police force, Dickie Debicki has become nothing more than a pointless desk jockey.
Never before have we seen such a laughing stock of a police force. Ask anyone in town and they’ll tell you where the hotspots for the root cause of antisocial problems lie. We all know that drug dealers turn up on the train at Blackpool North, distribute their drugs and disappear back to Liverpool or Manchester. So why the fuck don’t the police know about it?
In fairness to them, they probably do know. But this is the policy of their boss and this is why Blackpool has been labelled a crime hotspot;
“Sometimes enforcement isn’t the best way to handle these problems.”
What the fuck? Enforcement is why you’re paid hundreds of thousands Richard. It’s why we just bat an eyelid when your officers turn their lights on to pass through red lights then turn them off. It’s why we let you off when you’ve got a load of mounted police sat gossiping under a deserted bus shelter because there’s a bit of drizzle. It’s why we smile when you police a football match like a presidential visit.
Daily Fail columnist Peter Hitchens went one step further when talking about how useless the police are;
They have become the uniformed wing of New Labour, not preventing crime or seeing that it is punished – but mediating neutrally between ‘victim’ and ‘offender’ and spying out political incorrectness, in their own ranks and beyond.
Sooner or later, millions of people will catch on to the fact that the police in this country aren’t on their side and don’t want to do what we pay them for. Those who can afford it will hire their own protection. Everyone else will just suffer.
Think back to my article yesterday. Is it any wonder we get shite like Debicki though when most coppers actively seek not to get promoted due to lucrative overtime arrangements? It could quite easily be said that only the stupid ones actually try to progress through the ranks, and looking at what we’ve ended up with this rings true.
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Well said Phil. I don’t for one minute think the police take the side of a victim of crime or take doing their jobs seriously. I can certainly name places where dealers operate, where the big drugs bosses live, where is setting up as a cannabis farm (though they got there so late after the reporting and “believed” such an obvious cock and bull story that I’d have to conclude at least some at the station are on drugs payroll though thankfully the reporting was done via councillors so that no individual was named).
The police don’t come to Lytham and St. Annes at night – nor are they open at lunchtimes either. Frankly although I realise I’m in a low crime area with tons of curtain twitching old biddies that ought to scare anyone from untoward behaviour I can’t say I notice a difference in crime at these times.
And Police are paid too much. There’s one in Fairhaven in a house worth £315k mark even in the recession, one of the larger newer Mercedes with personalised plate, two kids at King Edwards (fee paying). Since when was police work supposed to earn that sort of lifestyle?
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Interesting posturing so soon after an election…
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What’s the election to do with it? Did we get to choose how our police forces were run? Or do you mean Debicki is commenting on anti-social behaviour being a major issue now the new government seem to be labelling it as one? I hate crawlers – either he thought this was an issue before the election and should have been tackling it then, or he doesn’t really believe it now but thinks he ought to make an effort for effect. Either way he’s not really taking the local people’s opinion as to what is needed most.
The helicopter issue has been on here (or the predecessor forum – Beneath the Neon Lights) before – as has our overall consensus that the police in this area are crap and useless.
Sheepdog’s right with their post on the Gazette site – a lot of Blackpool’s social problems have been imported from other cities. When Norman Tebbit went on about getting on your bike and looking for work, I don’t think he envisaged a system where you don’t work and get housed anywhere you want so that you can move to the seaside for a better lifestyle whilst on the dole.
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I suspect he’s found a renewed concern for local policing since the covening of a new government which has championed elected local police chiefs.
A bit of ‘security theatre’ now and again seems to keep The Gazette all starry-eyed about ‘clampdowns’ – never mind that invasive policing tactics like metal detector arches, sniffer dogs and dressing up like paramilitaries doesn’t elicit any real results, as Phil mentions.
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Needs more boffins i guess.
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Boffins? I think it needs more cowbell.
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I got a fever, and the only cure is..
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cool beans?
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Debicki has been knocking around Lancs Constabulary for a few years now and has generally been known as one of the more capable coppers. Problem is, like all these public service organisations, when you get to the top you have to be a pod-person who spouts buzzwords and rhetoric and meets government targets that mean sod-all to the general public. The big emphasis is, I’m told, on ‘reassurance’ – hence these PR stunts, which coppers know are cobblers. Surely the best way to reassure is to have the ugly mugs of a few dealers, thugs and paedos staring out of the front page of the Gazette after being sent down? Just a thought.
On the issue of overtime – it’s particularly interesting that you mention football. Policing of football matches isn’t funded by the public purse, it’s paid for by a poll tax on (taxpaying) football clubs and therefore, indirectly, on the (taxpaying) football fans. Basically the police decide how many coppers they need and the club has to pay up or face lots of dark suggestions about losing its public safety certificate. I’ve often noticed that, in the weeks coming up to Christmas, there’s always a sudden upsurge in the number of coppers on duty, as the 200-or-so Walsall supporters making the journey suddenly become a menace2society, neccesitating an influx of Lancashire’s finest. Hmmm, Christmas bonus, perchance?
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Completely agree that real police work and evidence of such is a better reassurance and probably deterrent than stupid stunts such as the ring of steel thing.
You’re probably right about the Christmas bonus as well, although I guess it’s a bonus at every match looking at the number of coppers that are just standing there gossiping. At the last home game I went to, they had a brand new unmarked gunmetal grey 3-series BMW with a copper in it delivering snacks to the other coppers that were stood around.
Phone them up for help, though, and they’re…. too busy!
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