UK.gov ploughs cash into creaky police technology The British government has sunk £100m into efforts to link up cops’ IT systems, boost resource-sharing and develop digital forensics. The UK's police forces have been battling to improve outdated systems for years. Multiple annual reports into the state of policing have concluded that cops lag far behind in their use of tech, …
May just cover the consultants "entertainment" and "refreshments" expenses... But the bit that really made me laugh, was
" also cash for a .. hub where people can report low-level incidents"
Given how please respond to these anyway, this can be solved with a simple online form that POST's output to /dev//null .. then returns a random meaningless "CRIME" number (probably a UUID) which can be given to insurance companies.
@K "/dev/null'
Hahah, yeah,... one park I walk my dogs at has signs all over it saying the use of motor bikes etc is prohibited (the scrotes vandalise the place, tearing off gates so they can get their bikes in, but that puts the deer there at risk if they get out,... plus it's not far from a busy 'A' road, so we don't want deer on the road.), so a couple of months ago I hear them tearing it up, see them, report them to 101, and got the distinct feeling I was being told 'yes dear', and that absolutely nothing was going to happen. Maybe a PCSO would swerve by if they were passing in a couple of weeks, that level of response. Thing is, the scrotes are often on stolen bikes, so if the Police responded, they might reunite the owner with their bike, rather than a smoldering pile of molten aluminium and plastic.
Once the Thin Blue Line in the rest of the UK realises how easy this will make the lives of their English compatriots, they will be falling over themselves to adopt it. Well, the men and women who join up in a desire to make the country a nice, safe for the rest of us to live in possibly not so much, but certainly those holding the purse-strings.
No need to talk to the public any more, just direct them to the online reporting system. So no need to have all those police stations cluttering up the cityscapes, sell them off and put the criminals under house arrest since we've got no cells. And if we can do it for the less-serious crims, then we can extend it to the slightly worse ones. And when that doesn't go too wrong*, we can expand the scope a little further. Then we can sell off all the prisons as well. And build a few new golf courses and country clubs.
*Care in the community is the prime example of this - when it works, it's a good thing. Unfortunately not everybody is able to behave in the manner necessary to live in a relatively uncontrolled environment.
Then we can sell off all the prisons as well.
I thought they already had? G4S?
But they will never get rid of prisons - without prisons how can you lock citizens up for years for trivial reasons? (Wandering around naked springs to mind)
But to be positive, we'll need some to incarcerate all our MPs and their friends after Brexit.
I share the feelings above regarding a single hub for reporting low level incidents.
The analogue equivalent would be running a tap into a sink with no plug in it.
Also as already mentioned the amount is piffling at best, considering all that they wish to achieve, a quick look at other UK gov' unifying IT efforts will tell you the end result will be an order of magnitude greater.
And it still won't work!
> Calling it an almighty clusterfuck is being kind. The primary task for the system is to assign resources (cops) to tasks (robbers, etc), but its so slow that it's completely unusable.
Maybe the crooks should be given access to the system. After all and lately that's the only way of getting a police responce to 'low-level' crimes. On the other hand, they will offer a call from the Victim Support Unit. How about shutting the Victim Support Unit and spending the money on police salaries.
We could afford a lot more technology (money in our pockets) if you get rid of the police entirely - we're working on it, at current rates we should have the police force down to about 10,000 in another twenty years - those 10,000 would all be managers, running the technology.
That's our plan,
Jacob Rees-Mogg and partners.
I've used the Met Police's hub to report traffic incidents on three occasions in the past year (https://www.met.police.uk/ro/report/rti/report-a-road-traffic-incident/) and think that this is a fantastic way to report issues to the police that otherwise would have been difficult and time consuming. These included a white van jumping the lights and almost t-boning me and two close passes that scared the life out of me during my commute, it helps having a camera. If in this case, by reporting the idiots, their driving can be moderated then I feel it's money well spent.
"These included a white van jumping the lights and almost t-boning me and two close passes that scared the life out of me during my commute, it helps having a camera."
And that video footage you uploaded - where did that go then?
If (as I suspect) its sitting on a cloud server operated by an out of UK provider - that'll be another fine waiting for the Met breaching the DPA 2018 then...
Your public funding well spent... paying fines to the ICO for not getting even the basics right.
Instead of wasting money re-inventing the wheel, the UK should buy a tried-and-tested system, based on a similar legal system, such as Canada. The US systems have too much bling that doesn't work properly (think the P25 neutered by a Mattel doll).
And hiring US-based companies is not the answer - except for off-the-shelf 'solutions'.
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