WF. Of all the crass and stupid comments that I have seen over the past 10 years or so reading pprune, your last comment just about takes the biscuit!
Firstly, you dismiss the hard working units that built UK Police Air Support from nothing in the mid eighties, to being a world beaters by 2004, calling them nothing more than flying clubs.
Then you parade "borderless" policing as being some new concept! Well I wrote my first paper on the subject of Police Air Support at Bramshill in 1984, and became increasingly involved in air support over the next 15 years until I retired from the service in 1999. During all of that time, I never came across a police air unit that refused to attend a serious incident in another county, or whilst during a chase or a search, came to a shuddering halt at an invisible boundry because they were going out of area. It is true to say that UK Police air units were an object lesson in inter force co-operation. For NPAS to to claim that they have introduced borderless policing is nothing short of an insult!
I'm out of it now, - (more's the pity but the years were rolling on). But I am proud of all those guys and gals too, who gave their everything to make air support work. And what did they get for it? A load of crap from some spotty faced youth in the Home Office and probably NPAS too, who decided that the air observer is not a front line officer and should not be paid accordingly.
No matter that the Observer is there to ensure that we all get the best bang for our buck out of that admittedly expensive piece of kit up there. The aircraft is only as good as its crew, and if you want to turn them into a dis spirited and unenthusiastic team, then you are going the right way about it.
This whole farce is the result of a chronic lack of leadership. HMG deliberately set up NPAS using people who knew nothing about the subject. They did it that way because they wanted to be in total control, which would have been challenged if they used experienced and skilled leaders.
Sadly we are now all starting to reap what they sowed. Confusion and disenchantment.
NPAS is here to stay, and I pray that it will soon start to become effective, but it cannot do that unless its leaders have the B***s to turn on their stupid leaders at the HO, and point out what a mess their policies are producing.
Someone needs to remember that "This is a front line Police resource" and should be operated and deployed accordingly. It is there to combat crime of all types, not just for pre planned and major events. It has a strong element of providing vital support and safety to officers on the ground. Its greatest weapon lies in its speed of arrival overhead the incident, and as a result any delay built into its method of deployment, has a far greater potential to waste money than almost anything else.
Sadly I write this knowing that no-one at NPAS or the Home Office will listen. They are set on their path towards ineffectiveness and I doubt that anything will shift them now. All attention is set on the next promotion or even the QPM. You don't get that for rocking the boat!
I don't know 'cos it was even before my time, but I guess it must be a bit like it was in the mid 1930's when the Gov't were intent on reducing the RAF. They wouldn't listen then either.
tigerfish