Sorry PA news!
Sorry PA News, but I don't accept your last post.
I can accept that several years ago ( And here I am talking mid 90's) there were a couple of units who owed their existance to a Senior officers whim, and as a result were less hungry for good arrests and good jobs than others.
But we didn't live in a closed silo, and units with that sort of mentality soon found themselves being shaken up, and had to work hard to earn their corn. By the start of the new century they had all been put under the microscope and in the main were pretty much on the ball. By that stage it had become my job to visit most of them on a commercial basis, and from my own observations I would state that there were very few that wern't hungry for action.
It is too easy to cast mud now that the die is cast, but explain if you can why some of the best were the ones to be taken down. I never got the impression that Merseyside or South Yorkshire were coasting. nor Chilterns North. Several of the others also under sentence of death were working hard too.
What was there was a good framework, not perfect by any means and even I would have made changes, but the body was capable of being revitalised. But now after the draconion bloodletting of about 30% of hardware & bases, and also the dreadful terms and conditions that are currently being forced upon the workforce, I am not as confident as you clearly are, that all in the garden will be lovely. New observers will still be beating a path to the door will they?
They were initially called Air Support Units, later it became fashionable to call them Air Operations Units. I rather think that that might just have been a mistake. We originally started the whole thing off to SUPPORT the officers on the ground who were having a pretty torrid time of it.
What really does worry me is this. With the advantage of rapid air support now denied to the officer on the ground, will moral remain as high? Will assualts increase? What will be the effect on Public disorder issues? The helicopter with its very effective camera was a deterent. You are obviously confident that NPAS will not reduce any of the advantages that we had. I wish that I was as confidant!
tigerfish