Sorry Shy, I was under the impression that when you said, "
The unit I worked for was a joint forces one and we never did "patrol" due to correct management of the resource.", you were saying that patrolling was an incorrect use of the resource. As you say, we must have been running under different terms and that is where the misunderstanding came
Like you, we were also told to watch the hours, as the service dates loomed closer, yet on the other hand there were times when we were told to patrol more. Whichever, the weather always seemed to be a good manager of hours come the day! No overflying, no over budget, no complaints, just effective planned use of the resource. A police vehicle doing police work.
Like you, I'd rather be proactively strapped to the cab 'Serving our communities, protecting them from harm', than sat dunking another digestive.