Police Observer
 

'Ello, 'ello, 'ello...
(sorry, couldn't resist it!)

What's the route to an observer's job with the Police? Do you have to be in the force already or can you apply from civvy street?

Thanks

when I was in the force all "observers" hardly the correct word, as its very hard work, were Police Officers

Occasionally there are adverts asking for civvie observers but you could starve out there waiting for them.

I cannot recall one in the last five years.

Most Air Units have Police Officers as observers. Some of those that have civilians as observers have recruited them from within their existing police staff.

All the Met's observers are police officers. Officially, you need a minimum of two years' service before you can specialise. In practice, you'll need a whole lot more... Bottom line is, you'll need to want to be a copper a lot more than you want to be an air observer as there aren't many slots and they don't come up very often.

There only 1 or two forces in the UK that employ civlilian Air Observers. 1 of the South East Units comes to mind. They have aprox 3 out of 9 as civvies. They are never flown alone, ie without a cop on board too.

The situation may change over time, as civilianisation creeps further and further into the Police Service. Civilian Observers across the board may prove impossible to resist.

In the meantime, the job is dominated by (experienced) serving Officers. IF you want to join the cops, better be prepared to do Police work..!!

No need to be shy. I am aware that the following Units have "civvy" observers: Suffolk, Hampshire (Plank), plus any like Sussex that have a combined police/HEMS role - One of the observers is then a paramedic. Incidentally, what a sensible use of the taxpayer's expensive assets they are, but I digress.
The previous responses were right about how things are. There is a general political move to review any roles carried out by police officers that don't involve arresting people, wearing a uniform in public. It gets labelled all sorts of things but often BEST VALUE. It is borne on a number of arguably false assumptions that police officers are expensive and "civvys" are cheap.
A number of existing Units will probably recruit civvy observers over the next few years. However, because being a police observer is regarded as a good job, various vested interests will try and keep it in house. Expect PCs to hang on to most of the jobs, followed by current civvy staff working for police forces - I even heard that PCSOs were being considered :mad: :ugh:

I often smile about the artficial divisions between them and us. Do remember we were all civvys once, and we will all become civvys again, unless we die in harness.

Could be expensive....most units' police observers have the discretion to turn down tasking requests on the grounds of being inappropriate use of the resource; we turn down about 75% of requests that come in because there simply isn't an air support angle to the task and I doubt we're exceptional.

If you remove that discretion and offer what is essentially an airborne CCTV service - phone rings so off we go - then the budget would be out of control in a few months. True, the camera/radio operators might be a little more technically skilled but that's not really the point - it's about appropriate use of the resource.

I can't actually see the point of civilianising the position of Police Air Observer. Surely the point of civilianisation of any post is to save money & release officers back to front line positions. But by the time you look at the role & responsibility of the air observer and then allocate the task to the relavent pay scale, add weekend working and shift allowances, I doubt that you will have gained much. Then look at what you lose.
(1) Flexibility, If the machine is down for any reason you can temporarily post your officer to regular duties. You can't the civvy, they are on a contract & job description.
(2) Police Observers do arrest people! The aircraft is often first on scene & whilst it is not the ideal solution it sometimes does have to land and effect an arrest. ( Yes I know civvi's can be specials but it is not the same ).
(3) In public order situations it is not unusual for the local "Bronze" commander to hand effective control over to the aircraft ( Not so common now that downlink coverage is spreading). But will they have the same trust in the none Police observer, I doubt it!

So in short yes a Civvi can do the job, - a teeny bit cheaper, but given the cost of air support as a whole, and the loss of flexibility that might result, is it wise?

I can't actually see the point of civilianising the position of Police Air Observer. Surely the point of civilianisation of any post is to save money & release officers back to front line positions. But by the time you look at the role & responsibility of the air observer and then allocate the task to the relavent pay scale, add weekend working and shift allowances, I doubt that you will have gained much. Then look at what you lose.
(1) Flexibility! If the machine is down for any reason you can temporarily post your officer to regular duties. You can't the civvy, they are on a contract & job description.
(2) Police Observers do arrest people! The aircraft is often first on scene & whilst it is not the ideal solution it sometimes does have to land and effect an arrest. ( Yes I know civvi's can be specials but it is not the same ).
(3) In public order situations it is not unusual for the local "Bronze" commander to hand effective control over to the aircraft ( Not so common now that downlink coverage is spreading). But will they have the same trust in the none Police observer, I doubt it!

So in short yes a Civvi can do the job, - a teeny bit cheaper, but given the cost of air support as a whole, and the loss of flexibility that might result, is it wise?

Thanks for the replies all, some food for thought

:ok:

ASU Observer
 

Are the Paramedics in Sussex actually PAOC observers?

Re: DB CHopper
 

Not all Met observers are Police Officers. As I understand, one of them is an Ops controller who has done the observer's course in-house. Despite being extremely competent, said observer is restricted to front seat duties only, not because of any lack of ability, but so as to protect police observer posts. Wouldn't want to let the cat out of the bag that 'civvies' given the right training and sourced from an appropriate background can be every bit as effective as a police officer.;)

2bart
I believe that HEMS Para's on joint Police / HEMS do a bit of training in use of the police kit and the police observerver does a bit of training on assisting the para.
Plod in charge when chasing stolen astra's, Bandage-man in charge when someone bleeding all over the floor.

in reply to trolley, having been a "civvie" and then a police officer, whilst i agree, there are certain posts that can be, civilanised, with training, what most civvies I encountered, don't have is the " policemans nose " call it instinct if you wish, When you have chased villans on foot or vehicle, you get to know, where there going to run or try and hide, what they probably will do next. If you havn't done it, how could you possibly know ?

This is a very old bone of contention and I doubt there is a resolution [even on Pprune]. The danger here is overall erosion of the police service efficiency.

There are some [particularly American police] who believe that a 'civvie' cannot do any police job in the air. Almost as if we were born to be police officers rather than trained and kicked into shape.

It may be rubbish to think that way, we were all born civvies ... but it is debatable whether many police officers really do revert to that state after 30 years of service.... and you can create an efficient observer quite easily even if they might be short of that certain something. The end product can be good subject to such as those 'ifs' pointed out by Tigerfish but there maybe a wider non-aerospace issue here.

For some years there has been a move to civilianise everything in the police service because it is allegedly cheaper. You can probably cut a third off the wage costs on a one-to-one civilianisation. But it does not actually work that way.

Time and time again over the last 30 years there have been instances of getting rid of the Admin sergeant or another police post and civilianising the office... but what happens... within months the replacement cannot cope and 'they' need more office space because there are three of them!

The same with the new semi-civilian CPSO's [the cheap undertrained and poorly resourced replacement police persons] ... they wander around in pairs... if not threes for mutual support .... that is not economical or efficient when compared with their predessors who did the same job solo.

My point is that this theme reads across the whole service and erodes efficiency [and sounds the death knell of the police service as we know it?]. Although they may not be as flexible as they used to be [potentially because the easier pressures upon the civvie staff as a whole read across] real police officers can still contribute greatly to the the requirement for air units to remain 'lean and mean' where [perhaps!] the easier requirements related to some civilian staff tend not to.

As everyone will agree, this one will run and run. Let me just re-emphasise a couple of things:

The civvy thing is all about saving money. Let us assume that a civvy on special shft allowance and danger pay and responsbility alloowance and ... costs less to employ than a PC plod [there really is very little difference when you add all these thinsg up]. As others have said, a PC has experience that will from time to time make a difference in how he does a job,when comared with a civvy. Operating an ASU is expensive not because of PC salaries (or even those of the pilots) but because of the cost of running a twin engine all singing dancing money shredding machine. If you want to put your experienced PCs anywhere, better to influence the use of such a multi-million pound piece of kit than operate a computer entering data, issue forms every time they talk to a mmeber of the public, ride a bicycle or even handle a police dog. Not having police officer knowledge and thought processes controlling a police heli can waste a fortune.

The other thing that always seems important to me, is that the aircraft has to work with and to some extent control or influence their police colleagues on the ground. This will be a lot more difficult if "they down there" think that "them up there" aren't even PCs and therefore don't know what they are doing. It is essential that police officers on the ground consider those in the air to be part of the same team. If not, the hele is a waste of money.

The paramedics in Sussex support the police officer when on police tasking acting as the second observer. To that end they are trained to use all the role equipment to the same level as the police observer.

Police Helicopter normally unavailable due to white cloud in the sky or the wrong type of leaves on the trees!! :E:ok:

Personally I like to feel that I have Observers capable of operating the, increasingly technical, equipment in the most effective manner. It doesn't matter whether they be Police or Civvie, just that they use logical search processes, and the most appropriate tool for the job, to find the suspect and communicate accurately, briefly & concisely, both within & without the aircraft. This does NOT necessarily mean they have to be Police Officers , that bit's just protectionism, as is the arrest argument.
I don't think anyone is suggesting complete civilianisation of the Obs job, but a smattering in a Unit can help to keep people on their toes, especially if they have any pride in their job!
As to cost - I doubt there's much in it, but I'd rather have a Civvie concentrating on doing a good job than a Police Obs who can't understand the technology & feels he has no need to improve his knowledge.;)