This is now wildly off topic but I may as well add a couple of observations.
1. Paarmo. You are clearly a bitter and resentful ex-observer who has been rightfully tenured from your post. Your comments are clearly intended to stir.

2 PAN. It is none of your business what the West Midlands Police do or dont do. Each Police service runs its own affairs according to the needs of the local community. The West Midlands Police are leaders in British Police aviation and have been at the forefront of it long before the tired PAN publication came into being. Whatever decision has been made by the Force has been made for the right reasons...end of.

HnH

Straying slightly off topic again, but I need to answer....

Immobilisers are making car crime worse? I can't believe I have just read that.

PAARMO, Immobilisers have definitely made it HARDER to steal a car, without a doubt. Unfortunately in your world, the criminal says "Ah, too difficult" and goes home. In my REAL world, the criminal says "I am still having that car, so how do I get it?". This means he needs the keys........... Think about it.
So when I say worse, I mean that the severity of a car theft now depends on how much resistance an owner decides to put up. Some give up the keys straight away, some are already dead................. Worse

"The West Midlands Police are leaders in British Police aviation "

Can't guess where you work:uhoh:

Sorry I can help you.

I work at the first unit to achieve the Police Air Operators Certificate.;)

Hnh

So why is it 002 then?

I see your ;) and I raise it ;):p

anyone else claim to be 001?

Police Aviation Services

As an outsider looking in , who actually trains the air observers to the standard required for the job? Presumeably this certificate that you are talking about.

Sorry missing from the parade... but I think I have caught up now.... [yes I know 'light blue touchpaper and retire....' thats a common ruse]

The item about West Yorkshire's aircraft being the 'busiest in the UK and with only one aircraft a 902' was pretty standard stuff issued by West Yorks .... it appeared in the local papers but probably only got global via PAN and some of the aero wires. The only thing I added was to do the sums to 'prove' the statement against the high time EC135 and expand the story. Press offices do sometimes get themselves in a muddle.

I probably take a bit of an exception to huntnhound and his assertion that the original thread is none of the business of PAN. I beg to quarrel with that. What the 'police' choose to do is indeed their choice but it has been under the scrutiny of the citizen for nearly 200 years and if I am anything I am now a taxpayer and YOU, like me in the past, are very much under scrutiny. Ask those poor officers in the G20 camera views. If in the end what the 'police' do is right fair enough but we 'the people' actually have the right to ask the questions - even if they are crass.

If PAN is 'tired' fine, but I guess you read it to make that judgement.

To be pedantic PAN was born before the WMP operation started.:ok:

Are you? I would never have guessed.

I am sure the residents of the West Midlands will be heartened to learn that ratepayers in Essex are contributing towards their running costs:hmm:

Ok Ok ....The West Midlands police were the first Police Force to be awarded the POAC. All others followed. Furthermore they have operated more aircraft types than anyone else.

PAN.......... Try charging for it and see how much money you make:ooh:

Hnh

Huntnhound... you really do need to research your statements. West Midlands has not flown the most aircraft types.... somewhere I sadly wrote all of them down before launching my quill .... pen... typewriter etc.

Even allowing for the Chipmunk, Rapide, PA23 Apache, Sioux, Navajo, Golden Eagle ..... of yesteryear the list is very much shorter than many many others.

The issue of a PAOC does not in any way reflect first in the field, if that were the case the Met would undoubtedly have been the first, not number 20, Devon & Cornwall probably the second rather than 17. Its all about who coralled the paperwork first and knowing many of the people involved at the time 'tomorrow' really was soon enough for most of them.

And.... just take a little peek over your shoulder..... :eek: I do not actually spend my time reading the job ads on the West Midlands Police web site. I received a request from someone very close to you to go to that page and [specifically] put it on Pprune.:oh:

As for the 'price' of PAN. That actually fits in perfectly with the Business Plan and has done from day 1. When you get there .... and I got there .... like me you will have assessed [researched!] your former colleagues with their [generally] sealed shut wallets and you will make the same decision. If it was a US scenario and not a UK one that decision would have been quite different. That is why the ALEA business plan works perfectly in the US but, much to their exasperation, does not work in the UK. Are you a member? It costs pennies ....

I guess not. :ok:

too easy...........

As no one would tell me about this air worthiness certificate or whatever it is called , I have done some research.
Civilians train the Police as air observers.
Civilians check that the Police are operating safely and correctly in accordance with their licence.
Civilians drive the aircraft.
Civilians maintain the aircraft.
Civilians direct the aircraft to jobs.
Civilians co ordinate the ground response.
You were all once civilians.
You will all become civilians once again.
Yet you are resistant to civilians sitting alongside you and doing an observers job.
I think that you should have a long hard look at your prejudices and at least think about civilians as human beings as you are yourselves.You are not supermen, but highly trained Police Officers who should be policing and not flying.

paarmo, if you have done some research why are you rabitting on about an "air worthiness certificate or whatever it is called"?

In answer to your statements:

Civilians do not train our observers!
I take it the 'checkers' you refer to are the CAA, if so you can have that one.
Yes, I am a civilian (with 24yrs military experience behind me).
Yes, civilians do maintain the aircraft (though ours is ex mil).
Our civilian radio operators make us aware of the jobs, the decision to go on them is made by the Police members of the crew from a tactical point of view and finally the pilot from a safety/aircraft point of view.
Actually, the civilians tend to get in the way a lot of the time (from a tactical point of view) because they lack the understanding of what is required.
Yes I was a civilian once but, having joined and served in a uniformed, disciplined organisation I do not think like a civilian or react like one so even if I no longer have the uniform I will never be a 'civilian' again compared to someone who has not been through the same life path as myself.
One of the reasons that Army pilots provide such a good aviation service to the ground troops is because a great many of them spent their early years doing the jobs of the troops that they support. In fact, when I first went aviating it was a pre requisit (what can you bring to the party?) to getting on the course.

And before you use the arguement of me being ex mil and doing the job as a civvi to justify your approach, CRAB@DAAVN had it right in that that approach for Observers would be used as the thin end of the wedge and soon the 'ex' qualification would be dropped in the name of money saving and not for increasing or maintaining efficiency!

PAARMO,

I'm with Annoythemouse on this.

I've got twenty four years experience of Beat work, Traffic and Firearms, so when I speak to Police officers on the ground I know what their difficulties are because I've been there, I know what they can and can't do because I've been there. I don't waste airtime by talking drivel and asking them to do things I know are wrong/impossible. Find me a non ex Police air observer who has that background and I'll gladly buy you and them a drink and admit I am wrong on this one.:}

As regards inflating civilian wages, I don't think so, staff wages are calculated on many things, technical knowledge and skill being just two of the pertinent ones here. Many forces, my own incuded are going back to police officers in what were civilian roles for exactly the same reasons I've posted previously on this thread.

I Know I shouldn't but:
Paarmo, I believe you are referring to the Police Air Operations Certificate.
In our unit,
Civilians train the Police as air observers. No. Police Officers do.
Civilians check that the Police are operating safely and correctly in accordance with their licence. Correct if you mean the CAA Flight Ops Inspectors and ours was formerly a Police Pilot.
Civilians drive the aircraft. Correct, but in our unit, all ex mil because they all have thousands of hours of “Operational” experience and are used to working with and for the ground units that they support.
Civilians maintain the aircraft. Correct, but our engineer cut his teeth in the mil and has an understanding of “Operational requirements”.
Civilians direct the aircraft to jobs. Wrong. Civilians request on behalf of the police officers on the ground. Police officers decide whether the task is accepted or not. Once the task has been accepted it is generally useful if they don’t get involved unless asked for.
Civilians co ordinate the ground response. Wrong. That is done between the ground commander and the Police Observers.
You were all once civilians. Correct.
You will all become civilians once again. Correct, I already am – but I still think in an “Operational” way when I am doing the job.
Yet you are resistant to civilians sitting alongside you and doing an observers job. Wrong. I regularly operate with a “Civilian” Observer. But, prior to that he had been a Police Observer for 10 years and didn’t need to be trained as one. Prior to that he had 20 years of pounding the beat in the same area he now patrols from the air. Given enough peanuts we could train a monkey to do the job. The problem is we don’t have anywhere near enough peanuts. A 2 week course is barely enough to teach someone any more than the basics of being a police observer and how to operate the equipment. If you have to teach them to think like a police officer the course would drag on for an unacceptable length of time.
A police officer in a helicopter, with all the available role equipment, is a police officer with a greater range of tools in his toolbox than those on the ground with which to detect and deter crime, search for the missing, the absconded and the hiding. Using the knowledge and experience that they gained whilst “Bobbies on the beat”, chasing crims through estates and gardens and knowing the places that they will hide is what makes the Air Support Team so effective.
Annoythemouse and pieboy are spot on. Listen to those in the know. Your research was not thorough enough.

Game, set and match me thinks!!:}

Lots of indignation but very little dispute over my observations.
We train our own observers!!!!...unless you have a secret research and development arm which designs and manufactures the equipment on the aircraft I think you will find that you were originally trained on this equipment by civilians.
Civilians request the air support unit but Police Officers decide whether the job is in the remit...this would be so even if a Police Officer requested a job and at the end of the day it is down to the civilian driving the aircraft to accept it depending on various things such as weather and serviceability of the aircraft.
Civilians do not coordinate the ground response....Unless you have real time access to the force command and control system I think you will find that they do in most cases even though the control room supervisor is a Police Officer.
Originally it was asked whether a civilian could do the job and it was greeted with cries of derision yet Fortyodd2 sits with a civilian in his crew and appears very happy with the situation.It is not clear but it would appear that Fortyodd 2 is also a civilian doing an observer's job.
Anonythemouse seems to think that he is not a civilian. Try getting in to your old Forces Base sir and see what happens.
Not so much game set and match as scoring the winning goal in extra time at Wembley.

"It would appear that Fortyodd 2 is also a civilian doing an observer's job". Wrong again!!! check my profile.
"secret research and development arm" - that would be what used to be called PSDB. Where do you think the manufacturers get all their equipment changes/mods/enhancements and user input from?
"real time access to command and control" - We have real time access to the job by looking out of the window. Command & Control doesn't even get close.

advantage Fortyodd2!!

Paarmo, where do you get your info from, have you ever visited a Police unit? Are you or have you ever been involved in operational Police work Civilian or Warranted? It may seem like I'm prying, but it is important. Most people on this thread have nailed their colours to the mast. It would be good to know if you are talking from some sort of experience.:ok:

paarmo, you are like indigestion after a kebab (just won't go away and are very annoying) Don't just read my words, read what they are saying. I might be a civvi because I am no longer serving in the forces but compare me to a civvi who has never served and you will find that I am a very different beast to them. I think that you will find that the civvi observers that have been spoken about are ex police observers which is what would make them different to a civilian who came along and only learnt the job of an observer. Having been the man at the sharp end means that you are in a much better position to provide those at the sharp end today with an understanding of what they want and what is required. Police observers think like policemen! Our new observers are trained by observers currently serving with the unit, so where does the civilian come into it, oh yeah I forgot, their mum & dad might have been a civilian at one time. Civilians do not request Air Support, they pass on a request from a police officer. Could you enlighten us as to what connection you have with aviation? Have looked at your profile but it doesn't show anything.

Dear Forty. You stated in your post that you were a civilian,sorry if I misread it.If you can access all Police units in your Force area to see who is available and is near the incident you are attending by looking out of the window then it seems a little remiss of your Force to spend all of that money on computer systems. I think the Defence Minister might like a word to save money on their systems also.
Realpie, I am not nailing anything to my mast.I am the voice of reasoned debate.No more and no less.
Anonetc. Yes you are a civilian and this thread is about employing civilians as air observers. There was never any mention that the civilian should not have had any experience in the same or a similar role in a former life.
It all boils down to picking the best man/woman for the job and if that person is ex Police or Armed Forces then so be it.
As a serious aside there are many ex service personnel being invalided out of the Services on a pittance of a pension and very few prospects of a worthwhile and interesting job who would jump at the chance of being an air observer but at the the end of the day it must be the best person for the job.
Back to reality, I still think that Police Officers are better employed policing.

This is getting a bit like teaching a pig to dance.................achieves nothing but annoys the pig!!

Paarmo, I am a police Officer and I am Policing, every day, but from a helicoper. I catch burglars.........3 up to now tonigh:ok:. Being a Police Officer I use my experience to add value to whatever role I am posted to.

As regards your facile comments to Fortyodd2. When we arrive over a task, we take on the role of Ground Commander, in effect 'Bronze'. Officers on the ground respect our position (800ft AGL) and experience and do what they are told/asked, we have a better overview than anyone at the scene and regularly Inspectors and above will defer to our judgment and expirtise.

As regards a civilian doing my job, YES!! it can be done easily,
1. Take the Police entrance exam and pass it
2. Get through the two year probationary period
3. Keep applying or Air Operations one day you may get it.

There you go civilian to Air Observer in 5 to 20 years. :ok:


Which nicely leads me onto my final point. When a Police Officer attends a basic Air observer course and fails it they are put into another policing role, when you set on a new civilian observer and send them on a course and they fail it you now have a very well paid driver handy person.

If you want to PM me and you are close by I can arrange a visit for you to my unit, perhaps then you will have some of your burning questions answered, we may even let you out again.:eek::eek:

Dear paarmo,
Looking out of the window of the aircraft - not out of the office. Once we are on scene it is us that feeds the computer, not the other way round. Our office has 8 radios tuned to various nets in the area and by doing so we hear what is going on around us and pick up on what is "bubbling" before we get asked.
I'm glad that you now pick up on the point about experience. The police don't put anyone into any specialist department, dogs, firearms, trafffic, CID, underwater search, etc, until they have completed 2 year probationary term of service and air support is no different. Once past their probationary period in the job, air observers tend to stay a minimum of 3 years but usually longer. Any less does not justify the expense of training them. Our one and only attempt at recruiting a civilian observer resulted in 96 applicants of which only 2 met all the required criteria - but we still had to pay all the expense of sifting and testing them all - which increased the "on cost" to the point where a police officer would have been cheaper. Our HR department would have loved to have picked a "Playstation generation" youth from the job centre and we would have been stuck with a liability - it's not just a case of pointing the camera in the right direction. As for landing on to make an arrest, would you really want said civilian to be in a situation where they find themselves facing some axe wielding nutter? Think it can't happen? Think again - it already has.
Your point about ex forces people, depends on what their disability is. Remember, they still have to be able to get in and out of the aircraft in a hurry where the situation demands it. One of our police observers is ex SAR crew who joined the police after leaving the forces and was, therefore, quite happy in the back of the aircraft and simply had some new kit to learn, being already capable of map reading/navigation etc. As has been previously stated on this thread, it's about what they can bring to the party.

Dear paarmo
 

:ugh:You seem to have things a little out of context. Yes, everyone starts out as a civilian then they join a disciplined organization. That might be police, mil, ambo. Whichever. Opportunity’s are given to them based on experience levels and qualifications. So

Ambo - you don’t start giving drugs or sticking needles in people until you have done the basics, learnt from experience, passed some exams get recommended and show yourself to be competent at the role.

Military - (Pilot) You join at the bottom, get some experience, do some exams get some experience and get recommended for the role that then takes years of training.

Police - You join at the bottom, pound the streets, deal with criminals, get used to how criminals think and what they will do next ( They are all creatures of habit) Get some experience get recommended, do some exams and show that you are competent at the role.

Now the difference with the way police do things is that is they advertise for a police job any one inside the police can apply. So all of the above apply. However if they advertise for a civilian post it goes into the national press. Therefore little jonny with no qualifications who is currently shelf stacking at Tescos ( other retail jobs are available) can apply and if he can pass the entrance exam and talk enough guff for 20 mins could get the job.

Which would you rather work with and put in charge of a police forces most expensive resource.



Personal abuse deleted. There is no need for this stupidity: the next to contribute with abuse will get more than a deletion :=

Senior Pilot

Personal abuse
 

And just when I was wanting to send some too!

Paarmo, I cannot make up my mind whether you actually do believe police officers should all be walking around or whether you are a wind-up merchant.

Anyhoo, seeing as how you like your (less than accurate) research, why not stay online and use the Cambridge dictionary to gain definitions of police officer and soldier. I include soldier as the ex-army flyers amongst us will well remember the cries of "soldier first" which many interpreted as "infantryman first" when in fact there are many branches and forms of soldiering. Likewise policing.

By your argument, you would 'civilianise' everyone in the police who do not make direct arrests day to day. If you really want to know whether it would work and be cost effective, do some more research and talk with units that have tried it.

Going back to an earlier post, also look up ab-initio.

Dear Regain,
The last definition I saw for a Police Officer went something along these lines...A Constable is a citizen locally appointed whose duties are the prevention and detection of crime and the prosecution of offenders against the peace . No mention of helicopters and the like. The much denigrated civilian observer seems to me a much better idea as he can commit long term to the position and upgrade continually as technology advances in a seemless manner rather than learning the job from scratch as he is posted in and out of the unit.
Yes I would civilianise all posts who do not use their Police powers on a regular and continual basis. After all why train Police Officers to be Police Officers when they are not Policing on the front line and making a difference for us taxpayers.

"No mention of helicopters and the like"

No mention of cars either - or firearms, radios, computers, cameras, horses, boats, dogs, aeroplanes, motor cycles, finger printing, DNA, etc. Probably because they are just part of the ever increasing inventory of tools available to the constable in order to assist him/her with the "prevention and detection of crime and the prosecution of offenders against the peace". We've moved on.

Paarmo does have a bit of a point. :bored:

Here we go again!
 

I know this is going over old ground, but I couldn't resist the juicy big worm Paarmo has put on the hook.

Police observers in helicopters do just that.

Police observers in helicopters are policing at the front line (albeit several hundred feet above it) and help save tax payers money by searching large areas of ground far quicker than land based patrols can. How much overtime has been saved around the country by the use of helicopters during missing person searches?

Dear retro,
Eyes are eyes no matter who they belong to when you are searching for a missing person. I seem to recall the Army and even volunteer civilians being used in searches for missing persons in the past.Surely if civilians can do it on the ground then they can do it in a helicopter.

Paarmo, you are correct - eyes are eyes when looking for a missing person. But that's nowhere near all we do. We need those eyes to be connected to a brain that has stores of experience in all kinds of police work in order to make them effective. Using your argument, why not get civilians to drive the police cars? After all, behind the wheel isn't front line policing is it? The problem comes when they have to step out of the vehicle. Perhaps you should ask the "civilians" at Surrey if their training was sufficient to deal with the larcenous, itinerant, travelling folk who smashed up their aircraft?

fortyodd are police officers more 'axe proof' than civllians then ?:hmm:

Its from a post a while back, but the quote about police being 'originally' trained by civilians is a bit lame. Yes, the first crews were trained by civilians many years ago, but if you apply that logic, who trained the first ever pilots? The wright brothers didn't have a school to go to.
Things have advanced since the early days, we train our own people now. The 'civilian' CAA do check us, but only to make sure that we are operating THE AIRCRAFT safely and within limits. They certainly do not tell us how to handle command and control and the operational kit.
Remember that the civilian/police interpretation is very small. The aircraft carries passengers to incidents, it is operated to Cat A standards to safeguard the passengers. Once it gets there the passengers do their job. Bleating on about engineers and pilots being civilian is a red herring. Who deploys us is a red herring as well. The only important thing is how the observers do the job at scene. A huge amount of jobs we do involve the question coming from ground units: "What offences have you seen committed?". The experienced officers can then relay important information to ground units. To me as a mere 5 year veteran, this suggests that there MUST be at least one qualified cop on the crew. The other alternative would be to train the civilian observer to a suitable standard to recognise offences and be able to understand ground unit requirements.........
Hang on, that means train them as a policeman..... we do that already :D

Sulley,
Physically no - but more likely to be trained and equipped to deal in the same way that they are when the aircraft lands to make an arrest which is why the crew have access to PPE when in the aircraft. Civilian staff are not trained and are not permitted to use the PPE.

Paarmo

Who do you think taught police observers in the first place whan air support evolved....Answer experienced police officers who transfered their policing skills from the ground to the air......trial, error and experience over the years has meant that skills are enhanced. Working groups set up to share skills....Infact I think you will find that it was police officers that told big companies like eurocopter what they wanted and got them to build and redesign a helicopter around police officers needs. Not the other way round.

So rather than the chicken or the egg argument. Just realise that police officers started it all off and have evolved air support over the years to what they do today.:D

If a civvie observer is to be recruited who do you think will train them..Police officers. Why do you think there are not more of them..because a recent study throught out the whole of the UK revealed that it IS NOT cost effective.

A top whack civvie with all their add ons and travelling, weekend working, shift allowance is around 45k a year.....quite alot more than a bobbie....

It would be interesting to find out what your line of work is and to put the same "can any one else do your job on the cheap" question to you.

Yeah, right, course it is, mate.

All those saying that civvies don't train observers have obviously never heard of PAS or the hundreds of observers they trained.

As I understand it Budgie,the question was can a civilian observer do the job currently done by a Police Officer not is it cheaper or more expensive to employ civilians to do the same job. I very much doubt that a civilian observer could earn that sort of money and if he can then his contract was not drawn up correctly in the first place. The figure you quote £45,000 per year would appear to have been plucked out of thin air and released into the atmosphere as yet another red herring. ( Can herrings fly as well as pigs ?.)
Budgie you probably could get someone to do my job cheaper. I sell clockwork toys for a living and very satisfying it is too.

Apologies to PAS, I only meant that the force that employ us train their own observers. PAARMOs last post says he asks if the job CAN be done by a direct entrant civilian...... Yes it can, any job can be done with the correct amount of training. I was a civilian until the RAF spent a fortune training me. Until that person gains experience of what the man on the ground needs, effectiveness is reduced. It makes more sense to recruit someone who has a bunch of experience in the first place. We are arguing just that point.