Latest Police force replaces 'targets' with 'milestones' 2011

A senior police officer has been accused of "meaningless bean counting" after attempting to explain why his force had replaced official “targets” with “milestones”. 

Police forces no longer have to meet fixed performance targets after the coalition government decided that red tape and box-ticking were unhelpful for officers trying to fight crime.

But West Midlands police have been attacked by a prominent police blogger after Deputy Chief Constable Dave Thompson used his own blog to explain how his force's new system of “milestones” was any different to previous targets.

Admitting that the new system of “managing performance” had confused even officers within the force, DCC Thompson wrote that previous measures of success such as arrest and detection targets had put “pressure on staff without analysing how to improve”.

However, he added that some form of goal was useful to officers because “if you aspire to something you ought to have something tangible to aim for.”

Explaining how a milestone is different to the old framework, he wrote: “The aim isn’t the absolute judge of success … the new milestones urge us to try harder, but simple improvement on good performance that falls short of a stretching milestone is still worthy of celebration.

Using the area’s high burglary rate as an example, he added: “look at how this will have affected those people in our communities who were burgled … a reduction milestone of 10 per cent is something we really ought to expect. We are not aiming for the numbers for numbers sake.”
But his argument failed to convince Inspector Gadget, an anonymous blogger who claims to be an Inspector in an English county police force.
Describing DCC Thompson’s entry as “one of the most cynical and patronising articles I have ever read”, the blogger wrote: “In a barely disguised attempt to hide the fact that he and his Chief intend to ignore the Home Secretary and carry on with the meaningless bean-counting we have endured for the last ten years, he has decided to rename the whole system.
“Targets become Milestones. Police Performance becomes some kind of group hug experience called Continuous Improvement.
“It’s a ****** insult to every front line officer who has ever booted up their mailbox to find a blizzard of nonsensical rubbish from the performance monitoring team”

 

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