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Police chief says 'job centre' threats were out of context

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Published Date: 13 June 2009
By CATHERINE SALMOND
A SENIOR Lothian police chief has defended the introduction of handheld computers to replace notepads but said it may take time to win over all officers.
Assistant Chief Constable Mike McCormick was speaking following claims from officers that the PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) are more time-consuming than a notepad and pen.

ACC McCormick also rejected comments reportedly by one of his colleagu
es in this month's Police Review magazine, which advised officers who did not want to use PDAs to "go to the job centre".

ACC McCormick said: "PDAs are the equipment we have and we need to get officers to use them. We support them in that and nobody will be 'sent to the job centre'.

"We encourage officers to come to us if they have problems with the PDAs. If they do not like them, come and talk to us about it – tell us what the problem is."

Inspector Thomas Muir was quoted in this month's magazine as saying "a lot of cops are happy to sit at the station typing, rather than doing their jobs", suggesting this was one of the reasons behind their dislike of PDAs.

The machines are designed to free up officers' time as they do not require them to type up statements on their return to the police station, but in Lothian and Borders Police Federation surveys in 2007 and 2008, 65 per cent of respondents thought PDAs made them less efficient.

ACC McCormick said he had not been able to speak with Inspector Muir, currently on holiday, but was confident the comments had been taken out of context. He said that the use of PDAs within Lothian and Borders Police was in its infancy, having only been introduced as a pilot scheme in certain areas of the force, mainly for frontline officers.

He stressed that gradual advancements in software would allow for easier use and more familiarity among users would go some way to winning them over.

He said: "It may not be as good as it could be, but it's certainly not going backwards."

Ultimately, the PDAs may allow pictures of missing children or wanted criminals to be circulated across Scotland within minutes of being reported to the police.



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  • Last Updated: 13 June 2009 10:41 AM
  • Source: Edinburgh Evening News
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Edinburgh policing
 
1

alfonsa pedrosa,

embra 13/06/2009 12:25:48
Will the polis still carry a notepad and sharp pencil,just incase his batteries are flat.
2

Pantaloon,

13/06/2009 13:15:14

His batteries are flat?

Has Robocop joined L n B polis?

Come to think of it.... i wish he would.
3

James (1),

13/06/2009 19:28:02
#1 Yes and it has to be a pen as pencil is not allowed.

4

James (1),

13/06/2009 19:40:27
There are two sides here.
One side is senior officer who do not have to use the PDA but make the decision to its suitability.

The other side is the front line officers who are made to use it every day and because they do actually know it is in fact worse than a paper notebook.

The end result is if a front line officer has the audacity to flag this up the it must be a "training issue"

No! It is because they are rubbish!

The out pops the senior officers spokesman telling all that the only reason that officers are complaining is because they are just not wanting to do police work.

The benefit of using a paper notebook far outstrips the benefit of the PDA. Every police officer who has one knows this.
This is another case of hype and salesmanship Arthur Daley style.
Those that make the decisions being told a lot of bull droppings and believing it.
Each time an officer uses a PDA instead of a notebook deprieves the public of their services because it is a fact that it takes longer to input data than write it in a notebook.
5

James (1),

13/06/2009 19:49:18
By the way the biggest lie is that it saves officers time.
Of course you can write down peoples details in a PDA.

Can I ask you to consider that if something you normally did was going to take you far longer to do, with no benefit at the end by changing to this new way, would you take that course of action?

If you answered yes then hand over your notebook and take this PDA!
6

NorT,

Edinburgh 13/06/2009 20:20:24
Everybody should refuse to give any information or details to a policeman unless he notes in a notebook. They can't refuse do do this.
7

Noodle doodle,

MSc HCI 13/06/2009 23:13:36
Being used by a police officer they'd have to be pretty robust. So one test I'd ask the deciding officers to consider is this. Take one blackberry, one ipod, one pda and one notebook to the top of the scott tower. Throw them off. Which one still works after they hit the bottom?

You don't need a degree in Human-Computer Interaction to guess which one do you? (But I've got one all the same.)
8

Up the NWO,

14/06/2009 12:05:44
#1 and #2, Good points. They would be fu3ked if their batteries run out.

To be honest the polis relying on a stupid pda (a machine/computer) for information/notes they may need for a case in court or whatever is a stupid idea.

Recently as well pen drives from Headquarters going missing and all sorts. Then there is the viruses that these thing can encounter.

Must be true then now that they have these things.......NO MORE PAPER WORK for Lothian and Borders Cops lol.
9

Voldemort,

Edinburgh 14/06/2009 14:06:47
PDA's will be fab ....

It will allow the Police to extract cash from the public even faster whilst ignoring real crime !
10

Franck,

01/09/2009 14:13:05
I have to say having used a PDa for over 2 years i find that for my jobn they are an invaluable tool that saves on repetative tasks.

The idea of handwriting recognition now that is the real stumbling point as if you do not write how the machine likes, then there is no way that it will recognise the text and hence you have to type it out anyway.

If they were to make the Custody Centres PDA friendly ie dock up and details transferred straight on as happens with other applications then they could save money by getting rid of some of the useless custody staff who were there to speed cops up and get them back on the street.

All we have is a bunch of overpaid to$$ers who believe that they are more important than the officers and the person that they are dealing with.

Simples.

 

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