Kent keeps pace with Professional Standards

The area of Professional Standards is fast-changing. Since beginning this series of stories, Police Professional has found that many of the forces highlighted for good practice in the 2006 HMIC inspection report ‘Raising the Standard: A thematic inspection of professional standards’ have since radically altered their structures for investigating malfeasance in their ranks.

Last April, DCI Adrian Futers joined the Kent Professional Standards Department (PSD) Senior Management Team, and even though the force was highlighted for good practice in many areas, he could see that changes needed to be made.

“When I arrived we had two teams – one larger team dealing with public complaints and one smaller team dealing with misconduct,” said DCI Futers.

The problem was that, because of the complexity of misconduct investigations, the smaller team was getting overwhelmed and the members of the larger team weren’t getting experience in criminal investigations or more complex misconduct matters that would prepare them for more challenging investigations later in their careers.

The structure was changed: Kent now has three teams, led by two detective inspectors and one detective sergeant, which deal with both public complaints and misconduct allegations. The teams take primacy for geographically based investigations.

DCI Futers said that Kent has complimented the make up of these teams by encouraging the recruitment of civilian investigators.

“Our three investigation teams each have a mix of civilian and warranted investigators,” said DCI Futers. “We are currently working through a process to ensure eventually all police staff are accredited as investigators by the chief constable under the Police Reform Act. Additionally, we have recruited staff members that have not had the traditional investigative experience but possess other valuable skills, such as good organisational capabilities and excellent interpersonal skills. Shona Pointon has subsequently been the first staff member to complete the Detective Accreditation Programme that is undertaken nationally by many constables.”

In the area of early assessment, DCI Futers said: “We’ve changed it in order to allow us to prioritise complaints and misconduct allegations. We’ve now got a three-tiered approach.”

Complaints or misconduct allegations are assessed as ‘Misconduct’, ‘Gross Misconduct’ or a ‘Critical Incident’. Applied then is a complexity matrix, which estimates what work is required to resolve the complaint. A more complete overview of current investigative demand is therefore available rather than simply counting each case as a single number. The matrix looks at the likelihood of a criminal investigation, the number of complainants involved, the number of officers involved, if there is a racial or diversity element to it, and whether it is a supervised or managed IPCC investigation.

But not everything has changed at Kent PSD since ‘Raising the standard’ was published in 2006. The report cited Kent in a number of areas for good practice, and those are either carrying on as-is, or have been improved upon.

For one, the HMIC was impressed with the force’s efforts for collecting data centrally. “Forces such as Kent Police have spent time and energy on further developing systems such as Centurion in order to facilitate improved data collection and the provision of National Intelligence Model (NIM) packages and problem profiles relating to BCUs, teams and individuals,” the report states.

It goes on to talk about the PSD’s development of a Centurion facility and its incorporation in ‘I-2’, an intelligence database created from I-base that also houses secure intelligence and feeds the covert policing aspects of the PSD.

“These developments will allow much greater use of the systems and increased interoperability,” said the report. “The analytical capacity is being expanded. The PSD monitors all direction and control issues within the Centurion database.”

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