Warwickshire Police must improve call response times, inspectors say
Warwickshire Police must improve how fast it responds to 999 and 101 calls, the policing watchdog has said. A report by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) found whilst the force's call handling had improved since its last inspection in 2022, inspectors still had "serious concerns" about how quickly officers responded once the calls had been answered. But inspectors also found the force was good at preventing and deterring crime, and reducing reoffending.Warwickshire Police said it was already taking steps to improve on its response times and now had additional officers and staff in its investigation teams.
Inspectors found that the force met its attendance times in only 33 of 68 relevant cases - and informed callers of delays in only 15 of 31 relevant cases.They said that the force had not improved in this area since its last inspection and was still failing to meet its own published targets.But the report also found that the force had improved how it investigates crime, with an increase in the number of cases closed.The force was found to be inadequate at responding to the public, and requiring improvement at protecting vulnerable people, building, supporting and protecting the workforce, and leadership and force management.Inspectors graded Warwickshire Police as being good at recording data about crime and preventing and deterring crime and antisocial behaviour, and reducing vulnerability.
'Work in progress'
His Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary Lee Freeman said while it was positive to see that the force had made progress in some areas - he was concerned about how well it protected vulnerable people. He said: "The force needs to make sure that its governance and performance structures are capable of quickly identifying and addressing any potential harm to vulnerable people. "It is evident that the force is committed to achieving this. However, given the scale of the changes required, this is still work in progress."Chief Constable Alex Franklin-Smith said: "We were already taking steps to improve and have been working closely with HMICFRS in the months since the inspection. "We have changed how we respond and investigate and now have additional officers and staff in our investigation teams. This has resulted in a better response and outcome rates."
'Overall lack of people'
Police and Crime Commissioner Philip Seccombe said the report highlighted the work to improve the force's service to the public was already taking place.He said: "Since the inspection period, the force has continued to sustain these improvements, despite increases in demand."He said the overall grade of inadequate for public contact was "disappointing", but added: "Nevertheless, the report needs to be seen in its full context, many of the issues it has highlighted come down to an overall lack of people to meet the increased demand or process investigations more quickly and effectively. "Warwickshire Police receives among the lowest amount of central government funding per head of population of any force and similarly ranks among the forces with the lowest numbers of officers compared to the population it serves."I have been clear for some time that there needs to be a fundamental review of the funding landscape for policing."
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If you ever thought, as I did growing up there, that Northern Ireland's fame was limited to 30 years of bombs and bullets, or building a ship that sank on its maiden voyage — you'd better think again. Twenty-one years ago, we were also host to the biggest robbery in British or Irish history at the time — in fact, the sixth biggest robbery in the world. Pretty impressive, eh? In one sense, it was impressive. On December 20, 2004, £26.5 million in cash was stolen from the Northern Bank headquarters in Belfast's city centre — in clear view of the public as Christmas shoppers strolled round the continental market just feet away. Glenn Patterson, an admired Belfast-based novelist, has written a book showing how the robbers did it, and how they got away with it. It was not just a monetary robbery, but a symbolic one. The Northern Bank building is a landmark in Belfast's post-industrial city centre, a great, sturdy 1970s edifice in concrete. It's a building you can imagine Bill Bixby walking out of, coat over shoulder, in the credits for The Incredible Hulk. But the robbery was not the first of its kind that year. Already in 2004 there had been other 'tiger kidnappings', where robbers would take family members hostage and force bank employees to help them to carry out the heist. In response, the Northern Bank had changed its operations so that two key holders were needed simultaneously to access its cash vaults. The criminals' solution? To abduct two employees' family members at once. Kevin McMullan, the bank's assistant manager, and Chris Ward, a junior employee, both had a knock on the door the night before the robbery. Armed men took over their homes and held their families hostage while McMullan and Ward were taken away. The men were held overnight, then told to go to work the next day and act normally. At clocking-off time they were to use their access to remove cash from the vault, disguised in containers to look like rubbish, and load it into a waiting white van. And so they did: great blocks and boxes of new and used notes, kilos upon kilos of it. The cover of Patterson's book shows a CCTV image of Ward leaving the bank's side entrance with a holdall over one shoulder. The holdall contains £1.2 million. Little wonder he's leaning to one side to counter the weight. So who did it? There's no doubt: the only criminal outfit in Northern Ireland with the organisational capability to plan and execute the robbery so methodically was the IRA. (The single sign of amateurishness was that two men in the van wore Russ Abbot-style ginger 'Jimmy' wigs beneath their baseball caps. This odd sight alerted passersby and almost foiled the robbery.) Opinions are divided on why the IRA carried out the robbery. For a pension fund? Investment abroad? • The 21 best history books of the past year to read next The whole story is presented beautifully by Patterson, who adopts the right tone for each phase of the tale. The abduction scenes have the horrible tension of a thriller, and reminded me of Brian Moore's great Troubles novel Lies of Silence. Elsewhere, Patterson adopts a tone of amused incredulity at the shocking details of the robbery and its aftermath. 'You have to take your hat off to this country. It has a way of exceeding your worst, most lavish expectations.' But the robbery also presented a political problem for the British and Irish governments. In 2004, the fledgling Northern Ireland Assembly had collapsed, and there were 'talks about talks' to get it up and running again. Indeed, when MI5 detected high levels of phone activity between senior IRA men the night before the robbery, they optimistically — naively — thought it meant an announcement was imminent on the decommissioning of IRA weapons, to break the political deadlock. When it was announced who the likely culprits were, Sinn Fein — the IRA's political wing — complained of a smear on republicans. But as Patterson points out, in one of the few passages where he sounds truly angry, this was a common tactic for Sinn Fein. He reminds us about the brutal murder of Robert McCartney after an argument in a Belfast bar in January 2005, when nobody in the pub — including the future Stormont minister Deirdre Hargey of Sinn Fein — would speak to the police about what happened. Instead, Hargey claimed that reports of IRA involvement in the murder were 'part of the onslaught by the media and governments and political parties to criminalise Sinn Fein and the republican movement'. As Patterson coolly observes: 'There is chutzpah, and there is chutzpah.' • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List Hardly any of the money has been recovered, and only one person was prosecuted for the robbery. That person was … one of the victims, Chris Ward, who was prosecuted on circumstantial evidence that the robbery had been an inside job — the IRA men were so well prepared that someone in the bank must have helped them. The case was abandoned partway through. Patterson attended every day of the trial. The case was clearly not an outstanding example of prosecutorial craft. Phil Flynn, who was vice president of Sinn Fein, took the view that 'there was nobody killed. At the end of the day, it was only money.' But it wasn't only money. The robbery revealed a lot about what was important in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein was welcomed back into government. And in a world where every conspiracy theorist sees two-tier justice in any outcome they don't like, the aftermath of the robbery provided a real example. The senior IRA man Bobby Storey — believed to be the brains behind the robbery, and 'a great human being' in the words of Gerry Adams — died in June 2020 and his funeral attracted more than 1,500 people, in contravention of Covid regulations. Other people could have no more than 30 at theirs. None of the Sinn Fein politicians who attended were prosecuted, while at a Black Lives Matter protest in Belfast a few weeks earlier, 70 people were fined. Patterson had once planned to write a screenplay of the robbery. I wish he had. It has everything: tension, dark comedy, human interest, big issues and more. But this book will do very nicely in its place. And if the Northern Bank heist was indeed a symbolic robbery, then here is the other symbol. Why did they do it? Because they knew they could get away with it. As Patterson points out: 'Something [else] disappeared in that white van in December 2004 that has never been recovered.' The Northern Bank Job: The Heist and How They Got Away With It by Glenn Patterson (Head of Zeus £16.99 pp272). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
