Here's a starter for 10.

North Wales Police have lost the plot. We all know that traffic officers have been using a points system for a couple of years now (when I say we all, I am assuming we all watch Road Wars, which is where I do most of my research). It always seemed fairly harmless for traffic - they have little else by which to measure their performance.

For those of you who can't be arsed to follow the above link (most of you are police officers, after all), they are now working on a points system whereby you get 10 for an arrest or detection, 10 for giving out a fixed penalty notice, and - my favourite - MINUS 5 for unreliable intelligence. That will teach PCs to be lied to!

But now Supercopnanny has arrived in North Wales, and Mummy and Daddy have taken her advice a little too literally.

Within minutes of Supercopnanny's arrival, she is horrified by the way the Senior Management Team discipline their PCs, and she sits down to have a serious chat. The trouble, she identifies, is that there is no praise. She recommends for the SMT to get rid of the daily nitpicking emails that criticise every little thing the PCs do, and to bring in a Points system so that the PCs will know when they have been good.

The PCs quickly identify that their time spent on investigations that are going nowhere and placating traumatised victims is time wasted. Since an arrest and a ticket are valued the same, instead of spending 4 hours arresting someone, transporting them to custody, fighting with them, booking them in, and going back to get statements, they simply give out a fixed penalty ticket to a passing motorist.

But when Supercopnanny returns to see how things are going, she finds that her plan has rather backfired. The SMT are up to their ears in complaints, undetected crime and they have no way to gather intelligence about drug dealers or impending terrorist plots, as the PCs have cottoned on that unreliable intelligence is the key to their downfall.

Supercopnanny takes out her crayon and paper and thinks again...

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