Monday, February 06, 2006

Lost paperwork

I like to think I am professional and responsible, someone who accepts their workload and acts in a diligent and efficient manner.

That means I have all my casefile work on the old harddrive at work and make copies of statements that I keep to hand on file in case of hiccups as I don't trust other buggers not to fudge it.

Well bully for me.

It seems these last few days the CPS however have made repeated attempts to land me in the proverbial shitter
So far THIS month and bear in mind its the 6th !

They have :

1) Lost an entire set of case papers
A) I found them in the cps office under a coffee maker ruined.

2) Lost a set of MG 6 series and then attempted to say they didn't get it.
B) They were sent and a CPU supervisor has signed them - had to print them off again

3) Issued me a court warning when I am due to be out of the country (Ignored duty system)
C) 728 Sent to C/Insp and court date moved.

4) Refused to give ADVICE on a MONDAY because and I quote... "Mondays are for custody cases'" and there was " NO ONE IN CUSTODY "
d) I have submitted a complaint.....

I don't know about you, but I have wasted a whole days worth with this.
The CPS have a mission statement which you can read here

Well now lets see Mondays are for custody cases.... Surely Monday is to bloody late and if they are from over night, we will have contacted CPS direct. Who btw I have NO problem with at all, just email or fax the whole lot over and about an hour later you get an email back with an MG3 !

As for loosing paperwork.. That gets my goat. I really feel embarrassed to have a witness sign a second copy of their statement because some faceless paper monkey has lost it and sent me an email saying they never got it. Something VERY wrong there.

So my advice to any of you dealing with heavy case loads is two fold

Save every casefile - file on your computer in a case folder
Make Copies of ALL statements and exhibits and keep them.

Its simple as A.B.C.

Accept nothing
Believe no one
Confirm everything

8 comments:

Stan Still said...

Another piece of advice.

The day you save all of your important stuff to a hard drive at work is the day that IT decide to replace the computer without asking anyone first.

Been there, done that - BASTARDS!

thinblueline said...

Thankfully - its shared drives :)
praise the data protection act :)

Anonymous said...

Hehe. They are uber pants. If it was all computerized then there would be less problem with loosing papers. But then some clever bugger would try to delete the file...

thinblueline said...

What bugs me is why are we still cutting down reams of forests when this should all be digital and secure anyway..

If we do have need for paper records why are they not scanned and saved that way

Bystander said...

I spent a day before Crhristmas with a dozen of the most senior JPs in the country. Their opinion of the CPS is at least as bad as yours.

Anonymous said...

so you still have to come the joy of discovering you have been warned for court on a rest day after the CPS have been advised of everybody's dates to avoid but STILL manage to regard them with abject indifference

Stan Still said...

@Thinblueline

The reason we have to use paper is that the CPS have more technosauruses in their ranks than we do. Plus our computer systems don't talk to theirs. (What's wrong with e-mailing a Word document through the CJX network?) and lawyers traditionally feel much more comfortable with a huge stack of paper to hide behind in Court.

thinblueline said...

Stan Still , It s a joke isnt it.
Here we are in the global community with fantastic technology that is relable and secure ,. yet we still have bits of paper that get "lost"

What I would love to see is that all "orginal paperwork" is kept by the polices own CJU and not the CPS

The OIC reatains all paperwork for a case and these files are scanned into a case application thingy on our glorious network. (joke)

So all the documents are single sourced - and can be updated by the oic at anything

Then the CPS ONLY work from COPIES printed from this system - and this system can be consulted at court !"!

And the poor CPS prosicuter will not be carrying hefty bags to court and spending pittiful minutes leaving tru pages looking for the MG3 / MG5 10 seconds into the court hearing wbtw is the first time they see the case 99.9% of the time !

Courts would be more speedy, less waste and more offenders brought to justice...

of course this will never happen unless I become some sort of acpo ranking police uberlord and implement this system as my brainchild ...

BTW I am trade marking this system and calling it
PcMS ™ ( Police Case Mangement system)

I wanted to to PMS... but.....

Investigations - 183 | Crimes Solved- 85 | No Crime - 47
% Detection rate - 46.4 % (Counting year April 08 )


Investigations - 129 | Crimes Solved- 53 | No Crime - 36
% Detection rate - 49.3 % (Counting year April 07 )