Is This A Waste Of Police Time?

below is something you will never have seen before

(unless you are a police officer), this is part of form RA1, it is a 238 health and safety check box form that police have to consider and fill in before being called out in an emergency, it can under certain circumstances be filled in after the event, but it must be filled in and kept for 10 years, senior officers also have to fill out a number of covering forms, including an inventory of ‘risk activities’ (Form RA2) and a calculation of the levels of risk (Form RA3), finally they must submit their recommendations on another form, (the RA4) for a commander or chief constable to sign,

former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner David Gilbertson has expressed his frustration at the ‘self-serving risk assessment culture’ blighting police operations, Mr Gilbertson said: ‘a generation of senior police, fire and ambulance officers have grown up in an environment where avoidance of risk and the fear of being sued by an ‘ambulance-chasing’ solicitor is more important than public duty, add to this the rise of the “compensation culture” ... and the nit-picking caution of insurance companies who demand to see paper trails and written risk assessments for every eventuality and it is easy to see how the organisational manager, rather than the operational leader, gained the ascendancy,' and there was me thinking that a response to a threat was immediate! I know the police operate under difficult circumstances, but surely there must be a better way than to have to form fill before you even leave the station?