The strange Death of PC George Dixon Published

[Frazzel]

DAILY MAIL AUG 27th 2011
Former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner David Gilbertson’s book on the decline of the police, The Strange Death Of Constable George Dixon, will is published Oct 2011.

Why London's 7/7 victims were left to bleed to death: Emergency crews are trained to view risks to themselves more important
By David Gilbertson
Last updated at 11:38 PM on 23rd October 2010
Survivor: Michael Henning, pictured after the bombing, revealed startling details about the emergency services response
Amid the disturbing evidence at last week’s inquest into the deaths of the 52 victims of the 7/7 London bombings, there was a moment of great clarity.
Survivor Michael Henning described how he stumbled to safety from the wreckage of a bombed Tube train at Aldgate station and pleaded with a group of emergency workers to go underground and help injured and dying passengers.
The firemen on the station platform seemed embarrassed  and explained that they had been ordered to stay out of the tunnel because of fears of a second explosion.
Victims died in agony during the delay – and there proved to be no second bomb.
In lamenting the loss of the ‘Blitz Spirit’ – when wartime rescue workers risked their lives to pull people from bombed and blazing buildings – Mr Henning laid bare the uncomfort­able truth: that today’s fire and ambulance crews and particularly today’s police officers are trained to see hypothetical risks to themselves as far more important than the actual safety of the public they are meant to serve.
The bombings of July 7, 2005, are not the only crisis in which this ‘risk assessment’ culture has been revealed.
Last June, ambulancemen in Cumbria were widely criticised for standing by for vital hours while the gunshot victims of taxi driver Derrick Bird bled to death.
The explanation given later was that they had been refused permission to advance by the police because of fears that Bird might open fire on them. He was already dead and nobody will ever know how many lives could have been saved had the emergency services acted sooner. 
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I spent 35 years as a police officer before retiring as Deputy Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard and I’m dismayed but not surprised by the rise of this self-serving risk assessment culture.
Who can now imagine an officer having the bravery and initiative of the Metropolitan, Police Commander who at the height of the 1981 Brixton riots commandeered a fire engine, drove it into the centre of an angry mob and dispersed the crowd by firing water from the hoses?
Anyone doing the same today would immediately be sidelined as a maverick
taking unnecessary risks.    

Courageous: Police officers used their initiative during the deadly 1981 Brixton Riots
The root of the problem lies in a little-known and ill-advised piece of
legislation passed in the dying days of John Major’s Government, when the eyes of Parl­iament and the country at large were on the forth­coming General Election.
The Police (Health and Safety) Act 1997 was introduced as a result of vigorous lobbying on behalf of the Police Federation,  the ‘trade union’ of officers up to the rank of chief inspector, which had been demanding action after a number of policemen in London had been shot on duty.
Under pressure, the Yard allowed the introduction of body armour and the the replacement of truncheons with a range of new weaponry. The aim of the new law was to make policemen safer by applying the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act to the force.
However, the original legislation was designed not for the complexities of police work, but for heavy industry, and the result was a nationwide organ­isational panic, hastily designed training courses and a frenzy of unnecessary paperwork which continues to this day.
The fire and ambulance services, which were already covered by the 1974 legislation, became infected by the same ‘safety-first’ malaise. Of course, both services are operationally linked with the police – who often, as in Cumbria, take overall control of major incidents. 
The current Metropolitan Police generic risk-assessment checklist, form RA1, is mind-blowing. It requires officers to choose from a menu of 238 possible hazards before conducting any sort of operational activity.
The assessment must be submitted, with covering forms RA2 and RA3, to a senior officer, who then has to consider what ‘control measures’ need to be applied, before submitting his recommendation – with form RA4 – to his ‘portfolio holder’ (jargon for the responsible officer) in order for the risk assessment to be confirmed and signed off.

Response: Firefighters bring up an injured person from Aldgate Tube Station after the bombing
Chief constables are liable for any breach and the spectre of legal action is no idle threat.
In 2003, then Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir John (now Lord) Stevens and his predecessor Lord Condon faced the ignominy of being prosecuted at the Old
Bailey for alleged breaches of health and safety regulations after two incidents in which constables fell through roofs while pursuing suspected burglars.
Both were acquitted and the trial judge roundly condemned the £3 million proceedings.
But the damage was done. 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’, fostered by no-win, no-fee lawyers, 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.
This corrosive culture of caution and risk-avoidance is why the Aldgate firefighters were ordered to stay at the gates rather than help the grievously wounded.
I believe there is still a Blitz Spirit within individual officers. But it is a natural instinct that is being suppressed. The embarrassment and shame Mr Henning saw on the faces of the 7/7 firefighters revealed that they felt deeply uncomfortable at being held back from doing their duty by rules and regulations beyond their control. 

Blame: The slow response at stations such as Aldgate was a result of legislation
Idealistic firefighters, police officers and ambulance crews have always joined their services believing they may be called upon to put their safety on the line. But force discipline is taken seriously in the emergency services.
Young officers are taught to follow procedures and ordered not to take risks by senior officers who have never known the old virtues of leadership, initiative, judgment and duty.
These are the officers (they are managers, rather than leaders) who visibly blanch every year when the police bravery awards are announced.
Where you and I see heroes being dec­orated for acting without regard to their own safety, these paper shufflers see potential lawsuits, insurance claims and breaches of force discipline.
This Coalition Government, at least, seems to recognise that there is a problem. Lord Young spent three months poring over health and safety regulations and the Prime Minister last month pledged to free the emergency services and teachers from senseless health and safety rules.
But sweeping away the red tape will make no difference without a complete culture change.
The police, fire and ambulance services must be made to understand that they owe a duty of responsibility first and foremost to the public who pay their wages, and that leaders, not managers, are needed to drive the message home.
Rigid adherence to procedure is not the easy way out. A good leader at Aldgate would have assumed authority and ordered his crews in to help injured passengers on a bombed Tube train. He would have dealt with the crisis first and worried about health and safety later.
And if a single life had been saved, they would have been hailed as fitting heirs to the
wartime Blitz Spirit.

Former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner David Gilbertson’s book on the decline of the police, The Strange Death Of Constable George Dixon, will be published in 2011.