Pass 6
TV Dramas are worldwide coverage programmes that millions of
people watch but does this truly show the roles and responsibilities of Public
Services?
With any TV drama there comes a time where licensing takes
over and the true portrayal of public servants becomes very vague. A perfect
example of this would be the start of a new three piece drama called Public
Enemies.
It focuses the spotlight solely on the Probation Service and
looks into it from the point of view of the offender, the gatekeeper Eddie who
has recently left prison after 10 years and his probation officer, Paula,
returning from suspension following a crime committed by an offender under her
supervision.
Fortunately for me my uncle has recently retired from the
probation service and I asked him what a
day in the life of a probation officer
was actually like, and whether or not it mirrors the TV drama or whether the
drama aspect of it over powers reality
We watched the three part drama together and afterwards I
asked him what he thought and whether Public Enemies really grasped what
probation officers do day in and day out.
“I cringed at some of the aspects of the drama e.g. the
probation officer colluding with the offender by lying to her senior and taking
the offender out for a coffee and cake to celebrate his birthday and portraying
a recall as simple as picking up the telephone within her own home after the
offender visited her”.
“The drama portrays an offender being able to secure work
immediately after release. The offender was seen to secure work straightaway
and the work provided was in a public place with female colleagues and mixing
with the public”
“If an offender found out my address, turned up at my home
and tried to push his way in, I would not hesitate in contacting the police. A professional boundary has been crossed”
We ended the meeting shortly after but he also said that the
worst part of the drama had the be the story surrounding Eddie murdering his
wife and becoming gatekeeper at the probation office where women are employed.
Reporter: Ryan Hall-galley
Resources:Thomas Purling, Jonathan Benton, Matthew Allison
Editor: Ben Browne
Merit 4
For this part of my report I will be looking into current case studies of media portrayal of the public service
The London riots have been the most talked about acts of criminal violence since the Brixton riots 30 years earlier and I wanted to see whether the media were in fact portraying the police as heroes for policing the streets or whether they were under the impression that police presence was just adding fuel to the fire. Also did the Police do enough to preserve local businesses who lost hundreds and thousands of pounds?
I Searched through the archives and stumbled across a website named London 24 who seemed to have focused all their attention on interviewing the criminals. And this is what I found.
The vast majority of people interviewed for a study of the causes of the disorder said they believed the “sole trigger” for disturbances in their areas was the perception that the police “could not contain” the scale of rioting in Tottenham, north London, and then across the capital in August.
“Lack of confidence in the police response to the initial riots encouraged people to test reactions in other areas,” the Riots Communities and Victims Panel found.
I believe by pigeonholing the groups for interview questions is sending the wrong message and is giving the Public Services a bad name and by interviewing a certain group you’ll get just one half of a story which is then impossible to conclude, and its articles like these that are harming the perception of the men and women that police our streets day in and day out. It won’t be long before the entire public start to lose faith in our Police force and I’m sure it will happen as long as people/media continue to make scape goats out of our Services.
I took time out to interview the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation Peter Smyth and many on the ground officers and asked them whether or not they felt they did enough to stop the riots escalating and a lot of those officers felt equipment wernt of high standard.
Almost half (3,859 or 45%) said they suffered fatigue and one in six (1,407, 16%) said they suffered stress. But one in five (1,798, 21%) said they experienced "no ill effects".
Peter Smyth, the federation's chairman, said: "Met bosses must as a matter of urgency ensure that enough properly equipped vehicles are available for deployment.
"The use of so many hire vehicles in particular was staggeringly inappropriate for the role they had to play leaving officers in these vehicles with little projection from projectiles or the rioters themselves.
"All police officers understand the exceptional nature of the riots, which is why so many of us were willing to give 110% during the crisis working for weeks without days off and sleeping on station floors.
"But it is completely unacceptable when a lack of safe equipment left officers at real risk of unnecessary harm during their duties or unable to help colleagues in danger."
Again this is another negative portrayal which goes even higher than on the ground Police Officers I mean how can the public trust the police to protect them when the police are worried the equipment being used may even fail to protect them.
Again there are also fake portrayals of police officers which you see on a daily basis with the bill re runs and Taggart etc who are all to gung ho into Police chases whether it be on foot or in a car. Again this is a purely for entertainment purposes and although at times they touch on proper police roles it is by far blown out of the water by blown up houses and violent gang attacks and although it all happens it isn’t as cut and dry as the tv dramas show. Firstly you will have to arrest the suspect and with that comes an awful lot of paper work and questioning which could last for days. Let alone the court dates and expenses trials getting the jury it’s a very long drawn out process which could take months to reach a verdict. It also doesn’t really represent the amount of work that the police do and the hours they put in week in and week out.
Its very easy for people to say that they want to become an officer after seeing these programmes and its easy to see why with all the media coverage around it but like I said earlier its all for entertainment.
Reporter: Ryan Hall-galley
Resources:Thomas Purling, Jonathan Benton, Matthew Allison
Editor: Ben Browne
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