‘I’m not surprised they’re struggling’
THE chief constable of Greater Manchester Police has described his frustration at ‘unhelpful’ criticism of the force’s new computer system - but said whistleblowers have only broken rank on the issue because austerity has pushed them to ‘breaking point.’
Ian Hopkins was addressing council leaders about the £29m iOPS computer system, the introduction of which has led to a flood of warnings from force insiders about crime backlogs, public safety, court delays and safeguarding.
But Mr Hopkins told the latest meeting of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority that many of the difficulties had either been blown out of proportion or had now been resolved, including long call waits and difficulties within the court system, adding that as a public servant ‘it makes you wonder why you bother.’
He was responding after months of bad headlines about the new system, which went live in July to replace the creaking, 30-year-old OPUS network.
On Friday Mr Hopkins said the overall backlog of ‘open’ crimes was down to 36,000, of which 10,000 could probably just be closed with no further action.
However safeguarding remained a ‘challenge’ and a ‘concern,’ he acknowledged. He said the whistleblowers who had spoken to both the M.E.N. and ITV over the past few months had primarily been driven by the pressure of policing cuts.
“A lot has been said about unprecedented numbers of people coming forward to the media, etc etc,” he told the mayor, deputy mayor and gathered council leaders.
“Many, many of our own colleagues are at breaking point because of the cuts to our resources, because of the changing nature of demand, because of the incessant amount of really traumatic incidents that they have to go to deal with.
“If you just look back over the last few years the things we have collectively dealt with, all of this impacts on my staff. “You add to that that we have changed our entire information systems and therefore changed many of their business processes and it has added massively to the anxiety they’re already feeling.
“So I’m not surprised they are struggling and coming forward and saying they can’t cope.”
He said there had been a huge programme of work to support them.