Posts Tagged ‘PolSA’

A Defence of Purposeful Wandering

January 13th, 2010

Johnnie Walker a long while back made a throwaway comment when he was commenting on his own Search Analogy;

I know of Police Services who ban purposeful wandering by their search volunteers. Yes, you read that right. Not insist on it. Ban it!
[Read it here if you don't believe he wrote it...]

I have endeavoured since then to get more information about this, but as yet, it remains [to me, I hasten to add] an unsubstantiated rumour.

It comes, apparently, from a conversation had at the UKLSI Search Controllers Course. I’m afraid I’m being elusive about it because the best thing for a misper is a good working relationship between a PolSA and the search team. I do not want to do anything to jeopardise this so won’t be going any further into what team, what was said or so forth. [Although maybe this is a job for a senior representative of ALSAR to work with the police nationally!]

I’m hopeful it is all a misunderstanding, but in case it isn’t, I am writing a defence of the technique in order to give more information to make an informed decision on its usefulness!

As you all know purposeful wandering is the search technique whereby a foot searcher, searching their “search strip” meanders through the strip searching certain bits. The big clue is in the term “purposeful”. Each searcher looks at their search strip. Some sections of it are clearly visible and do not contain the misper. I’m hinting at all those open bits – the grass, the ground between the trees! However, some bits of their search strip are not clearly visible and need closer attention.

The searcher, then, wanders this way and that – searching the bushes, tree stumps and so on; where a misper might be hidden!

My first comment on hearing the rumour was – so if I see what looks like a foot, should I go over and check it or just keep to my straight line? Essentially this is what purposeful wandering is – checking the bits that are not immediately visible.

Now if this wasn’t enough to persuade you that this is a useful technique, I can go even further. The Probability of Detection (POD) of a search resource is based upon it’s track length – how far it travelled within the search area. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line – start wandering from side to side searching bits that need a closer look, not only to you prioritise those areas and make sure they are searched, but you also travel further, spend more time searching and increase your chances of finding the misper!

Without knowing more about the issue, I am only speculating, but one possible reason for insisting on straight lines is a misunderstanding of the maths of search theory. There is a search calculation – based upon perfectly straight search lines – that gives a higher POD for the same effort. However, this is based upon almost perfect [flat, calm] sea conditions – totally unlike any piece of land you will ever get to search! There is no alternative then than putting in more effort to achieve higher PODs!

Hopefully, this is enough of a starting point to persuade anyone involved that purposeful wandering is an essential tool for foot search and straight lines are most definitely OUT!

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Search Pre-Planning Ideas

December 2nd, 2009

It has been a week since the UKLSI Search Controllers course. Delegates on that course only qualify after passing an assessment assignment. The assignment is made up of two parts; a “critical” review of two past searches (the search management decisions made etc.) and to produce a Search Pre-plan from their local area.

Delegates should be in no doubt as to how useful this last part of the assignment is; to them and their Unit.

Imagine turning up to an incident and having all the mapping done for you already – master map already sectored; detailed terrain analysis to hand for each sector [along with aerial and digital photographs], hazards already mapped on and search hints and tips for each sector; sector maps already produced for Team Leaders; Contact details for access to various problem areas and so on.

Not only does it lessen the workload by a massive amount, but just think how professional it looks to the PolSA. If you are one of those Units struggling to prove your professionalism, what sort of impact do you think pulling out a pre-planned search would have?

It is not easy [no one ever said it was!] but the work is (or should be) well worth it in time.

The big question is where should you do your search pre-plan for? Well, its time to look back over those past incident records again!

Every county has a hospital which the Unit is called to at least once a year [if not four or five times a year]. If your Unit has been neglecting its pre-planning you should start here. In established Units, however, these search pre-plans should not only exist but be in use quite regularly. However, work down the list of common callout areas – unless you have a dozen or so Search Controllers – there will be a hospital, country park or similar that you can do a pre-plan for. Then start work… I’ll write some more about how in another post sometime!

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Are PolSAs the right resource for managing missing persons search?

November 12th, 2009

A while back I wrote a briefing paper, Spaced Out Searchers, that formed the basis for the ALSAR Conference presentation, Advances in Lowland Search Techniques. In it I discussed how ALSAR Units search techniques had changed because they were working with PolSAs who, because of the experience of search tended to want areas “cleared”.

To understand this you need to understand the main role of a PolSA. The role of a PolSA is to provide Chief Constables advice on the management of low-risk counter terrorist and explosive device search. That is, they search for devices in situations where there may potentially be devices, but that it is not suspected – for Royal visits etc.

When dealing with explosives you want to be pretty sure you haven’t missed anything so PolSAs and police offices trained in search are trained in terms of absolutes – either there is something there, or there isn’t. This works well too in the extension of the PolSAs work with evidence searches. Again, SIOs want to be confident that something is either there, or not.

However, as I stated in the paper, this takes time and resource. In order to have that level of confidence a PolSA will use whatever amount of resource for whatever length of time is required to achieve it. Missing person search is different. Time is critical; the misper is dying as time goes by – just take a look at the survivabilty figures for the evidence! And, unlike a planned operation, you only have the resources available to you there and then [which are never enough!]

This is where the mathematics of search theory comes in to play – allowing the optimum use of those resources available to you over time. [I will write a series of posts on this soon.]

However, the concepts of probabilities must be extremely difficult for officers trained in searching in absloutes to get their head around – especially when in one search one thing is called for, then in the next search which might even be during the same operational period or day, another search style needs to be used.

A radical thought came to be yesterday – why do we then train PolSAs to run our missing person searches? Why not train other, non police search trained officers to run missing persons searches?

I’d love to hear your thoughts;

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Common Pitfalls in Vulnerable Missing Person Search

September 29th, 2009

The first item on the UKLSI Search Controllers course competencies is “recognise common pitfalls in lowland vulnerable missing person search”. These are taken straight from the 2002 research paper, Missing You Already by Charlie Hedges.

In this paper, Hedges notes,

Problems encountered in this area usually relate to:

• Not starting the search early enough – the later it is started, the further the person can have travelled.
• No proper management or planning of the search.
• Failure to document which areas have been searched.
• No evaluation of the effectiveness of the search in a particular area.
• Incorrect use and reliance on specialist resources – a helicopter search can be useful but will not solve all problems.
• Overlooking the need to search some areas more than once, as the person could be moving around.
• Reliance on other people saying that the have searched somewhere without verifying the integrity of that search.

Hedges also highlights other problem areas in the investigation of such incidents too.

This paper was the starting point for the 2002 ACPO Guidance on Missing Persons, which was then superceded by the current guidelines – both on the investigation, management and recording of missing persons and search practice guidance.

You would think then that in the seven years since its publication these “problems” would have disappeared from missing person search.

Perhaps then, you would like  to visit another website – Learning the Lessons - which claims to exist “to help the police service improve by learning in this way from investigations and other operations of the police complaints/conduct system.”

If you have time read the bulletins – the latest one, bulletin seven,  has a number of missing persons incidents in it. Compare the “problems” discovered in each search to the “problems” Hedges outlined seven years ago in his paper. Can we really say we are learning the lessons?

A thought has sprung to mind however – this might make a great search controllers training evening activity. Hey, why not invite along your local PolSA too?

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