A gang had gained access disguised as police officers

Chief Constable Tim Smith: There's a few cases that stick in your mind and that's usually because of the really emotive and difficult challenges of those cases. The gang had used them to gain access to the depository, very sophisticated disguises as police officers. They had stolen over £52 million, our role is there to investigate, our role is to gather the evidence, present it to the courts. Our role was to look after that family. There were three people who were in fear of their lives, and they honestly believed they were going to be killed.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: From police constable to chief constable, what has been your most challenging moment in your career?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: We deal with death a lot but it's not too often we deal with multiple deaths, and particularly the way these poor people had died it took us across the globe. The level of emotion and trauma on the team and on me was really, really high. My key message to anybody from any community, do not for a second think you cannot be a police officer, because you can. Are you someone that is selfless, you'll think about other people first, that you enjoy helping other people, that you like protecting other people. There are hundreds and hundreds of different jobs within one employer. To anyone with those values if you are even thinking about it, give it a go, because it can take you to places that personally and professionally you just get such massive rewards from it, it's a truly wonderful job.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: Welcome to More Than the Badge, a Kent Police podcast. My name is Vinny Wagjiani, a Detective Inspector at Kent Police. I'll be your host today and today's guest is Chief Constable Tim Smith. Welcome to the podcast Sir.

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Thanks Vinny, lovely to be here.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: What inspired you to become a police officer?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, that was nearly 33 years ago now Vinny, so you kind of latch on to ‘can I even remember that?’ I suppose is the first thing to say. Well I can, and I was at a point where I'd done quite a lot of academic study and I was due to go to university and do something in sciences, but I'd spent probably a year or two kind of thinking “do I want to do that or do I want to have a career” and one of my uncles was a police officer, he did 30 years in Avon and Somerset, and he got chatting to me and he clearly recognised that some of the qualities I had would have fitted the police service and he mentioned it to me and I just thought on it more, I took a little bit more advice and the more I thought about it, the more I thought it did fit me really quite well. So, in all honesty it was actually quite a practical decision at the start of it. I hadn't spent the whole of my life wanting to be a police officer, which some of my colleagues, you know do, and that's absolutely fine, but once I started and once I joined and started to understand the work and I realised that, you know the qualities that I had, would fit well for public service and I just enjoyed it more and more that I did it, and so the motivations continued from there really, but actually starting was just a practical decision really about I wanted a career and I wanted something that offered me stability and offered me the potential to do different things, and so I went for it.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: That’s a good segue into the next question, which is how has it evolved over the 30 plus years?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, that's a huge question, I could probably spend an hour just talking about the differences, but we haven't got that long so, I think the things that are different today, I would say the level of expectation on police officers is very different to when I joined. It's you know, police officers are really in the public eye in a way today that, that I never was when I joined. Their CCTV systems were kind of just starting really there was certainly no mobile phones with camera capability, their dash cams weren't a thing and I think the media attention on policing has grown and grown over the years as well. So I think there's a lot more expectation on cops today and I think rightly the public are far better informed than they were when I joined, and they’re rightly far more vocal as well about the service they should expect, about trust and confidence, about how we deal with things like violence against women and girls, how we respond internally to the challenge of misogyny, how we make sure we're doing everything with honesty and integrity. Those have always been there, but they're very, very, very public now and you know the public rightly are asking us about them, so I think the expectation is very different today than it was when I joined.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: Are you able to share some of the sort of key responsibilities you have now as the chief constable of Kent?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Yeah, I mean it can be summarised fairly quickly in I am simply the person with the ultimate responsibility for the policing service we deliver. So, it doesn't really matter whether that is frontline policing, whether it's our neighbourhood policing, our investigations, our dealing with serious and organised crime, or how we respond to our border security, all of that ultimately sits under me. So, it is in some ways akin to a chief executive role in other organisations, but obviously very different, because I'm a public servant. We're an apolitical organisation, we don't get involved in the politics of it, we police without fear or favour, but that's ultimately the role and that responsibility comes with some very specific things about authorising certain activity. So some of our, the most sensitive tactics we use in policing have to be authorised by me, as an organisation, I'm responsible for all of the people and all of the budget, and how do I make sure that that budget stretches in the right way, how do I make sure that the right teams have the right level of resource to deal with the demands that they face and ultimately I'm accountable to the police and crime commissioner and the public for the service we deliver.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: And I know you must have gone through and had dealt with many jobs, but I believe you were the SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) on the Securitas investigation.

Chief Constable Tim Smith: So in about 2005 I think, I was promoted to the detective chief inspector in charge of our Serious and Organised Crime team. So, they are the team that are really charged with catching the most serious criminals, the most organised criminals in the county. One night I got a call in the early hours of the morning, I was actually the forces senior detective on call as well, which was probably a useful coincidence because of the role I held in my day job, and I remember talking to the inspector who said "look there there's been some sort of robbery" and I remember saying "well what is it?" and he said, "I think there's been an armed robbery at a cash depository" so I said "well what's a cash depository?", I don't even know what you mean and a long story short, there had been a really awful offence of kidnapping of the bank depository, cash depository manager and his family and then the gang had used them to gain access to the depository, very sophisticated disguises as police officers. A real lot of thought had clearly gone into the planning and preparation, and they had got into the depository, they had stolen an awful lot of money over £52 million, made it the, and still makes it the largest cash robbery in the world in peacetime. I think people say that the central bank of Iraq when it was sacked during the Gulf, First Gulf War lost £80 million in cash, but that was during a war, so in peacetime there's never been a cash robbery of that size. So that was really challenging from the focus that that brings on from government, from the public, but ultimately it was just another investigation, and I was supported by some amazing staff. I spent about eight months working on it, I was responsible for all of the decisions about our covert deployments, so I had very little sleep, I had very few days off and I was really tired at the end of it, but we caught everybody that was in that cash depository, probably with the exception of one person who we're still after.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: Still after?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Yeah, so we've got several lines of inquiry that are still active, and they relate to one suspect that we're still doing some work on, and there was a number of lines of inquiry to try and trace the money and I think probably about half the money was recovered, but half remained outstanding so a truly remarkable job, a lot of people went to prison for a long time rightly for their part in this crime. And as I'd always say to the team, you have to focus on what our role is, our role is there to investigate, our role is to gather the evidence, present it to the courts, our role is to look after that family. And interestingly the media attention was very much on the robbery element and the cash, but we worked hard to remind the media that actually in this there were three people who were in fear of their lives, one of whom was a child and they honestly believed they were going to be killed. And they were threatened with firearms, they were threatened with their lives, and that was over a very prolonged period of time whilst the robbery took place, and they were tied up, cable tied up with a load of other individuals who were working at the cash depository and left there. So, you know it was a really awful case in terms of the impact on people not just that it was such a huge cash robbery.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: And you know you've had 30 years plus of policing, what continues to motivate you to stay in the service?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Yeah, it's a good question because you know the pension arrangements for us are changing as you’ll know, so I could have retired at 30 years and probably been very happy with my career and what I had achieved, but I knew that there was more in me, and I have always, always truly hated people that commit crime and hurt other people. I understand that someone who is starving, I can forgive them stealing bread. I struggle to forgive people that really cause huge harm to others, particularly children. I find that always very, very difficult, and I don't investigate those sorts of offences anymore. I don't do the work to try and prevent those directly, but I realised I have the opportunity to lead the organisation that does that, it means that I can try and make sure that the service we deliver to the public is the very, very best it can be, delivered with absolute integrity so that I can at least retire knowing that I did my very, very best to make the organisation the most effective police service it can and I know I will never be able to stop all crime, I do get that, but I'm pretty determined that this period in my career is the period that I can exert the most influence to try and get the force as the very best sort of crime fighting force I can.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: And I know, as I go through the journey of progression within the organisation, I see a lot more responsibility being added on to myself, and seeing your position as chief constable and the amount of responsibility you have for the organisation, how do you balance a healthy work life harmony?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, it's always, everybody does it differently. I think probably when I joined it was lots of beer and talking to your mates, and I probably wouldn't advocate lots of beer now because that wouldn't be healthy living, but I think talking to people, having that ability to speak to friends and family, having the ability internally to talk to peers and colleagues, you know we're part of a team as chiefs, there's lots of us out there, so you know chiefs will talk to each other and that's quite helpful, but I've got a really strong Chief Officer team around me, and of course we have a rank structure, but it doesn't mean that I can't go to one of our assistant chief constables or one of the other senior leaders and say “look I’ve got this problem, what do you think?” and get their advice and their support, and policing is a team game, you know there's no doubt in my mind about it. If you want to be really, really effective you need to work with other people and work well with other people, even sometimes maybe if you don't have an immediate personal connection with that individual, you've got to be professional. So that support internally is there and then externally, you know I've got friends from different walks of life, and you know there's only so much I could share with them about my day sometimes, but it's quite handy to have people to bounce things off and just say like you know what have you ever confronted this sort of issue, and you know colleagues in other walks of life that maybe have similar responsibilities, though not quite the same, it's quite useful to have that as well and experience helps you too Vinny, you don't do 30 plus years and not have the ability to recognise there are some weeks where I probably need a little bit more time, and time to think, and time to come to some of the decisions I’ve got to make need a little bit of thought, you can't do that if you're constantly on the go and then you just recognise when there's weeks when you just need to kind of be all in really and just find the balance, so experience helps you do that as well.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: So, drawing on your experience, for officers that are coming into policing or are in policing, what advice would you give them to leave those emotional impactful jobs behind?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: First and foremost, one of the things that's dramatically changed in my time is the availability of welfare support to officers and staff and I really do encourage all officers and staff to look at that offer and just make sure you really do understand that that offer is there. And whether it's your supervisors, your managers, your leaders, we're all much more alive now to the impact of, you know, stress and anxiety in the workplace, and that just wasn't really recognised when I joined. It was just a different era; it wasn't recognised in the way it is now. So, my advice to any officer joining is just you know make sure you try and maintain your own really good healthy balance in life, make sure you look after yourself and make sure you're thinking about your own well-being. But when you recognise there's periods of stress and strain, make sure you access that help and support, and it can be just as simple as talking to a colleague about how you feel. And you know, I am a man, a child of the 70’s talking about how you feel wasn't really a thing when I grew up, you know, it just wasn't, you just got on with stuff. And of course, what we realise now is that's just not a healthy way to deal with your mental health. You need to have the ability to talk to people about the challenges that you face, but recognise that everybody, and I see this particularly in people joining the service now, that resilience is really important, you have to be a resilient individual, if you know you're not a resilient individual, it's probably not the thing to come into policing, you do need to be resilient. But there's an awful lot of help out there for you and an awful lot of support and I'm really keen to make sure that we give that level of support to officers and staff, because at times it can be a really challenging job, hugely, hugely rewarding but at times challenging as well.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: And I know as a member of Kent Police, that one of your pledges is around the health, safety and well-being of your staff which is one of the things that provides me with comfort, but also me as a leader sharing that with my team just to make sure that they are fit, well and healthy within policing. So, we're just going to try and look at what the most defining moment in your career has been.

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well again that's a bit of a toughy really, but 30 years I suppose, I guess probably quite early on the pressure of learning so much so quickly, then coming out of a training environment into being a police, you know these are, these are difficult times, and I always remember that for our young cops, that's where you really do need a lot of support. But I think probably to answer the question, I think it probably took me maybe a year, maybe 14 or 16 months before I really settled and knew this was the job for me. And it's pretty difficult within that to give you one moment of utter revelation, but once I realised that young as I was, I could deal with physical confrontation, I could deal with verbal confrontation, when you are a young person going to deal with maybe a couple in their 50’s that are having an argument and there might be domestic abuse there, your job is to protect and that that can be really challenging if you're in your 20’s. They were times where I went to those calls and think 'can I actually do this?', but once I realised that I could, and I was making the right interventions and importantly the more experienced people around me were telling me “that was fine”, ”that's a good job”, “you needed to do that” or conversely “no, next time you need to do this and not that”. I think at that period that acute learning, it's a really steep learning curve because you're trying to remember all your training, you're trying to remember all the law, all the procedure, and still make really good sound decisions and be a really good police officer. So, I think during that period Vinny, to kind of answer your question, there were plenty of times where I went to calls and doubted myself, lots of times where I thought ‘I'm not sure, am I really the right person to for this’, but once you, I'm a real believer that once you start doing it, you'll quickly work it out, is it right for you or not. So, I think during that period, probably sort of from being an independent patrol officer at about 9 months, through to, I would say maybe 14 or 16 months, I was going to things I'd never been to before, I was dealing with all sorts of things that I would probably never meet in normal everyday life. As a police officer, I worked out that do you know what, this was for me, and I could do it, and that just gave me and would give young officers more and more confidence that yeah, they you can do this. And of course for every person joining us just remember, there are thousands of people that have gone before you, so, you know, it is not the case that for you as an individual it's impossible to do, because look at the thousands of people that are doing it now and have done it before you, and that gave me great confidence that of course there were, if other people can do this, I can do this. And so young people joining us, I would kind of say that first period that up to sort of 18 months, some people learn much quicker than others, but that first year, 18 months is absolutely critical and that's the point I think it helps you decide if this is for me or not.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: From police constable to chief constable, what has been your most challenging moment in your career?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, probably personally there's a few cases that stick in your mind and that's usually because of the really emotive and difficult challenges of those cases, so a lot of them stick in my mind when people have been, you know really badly hurt through crime, when people have been treated in a really deplorable way that has affected their life forever, that is difficult to deal with and it will leave a mark, you know, and that's why I talk a lot about health and well-being. I suppose interestingly as the assistant chief constable in charge of the Serious Crime Directorate, which spans us and Essex, I was in charge of the investigation into a large number of Vietnamese individuals who died in the back of a refrigerated lorry that arrived in Essex, and it's a case, there was an awful lot of national media about it. We deal with death a lot but it's not too often we deal with multiple deaths, and particularly, the way these poor people had died was really traumatic for the team. I had to support a really large investigation team and a really large response to that. It took us across the globe, I had to go with staff to Vietnam. We had to go and visit 38 families to return their loved one’s property, to talk to them about what we had found and what had happened, so the level of emotion and trauma on the team and on me was really, really high. And I think interestingly it was very late in my career that I led that, I had, you know, some sort of late 20 years’ service, but it still is probably the most traumatic case that I can remember, because I was asking staff to do really, really difficult work in really difficult circumstances, dealing with so much death, dealing with so many traumatised families, so much public outpouring of grief, really, really challenging for the teams. And that took you know many months to resolve and to deal with and we had to be very professional through that and I had to support the staff through that, but of course, it also did have an impact on me as an individual.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: So, moving on now, there's a lot of decisions you have to make as part of the organisation and how do you balance public safety and trust and confidence in the community?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, it's an interesting question because you know the two are intrinsically linked. I think that it's absolutely essential that I have that public trust and confidence otherwise I can't deliver the service. Now of course sometimes it means that we have to do things that the public at large might see as unpopular, or might see as unnecessary, but I think with each of those occasions what we must do is explain our actions. Sometimes you can't do that at the time and that could have an impact on trust and confidence, but as soon as we can we've got to be really open and transparent with the public. And you know I, with colleagues, have tried to really instil that in our pledge. So, the public, I think the public want us to turn up when they call us, you know very often it will be the only time in their entire lives they call the police and often, as you well know Vinny, that's at their lowest point, it might be at a time in their life where everything's going wrong. They want us to turn up, they want us to be professional, they want us to act with integrity, they want us to be fair in their dealings with us and they want us to deal with crimes that are reported, they want us to solve those crimes, they want us to keep them updated on how it's going and all those things are absolutely essential in my view and they could sound really basic really if you think about it, but actually I do believe that's what the public want from a police service, they want to feel safe, they want to feel secure, and they need to be able to trust us. So, everything that we do must be underpinned by that integrity. And then when we make mistakes, do you know I think the public will forgive us, and I say that to officers very often, if they make honest mistakes in the genuine belief they're doing the right thing, but they make a technical error or things just go wrong, you know they'll have my full support, and I will back them. Conversely officers that go out the way to breach the standards that I expect, and the public deserve, we will need to deal with that in a really robust way and we do.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: A brilliant segue into the next question around what do we at Kent Police do to root out unacceptable behaviour?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, an awful lot, and rightly so, because one officer who conducts themselves sometimes in a very deplorable way, sometimes in a criminal way, has such a damaging impact on public trust and confidence, I really can't understate that. It's very sad, because of course the reality is, thankfully, the vast majority of officers and staff behave absolutely impeccably. Brave acts every day to prevent crime and disorder, prevent harm to the public, save people's lives, that can all be undone by one officer behaving in a deplorable fashion. So internally we have an entire department, Professional Standards Department, whose job is to support staff of course first and foremost, and make sure those standards are upheld, but where people fall below those standards, to make sure they investigate that and deal with it, and that means on rare occasions even arresting police officers because police officers are not above the law, and when they do commit a crime we arrest them and we deal with them, and I think the public can have real confidence then when they look at us, to say, you know, Kent Police will do the right thing when these things occur, they won't you know, they won't hide it away, they will deal with it. So we have to be open, we have to be transparent, we work really hard with our staff support services and our colleagues to make sure that we do really root out any behaviour, particularly misogyny and particularly behaviour that's really harmful to people, and sometimes that does just require a member of staff to have a little bit of education, they just need to learn, reflect and change their behaviour, and that’s great, but if it's more damaging than that then we need to deal with it and deal with it head on. So, the public can be really confident that we are talking about it every day as a senior team, we look at it every day, and there is an entire department whose job is there to check and make sure that everybody in the organisation, me included, behave the way we should.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: And sort of from the supportive element part of it, how do you ensure that the organisation can police, sort of allow officers to feel valued and confident to be themselves?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, it's highly important to me for several reasons, but I guess the two most obvious ones are, the reality is if people come to work and don't feel they can be themselves; they're not going to be as productive. And over time, they potentially could become, you know really quite down, and it could affect them in a really big way. So, if I can't create an organisation where people feel they can bring themselves to work and their whole selves to work, and be unashamedly proud of that, then I, I've failed right off the bat. Of course, as with lots of organisation, there are rules that we work to and for public servants, particularly police officers, you know there are standards we've got to adhere to, but that's all within the gift of anybody coming to work for us, whatever their background, whatever community they come from, or whatever walk of life, Tim Smith actually doesn't really care too much, what I want is really good police officers and really good police staff and I've been lucky enough to work over, you know, 30 years now with some amazing people from all different walks of life. And my benchmark has always come back to ‘are they a great cop’ and you know, that should be really my key message to anybody from any community, do not for a second think you cannot be a police officer, because you can. What will make you a good police officer is these things we've already talked about, what are your values, are you generally an honest and open person, are you someone that is selfless, you'll think about other people first, that you enjoy helping other people, that you like protecting other people. If you have these natural instincts and values, you'll be a great cop, regardless of what community or background you have.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: And just to affirm some of your work having transferred from another force to Kent Police, I do feel certainly from my own perspective, that I can be myself, and that in itself allows me to be able to do more for the organisation and offer my services, sort of discretional effort wise, so thank you for allowing that sort of space to be created. Share with us some of the successful initiatives that you've done to sort of strengthen relationships between us and the communities.

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, I think if you look over many years we've invested more and more of our time and effort in making sure that particularly we've got the right response to hard-to-reach communities and, I'm really proud of some of those relationships we've built up with an awful lot of the communities across Kent. Certainly, when I was the North Division Commander, you know the various mosques and the imams, you've got the Sikh temple with thousands of Sikhs attending it every day. And an awful lot of those community groups I think just wanted to be listened to, they wanted to have engagement, they wanted to have understanding, and I think very often we would rightly perhaps leave that to our community liaison officers, who are a great group of employees and it's their full-time job to have that interaction. But actually, what I found, particularly as I became a more senior officer, they wanted that much higher level of engagement. They wanted to understand what our stance was on certain things, what direction was I giving to officers about stop search. And so certainly the local Independent Advisory Group structure, we spent an awful lot of time to really try and make sure that they had the right representation. And what was made very obvious to me, as you'll know Vinny, some communities really do want to engage, but I was more interested in the ones that didn't want to engage with us. So, I spent some time, particularly in that role, trying to make sure that we were being quite pushy with those communities to say, “please engage with us, we'll do it on your terms” and that was very beneficial, particularly when major incidents happened or major crimes happened, because there was just a bit more trust and confidence between the police and that community. And I think that's something I've instilled in every command that I've had. You know, we've now got I would suggest, an extremely vibrant Independent Advisory Group, and we now bring in members of the public to look at things such as how we stop search the public and looking at our staff's decisions. We also expose our use of force to the public as well and we will show our body worn video to members of the Independent Advisory Group and other members of the public that want to volunteer to do it, and say to them “that's what we did, what do you think?”, and we explain the context and the officers will come along and explain what they were facing, why they did what they did, and it's a wonderful mechanism to enable us to really test, is the service we're delivering right. If we've got it right, it's nice to have that affirmation that you know what, that was okay, but where it's really powerful is where we've got learning, and that learning could be for an individual officer, which is really helpful, but it also could be about our policy and our practice, so we learn as an organisation.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: And I guess diversity and inclusion is a real big thing, not just in policing, but in every sort of organisation. How do we promote diversity and inclusion, and what is the importance of it of having a diverse force?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, I think everything we've done over many years now, certainly all the work from my predecessor, I look at and think how powerful that's been to bringing as much diversity as possible, I want to continue that work. Sessions like this, you know I don't relish spending my time on a podcast really, I kind of always just want to go back to policing, that's what I like doing, but this is really, really important because I want anyone from any walk of life, from any community to listen to me and hear me say those words that I want them to join us, I really do. If they have those values and qualities that I've talked about, I want them here. And there is no doubt in my mind you only have to look at thousands of studies to see and feel the difference that diverse, true diversity inclusion brings, and it's a really simple one for me, and it's about service delivery and performance. If you have a diverse workforce and that matches diverse communities, you will get better engagement, you'll get better service delivery and you'll get better performance for the public. We'll be more effective at protecting the public, we'll be more effective at preventing and detecting crime. All of those things are obvious, and 33 years is a long time, and when I joined, I can tell you I think from memory there was, I think there was one female inspector on the station that I worked. There were extremely few officers from minority ethnic backgrounds. There was one black officer from memory, I think on one of the sections I was working on, and our representation just clearly wasn't matching the communities we were policing. We've still got an awful long way to go Vinny, but I reflect now on, particularly I think female representation in the organisation, compared to what it was, it's still got a way to go and I think minority ethnic communities is getting better and better, but we've still got a long, long way to go. We have to try and match the diversity of our communities as closely as we can because that inclusion and that confidence particularly communities that feel maybe most alienated from the police, is absolutely vital that we have that to try and gain their confidence. Without it we just cannot police as effectively as we should.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: That's so reassuring, you know being a police officer of colour within Kent Police and what support you provide within the organisation, really sort of shares with the community that what can actually be done when they join the policing family. You’ve shared with us a bit of your past experiences; you've shared with us some of the things that you're currently doing. Let's look at some future goals, one professional and one personal that you'd like to share with us.

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, blimey, well you know I've talked a lot about you know why I've sort of continued and what keeps me motivated and I think probably the professional goal will be achieving for me, that position where I think I can get the force to be as efficient and as effective as it possibly can. Particularly working to the values we hold, and making sure that our response to everything that we are called to, whether that is a very, very minor disturbance between two neighbours over parking or whether it is the most awful murder in our community, that our response is absolutely the best it can be, it's delivered with absolute integrity and it's one that the public can be really proud of and that the public can trust us, that when they call we will turn up and we respond in the way that we should. And I know I'll never be able to stop all crime, I don't think that's actually possible, but I'm determined I want to drive down crime as far as I possibly can and really make Kent the very, very safest place for people to work, live and visit day in and day out, that's what I really aspire to. If I can get there before my time's up, I shall be really, really pleased and there are some short-term things that I need to address that I've touched on to achieve that around our budget and the structure of the force and how we're equipped and you know, how I align our resources to demand, all of those come into that sort of goal if you like Vinny. Personally, it'll probably be to try and survive all that, and live a long and healthy retirement, but no personally, I've got adult children now, I have a little bit more time to myself and maybe I can, with my wife do a bit of travel and get a bit of time back for ourselves.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: So, you talked about your uncle sort of planting the seed around being coming into the sort of police service, and you've done 30 plus years, looking back what advice would you give your younger self starting into policing?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: That's a difficult one, blimey. I suppose it's a really, it's a good question, I probably I would, so I think probably the young Tim Smith had an awful lot of energy and I was really committed, but I think probably at times I'm you know apparently I can be a bit stubborn, so I think there's probably times where I could have learnt a little bit quicker. I could have probably stopped and reflected a bit more, I think we're far more enlightened now about being reflective and stopping as people and as an organisation to say you know what “how did that go and could I have learnt better from it" and I probably wasn't as good at that as a as a youngster and it means that the reality is you just don't learn as quickly, so I was probably holding myself back from not being as reflective as I should, not spending the time to acknowledge when things went wrong and work out well what went wrong, what can I do better in the future and I do see that in new cops, because I think there's a real, you know I was talking about expectation changing, I do see a lot of my young colleagues putting that pressure on themselves that you know you they think they've almost got to be perfect on day one and then when they're perhaps not perfect on day one it really does affect them. And I think having the permission to get things wrong is really important as long as you learn from it, so I think probably that that's the key bit of advice I would have given, is a little stopping, when you know something has happened and you're you know maybe it hasn't gone the way you wanted it to go, that's the time to stop, talk to others about it, make sure you really identify what went wrong, what you can fix for next time, because you just become so much, you know become so much more effective, so much quicker and your confidence grows with that, why wouldn't you do it. But I think as a young man, I just didn't do it, I just I just ploughed on and ploughed on, it probably took me a lot longer to become a really effective cop than actually it should have taken me.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: And those that will be listening who have sort of listened to all of your experiences and then now on the sort of cusp of thinking about joining, what advice would you give those that are thinking about joining policing and Kent Police?

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Well, I think probably first and foremost I think be very honest with yourselves about is this the job for you, and it's really difficult to make that assessment until you actually do the job and that was something that really struck me. So, I would come back to probably two or three things, the motivation. What is your motivation for wanting to do this? If the motivation is an honest one, I think you’ve got a good chance. If the motivation isn't perhaps an honest one then I think you would naturally struggle. What values and qualities have you got as a person, it's just so vital in policing, it does not mean we all have to be exactly the same, far from it, it does not mean that every single quality and value must be matched in every single officer, but you fundamentally have to be of an honest disposition. You have to have integrity, you have to have some values to know what's right and what's wrong, you have to be able to accept some authority and be told what to do, you know and that isn't always for everybody. But at your heart you have to be someone that wants to help other people, and if you feel a sense of injustice when things happen that shouldn't happen like crime, that's a that's a good benchmark I think to tell you that you've probably got the right sort of value system that where you could make a real difference. And whether it's physical courageousness, morally courageous people, there are some values that will add a lot, but if your motivation and your values are true you can absolutely fly in this job. And what people have to remember is that there are hundreds and hundreds of different jobs within one employer and some people join us and they desperately want to be a dog handler, and great that's fine because we need really good dog handlers, but they'll find that they actually suddenly like doing lots of traffic work, or they really like investigations, or they want to be a surveillance officer, all of that is available to you once you are a police officer. And so actually if those values are there, go for it, you never quite know where it takes you, you can have a bit of a plan but just see how it goes. Because once you start you will experience all the different facets of policing and that's exactly what I did, I was a patrol officer, I loved being a patrol officer, didn't want to do anything else and it was a very sensible and bright sergeant who realised that actually I could probably be quite a good investigator and they pushed me into the Investigation teams and I didn't want to go. And talking about reflection and learning, I kicked and screamed, and I really didn't want to go, because I love doing patrol work. But once I got there, and I had talked to myself, “come on Tim, this is a job, do it, you've been asked to do a job get on with it”, within, you know, a few months I became more and more confident in what I was doing and actually I started to realise if I could do really, really good investigations, I could really impact positively on people's lives and I just loved it. And I got better and better at it, so it took me in a direction I never really anticipated. You couldn't have told me that before I joined, so to anyone with those values, if you are even thinking about it give it a go, because it can take you to places that personally and professionally you just get such massive rewards from it, it's a truly wonderful job.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: And I'd wholeheartedly agree I think, I've always seen policing as a career within a career and it just when people see the opportunities that are available when you come into policing, I think you just get enhanced and get absorbed into the whole family of it. Well thank you very much.

Chief Constable Tim Smith: Pleasure.

Detective Inspector Vinny Wagjiani: Thank you for listening if you have enjoyed this episode, follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn where we will be posting previews of our upcoming episodes.

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