Business as usual

Well a nice couple of days off and welcomed back to Suburbiaville to the all to familiar soundtrack of the wheel coming off. What a day.

Had one of those rare and unusual things starting the day off- an ordinary member of the public prepared to intervene in something going on (note- I appreciate that most readers of this who aren't officers are decent people who would step in. But in some areas of town it is rare enough to have someone who'll call 999 let alone see a passing police car, get its attention, direct them to the suspect and hang around to give a statement) which resulted in the most deserved arrest of a domestic bully "brave" enough to give his girl (half his size) a hiding in public.

Things went a bit loopy from then on. I got the shields out of the back of the car twice. Rape kit once. There were people with knives going for officers. Going at themselves. Going at their girlfriends dog. People wandering away from supposedly secure mental health facilities.

I had a shouting match over the phone with a DC who was doing his absolute best to ensure the latest pile of grief I had the unfortunate task of being initially in charge of did not end up on his desk. Spectacular efforts to squeeze and slime their way out of something that is clearly within their quite specific remit.

Trying to find words of comfort to a young mother whose husband has just smashed bits of their door and window out trying to get inside to them. And I don't mean for heroic reasons.

At the end of the shift I was pacing up and down the old control room bouncing ideas and plans off the other skipper trying to figure out a plan to deal with yet another job- an usually convoluted and twisted one this time- one of the ones that no matter what our final plan would be someone in an office somewhere will pick up on it and say our performance was inadequate and we failed to comply with x y and z. I was talking to the next shifts skipper and I had got barely 30 seconds into when he was saying "oooh don't like that, you didn't do anything about that?". I was about to go and explain how with the information and resources -i.e. myself and one other car- we had at the time that was really not our priority. Then I thought I would just tell him to go and take a long walk off a short pier (possibly rephrased a touch), but finally I kept my temper in (it was a long, long hot day) and restrained myself to agreeing that with hindsight I might've done something different.

I'm quite glad Mrs Simon doesn't ever hear me in the locker room. I might have said a few choice words about various people in Suburbiaville and various officers who staff various offices and choose to implement their policy when it suits them.

On a different note. My thanks to those who commented on the previous post. I always appreciate people leaving comments but those ones particularly so. I'm not planning on promotion any time soon. When I did the sergeant's exam I passed with a score that would've done for the governor's too but put the exam in front of me now I reckon I'd fail it. I don't need to have it all memorised, I have reference books and legal database to hand!

But yeah I do enjoy skippering. At the end of the day above I went down a local watering hole on the way home with another couple of PC's who were late finishing. A beer never tasted so good. Had a good moan about pretty much everything you could think of, which helped let off some steam. Didn't have to burden Mrs S with quite so much of it!

But that will do. Off to bed, more of the same (I don't hope) tomorrow morning..............