Custody Sergeant's Response

Sergeant Mark Andrews is in the news for the wrong reasons. I don't really need to provide a link judging by some of the newspaper headlines but just in case look here.

Firstly I don't condone what he did. No matter how drunk or annoying someone is we still have those three words which take precedence over everything: duty of care. He'll lose his job, and arguably deservedly so.

However, as a police sergeant who has spent a lot of time as a custody sergeant, I think I'm perhaps a bit more entitled to have something to say about all this.

I work in a relatively small police station. We only have the 10 cells. However, despite that we have generated nearly 4000 custody records this year alone. This is not even the only custody suite in our force area. 4000 custody records is just a drop in the ocean of what must be hundreds of thousands of custody records across the uk, each referring to an individual arrested and booked in at a police station. The vast, overwhelming majority of these cases pass off without incident, even with the really drunk, aggressive and dangerous people that we literally drag off the streets to keep you lot safe. The borderline psychopaths who will literally rip their arms open with their teeth to get attention (yes, I have really seen this happen). The drug addicts who start attacking the doctors when they won't give them the drugs they want. They all get treated properly and fairly. Certainly in my experience they do. Custody suites are dripping with these cameras for precisely this reason and to my knowledge they have fended off far more malicious allegations than they have found genuine ones.

So when you see the blaring headline of "BRUTALITY" and bruised faces splashed over pages in full close up just remember it refers to one, single, individual officer and his misjudgement. Not all of us.

Temporary pause...

I know this site has been somewhat neglected for some time. I just have different priorities these days (family) and I felt I was being somewhat aimless. I didn't have that anger at the ridiculousness of so much of the police service.

Well, I did, but to to a lesser extent, I guess. I was frustrated that I couldn't post what I really wanted to post about because it would lead me to being too easily identified. I've never posted anything really controversial but at the same time it's something I could really do without.

I'm trying to change what I do to go into a certain specialism. I reckon that give me some time and I'll have enough enthusiasm to tell the world about I'm up to (with the odd name changed here and there)...

I hope that I'll be able to return to blogging. I did enjoy it and the odd banter that the comments threw up. I reckon that me trying to be a political commentator opinion type blogger just doesn't suit me. So, I think I'll just return to what I'm most comfortable with, i.e. tales of what actually happens, and leave the political opinion to you.

No time frame on this specialism but I'm hoping by the end of the year. Keep an eye out....

Be the miracle

I am getting seriously fed up with a certain group of people. Any time there's a problem, they whinge and gripe about how nobody is doing anything about it. Then they come and whinge and gripe at me about how nobody is doing anything about it.

Unfortunately, that particular group of people I'm talking about happens to be police officers. I am so sick and tired of half my relief coming whinging about how stuff doesn't work or there aren't enough latex gloves or bits of first aid kit are missing.

They usually come to me for the simple reason that I tend to sort it out. However, I am royally fed up with it. I now just ask the question "What have you done to sort it out" by which I am invariably met by dumbstruck silence and a shrug of the shoulders.

At this point, I usually point out the very simple solution to whatever their current whinge is. No first aid supplies? Well here's an extraordinary solution. Email the resources people and ask for what's missing!!! Is there a fault with a bit of kit? Here's the fault reporting number!!!

I'm currently sidelined off response team after an old rugby injury came back with a vengeance and the amount of long sighs and slow shakes of the head I have off my old team about the states of various things now the only person bothered to do something about it and not leave it to the next person has gone!

That unfortunately is the case. The problem with shared kit- e.g. a police car- is that everyone seems to think it is someone else's problem to remedy, and not theirs. The end result is nobody does anything about it.

The title by the way is from Bruce Almighty, which I stumbled across last night (great film!!!). The end of the film summed it up. Don't look to others to solve your problems. You can do it yourself!