Propotional?

More on pursuits (not that I'm obsessed).

Our force doesn't have any tactical options for dealing with motorbike pursuits. The end result of this is that a criminal on a motorbike or a moped knows a pursuit is not going to be authorised unless he (or she, of course) has committed a serious crime. And then what happens is that we follow like blue lighted sheep until a) he crashes or b) we lose him through a width restriction, like a footpath.

B is the more common, by the way.

Here's a spanish tactical option for ending a motorbike pursuit.



Should that be an option available to us? Honest answers please. Police readers, who might be be more inclined to say yes- would you be prepared to be the driver of the car that does it? Non-police readers: do you think that the above is excessive? Your politicians and police chiefs certainly say so. Do you agree?

Note (27th Sept): I know this is a fairly extreme example in terms of the crime committed, and am not suggesting this should be employed on someone for evading road tax or parking on a double yellow. But at the moment this would never be considered regardless of the crime committed, and I am asking- should it be an option available to us, even if only as a last resort?

Pursuits continued

Finally managed to read through the bulk of the IPCC pursuits review.

Shockingly, most of it actually makes sense. It mostly calls for the existing guidelines to be more consistently and properly adhered to- i.e. only advanced drivers should pursue etc; fit data recorders to cars (something I wholeheartedly agree with); and a whole load of stuff to do with reporting it when it goes wrong.

The recommendation that did have me shaking my head is number 13- namely that if there are no tactical options available, there should be no pursuit.

And here lies the problem. My force no longer has TPAC- we (the drivers) are not trained in it, and it is not authorised. Apparently, it is felt it poses too much of a risk to the suspect. Therefore the only tactical option we have is Stinger.

Only traffic officers have stinger.

Last set of nights I was on, there was one traffic car across the whole district.

The end result is that despite me being an advanced driver, I effectively still cannot pursue. I have no tactical option available- and so according to the IPCC I should therefore not engage in the first place. (I tend to anyway of course, and usually end up waiting for them to crash whilst the traffic car comes from miles away, correctly second guesses which road they're going to go down, and then successfully deploy. Haven't seen it happen for a while.)

And of course, Stinger won't work on run flat tyres. Anyone else see that 5th gear show where a BMW went round their racetrack on flat run-flat tyres, and was only a few seconds slower than the properly inflated ones?

It frustrates me my force doesn't allow TPAC. A glance at the IPCC report shows the majority of pursuits happen at night. Empty roads work for TPAC, even in the suburbs. Top brass seem to wring their hands at the thought of even a suspect in a vehicle pursuit getting injured as the result of police action, and so once again the "rights" of a suspect outweigh the rights of everyone else to have a dangerous scumbag put somewhere where he can't do anyone any harm.

Which I think is what really hacks me off. I've mentioned before about the one character- a prolific burglar, I might add- on our ground who shows off how he will never stop for police, how he knows our tactics (or lack of) and knows he just has to drive as dangerously (I'm talking red lights at 70+) as he can and we'll call it off. What I'd do to be able to knock him off the road in the first few seconds of a pursuit, just to see his face.

I can but happily daydream.

Not good.

Once again PCSO's are in the headlines for the wrong reasons- the sad tale of the drowned 10 year old who had sunk beneath the surface. Apparently, two PCSO's were on scene quickly, but did nothing apart from radio for police officers.

Two things strike me from this.

One: why were they dispatched there in the first place.

Two. It is sad that litigation culture has grown to the extent that people appear exempt from criticism because they haven't been trained to do something, and their employers have to defend them because of this.

There may be more to this. Perhaps the PCSO's couldn't swim. I don't know, they didn't give evidence at the inquest.

Distinctly sour taste left in mouth after this.

Pursuits

Okay so I heard on the news today how we take unnecessary risks in vehicle pursuits.

I haven't read the report in full yet, but I will.

I nearly fell off my chair when I discovered Tony McNulty said something which both made sense and I agreed with- namely that chases only happen when a suspect refuses to stop!

However, for some reason I have only just skim read the BBC report and already I can feel my hackles rising and can feel myself getting defensive.

Hum. I'm off to the gym. Will come back to this at some point for a more measured response. I think I'll do another of those poll things asking- Whose fault is it when a vehicle being chased by police crashes- the suspect, or the police?

Here onwards

Well if there's ever going to be a day when there is renewed interest in police blogs it is today. The original candle bearer has gone and told the world about the state of policing culture, where the priority of the police is to meet performance indicators, rather than use common sense and deal with situations in the best way.

I guess that leaves myself and the other bloggers left to try and keep the world aware that despite what the government says this is what its really like. But there is an inherent risk in writing these blogs. I started because of someone else I knew who wrote a police blog (a good one at that), but got found out and got hauled in front of the Chief. There can be real discipline brought against officers writing these things.

As for Tony McNulty. Am I the only one who thought he gave the impression that he regards the front line police officer with contempt? That they should do what he says because he's the police minister? I'm sorry Tony. I know several officers who have been in the service far longer than the Labour government have been in power, let alone before anyone had heard of you. I know who I'll listen to.

So where from here? Two things, I guess. One, to carry on on here, posting now and then about what I see. I'll be the first to admit I don't post about half what I see for fear of being recognised by a colleague. How Stuart Copperfield-Davidson managed for 3 years I don't know (but am impressed).

The other, more difficult thing will be to start making more of a stand at work. We have a new governor coming next month who the rumour mill has is very stats driven and expects 1) the Pcs to have a certain number of arrests, detections, stops etc per month, 2) myself to reinforce this.

Its one thing blogging about how crap this is and another to start doing something about it. But perhaps it might be time to start. It hasn't been a problem recently, my old governor happy enough with us doing our jobs properly and as long as policy wasn't breached then didn't mind us dealing with jobs appropriately. This looks like it is going to change. Might be time to put myself to the test, can I practice what I preach.

Last word today ought to go to Mr DC- click here for his summary of his experience of writing the blog.

Inspiration

The inspiration behind myself and many others has revealed himself.

Pc Stuart Davidson, aka David Copperfield, we salute you.

Best of luck over there. Don't send a postcard, I'll only get jealous ;-)

Performance, Stats, Targets etc

Carrying on with this performance v policing debate.

I was talking about our teams performance with another skipper today. The ethos on our team generally amongst the skippers and PCs is that on response teams, response work should take priority. (The governor is trying to get us to push more the other way, towards stats, more on that another day.....)

We had a look at the response times of the top performing team. They are pretty poor. For some reason, response times to calls are not one of the team performance comparisons given any weight.

And herein lies the dichotomy.

The top team have the best or at least high statistics for arrests and stop searches /stop accounts and detections. This is because they are quite happy to arrest people left and right and centre for minor crap. They are in fact encouraged to do so. The usual tales of "its not drunk and disorderly, its section 5" and all that.

So- they can be said to performing well and are providing good value for money for the public. The statistics say so.

And in a certain way, that may be the case. Unless you're one of the unfortunates who's called 999 to find that the top performing team is on duty and they're all already busy dealing with (on the whole) more minor stuff.

Broad generalisations here but the overall picture is accurate. A police team that is performing the best on paper is more likely to be providing a worse service if you're the one actually calling us.

But how do you measure the performance of the police? Its your money being spent on us lot. I wouldn't accept just being told "We're doing a good job, just believe it". But the current system isn't exactly working, nor accurate.

Suggestions welcome.....

Too many targets? Surely not?

Well its a day old news now (sorry, been busy, blah blah) but the prize for the least surprising news article of the year so far goes to the BBC.

Despite the reams of bloggers telling the world for months and even years in some cases that we have too much paperwork, and discretion comes a limping second place to government imposed targets and directives, it is now official. The HMIC say so.

The Home Secretary comes up with the usual pseudo-enthusiasm about how they will listen to this report and suddenly free up 400,000 of police hours by engaging his recommendations.

Forgive my unabashed criticism but my arse you will. I'll believe it when I see it. The trumpeted reports about how many forms have been discontinued is a sly move as they completely fail to mention that the old forms have in the majority of cases simply been replaced with a newer version that is not necessarily better or quicker.

I can remember the old version of the stop / search forms. The size of half a piece of A5 paper it recorded the essential details- who, where and why (what power) and that was it. However, the new version is half the size of A4, has codes for why someone was stopped and then a different code to enter for what they've been searched for (to help statistical compilation), has a space for you to explain why they weren't given a copy of the form at the scene (the office brigade get very uptight if that isn't completed, and I get sent them back with red pen and highlights). And we have to fill out one of these every time we ask someone what they're doing.

"Excuse me sir, would you mind telling me what you're doing? Its 2am, a residential area and you seem in a bit of a hurry".

"My mate's just dropped me off, and I really need the toilet, and the wife'll kill me because I'm this late".

"Fair enough, on you go..... oh no, hang on wait, I need all of your personal details, date of birth, current address, self-defined ethnicity, clothing description, height, distinctive features, hair style, and offer you a copy of everything that I'm writing including why I felt it necessary to ask you to account for your behaviour."

"Do I have to wait?"

"Er no but......"

"Bye"

"Dammit. I've still got to write this thing out in its entirety and now additionally add why I failed to give him a copy of it. Oh and transfer all the details of it onto a computer database. Best get myself a cup of tea then".

I was about to write this is a fairly extreme example, but it isn't. Seriously, if I or any other officer asks someone to account for their presence in any particular place, we are required to fill out a form detailing just that and why.

The logic behind this is to keep the individuals concerned in being asked to account for their behaviour an opportunity to understand why, and to have a record of it if they are feeling victimised.

Noble ideas. But the end result is we don't ask as many questions of people we think are up to no good as perhaps we should. For if one does complain that he's been victimised, and you haven't filled out your stop form, then you shall face discipline.

Yet from personal experience the only ones who really get targeted are the ones who we know are up to no good, but don't always have the level of proof required for a conviction. Amnesty would therefore say they are innocent and perhaps in some cases they are right.

But not always.

Guns and hot air

Well apparently a room full of 200 people who often seem to feel actions aren't often as appropriate as a carefully considered collection of politically approved words are having a chat about guns.

Yes, its the ACPO firearms conference.

I did think about engaging in a reasoned debate about the rise (or apparent rise) in gun crime and the media sensationalism about it- drink drivers still ruin more lives than guns, but I don't see that all across the papers. Tragic as the Liverpool lad's story is, I wonder if it would be national news for a fortnight if it was a drunk driver who killed him. (Note thats a criticism of the media, not meant as any kind of lessening of the impact on Rhys's family). It is no less tragic and no less wasteful and pointless when a life is ended because of someone else's irresponsibility with a car. Like here. Or here. Its not hard to find these kind of stories.

But then I thought I'm on nights, anyone sane would be sleeping now, and the idea of a reasoned debate arguing about firearms-enabled crime trends kind of fell into the "forget it" box.

I will, however, concede I might have felt a bit more affinity with the so-much-stuff-on-my-epaulettes-I-can't-stand-straight brigade when I read the end of this report, about their reaction to a video of a shopkeeper chasing off an armed robber with a baseball bat:

"And perhaps the greatest applause of the day came for a speaker with neither a police nor a political background.
There were cheers and shouts of approval as delegates watched a video of Jagdish Patel, a brave shopkeeper from Rochdale who saw off an armed robber with a baseball bat.
Not an officially-approved response to a potentially lethal situation. But an encouraging example of a member of the public prepared to take a risk to stop gun crime."

Maybe, just maybe they are cops at heart after all.

(Edited slightly the next day from original post after a bit more sleep!)

One for Which End Bites

May his fluffball rest in peace.

Organising etc

Rightyo have fiddled with sidebar links now to have all the other job bloggers ordered in the length of time that their page has existed. As usual if you want your link in let me know via comments or email.

Have added a couple to the graveyard, too. Dogberry has disappeared without a trace. I have added a new rule that if your page hasn't been updated for 6 months without explanation then it goes down in the graveyard too.

Following on from previous rambles about PCSOs and whether their uniform should be more distinct from regular sworn PC's, I've added one of those poll things to the sidebar. Please click your thoughts in, just to satisfy my curiosity.

In the meantime in the news here's a tale of two trains. First- ordinary member of public is prosecuted for having a her feet on a seat. Second, here's a train guard sacked for telling a youth to get his feet off a seat (ok, so there's a bit more to it, but thats how it started). Bonkers eh?

Taser taser

Well apparently some of us across the country are getting more tasers.

I just noted some of the headlines across the media.

Trust the Daily Wail to get completely hysterical and sensationalise an issue that wasn't really there. (Can anyone tell I'm not really a fan of this paper?)

"Police can shoot children with stun guns".

I mean, for goodness sake. To read their headline and leading line- "Police will be allowed to shoot children with Taser stun guns despite concerns it could trigger heart attacks"- conjures up images of officers swanning down the local play park and randomly electifying little Joe on the swings, laughingly telling mum "because we can".

Well, no. I have never heard of any child (I note the mail give no definition of what age you're still a child) but I cannot recall either in my force or reading about any incident where a taser was used or even threatened on someone under 16. The level of justification for using a Taser is at such a high level that there has to be serious risk of serious injury before it can be contemplated, and when lesser means are exhuasted.

Despite the temptation I might often feel when booking in one of our regular juvenile crime waves for the umpteenth time in a month I can't just Taser him because the government haven't expressly forbidden it.

At least the BBC are a little more... well, journalistic about it, questioning the level of training that the new taser recipients are to have.

My own opinion? I certainly don't think all officers should be armed with them. I do think more officers should be armed with them, and they should be more readily available for immediate use on the front line, and not dependent on whether the areas firearms car is tied up with something else and you have a half hour wait for the nearest available one to arrive. For example. I turned up first a domestic the other week to be confronted with the household equivalent of the Marie Celeste- door wide open, things still cooking on the stove. Slightly more disturbing was the evidence of a struggle with things hurled over the floor. Even more disturbing was the unsheathed Samurai sword lying in the middle of the floor. If we had arrived but a few minutes earlier then chances are we'd have found a rather hostile and angry male resident armed with 3 feet of sharpened steel. Baton isn't much use against that.

Taser doesn't even have to be fired to be effective. Its laser sight (I've seen this, and so have others) parked ominously on a suspects chest has been enough to calm him and subdue him to where he follows our requests (usually to get on the floor and be handcuffed).

I am interested to see what the taser training is going to be like for the new non-firearms offcers being equipped with it. I have no idea what it'll be, as the first I heard we were getting more tasers was on the news!

Leading from the front

Gordon Brown, August 2007: speaking about not paying public sector workers their recommended (by independent panel) pay rises: "We have succeeded in tackling inflation and having a stable economy because of discipline in pay over the last ten years. That discipline will have to continue".

MPs in December 2006: requesting a 66% pay rise.
MPs in 2003 voting some of themselves more of a pay rise.
MPs in 2001 voting themselves more of a pay rise.
And don't forget their 23% increase in 1996.

Whatever, Gordon.

Public Relations

Been sent an email from an officer who states he is in the self proclaimed flagship of British police services, The Metropolitan Police. Paraphrased slightly to ensure names and times remain ambigiuous, and swear words removed.

"I am a level 2, or public order trained officer. Over the bank holiday weekend myself and my serial have been on standby at the Notting Hill Carnival.

We have been kept back, in a hall, awaiting deployment in case of a major incident or fight- large scale public disorder. I was one of several dozen if not 100+ plus officers held back in this hall.

Now there was one point early in the morning when the carnival parties were still in full swing and the booze and cannabis (thats another story) were in plentiful supply. As you might expect, a couple of fights broke out.

One or two of these fights became quite serious. The carnival has dozens of PC's on the ground. Most of them are what we call level 3 public order trained, i.e. have no riot training. One or two of these PCs found themselves in a quite serious fights and unsurprisingly asked for backup.

There were over 100 of us probably nearer 200, ready to go in that hall in full riot kit, ready to deploy as soon as the command was given. No such command was given. We sat in the hall listening as it became more and more urgent on the radio. Urgent assistance was required. Next thing, officers were down.

Still we had no command. We were standing up, adrenalin going full throttle, waiting to be let out to help our colleagues.

No command was ever given.

It turns out Gold (overall command) or whoever was his deputy wasn't prepared to release us. I have no idea how they justified it but it boils down to they were prepared to sacrifice the safety of a PC or two in order to not deploy the riot police with all the negative media that that would undoubtedly follow. At least two PCs were put in hospital just so the management could say it was a quiet successful event"

I have no idea if this is true or not. I was happily nowhere near Notting Hill this bank holiday. But if this is the case- I am hoping that some of the commenters may be able to verify this story- then this is a damning indictement of the modern police service. Safety of individuals play a poor second fiddle to the corporate and media image that senior management wish to portray. I hope the hospitalised PCs make a full recovery and sue the living daylights out of the Met under the Health and Safety at Work act.

Daily Wail continued.

As I was saying the other day. Daily Mail reader is shocked and appalled to wait 50 minutes for a real police officer to turn up to a fairly nasty assault on his son.

I say real police officer. I have got to admit that I am beginning to get a little irate when I see reports which refer to a PCSO as a community police officer. You might say that it is just a minor play on words but there is a significant difference. A PCSO is not supposed to be a police officer, and to refer to them as such is inaccurate.

I've debated PCSO's and their distinction (or not) from police officers before on this blog (with particular regard to uniform and appearance), and its a post which consistently gets referrals from search engines, and I don't propose to debate that again. My view remains the same, namely that there should be more of a visible distinction between regular officers and PCSO's. I was at a motorway services the other week and a PCSO was there handing out leaflets. Now don't get me wrong, she was doing an important job of making people aware that service stations are a criminals dream with all those unattended cars with sat nave, ipods and even caravans available for the taking. But I could only tell she was a PCSO when I got close enough to read her epaulettes. Her hat even had a chequered black and white band round it, black stab vest, black trousers. To a ordinary member of the public, they would've thought she was a police officer. But she was not. A criminal intent on doing no good may decide to have a go yet she has no protective equipment beyond the stab vest and no training for dealing with it.

But anyway. Back to the Mail.

First of all, here's my perspective. I am unashamedly a uniform response officer. For me, it is what the majority of policing is about. With the exception of some ultra-specialist departments like surveillance and counter-terrorism nearly everything else the police deal with, a response team officer (I include specialist response teams like firearms and traffic here) will be the first to encounter it and make the initial moves. You'd think that therefore most other departments should therefore act to help and back up the front line. Unfortunately it is usually percieved the opposite way round, namely uniform response should do more to help the other departments.

In my division, the regular response teams are quite distinct from the neighbourhood teams. PCSO's only work on neighbourhood teams. Therefore I cannot comment on exactly what they do.

What I can comment on is the impact they have had on myself as a response team supervisor. And the answer is minimal. I appreciate this may be unpopular with some readers who are PCSO's (I know there's one or two out there) but here is why. I have only heard one usable relevant piece of intelligence sourced from a PCSO, which was when he recognised a wanted character. I cannot deploy them to any kind of call. I can only use them on a counter-terrorism cordon, and even then it has to be one where I cannot give them a scene log as they've never seen one before. It feels like we have just as much youth disorder as we've ever had. So I take exception to the Home Office stating they are there to support police officers. I have never seen this support.

Now if I was a neighbourhood police team sergeant, I would anticipate I would have a different story to tell, of how his or her PCSOs have got the time to engage with vulnerable community sections (e.g. the elderly) and how their job is not about crime and detections (true enough) but about building bridges. My argument remains the same though. For the 14000 PCSO's you could have 8-9000 PCs who would be able to do exactly the same job- and a whole lot more. My understanding of the the way this was budgeted, certainly to start with, is that the PCSO budget was extra funding made available by central government. Therefore the PCSOs have not taken over a PCs role, i.e. every PCSO has replaced a PC: the PCSO is in addition to the PC. I say 8-9000 extra PCs would make more of a difference, even in the ringfenced safer neighbourhood role.

I note the home offices definintion of a PCSO's purpose is completely unquantifiable, in complete contrast to their attitude towards police officers, which is measure everything, set a target relating to everything and then cut budgets if these targets are not reached, which of course really helps.

So we have: Reassure people (has anyone seen a survey to find out if this is the case? Perhaps I ought to do one of those poll things); build confidence in communities (ditto! In my area, I have never seen a PCSO round where I live, and I live in a fairly large town. According the board up next to the local Co-Op, there's two dedicated to my ward. Where are they?); and support police (er... maybe).

Do tell me if I ever sound like a scratched record going on about this, won't you....

Daily Wail (again)

Well, I'm glad to see the Daily Mail still gets completely hysterical about anything police related.

Example one: unfortunate tale of a man down south.

Example two: That PCSO headline.

Lets start with number one. Lad goes down to Portsmouth's 24hr european cafe culture one weekend night and encounters random hooligan and gets a pasting. Not taking anything away from the victim, my only surprise with this story is that anyone is surprised it took a response team officer that long to turn up. In all honesty I wouldn't have been surprised if it was nearer the four hour mark, let alone fifty minutes.

I can completely sympathise with the person at the 999 call centre. Its interesting how what would actually be a civilian operator suddenly become "the police" with its deliberate effort to tar everyone with the same brush. That as an aside, I would anticipate that operator had had dozens of calls from people on that late saturday night. Some of them (well, I read some of our official propoganda in a moment of boredom and found 70% of 999 calls are actually not emergencies) and this poor sod at the end of the 999 line, obliged to make a record of every call recieved was probably more than a touch frustrated at the sheer volume of idiots calling with nonsensical claptrap that would still under this that and the other charter require a police officer to go and speak to them in person. So when he or she gets a genuine call through, like the one in the article, lo and behold noone is available. Or of course there have been sufficient serious calls to mean all available response officers are already dealing, as what is reported here. The 999 operator would've been more of aware of that, too.

I must admit I've used that line before- when I've been haring round from call to call and someone says "what took you so long?" I tell them there's only 6 of us on tonight covering so many thousands of population, and if he doesn't think that sufficient to write and complain to his MP. And you know what, I wish they would.

I don't know quite know why this particular tale warrants a trumpeting around the Wail. There would have been hundreds of people calling 999 across the country at the weekend and found that the police response takes more time than they would expect, or demand.

I have sympathy with the Mr Bayliss senior too. Not his sense of moral outrage at being told to phone his MP, how could some possibly be so rude, but for the circumstances of it. Most decent people can remember how many 999 calls they've ever made and it is quite a significant event, amplified a hundredfold when its your own son.

But Mr Bayliss junior, now that things are over, you had opportunity to make a difference to other people, to try and stop such things happening again by joining up. I'm sorry but withdrawing your application isn't going to help anyone.

At the end of the day, the 999 operator is right. I would bet Hampshire's finest would have loved to have come and locked up a drunken violent hooligan. At least, I would hope so. But they were unable to simply because there weren't enough of them. And the blame for that lies with the MPs.

Which would lead me on nicely to the second article. This is where all the money for PC's has gone. Most forces are recruiting more PCSO's than PCs.

But I'll continue with this another time. This is enough for now.

Well I never

I've just noticed.

I'm one year old this month. 10 days ago in fact. Happy birthday me!

Here's my posts from August 2006 (all both of them).

(Link now works!)

Back to the Future

Well, a little rest has done me a world of good. For the best part of the last few weeks (joys of several re-rostered rest days and a bit of leave thrown in) I have been resolutely not thinking anything job.

However, the time is nigh where I shall be launching myself back in the deep end.

When I say deep end, I don't mean jobs- calls, or interacting with the public. That shall have to wait. I am going to have to wade through a pile of emails sufficiently high enough to remind me of the mountains I was climbing only a few short days ago.

I have a sinking feeling that I might a simple, but possibly fatal error before I ran out the station leaping for joy at the commencement of leave.

Cue drum roll and sounds of impeding doom riders, please.

I did not set my out-of-office email autoreply to "on".

I shall therefore expect one or more of the following.

- Emails urgently warning me for court.
- Emails urgently dewarning me for court when someone actually bothered to check the duties to see if I'm in. The Witness Liason Office or whatever their title is these days have an annoying habit of warning absolutely everybody for a court case, and then checking the roster. They even check on what date you've booked your leave to see if you didn't pull a crafty one. I got warned for court on the first day of my honeymoon. I had great pleasure in telling the somewhat snotty bloke where he could stick his warning as I had booked that leave about a year in advance.
- Emails warning a PC that he has certain work on some job outstanding cc'd to me (because the PC is on leave.)
- Utterly useless tripe sent to the entire division about how the lift in HQ is having scheduled maintenance.
- Emails advising me that a PC still hasn't completed certain work on some outstanding job (because he's still on leave).
- A good work email celebrating the fact that someones latest politically thumbs-up scheme has gone down terribly well. Too many examples to mention.

These emails shall be dealt with in the usual manner:
Delete without reading (50%).
Read briefly and delete. (40%)
Read, consider actioning, then delete. (7%)
Read and actually do something positive, like reply. (3%).

This will probably take most of the shift. The greatest sense of achievement of returning to work will likely be sourced from getting the email inbox back down to zero.

On a more serious note. Am I the only one who gets just a tang of worry about going back to work after time off? Not about nonsense on email I might add. But I do worry that in time off I'll have forgotten something. I haven't had to think about police stuff for a fortnight or so, and part of me says "Do you still know what you're doing?" (I ignore the voice which says you never know what you're doing.....)

Still, I ignore that voice too. I always seem to get back into things just as quickly as occasion demands, which is usually 10 minutes or so after parade. Except night duty, when things have usually gone wrong about half an hour before parade.

Anyway. I still have a couple of days before the joys of going back to shiftwork. Could go and top up my tan. Ha! If you include rust / weatherbeatenness as a tanning type that is.

Feet up, warrant card down

Apologies for the lack of posting, but I have joined the stampede to somewhere a little warmer and a little less wet (most of the time), although I understand the weather back home has improved somewhat the last few days.

Although whats this about foot and mouth? Not again, surely?

I shall return from lands afar (ish) soon, whereupon I shall have to get back into the habit of carrying warrant card again. It has been a lightness in my pocket not carrying it the last few days.

Stay safe y'all

Update: Normal service shall shortly be resumed.

Custard Sergeant

Had the joys of being in custody recently.

Some skippers enjoy custody. I don't.

To be fair, I can understand why some enjoy it. It is a role where you know exactly what your job is, there is considerable responsibility, and you are the boss. Anything that happens in the custody suite happens with your consent. Immaterial of rank, you still get permission from the custody skipper if you want to do anything in the cell block.

To me, I hate the fact I'm staring at the same walls for the entire shift and sat at a desk 98% of the time. Its the precise thing I joined the police to get away from. Occasionally you get interesting prisoners- after all, no matter what the offence or offender everyone goes through the custody office- whether a first time shoplifter or a murderer still covered in his victims blood having been chased all over town. But most of the time I'm counting down the hours.

Anyway some time spent in there is inevitable.

Following on from earlier posts it isn't unknown for police officers to turn a blind eye to some drunken antics that could be recorded as crime- mostly low level stuff- the odd taking a leak in corner, squaring up and posturing business that is normally dealt with a word in your ear like.

One thing that is not ever knowingly ignored is drink drive. If that little light goes red on the roadside, you're coming in. No word of warning, park it and get a taxi, you're coming in.

Had a classic in the other weekend.

Posh girl leaving club with her utterly inebriated boyfriend who turned out not to be her husband. Get in their bling shiny 4x4 and promptly reverse it straight into the taxi rank. Taxi men and club manager aren't the happiest with this and manage to stop her and call us.

Two PCs turn up. She messes about with the breathalyser until on the last chance (i.e. "if you don't do this properly this time, you're arrested for failing to provide) and surprise surprise the machine thinks for all of half a second before going straight to red.

She gets brought in before me. At this stage for her its all just such a terrible inconvenience. I start off the myriad forms with the same questions repeated about 6 times. These forms have been developed as a result of various people getting their high paid lawyers to blag them off a drink drive as a result of some poxy technicality like they had mouthwash in the preceding hour- anything to just make the breath machine not 100% accurate and so inadmissible, even if they were completely bladdered and were 3 times over the limit.

Anyway, I surmise this plunging neckline in front of me is going to have a high paid lawyer so I make extra sure everything is precisely by the book.

And she's more than double the limit. Oh dear oh dear.

This is where the fun begins. I have to wait for her to be sober so I can charge her with the offence. Police doctor advises 3 maybe 4 hours. This has the added benefit of ensuring she isn't released still too drunk to drive. Hopefully the Range Rover will have a nice clamp on it by the time she gets out.

I tell Posh Totty she's spending time in the cell to sober up, knowing precisely what reaction it will get. I am not disappointed. Cue one hysterical crying fit "I caaaaaaaaaaaan't go in the cell, pleeeeeeeeease". Unfortunately for her I am not one for bending to her every whim unlike what she is probably used to, and one of the female detention officers escorts the streaked mascara to the cell "with pleasure, sarge".

Am I wrong for taking some kind of guilty amusement out of this??