Have you ever jumped through the air firing both guns at once?

No actually.

But what a good film. I’m not going to spoil anything for thise of you who haven’t seen it yet. Be prepared for it to go a little over the top near the end, but it’s funny, and well worth a watch. There’s a few nods to today’s police officers, for instance, the lead works in Sandford, now a real town but with just as much crime as we all remember from training school.

Some very funny one liners in there too. Well done.

Sam Tyler

With a new series of Life on Mars starting again on Tuesday 13th February. I find myself feeling some empathy for Sam Tyler’s “What the hell is going on?” dilemma.

I look at the job I’m doing, at the free reign given to crooks, at the emphasis placed on political correctness and the need to wear my tie straight – and I’m baffled.

Sam lives in my ideal policing world:

Little paperwork

Police on the streets, and are not part of a “New code of practice department” or similar

No Crown Prosecution Service

Real crime, no “I have kids on the corner of my street, one of them is smoking, what are you going to do about it?” calls

An active CID team who seem to go out and fight crime too

Meals

Lady coppers in skirts (ok, that one was just for badness)

I know exactly why Sam is distracted half the time, all he can hear is 136,000 uk police officers begging for his job across the ages. He’s where every cop would want to wake up if they got hit by a car.

Diversity Training vs Life Experience

I’ve recently finished a two day diversity training course. This covers things like race discrimination, sexual harassment and other such gubbins. It’s a regular occurrence in the police that officers get this sort of input under the pretence of ensuring we’re not bigoted idiots. The reality is that if we’re bigoted idiots and inflict our view on the public then the Chief Constable is vicariously liable for our bigotedness. If the force provides training then clearly they have done as much as they can reasonably be expected to do and well, the officer stands alone in the court box. It’s a slightly cynical view on diversity training but not an unfair one, I tend to agree that if an officer exhibits racist or similar behaviour sufficient to get them summonsed then they shouldn’t expect anyone else to take the fall with them.

In terms of the training given though, I have to wonder on the merits of 12 white British people of similar backgrounds and all of majority groups pushing ideas around about how everyone else we deal with would prefer to be treated.

A week later I’ve been on a night out. In a burlesque night club. The sort with guys dressed as girls, girls who are very girly girls, straight people, gay people and as many different cultures as you can think of. The music was loud and I couldn’t hear a thing and couldn’t make myself heard. The fact is I learnt more about diversity in this three hours than two days with so called diversity ‘experts’. I didn’t discuss anything, I didn’t need to dissect what was happening around me to know that it was how things should be. Everyone from every background just getting on, having a great time and smiling. At each other.

I’ve sent a force suggestion card to the Chief Constable. If he wants to ensure he’s not liable for my and my colleagues turning into racist, sexist homophobes I will happily have my next diversity training session with him on a night out. He can buy the first round.

John Reid’s brain is missing…

Hmm, I had wondered. Big promises, poor results. Check out The Sun’s full article HERE .

In particular though, I like that Police Federation chairman Jan Berry said:

“The criminal justice system is failing the victims of crime, future victims of crime and the police service.

“It is essential sentences are appropriate and not a result of other factors such as the chronic shortage of prison places.

“It makes a mockery of a criminal justice system where sentences are rarely completed in the first place anyway.

“The safety of the public is paramount. If we’re kicking people out earlier, then that is ludicrous and hugely demoralising for police officers.”

 I couldn’t have said it better myself. So, while everyone else berates John Reid let this message be a nod of approval to our Jan.

Ta like.

Assaults with thefts

Had another robbery today that was crimed as an assault with a theft. Makes me shake my head and tut. CID are well trained officers with time on their hands to deal with these sorts of jobs but crime recording figures urge police to avoid criming robberies and burglarly dwellings where possible. Recording figures only seems to encourage forces to misreport crimes as something other than what they truly are and as a result the public suffer with a lesser service. And don’t get me started on National Crime Recording Standards. I’ll save that rant for another day.

Makes me shake my head I tell you.

Police Con Still On schedule

I have a lot of respect for PCSO’s. They go out and patrol the streets in all weathers, they reassure the public and generally make the most of the restricted powers that they have. We’ve got some good ones in our force and I say that as a friendly nod to my colleagues in apology to what I’m going to say next.

Why do we have them?

At the moment the only purpose I can see is that they’re part of a UK-wide con to fool the general public into believing there are more police officers on the streets. Billy burglar and every regular copper on the street knows that they’re powerless and of as little impact on crime as any normal member of the public.

I think it’s the expectation of many police officers that this early onset of PCSO’s being put into place is the prelude to a two tier police force. Where PCSO’s will take minor crime reports, damage, theft from vehicle etc and todays bobbies will become the fighters of crimes in progress.

While it’s a difficult change to anticipate, I hope this is part of THE PLAN. It sounds like PCs will have work taken from them and we’ll all be less stressed. PCSO’s will be used to their full potential, have long and fulfilling careers in the police force and the streets will be a safer place to be. Brilliant.

I live in optimism that those officers walking our streets are not going to remain the empty gesture that they are now.

Public service paperwork

I have a burglary on my workload. It’s not a priority crime because even though we’re talking about a loss of about £2000 the premises burgled was a community centre, not Mr and Mrs Middle England’s detached house in suburbia. If this had been a burglarly dwelling then CID would have dealt with this and it would have got the attention it deserved. Well, probably. As it stands I’m investigating it, between going to 20 jobs a shift without a meal or a ahem, comfort break.

I did pretty well with this to start with, I got statements, SOCO evidence, interviewed the suspects and stood a reasonable chance of conviction – mostly because my colleagues had caught them in the act, less because of my investigative prowess. I spoke to CPS and got some advice on how to proceed, not the immediate decision to charge that I had expected but not much work needed so I trotted off and over the next couple of weeks got the extra couple of statements they needed to secure a charge before returning to CPS.

I made the mistake of speaking to a different CPS lawyer on my return. Having been told “just get this” I now got “hmm, get this, this, this, this and this”. 9 months later and after several re-bails we’re still going and I’m trying no to get too optimistic as “this, this, this, this and this” have now nearly been done and I’m to return for a decision.

It therefors comes as no surprise to me at all that THESE DOCUMENTS were left on a home office desk for months on end and 25 rapes, 3 attempted rapes, 29 paedophiles, 17 other sex offenders, 5 murders, 9 attempted murders, 13 manslaughter convictions and 29 robberies committed by Britons abroad go unrecorded over here.

I do wonder how many meals breaks and bathroom visits they squeezed in in this time though…

An epiphany

I’ve had one. Well, I think so. Ok, it might just be a really good idea. Well, I’ll let you be the judge.

Put criminals in prison. Do it more often, do it for longer. Provide a real deterrent to crime and a real punishment to those who commit crime. Keep the streets safer for longer even if the real die-hard crooks are determined to re-offend on their release.

It’s briliant. I love it.

OK, it’s no epiphany. It’s barely a great idea. In fact, the Criminal Justice System have gotten there before me:

“The purpose of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) is to deliver justice for all, by convicting and punishing the guilty and helping them to stop offending, while protecting the innocent. It is responsible for detecting crime and bringing it to justice; and carrying out the orders of court, such as collecting fines, and supervising community and custodial punishment. “

Bugger.

Alright so theirs is a bit more wishy washy and flowery and if I may say so, I think my version is more uplifting and inspiring but I can live with it. Why it isn’t happening?  I reckon all the staid and wrinkly magistrates are desperate to show some hardline sentencing but Mr Reid says there’s no room at the inn. Not enough prison space. Not enough money to build new ones. Not enough money to fund expensive prison sentences for inmates.

Then I had an epiphany. A real one. And it involves the French, so it, er, must be good.

As I understand it the French have a three-strikes-and-you’re-out attitude to free legal representation for arrested people. The logic runs that the most unlucky average Joe Public isn’t going to get locked up three times in their lifetime but if they do, we’ll the French will look after their legal needs. The fourth time in and well, lets face it, you must be a crook and you’re not going to be allowed to take the piss anymore (out of the French I mean, us Brits are ok with it)

What a money saver! What a great way to stick it to the persistant crooks. I love it. Vive le France.

Open the prisons! Build me some new ones, I have the answer! Magistrates, lift up your snoozing bespectacled faces, put your crochet to one side and send me some tenants!

In my new regime I’m going to restrict Sky TV in prisons to the basic package too. It’s all in my recent proposal paper in the post to Mr Reid…

Unmarked hi-vis cars

Like any police force we have unmarked cars. I’ve used one this last few days going to the dross I described in my last post. They’re all the same make and model though – it’s pointless. They stand out like a sore thumb – to the people that matter that is. The crooks can see us coming a mile off. I don’t understand how our undercover teams get anything useful done. Drug dealers and their punters starburst quicked than when approached by a marked car with blues and twos on.

Apparently it saves money to get all the cars for the force from the same company though. So that’s nice.

Where did my parking space go?

It’s half past one on a weekday afternoon and I’m just trundling in to work for a late shift. Frustratingly there are no spaces in the car park, but about 70 cars parked in and around the station grounds. I’m working on a different team for the week this week but I pop my head in to see only 6 of my team on duty and ready to go out and fight crime in the town.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people are in the station to work alongside and support these few officers. Agreed, there’s CID and other specialist units that have their own workload but for the crimes that come in here and now, we have 6 bobbies covering a town of about 100,000 people.

Anyway, this isn’t today’s gripe, it’s an everyday one. Today I’m working in one of these other specialist roles, and arguably the most pointless. This team of about 6 people filter through the jobs that the call handlers haven’t managed to get rid of and the 6 bobbies on the team haven’t managed to get to. This is the appointments unit, 6 bobbies all paid regular police salaries to sit in an office and send other people – that’d be me then – to go and deal with the jobs they haven’t managed to get rid of. As you can imagine this is the bottom of the dross barrel – the stuff the specialist teams don’t want and even the beat bobbies who aren’t allowed to turn anything down can’t find the time to get to.

For instance, I’ve attended a job for some stock that was delivered and then stolen, only to find it was never delivered in the first place; nuisance telephone calls received by an unknown person who turns out the were just playing a practical joke and other jobs of this quality.

6 bobbies to send me to junk that nobody cares about, not even those who called the job in, 6 bobbies left on the team supporting 16,000 people each and lots of other departments sat taking up space in the car park outside.

The disproportionality of staff in the job infuriates me. But at half past one on a weekday afternoon, I just want a parking space close to the station so my car doesn’t get broken into.