Power!

One of my fleeting moments of power and influence.

It was 0800hours and a few of us had been called in on a rest day for a pre-planned operation, to dress up in plain clothes and go out looking for wanted offenders.
We had obeyed by turning up in the obligatory "plain clothes copper" uniform of DM booths, jeans, and North Face jacket with buzz cuts for the blokes.

Of course, the robbery squad were too busy to deal with any robbery prisoners. Same for the burglary squad, and the domestic violence unit are always snowed under with their prisoners.
So all three had requested that we didn't go out looking for any of their circulated suspects.

Instead, we were briefed to go out looking for SERCO breaches. Most met officers will know these - when people who have been electronically tagged breach their conditions, SERCO automatically send a fax to the force with the time of the breach, and arrest enquiries are (eventually) made.

The sergeant had called in sick. The DI looked at me - "Area, you're Acting Sergeant for this. I need a return of work on my desk before you head off. Cheers."

I leafed despondently through the dockets - I had one for a breach of curfew by four minutes. Hmmm.
Another one for a breach of curfew that happened on the day of his court date - the suspect had been at home since then, but had obviously got home late from court and therefore technically breached his curfew conditions by being outside the curfew hours. Not unreasonable when court finished at 1700 and curfew started at 1800.
A third breach of curfew by twenty minutes where the suspect's mother had phoned and stated he was ill and in hospital. This has actually happened some weeks ago, and since then the suspect had gone to court for trial and been found not guilty.

In all, we had one docket with a 'real' arrest.
The robbery, burglary, and CID dockets had been sprited away by the guvnor from CID.

I had six officers and three unmarked cars. I quickly came up with a plan: "OK, lets see if we can nick this bugger and be back for breakfast."
Sure enough, the suspect from our one good docket had been evicted, and the house was boarded up.
I sent the other cars out to verbally warn the breaches of curfew, then at 1000 hours with nothing left to do, we RVP'd at the nick for a late breakfast.

With the "return of work" threat ringing in my ears, I decided to be creative, and we went out hunting. Two officers on plain clothes patrol in one of our busier town centres, and the rest of us targeting our hot spots and seeing if we could turn over some gang members.

At 1930 hours we headed back to the nick - loads of searches, a number of drug seizures, two shoplifters, an arrest for PWITS (Posession with intent to supply) and one for a wanted male who had decided to kick one of the unmarked cars in a drunken haze.

I dismissed the PCs with me, and headed up to report our success to the DI.

Next day, I had an email waiting in my inbox (as did the officers with me) asking in the strongest possible terms for an explanation - apparently there was great upset at my decision not to arrest the SERCO breaches I mentioned above. "Verbally warned" was not the result they were looking for. Our self created arrests didn't count as part of their targets for their dockets...

Serves them right for putting me in charge.

White Van Man

People that know me may be surprised, but I was nice to someone the other day.

It was the end of night duty, and I was single crewed driving the streets early in the morning, as it was just getting light. I was on an 'A' road heading towards another nick, and as I pulled off at a junction I saw a white van blatting along the road in the semi-darkness.

I turned round on the junction roundabout and then back onto the dual carriageway in the direction the van was heading in and went after it.

The speed limit on the road was 60mph, and the van was doing ninety odd approaching a set of lights. I coaxed the battered diesel engine to catch up with the van, and as we passed the traffic lights I hit the blues and woke the driver up with a burst of two-tones.

The van pulled straight over, and the driver climbed out and walked to me. As I got out I recognised him straightaway. I'd arrested him a couple of years beforehand on a warrant, and remembered he had needles in all his pockets at the time. If I do traffic stops on people I usually get them in the car in the back seat to keep them contained and to try and protect us from passing traffic - with junkies I'm not so keen on this idea.

He (I'll call him Aaron) apologised straight away for his speed, as I was searching him. I did checks, and he actually had an actual full driving licence. Aaron explained he had a job as a courier, hence the van (with insurance) and driving licence.
He told me that in fact he was clean now. I've heard this before from drug addicts, and funnily enough I often suspect a mistruth. Aaron obviously knew this, and pulled up his sleeves to show a lack of needle marks. When I had nicked him he had a very long record of drugs, theft and Failing to Appear offences, and was expecting a child. I reminded him of this, and he laughed.
"Truth is mate, that's what's sorted me out. There's only so long you can live like a wanker."

Aaron hadn't come to the notice of the police since the birth, he'd got his driving licence in the same month, and had been working agency for courier companies since then. He looked knackered, but as I talked to him I realised that the grey face had more colour than it used to, and he was amazingly lucid. He'd had a second child, and fathering duties plus early mornings were obviously catching up with him, but I actually believed him about the drugs.

I knew then that Aaron would be getting a verbal warning - he was late to work after sitting up with a crying ill baby, not through injecting himself with gear. I knew that he couldn't afford to lose his licence as he'd probably lose his job, and to be honest I was impressed.

Afterwards I did some digging, and according to the Drug Intervention Programme team, Aaron really has gone clean. No relapses, paid off his fines, and working six days a week twelve hours a day to support his new family and clear his debts.

Aaron is one of the few examples of someone actually, truly changing, and I respect him for that. I'm glad I stopped him, it cheered me up and I know some officers would have done him for the traffic offence.

I've seen him a couple of times since then at about the same time in the morning, as it's a usual haunt of mine, and he's been doing a steady 59mph.

Something postive for once!

Hmmm

After working seventeen days straight, I usually look to the outside world to give me occasional bursts of sanity. THIS and THIS surprised me, and made me wonder if the BBC was on a wind up.

I know Stop and Search is a risky topic, but Police Paperwork is a constant issue and this appears to be a "Politicians in Talking Common Sense Shocker."

The problem is of course, if the forms are scrapped, how can we be measured on things we do? Our many and myriad departments demand a certain number of stop and search forms from each officer to prove that he or she is working, how will they justify the existence of us Police Officers now?

In fact, there are people within my division paid full time to re type the details of the stop and searches on to a database. And others paid to compile the statistics that we create through them. And others paid to dip sample them, and present them to the senior management team.

This could be fatal. This could well be a move that will both reduce beaurocracy AND save money.

Surely someone in Government will scupper this plan, before wide spread common sense breaks out?


On another note, sorry for the gap in posting, I have no doubt that it has not effected most of you, but if it was distressing a counselling service is available. Please write to my duties office and tell them I need more time off.