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.

Luton et Al

PC Pinkstone has also posted on this, as a Luton lad he feels "disappointed."

I'm as "disappointed" as anyone. But it also neatly answers a question that most coppers get asked on a semi-regular basis: "What's the worst thing you've dealt with?"

I'd say THIS kind of job is definitely up there.

Dead people, bloodied fights, violence - they are not pleasant but they are what you joined to do. Protecting people like these protestors against members of the public who are probably feeling emotions similar to you is frankly not what I joined to do.

I personally have huge respect for the armed forces of this country. The Police as a whole has a good relationship with the forces, and many many coppers are ex-services.
To have to protect a sickening group like the one shown in the video above is what is difficult about the job.

I've watched it a few times now, and my eye keeps getting drawn to an elderly man in a grey anorak and pie hat who appears to challenge the protestors. I appreciate I'm stereotyping here, but he doesn't look like the type for violence. Instead, he looks a lot like someone's Grandfather who is so upset and angered by what he sees he feels he has to react.










Rock and a hard place for the coppers there. Whilst on duty I've been to military parades, rememberance dos and funerals of local soldiers killed on multiple occasions, and the pride at those events clashes completely with the shameful actions of the protestors in Luton.

Knife Crime

This post will probably make me unpopular with the public and the Police equally, but knife crime is in the news so much at the moment it seems daft to leave it alone.

There has recently been a 75 strong anti-knife crime unit set up by the Met to help out, and good luck to them. I do have to wonder where the seventy five officers came from though, and whether another desperately short team is now even more desperate.

On our response teams, we can also prevent knife crime. Until our numbers were so sorely depleted, we used to put out Q-cars, a plainclothes unmarked car, every night duty and some day shifts. I haven't seen one put out by our team in months.
CID and the Robbery Squad also used to go out hunting, but their hours and staff have been reduced to the point where CID especially are struggling to keep up with their workload that is already on their plate when they come in. Sometimes our night duty CID cover is one lone officer, and I don't expect him to start scouring the street for knife carrying feral gangs alone.

We struggle on our response team to put out the numbers and get to the calls, as I have talked about recently. This means that proactive patrolling, although the most enjoyable part of policing, is rarely if ever done.

But we know where the knives are. Any street copper who has worked years in the same area knows where the gangs hang out, where the knives are carried, and who regularly carries them.

Although this is unfashionable, some officers are scared. Not all of us, all the time - but scared we sometimes are.
When we approach these groups, there can be more of them in one place than every single officer in the division. And some, if not most of those officers will of course be dealing with other things. So we know that if it comes down to a real violent situation, in the short term we will lose.
We still approach them, and still get assaulted of course, but it does put you in a thoughtful mind sometimes. Sometimes the control room will not even let you approach groups if you put up you're going to go after them.
We're scared of complaints - we're told we're harassing people. This we are, but that is because, as I said, we know where these knives are - but turn up in a marked Police vehicle with officers in uniform, and most people will have plenty of time to ditch or hide their weapons before our approach.
Often we use stop search as a deterrent, as a nuisance rather than a finding exercise.

When we get lucky, and get someone who is armed and arrest them, we hit the next problem. There will be no handover team if it is weekend, evening, or night (and the handover teams are so busy that often they can't take the jobs on during the day).
So that is probably you and another officer off the road for the rest of the shift. Plus any further enquiries you many need to make before the court case. I am assuming they are charged.

This means that whilst you are sat inside dealing with your body, you cannot deal with the constant, frantic calls that are being put out. Knife fights, serious assaults, domestics, serious car accidents, pub fights, sudden deaths... all are coming out over the radio and you can not assist with any of them.
Neither can your colleagues. They are either tucked up with arrests of their own, or already at or on the way to calls. There are ALWAYs calls outstanding, some hours old.

Don't misunderstand me - my colleagues and I want to arrest people carrying weapons. We want to drag self created arrests in, and do more than just respond to calls. But we don't have the time and resources, and until a more efficient way of dealing with arrests is put into place, this is not going to change.

Like most Police bloggers, I don't think we need more police officers per se. What we need is those officers out on the streets, providing a visible presence, and getting in the way of the persistant criminals. And we need to be helped to do our jobs, rather than constantly hindered in the execution of our duty.

If that happens, then simple - knife crime, and many other types of crime, will fall.


EDIT - the link to the news story where the photo above came from is here. It is a scary set of photos, showing incredibly brave, unarmed officers dealing with an armed, angry, dangerous individual with mental health problems.

Units To My Location

No, I’m not taking the piss out of you.
Yes, I can arrest you.
No, I don’t need a warrant.
Really, I can arrest you.
No, you don’t need to take your shoes off. Really.
Ok, let me rephrase that. DON’T take your shoes off.
Honestly – oh, right. Well, put them back on again. The socks stay on. THE SOCKS STAY ON!

Oh for the love of God. Take your feet away from me. I really don’t want to search there.
No, your shirt can stay on. I don’t care. Tattoos don’t interest me. Not even that one. Or that one. Who is Cindy anyway? Ah, sorry to hear that.

Right, now keep still. I mean it, don’t mess around here. You don’t want to be cuffed? Fine, so the police car is behind you, why don’t you climb in and I’ll chauffeur you to the Police station?

No, that is not your right. Or that. I hate to tell you, COPS may be good to watch, but it isn’t filmed here. It’s filmed in The States.
No, the United States... you know, America.
What do you mean, “so?” Well, they have different laws – look, it doesn’t matter why I stopped you. You’re drunk. And you’re wanted. And those tablets are NOT aspirin.

Do I have anything better to do? Well, yes, I could be spending this time in a hot tub with a beautiful blonde girl outside a villa by the sea in the Med, with a bottle of champagne cooling nearby. Failing that, YOU are my project for this evening.

No, not in that way. Perhaps that was the wrong choice of words.

Yes, that’s true, I’d have to get the blonde girl first. And the rest of it.
No, that’s very kind, but I’d prefer to try and find a girl to spend my time with myself.

...The things you say and do when you’ve stopped a car whilst single crewed and are waiting desperately for back up to arrive to help you deal with the four, known, violent occupants.

Or is it just me?