Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Family Connections

Published on March 31, 2008 in media. Closed

written by Sergeant Simon from Sergeant Simon

I happened to browse over someone's shoulder today (well, I wouldn't buy it myself) an article in the epitome of unbiased reporting, The Sun. I noticed this article.

Some bloke is given eight points on his licence for driving like a tool at 130mph plus.

Not normally a cause for a story, there must be dozens of people going through the courts on a daily basis on speeding cases that never get a sniff at the Sun's editorial desk.

Yet this is news. Why? Because he's an ex-cop's son. Not even a serving officer. In fact, he's a PCSO. But that isn't the blaring headline.

The whole article has a somewhat unsubtle bias, and it is clear to me the person writing the article either believes, or wants you to believe, he only got this lenient sentence on the basis of him being an ex-cops son.

Sure enough, the first commenter "makes" the connection, saying how we all look after our own.

This whole article annoyed me because of the snidey anti-police connection made when there frankly is none.

For what it's worth, he should have been banned. £200 fine driving a V6 Alfa Romeo? He's got more cash than that. A non-police friend of mine, no previous motoring offences, got that fine (and the rest!), plus a 6 month ban for 105mph on a motorway.

It should be the judge that gets the criticism here. Not making unsubtle hints thats its only because his old man used to be a policeman that he got off lightly.

Investigative journalism at its finest.

The original post can be found http://policelockerroom.blogspot.com/2008/03/family-connections.html

That dreaded knock…

Published on March 28, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

written by bawpc from WPC In the making

It was 23:31 when my finger reached the bell...a few seconds later I tried once more. It had to be done...there was no way out of this.

Eventually the door opened.

Sometime later I found myself in their living room and saying the dreaded words "Unfortunately I have some bad news to give you. I'm afraid there's been a fatal accident in which your daughter was involved." I could hear my voice shaking at every other word that I said and knew that I had to find a way to control myself.
The worst was yet to come, giving the details that could be given and answering the the questions that could be answered. Eventually I managed to get some sort of control over my emotions and was able to give them the information they requested.
They were calm and controlled...mum did most of the talking and dad just sat there with a look on his face that I'm still trying to work out. Was it pain? Resentment? Guilt? I will never know...

We stand up and decide it was time to leave and as we do so the mum says "She has two children, you know? What is gonna happen with them?" Myself and my tutor just stood still in the middle of the hallway, I felt a lump in my throat and noticed that my tutor's shoulders dropped a little. "I'm so very sorry" was the only thing I could come up with, but it seemed to be enough. We left the house and drove the 60 something miles back to London in silence.

As I get home and close my front door I sit on the floor, in full uniform, and just cry. I cry for the family who just lost a loved one, I cry for the tragic way it happened, I cry for the way they had to be informed, I cry for the loved ones I have lost in the past and I cry for everything else that has upset me in the recent weeks. All of a sudden I have become an emotional mess.

She was a drug addict, an alcoholic and a thief but she was also a mother of two, 29 years old, to be 30 in a few days, a daughter and sister and most importantly a human being but she was her own worst enemy.

I have not been properly trained to do this and I wasn't prepared for it but you just take it on the chin and move on...hopefully tonight I'll be able to forget the picture of her on the tracks and of everything else that happened on Thursday night! Hopefully I will be better prepared for when it happens again...because it will, it's just a matter of time!

The original post can be found http://bawpc.blogspot.com/2008/03/that-dreaded-knock.html

Bring back Gene Hunt

Published on March 28, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

written by PCFrankyFact from PC Franky Fact. His views on policing are lacking in tact.

With all the kerfuffle going on over on the Guvs site about Ali doodah and Twining reminding everyone that he's black, I thought I'd mention something far more important.

Ashes to ashes has finished and won't be back till next year!

Aaaarrrgh!!!!!

I can't be doing without the Gene Genie for a whole year! He's the best TV cop ever. Better than Burnside and Regan!

Come on BBC. You've got a top show and you only give us 6 to 8 weeks of quality but year round tosh like Casualty!

Sort it out or you'll have a face like a baboons arse with a tash on it.

Fire up the Quattro Raymondo, me oops are going colder than a polar bears balls.

The original post can be found http://pcfrankyfact.blogspot.com/2008/03/bring-back-gene-hunt.html

Unbreakable?

Published on March 28, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

written by Officer Dibble from Tales from the Metropolis

I do really start to despair as to the general lack of fibre of our 'customers'
Some of the nonsense they report as crime to police has to be seen to be believed.
Incapable of sorting their own lives out or having some sense of 'c'est la vie' they turn to the police.The Harassment Act for instance has to one of the most abused pieces of legislation going. I spent another recent chunk of my shift giving advice on someone who was screaming about a racial incident. Turns out that this individual had had a spat with someone and although no evenly remotely racial thing was said. they insisted they could tell because it was in their 'tone of voice'.

On the last set of Lates there was so much crap on the 'box'(police parlance for the computer at which we spend so much of our time) that I had to make a cup of tea and wander outside of the nick.This was firstly to get a breath of fresh air and secondly to check our traditional blue lamp was still in place and had not been replaced by some joker with a sign saying 'Reporting centre for the socially inadequate'

There's not much in the other 'box' when I get home either to cheer me up.
The last set of 'Ashes to Ashes' went out last night and I have to wait another year before I get another wave of nostalgia from the 'Gene genie'.

There was a good scene in last nights episode when DCI Hunt went 'into one' at Lord Scarman. Basically he was saying that despite whatever the government or the anguished ranks of the liberal elite try to do to us we would be unbreakable.

Stirring words but I wonder in this day and age are we? This Government is certainly trying to finish the job.

I recall ages ago, in my first few years in, it had been a particularly heavy snowfall and only myself, another PC and a skipper had managed to make it in for the 6am Early's.The skipper looked at us as we had our first cuppa and sorted our postings out. He said 'Do you know what lads, if at least one PC turns up for the start of the shift, no matter what,the job will eventually get done.He nodded up to the next floor where the senior management lived.....'it doesn't really matter whether they turn up or not'

I thought they were wise words then and they are wise words now. Unbreakable still? I'd like to think so.

The original post can be found http://officerdibble01.blogspot.com/2008/03/unbreakable.html

Double Standards

Published on March 28, 2008 in job politics and politics. Closed

written by Sergeant Simon from Sergeant Simon

Want proof that setting targets is a helpful method of improving performance? Ask the senior NHS man who's just been sent down for a year for trying to make his results meet government targets.

Okay so he falsified some documents to fiddle the figures, but two questions I have:

1) Is that really a million miles different to the crime classification games the police play to make certain crime types appear not as prevalent as they really are? The over emphasis on sanctioned detections, where a 5 pound shoplift carries the same statistical weight as a murder or rape?

2) How come this bloke, on a first conviction, without any personal gain or injury to any other person, gets sent down for a year, whilst violent drunks, car thieves and burglars get (barely) supervised community orders?

All of this, of course, whilst the government themselves are desperately trying to not make themselves accountable, and have all their generous expenses claims kept secret from the people who fund them.

The original post can be found http://policelockerroom.blogspot.com/2008/03/double-standards.html

John Doe

Published on March 25, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

written by Gazza from Gazzateer

I spent 14 hours on my last 8 hour shift dealing with the unexpected. Stumbling onto a nightmare like an errant burglar tripping over the family dog. Unsuspecting, whimpering and snarling, the beast awoken from its sentinel guard over a sanctuary few of us ever want to broach.

A seemingly minor call turning and biting, ripping into the flesh of my personal psyche like no other has done before in my brief time as a cop. And after, so much after, leaving me drained and hollow. Sleepwalking like the beast we had awakened.

No training really prepares you for dealing with “Offenders”. Nothing, especially when the evidence is staring you right in the face, can force you to accept the repellant truth of what sits in front of you in the interview room.

Control, during our brief (in the grand scale of things) encounter, is a common bond that we share. But the bond stops at that. His control is steeped in maintaining the lies he is manufacturing. Mine lies with the restraint in not reaching across the table and ripping out his windpipe.

Here lies (sic) before me is the antithesis of who I am, or purport to be. Father, husband, protector. He is guided by morals that are so far removed from my own that I have a great difficulty in accepting that a person can really descend to the nadir of such immorality.

But, I digress. Again I have to accept the unacceptable. The restraint is what separates us. The fact that I wholly believe in the course of Law and Justice. And that course will run. Without it, would I be as accountable? I do my job, to the best of my abilities. Realising how important it has suddenly become. All the stuff before, all the other cases, calls, dealings, arrests, detentions, the whole bloody shebang falls by the wayside. This, for once, takes dominion.

Driving home that night, as always, gave me chance to reflect. But I am still trying to sort out what happened. What (or who) I, and my colleague, actually dealt with. Trying, desperately, to keep my mind focused on the road whilst simultaneously clearing the dreaded distortion. Acceptances of certain truths are hard to come by and I could not help but feel somewhat tainted by the day’s events. This one will not be the last and that makes me fearful.

A scene replays in my head. Whether this is wholly relevant to what I have witnessed or not, is up to you, dear reader. It is one of many. If you have never watched Seven, go away and buy/rent the movie now……

David Mills: Wait, I thought all you did was kill innocent people.

John Doe: Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? An obese man... a disgusting man who could barely stand up; a man who if you saw him on the street, you'd point him out to your friends so that they could join you in mocking him; a man, who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn't be able to finish your meal. After him, I picked the lawyer and I know you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that he could muster to keeping murderers and rapists on the streets!

David Mills: Murderers?

John Doe: A woman...

David Mills: Murderers, John, like yourself?

John Doe: [interrupts] A woman... so ugly on the inside she couldn't bear to go on living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer, a drug dealing pederast, actually! And let's not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed... forever.

The original post can be found http://gazzateer.blogspot.com/2008/03/john-doe.html

Show me the…..

Published on March 24, 2008 in pay and politics. Closed

written by Sergeant Simon from Sergeant Simon

Well, a couple of days a long way from the grey walls of Suburbiaville, where by some terrible mistake of planning I forgot to take the phone, and I'm feeling a bit better about actually going to work.

It's surprising (read: not at all) to find that after a bank holiday weekend the email inbox barely registering anything new at all. As crime doesn't happen on bank holidays, not least in offices within police stations, there has been nobody in to send force wide emails on minute (but god help you if you don't implement it) changes in policy, or the unneccessarily detailed breakdown of the last so many hours crime patterns. I shall wait for the deluge upon my next non-bank holiday login.

Before I get criticised for criticising people not working the bank holiday- I know, I wasn't there for all of it either, but it was only my second weekend off this year that just so happened to be a bank holiday weekend. I did get calls to ask me to work various days within it but I balanced it up and thought the ire of the duties office was a better bet than the wrath of the wife.

Anyhoo one thing has caught my eye. Ever eager to clamp down on expenditure on every public sector (excepting, of course, within their own unaudited, mileage-claiming, second home owning, self-pay-rising, family employing walls) the government has put forward the suggestion that PC's and Sergeants should have overtime payments abolished in favour of a higher basic salary.
The details are in the most recent Police Review, for those who are able to log in.

I can hear Inspector Gadget's hollow laughter already. Inspectors and above forfeited their right to overtime back in 1996 for a higher basic salary.

Now, this higher basic wage would be a fantastic idea for anyone office based. An extra 3 grand a year for doing precisely nothing more. For muppets like me still flogging out rotating shift patterns and the unpredictability that response policing inevitably generates, we'll probably lose out. There's been at least two or three occasions this year already where circumstances have dictated I have had to stay at work long enough to work into a rest day. Things like this aren't planned, and are generally actually an inconvenience, but at least the following month when you've forgotten all about the extra tiredness and rapidly rearranged childcare stuff there's an extra couple hundred quid to play with.

I don't want to see overtime scrapped in favour of a higher basic rate. I'm no overtime bandit unlike some other safeguard-aholics I work with, but I still wouldn't want it on principle. However, it worries me that if it went to a vote, there's a lot of Pc's and skippers working in office based units, with no intention of being in a situation where they could end up being late home, who would vote yes if it came to it.

I think policing would suffer, too. Don't pay the overtime and there's a real risk that an hour before the shift end, every car is going to be parked up in the back yard with the log books shelved. At least now, if you're late off, there's extra money to be had off it. Be late off with no recompense at all, and especially if your finishing on time colleagues will get exactly the same cash, then there will be a real motivational issue. Coppers generally are decent people who want to help the people who call 999, but we're not complete fools and we all have bills to pay- and if we get the same money for whenever you finish what's the point in taking the last minute shoplifter that'll make you 4hrs late home.

But of course, McNumpty et al don't care about this, they only see the pound signs, and if they think they'll go down, then it'll be worth it whatever the price, if you catch the irony.

The original post can be found http://policelockerroom.blogspot.com/2008/03/show-me.html

Zer vill be no toasters!!!

Published on March 24, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

written by PCFrankyFact from PC Franky Fact. His views on policing are lacking in tact.


Attention please.
A Northern police force in which I serve has decided in its infinite wisdom that toasters are a dangerous fire risk.
In a covert overnight swoop all toasters have been removed from offices and KITCHENS!
They have been confiscated and are currently impounded at an undisclosed secure location.
An immediate appeal was lodged by officers and staff in protest at no longer being able to partake of toasted teacakes and the like.
However, the ACC of said force said "I'm chair of the health and safety committee and the decision stands. They're dangerous pieces of equipment and pose a potential fire risk so you can't have em back!"
Apparently we've been told to use the grill inside the oven.
Wait a cotton picking minute....
Oven!!!
They get quite hot don't they....?
SHHH!!!
I think the committee heard that.
Next week Ovengate!

The original post can be found http://pcfrankyfact.blogspot.com/2008/03/zer-vill-be-no-toasters.html

Nobody’s Fault But Mine.

Published on March 21, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

written by CSI:UK from CSI:UK


I was examining a Builder's van the other day. I hate Builder's vans, they are naturally dirty dusty things and full of crap, not the greatest environment for fingerprints to thrive in and almost always wind up as a 'negative result'. In addition to this the owner refused to have it recovered to the safety and shelter of one of our secured garages, it was raining and he expected yours truly to examine it on the roadside.

Now usually I would refuse under grounds of insufficient preservation of the vehicle and the Health and Safety aspect of examining a vehicle on the roadside, but my heart isn't made of stone, I understand that this van is integral to the victim's business and any unnecessary delay in using it could cost him money.

I am also aware that this is a lost cause given the factors involved:- The van was stolen with keys in the ignition, it's filthy, it had since been driven to it's current location and searched though by the victim and it had initially been taken a whole half a mile down the road before the offenders gave up for whatever reason. So I give it as thorough an examination as I can considering the circumstances and alas there is nothing for us.

Of course this now becomes my fault, I have not, according to the victim, done my job properly. Apparently there are lots of areas I have not examined, the steering wheel the outside surface of the window (which are soaking wet!), the handbrake and all manner of areas unsuitable for me to examine. I try my best to explain why there is no point looking at those areas and how there is no physical way I can retrieve fingerprints, but this is just met with a roll of the eyes, as if I am just making excuses not to do my job properly.

So then it's the Police's fault for not having an officer in the street corner at the exact time it was stolen! At no point does he take responsibility for leaving his van unattended, insecure with the keys in the ignition, claiming he should be able to (in an ideal world!) or that he has refused the chance to have the job done properly and give us an outside chance of a result. I was gobsmacked, I explain to him in no uncertain terms that had he secured his vehicle properly we wouldn't be having this discussion, but he has already formed his own opinion.

When will people learn that they are just as responsible for the security and safety of their own property as those that are paid to protect it and prevent it's loss. We do not live in a perfect world and sods law dictates that the only time we leave our valuables vulnerable there will be an opportunist little sod who will be there to relieve you of such possessions.

The original post can be found http://csiuk.blogspot.com/2008/03/nobodys-fault-but-mine.html

I’m still around…

Published on March 21, 2008 in Uncategorized. Closed

written by bawpc from WPC In the making

Just a quick update...

* the power adaptor for my laptop has broken.
* until Dell decides to send me the new one I'm relying on the battery and on my housemates lending me theirs.
* we finished our university training yesterday
* and went to the pub at 3pm, I got home just after 5 this morning...my head hurts.
* I found out where I'm going to be based
* and until our station is up and running I'm working out of the local Met nick...TUPC, watch out!
* I still have one more essay to do
* but I don't care because I'm just happy that it's over.

I'll be back when Dell pulls the finger out :-D, in the meantime stay safe!

The original post can be found http://bawpc.blogspot.com/2008/03/im-still-around.html