Sheepdogs & Wolves

ENDEX

2009-06-17T20:59:00.003+01:00

When I started writing this blog it was never meant to be more than a personal catharsis, in that aim I think it succeeded as I've managed to get a few things off my chest which some of you guys have read and commented on. I haven't posted much over the last 6 months due to work, I've been getting a lot more into stuff I can't talk about and have hardly worked on team, and public order duties have lost all appeal. They say a change is as good as a rest and I'm liking how things are going even if it has meant I've been absolutely knackered, it just means I get to enjoy doing the family stuff and enjoying my rest days all the more.

Due to a combination of my work role changing, getting lots of cancelled rest days, and now more importantly because of the Times, I'm going to be calling it a day. I won't be posting anything new on here for the foreseeable future.

The Times decided for whatever reason to expose NightJack's real identity. After a written warning, the deletion of his blog and now a lost case in the high court, NJ has been well and truly burned by the media and I've no doubt his career prospects are going to be extremely limited for some time, and I have no intention of putting myself on offer for that one now that a judge has ruled on it. Personally I hope the ruling on anonymity in a public forum comes back to bite them in the arse with regard to anonymous sources, especially as the law of unintended consequences seems to favour anything to do with the Police or media.

For the 100k or so site hits in a the last year I'd like to say thanks for your support again, I'll probably speak to some of you on some of the other blogs but in the meantime, I'm out.

MCM

Point Number Eight

2009-06-05T02:22:00.005+01:00

Back in January I wrote this post about the appointment of our new boss. In the list of things I very much doubt we'd get (and thus far we haven't) was number eight's "specific targeting and extreme harassment of each divisions top 50 criminals until they are locked away, move out of London, or kill themselves." Now, the last bit may seem harsh to some people, but as I and all of my colleagues know how much pain and misery someone would have to have caused over a number of years to get into the top set of criminals for a given area, few of us would shed a tear if they were to turn up swollen and bloated after a couple of days at the bottom of the Thames.

When I was a probationer in my old force we had a new divisional commander who moved to us from a neighbouring force, and at one of his meet and greet sessions he outlined his strategies for winding a few of the local criminal necks in. Aside from more 'encouragement' for the local CPS prosecutors to actually work at putting some of them to court for the right offences (and not busting the offence down to get an easy guilty plea) he wanted us to harass our top twenty or so criminals. By harass he meant executing arrest warrants at the most inconvenient times possible like Christmas or their birthday, searching them when and where possible - but especially in public - if there was even the slightest grounds, and getting in touch with all known members of their family to trace them if they were named as suspects in a crime allegation.

The most encouraging bit was that in ordering us to assertively target people he knew that we'd be subject to complaints from the suspects as well as family members, and possibly members of the public. "That's my problem, not yours" he said "and besides, if they are complaining, then it's working"

This type of Policing is extremely labour intensive, it's not just a case of putting one or two officers on the suspect, you need dozens to get proper 24 hour cover for just one person. Overt surveillance is not as difficult as covert as you need many more, but you still need resources to put into it and you have to sustain pressure for some time before you actually see any effect, but as Essex Police have shown the time and effort IS worth it. By targeting known burglars and basically making their lives a misery for a change, they have drastically reduced the number of residential burglaries compared to the year before.

As a preventative measure - in lieu of burglars actually getting any meaningful prison sentences - harassing them works. They're not going to be able or willing to go out in the dead of night and screw someone's house or garage over if they know that outside their own house are a couple of Police officers ready to follow them. Their thieving burglar mates aren't going to want to hang around them, and other people will know that they are a criminal if they constantly see them walking down the street with a couple of Police officers a couple of steps behind.

There are inevitably going to be ECHR issues and some could (and probably will) argue that we are breaching their right to privacy, free assembly, family life etc but to be honest I don't care about that. My personal belief is that if you breach someone else's human rights by committing crime against them, then your protection under the human rights act should be forfeit.

There is also the cost factor involved and eventually justifying that cost. If we harass our most prolific criminals enough then they will either stop committing crime or move out of the area. This drop in crime is great for you and me, but not so great for those holding the purse strings. How can you justify spending a fortune on a crime reduction tactic when there is no crime to speak of? That paradox of proactive policing is one that the government have failed to grasp for so long, and it's the main reason for the removal of beat officers - a Police officer walking around is going to reduce both crime and the fear of crime but how do you measure prevention?

Annoyingly we can't say "well Billy burglar used to commit 1 burglary a day, so over the last year we've prevented 365 burglaries" because someone will just say "prove it" and we can't.

The only way is to look at what happened in the previous year, but if you are that successful and continue to reduce crime there comes a point where there is no crime year on year and someone is going to suggest that you don't need the money to continue policing that way any more. Harassing criminals, getting in their faces, ruining their weekends or parties and generally making their lives a misery is a proven method of reducing crime, not only from them but from other people who see what will happen to them if they get on the list. How about a bit of consequence to their actions for once?

Metcountymounty.

PS, I will be revisiting the other points on that list but as Essex have proven the point so well I thought it only right to acknowledge it!

Stuff

2009-06-02T21:29:00.006+01:00

So, today has been another interesting day in the world of policing and general politics. It's taken long enough, but finally the evil wicked bitch - sorry, witch - of the east has decided to quit. Not because she has admitted that she has been the worst, most hostile , most anti-Police and generally incompetent Home Secretary in recent memory, but because she got caught milking the taxpayer (me and you) for money by calling a spare room in her sisters house "her main home" and the house where her family lives as a second house. That, and she claimed for some porn so her husband could knock one out a couple of times. I can't really blame him because his wife is pig ugly, but there is enough free porn on the internet if that's your thing, and there's considerably less chance of getting humiliated by a curious and diligent reporter.

I wonder if he was thinking the same as me? "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out..."

On that last point about reporters, I have said many times that I'm no fan of the main stream press but I must admit that I think they have done rather well of late, what with exposing parliament for the hive of vulturous swine that they are, and the Met hierarchy for the S.44 stop searching debacle. If ever there was proof that we are no where near a Police state, the fact that we have a free and independent press proves that, no matter what the Daily Wail and their numerous misguided armchair experts suggest. I've never been an advocate of stopping and searching people who are soooo not a terrorist (as I discussed in this post) just because someone in SO15 thinks it's a valid tactic, and if I used any S.44 ops I've been on to target criminals instead then so be it. You can accuse me of being complicit by carrying out lawful orders and searching people at choke points, but as I've always tried to specifically target people who fit my own personal profile of "scroaty bastard" I make no apologies for making crime arrests during counter-terrorism stop searches, of which I have had many.

Now on to separate matters. A combination of work and FANTASTIC sunshine has made me inadvertently miss a rather large milestone on this blog - 100k site hits.

THANK YOU!!

The old stat counter at the top gives me a bit more than just the number of hits the page gets, I get lots of other info such as what countries my visitors come from, what sites direct them here and who links to me etc. Aside from every country on the European continent I've had visits from all over North America and most of Australasia too which is rather nice. I've had links from left and right wing sites, news sites, Police sites, random blogs and even a World of WarCraft forum, which is odd, but again, Thanks!

I know I haven't had many posts on recently but as most followers know the world of response policing, public order and other stuff I can't talk about has been the cause of many a cancelled rest day as well as the occasional splat of overtime, and when I haven't been at work I've been trying to make as much Vitamin D as I can!!

We've been absolutely hammered for aid recently which has lead to teams being left unjustifiably and dangerously short. Thanks in no small part to the Tamil protests (or Op Mirandy as my various overtime sheets have known it) we've had loads of people abstracted from teams just because they proved at the very beginning that they could actually get a few thousand people on site in next to no time (unlike swampy) which has caused a massive headache - and bill - for policing it.

Contrary to popular belief we don't have huge reserves of public order teams on duty "just in case" and aside from the TSG units on Commisioners reserve (a few PSU's to provide emergency cover for public order, backing up response or life threatening/large scale incidents) if something kicks off our resilience is tested to the full as we have to scratch around for anyone currently on duty to don kit and make their way there. If you have all your units on all the time you'll have no one left within 24 hours as we're not robots and need breaks and sleep, so trying to plan for appropriate resources has been an absolute nightmare for the public order branch and relevant duties offices. It's also cost a fortune to the tune of over £8 million, and that was a couple of weeks ago.

I've no doubt that a huge part of the hesitation to kick them out of the square has been fall out from G20 (and yes, officers HAVE refused to use force to move people because of the threat of media witch hunts and suspensions even though it's EXACTLY what we are trained for) and the threat of their community rallying to swamp Westminster with tens of thousands of people in a very short period of time. If anything it shows that a determined group of people can bring central London to a standstill in protest with very little actual violence. Surely another sign that we aren't as much of a Police state as some think?

I will try and get some more posts up soon but to be honest if the sun stays as it is (thanks to El Nino no doubt) then I'll be out there in the garden, on the beach or on the water like everyone else when I'm not wearing a polyester shirt with body armour or a couple of stone's worth of riot kit. In the mean time, thanks again for visiting, thanks for the comments and thanks for the support when some jobs have made me question why I actually do it, and others why I should carry on doing it.

Now, get off the bloody computer and go and get some sun while you can!!

Metcountymounty.

Peaceful Protest..... yeah... of course it was.....

2009-05-04T23:04:00.005+01:00

At the Mayday! demo organised predominantly by SmashEDO around 1000 (police estimates are usually lower and organisers usually much higher) turned up for a supposed peaceful street carnival. Because of the massive amount of negative press surrounding the G20 and police tactics, a more low key and standoff approach seems to have been adopted in deference to containing from the outset.

It didn't work, and it kicked off.

There were probably over 7000 people at the G20 on the 1st, I really have to ask myself what would have happened if we had just left them all to it, considering only around 1000 appear to have got the initiative in Brighton. Frankly, considering the huge lack of support we received from our bosses, numerous politicians and the majority of commentators in all the mainstream press, I think we should have just left them to it and I definitely think we should at the next big one, if only to prove a point. The lack of assertive action in containing a crowd that had violent intent has made the Op Commanders in Brighton look likes dicks and has caused the guys and girls on the ground to get more grief and suffer attack for the SMT's fear of looking bad on youtube and on Newsnight.

If you were one of the officers there then let me know how you think it went compared to G20 as I know there were a lot of teams from all over the place with us at Bank, so the comparison would be nice, especially so close to the last one.

There hasn't been much coverage on the news yet, but here's a couple of snippets about today's festivities down in sunny Brighton.

Fitwatch -

FIT teams have been forced to retreat from the Smasho EDO/ITT demo in Brighton. Due to a large number of participants engaging in Fitwatch tactics, they are not able to get any footage. People have physically pushed, shoved and kicked them out of the demo. A mobile CCTV van was blocked and forced to drive away. Two FIT officers trying to stop someone from doing graffiti were pushed away.This shows what can happen when we collectively resist our oppression. We no longer have to be passive victims to this policing - we can fight back and we can shut them down.

Congratulations to all those involved in Brighton and good luck for the rest of the day.

Indymedia -

After meeting by the Palace Pier, the protest moved through the centre of Brighton cheering and chanting. Four young anarchists climbed to the top of the Barclays building, where they hung a banner reading “Arms Dealers Out Of Brighton’. Barclays is notorious for being one of the banks most complicit in the international arms trade. The people responsible for the banner were welcomed into the crowd as heroes, and avoided arrest. After passing peacefully past the Clock tower, down Queens Road and through North Laine, the protest clashed with police on London Road.

A heavy police presence blocked part of the road outside McDonalds, and minor scuffles quickly escalated as mounted and riot police forced through crowds to protect the building. A smoke-bomb lit by protesters, combined with a push forward from mounted police, frightened shoppers and nearly split the protest in two.

From then on, the protest became a game of cat-and-mouse - although it was sometimes hard to tell who was the cat and who the mouse. Protesters managed to force back mounted police several times, while police hastily re-grouped around the protest as it moved into residential districts and through Preston Park. However, neither protesters nor police seemed to have a plan as such, and after much walking and a few minor scuffles - including the arrest of one man by riot police - the protest moved back into the town centre. On the seafront, for the first time in the day the police attempted to ‘kettle’ protesters by surrounding them on all sides.

However, protesters quickly skirted down onto the beach and back onto the road behind police lines. The protest moved on peacefully and, after more skirting through narrow lanes and moving around police lines, settled on the grass outside St. Peter’s Church to dance and relax.

Daily Mail -

A May Day protest descended into violence today as anti-war demonstrators clashed with police in Brighton, where thousands of visitors had flocked to enjoy the bank holiday.
Three police officers were injured after scuffles with mask-wearing activists who organised a march through the city's streets. One man was arrested.
At one point activists climbed up scaffolding onto the roof of a Barclays bank branch and unfurled a banner as part of the protest against an arms factory in the city. Graffiti was scrawled on windows and paint bombs were pelted at buildings marked out on an ‘anti-militarist’ map that included more than 30 banks and businesses.
The American Express building, police stations and several McDonald's restaurants were targeted.

Protesters chanted 'Whose streets? Our streets' as they marched through the city, while police officers on horseback cleared the way ahead of them.
Organisers had instructed protesters to wear red, but many wore black with masks covering their faces, which they said was a stand against the country's surveillance society.
Daytrippers and tourists, many down for the launch weekend of the Brighton Festival, were forced to run into back streets for cover as the crowd surged through the busiest streets and police tried to cut them off.A police spokesman said: 'The protestors having been attempting to target some premises and there have been some flash points of violence.
'Missiles have been thrown at police officers and police horses by the demonstrators.
'Three officers have suffered minor injuries - I do not believe they need hospital treatment. The group of 500 or so is still moving around the city.'
Activists from peace campaign group Smash EDO were protesting against EDO MBM Technology, an arms factory in Brighton.

BBC -

Police have criticised May Day anti-war protesters for pelting officers with missiles and causing criminal damage. Sussex Police said three people were arrested, including one for assaulting an officer, amid some violent scuffles during the demonstration in Brighton.
Police say three officers suffered minor injuries like twists and sprains.
Campaign group Smash EDO, which wants local arms factory EDO MBM Technology closed, organised the protest which it described as a "huge success".

Smash EDO estimated about 1,000 protesters had gathered on Monday, but Sussex Police said it was about 500.

Brighton and Hove City Commander, Chief Supt Graham Bartlett, said: "Once again... we have seen unjustified acts of violence aimed at premises and police officers.
"Members of public including many visitors to the city have been clearly frightened and intimidated by a small minority of the group who have been verbally abusive, and throwing missiles at police.

Sussex Police said three officers were slightly hurt and three people arrested
"One member of the public was struck in the face by a missile and had to be treated by a police medical team." Police also criticised organisers for not telling them how many protesters were expected and what route they would take. Protests began with a street party in front of the Palace Pier before moving through the city centre and on to the factory to the north of the city. A small number of demonstrators surged towards officers in riot gear and flares were let off. And one small group scaled scaffolding in front of a branch of Barclays Bank and unfurled a banner.

Later groups of protesters gathered in the grounds of St Peter's Church and listened to music.
A number of others returned to the pier where they were surrounded by police in riot gear.
Smash EDO spokeswoman Chloe Marsh said the day was a "huge success".
"Large crowds arrived on foot and on bikes, bringing sound-systems, banners and a carnival dragon," she said. At least 30 protesters had reported injuries and some were struck with batons by officers concealing their identity numbers, she said. The march was a larger version of a demonstration regularly staged against EDO MBM Technology. The weapons manufacturer has never commented on the protests.

Lets see how many 'Police brutality' stories come out and short clips hit Youtube.

Same shit, different day.

Metcountymounty.

I owe you a less than five...

2009-04-28T08:24:00.014+01:00

Having had a week off to chill out, see some sunlight without wearing body armour and let my skin get used to breathing instead of being covered in polyester, I'm feeling much more normal again. I was looking at my duties the other week and was actually shocked to see the amount of cancelled rest days and non voluntary overtime (as in had no choice because of prisoners, sudden deaths etc) that I've done since January. For some reason the last couple of months worth of shifts have been nightmarish, in the last month we've had a couple of weekends that have directly compared to New Year with the number of urgent calls and prisoners, loads of which are for decent jobs like robbery, GBH and burglary.

It's nice to get a busy set of shifts to make the 12+ hours go faster, but you need a break afterwards to recover which hardly anyone has had due to the amount of aid commitments the we've been hit with such as the Tamil demos, G20 and the Israeli Embassy - the vast majority has been done on cancelled rest days meaning we get sod all but a day in lieu, that we'll have to fight to actually get back. The shift pattern we do works really well if you have the time off in between shifts but getting that thrown up in the air by being required to work just leaves everyone knackered.

I've no doubt the up coming Mayday protests down in sunny Brighton will put more officers in the spotlight, I really can't see some of the protest groups missing an opportunity to have a go at some Police officers and then film the aftermath to give to the Guardian.

The media and political storm after the G20 has definitely taken its toll on morale on frontline officers, the murmurings of dropping out of public order training has turned into outright corridor conversations with no care to who is in earshot. I'm not going to go into the Ian Tomlinson incident anymore, there has been enough speculation and comment on blogs like the Coppers Blog and Fitwatch from people who know what they are talking about, from people who haven't got a speck of a clue, and people who just want to throw their twopence in.

One thing that has come out of the G20 is the issue of public order training and exactly what we are trained to do and in what circumstances we are authorised to use certain tactics. Take for example the 'Nicky Fisher' incident - large crowd getting too close to a line of officers putting in a cordon, they are pushed back by other officers, someone takes exception to being pushed back and gobs off because she's a 'woman' and doesn't think a man should push her. She pushes the officer who again pushes her away, she shouts and swears at him and moves forward grabbing his arm, he swipes her away hitting her in the face with the back of his hand (personally I would have gone for a single or double handed push and thrown her up the street) and she STILL gobs off. All the time the officers are being surrounded by media photographers, protestors with cameras and people shouting abuse them.

The officer gives a couple of very clear 'get back' shouts to everyone and turns away from Fisher. She decides to go forwards AGAIN and the officer escalates his use of force having already given her multiple and very specific opportunities to remove herself from the situation. He draws his baton and gives her a strike to her legs (and not even full force hit because the bruise would have been different) causing her to fall over. After that the video footage shows lots of people going into 'shame on you' mode - which by the way I've never heard until the Israeli embassy demos in January, just like the new fashionable trend of throwing shoes at demos that they've adopted.

The main issue with the Fisher incident appears to be that the officer is tall with a large build and she was a munchkin. Does that mean that as Police officers we are only supposed to use any form of force on people of equal or larger size to us? Considering that most public order officers are tall males with a large build that rationale would mean we shouldn't be dealing with 90% of people at demos just in case we are larger than them, so what's the point in us being there. Do the public really want a plethora of extremely short and slightly built officers for public order duty so we don't offend other people's sensibilities by having to use force on people smaller than us?

Seriously?

She had more than enough chances to go away and didn't and the officer rightly - and as trained - used a single strike to the legs in escalating the use of force. How many times do people think that he should have been pushing her away before she got the hint? what if she never got the hint and refused to get back? Everyone knows the slur of 'small man syndrome' but one thing this job has taught me is that 'small gobby woman syndrome' is just as bad if not worse, and you're more likely to actually get injured by them because no one wants to start manhandling a small woman. And they have nails and pointy shoes, and like to use them.

This incident and a number of others from the G20 have really put public order policing in the spotlight along with the tactics used overall. The problem we've got is certain tactics require different levels of force from the officers on the ground. The tactic of containment requires us to be up close and within body contact distance with people who invariably don't want us there. The only way to control a crowd that doesn't want to be controlled, and is at the very least being obstructive and at most violent, is to use force. This can be anything from pushing to strikes with shields and batons, right through to a running line with long shields as we had at the Israeli Embassy.

When you compare our tactics with virtually ever other country in the world we have considerably less serious injuries. The main reason is because the preferred option in most countries is to leave well alone and then step in once trouble kicks off. The problem with that approach is that you have to use much higher levels of force in order to get control because any delay in assembling resources just gives the crowd time to cause more damage. The increased media attention on the results of having officers up close and personal where videos of people being punched, hit with shields, batoned and pushed has caused an outcry and prompted calls for a national debate on public order Policing.

Some people have been saying in the media "well I don't care what they do in other countries, the is the UK and I only care about how we do it here". Well they should care because doing nothing is not an option, so we either do it our way and look forward to more videos of people being punched, pushed, hit with shields and batoned, or we do it like everyone else in the world. This means full complete deployment of shield teams (no messing about with half kit, then short shields followed by long after we've been attacked repeatedly) and creating stand off distance from the shield lines to prevent people getting close enough to attack officers.

The only way to do this is to extend the range of your use of force beyond that of shields and batons by using projectile weapons such as baton, rubber bullets, live rounds, CS grenades and water cannon. Do we really want that over here? I know I don't, especially if the current trend of suspending is going to continue if officers are seen on video doing things that doesn't look nice, regardless of whether or not they are trained to do it. To put this into perspective for you, if a firearms officer shoots and fatally wounds someone in the course of their duty then they are removed from frontline duties pending investigation. They aren't suspended, they are still on duty and working just not in a public facing role.

During the briefing with IPCC chairman Nick Hardwick to the Home Affairs Select Committee, he said that he supported calls for a national debate on public order policing but also that "we can't train our Police officers to use certain tactics and then completely wash our hands of them when they use those tactics because we don't like how they look"

This last comment has been the point that is seriously destroying morale amongst officers at the moment, especially those who volunteer for public order roles. I've watched an awful lot of videos on youtube and on the various news sites and blogs, and I really have not seen anything that we are not trained to do in both normal officer safety training or public order training. Police officers volunteer for any specialist training such as driving, firearms, public order, searching or CBRN, and we can just as easily un-volunteer from those posts. If the everyone did that, I've no doubt the wheel would come flying off within a shift, let alone over a couple of days.

If it is going to become the norm that officers are suspended for doing what they are trained to do, how many people are likely to put themselves forwards for that? A suspension stays with you for your whole career, and no one is going to want a suspension for excessive force plaguing every promotion board or course application, especially if you just did what the instructors and the job trained you to do.

While I was working over the G20 my shifts were changing literally on a daily basis, a couple of times I was actually getting changed as I came on shift or just as I was going off. It was ridiculous. Our job absolutely relies on the goodwill of officers to both put themselves forwards for training in specialist roles and to put ourselves out to actually make things work. If that goodwill is going to be completely abused and all support is removed then no one is going to do it any more. In one of the many phone calls I had over the G20 week from the duties office (who were pulling their hair out having to chop and change at literally the last minute) I spoke to one of the Sgt's I've known for years -

"Mate, I need you to do me a favour, I need you to do a quick swing tomorrow, I know you're finishing late tonight but I need you on an early start.

Have I got a choice?

Not really, but I'd rather you agreed to do it than having to force you or someone else to.

Fair enough, if you can put me on a team that's going to get off on time that would be appreciated.

I'll try, but I owe you a less than five for helping me out.

You owe me more than that Sarge after this week, it's been shit

True, serves you right for volunteering to do the courses though, see you later"

Metcountymounty

G20

2009-04-03T14:16:00.004+01:00

Along with the vast majority of my colleagues in the Met, and those from the county forces, BTP and the City, I'm absolutely shattered. It's been a long couple of weeks - thankfully with some variety - but that was mainly because we didn't have enough people or kit to fill all of the posts. As a result public order serials went short, search teams went short, vehicles were plundered and all teams but predominantly response, were decimated.

Those who were on were constantly retasked at the last minute, many came on with no idea what they'd be doing or what kit they needed because their duties had been chopped and changed so much that no one had a clue. The vast majority didn't care anyway, we just got on with it. If you have infinite resources then you can cater for most eventualities and keep a good body of personnel available for fluid and spontaneous incidents.

Not even the Met is big enough for that, especially in the current economic climate with budgets very tightly controlled in lieu of paying for plenty of back up. Standing at the forward command area at the ExCeL and seeing how much was involved from Level 3 PC's for area security through to the SFO's, helicopter crews, public order teams, search teams it was quite awe inspiring really. Christ knows how we're going to deal with the Olympics, that's going to be ten times bigger and will go on for months and not just a couple of weeks.

I've no doubt an awful lot will be arranged at the last minute and will be sorted out on the hoof, that's how we usually do it anyway.

Most officers were on extended shifts (12 hours minimum though most did 16+ each day) and when things went properly pearshaped we had no relief and were just kept on, regardless of when we were due to start the next day. On the 1st for example, most of the serials were on an 0800 start, they didn't finish until 0200 and were then due back on for 0430 - so much for a minimum of 11 hours between shifts. After spending 14 hours getting battered with bottles and poles in one of the cordons in the City we were retasked to clear and take the climate camp.

Before we cleared the camp I was walking around trying to find somewhere to sit down and the streets were littered with shattered public order teams trying to get some food and fluids, others were trying to get a couple of minutes shut eye before we went back in. When you're that knackered you don't really care that your new found pillow is a kerb covered in broken glass and debris.

Before anyone says we milked the overtime so why complain, we were all on cancelled rest days so no one had any overtime except normal time+3rd after 12 hours. After two weeks of extended shifts, no one wants the overtime anyway, we all just need sleep.

When I can get my head together and sort my very knackered legs and feet out I'll be putting some more posts up, in the mean time I'm going to enjoy the family stuff, go to the zoo and get some much needed rest. In lieu of some decent vids of some of the action, here's a brilliant vid I was told about whilst getting rained on by bottles of Becks -

Metcountymounty.

Meet James Cleary

2009-03-04T18:53:00.006Z

A little while ago I wrote this post following a briefing slide we were shown at work asking for help identifying a burglar who preyed on sick children at Great Ormond Street Hospital. After some decent work by the guys and girls in the crime squad the suspect was identified as being 47 year old, James Cleary -

On the 24th of February 2009 Cleary pleaded guilty to four counts of burglary, admitted two more and asked to have them taken into consideration - by admitting further unsolved or unreported crimes they can be given leniency in sentencing.

Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith sentenced Cleary to 20 months in custody and said -

"Your counsel is absolutely right. The financial value of these matters is less than £2,000 apparently, but the sentimental value of a play station and games for a sick child is far greater.

'But I am bound by the guidelines from the Sentencing Guidelines Council.

'It seems to me that when you committed these offences you targeted vulnerable community premises, that is to say hospitals, but your entry into the children's ward or children's hospital is a further aggravating feature as I see it."

Considering that the maximum sentence in law for a single non dwelling burglary (with no violence or weapons) is 10 years at Crown Court, you have to wonder exactly what a burglar would have to do to get that if repeatedly preying on sick children inside a hospital attracts only 20 months - even if he did plead guilty. If you think now that he automatically gets half his sentenced reduced on anticipation of being granted licence, and then up to a further third of whats left for good behaviour, Cleary is going to back out on the street long before Christmas this year.

That'll teach him..... won't it?

Cleary is a prolific and habitual burglar with numerous previous convictions for burglary and other offences. For each offence he would have been found by, arrested by, investigated by and sent to court by the Police. How can we possibly be to blame for the rise in crimes committed by people like Cleary when the Police officers who have dealt with him have done EVERYTHING they could possibly do on every occasion? It's not our job to sentence people, that is for the courts. I've seen people with over 200 previous convictions out and about committing crime, and getting caught by Police officers.

That is us doing OUR job over 200 times for one person and yet they are still able to walk the streets freely. We rarely get people arrested who have no previous convictions, nearly everyone we deal with has already been caught and convicted several, if not dozens or sometimes even hundreds of times before.

If someone receives the maximum sentence for each crime they are convicted of the prison population will go through the roof very quickly, but once they are in, there aren't going to be as many convicted criminals out on the streets able to commit crime. If anyone is stupid enough to commit crime such as burglary, theft, assault etc and then loses several years of their useful life because of it, well that's their fault isn't it?

Why should we feel guilty about having a large prison population when they are the ones who put themselves there?

If someone is in prison, behind bars, he cannot be breaking through your back door as you sleep, or breaking into your childs hospital room while they are recovering from life saving surgery. That is a simple fact, but one that people still refuse to grasp when they call for community sentences, or leniency over long custodial sentences.

Metcountymounty.

PS. I've a few things going on and a course coming up so will be off the grid for a few weeks. Stay safe.

Very bad day in a bad couple of weeks.

2009-02-19T22:53:00.008Z

Work has been stupid busy recently and I've spent the few days off I've had mostly trying to forget about it and live in the normal world. My list of days that I'd rather never happened is reasonably small considering some of the things we have to deal with, most jobs just go into the work box and get locked away to be dealt with as and when, but unfortunately I've had another one added to the list quite recently. I'll have to wait until the inquest and investigation is concluded to give you a better picture of exactly how utterly horrible and fucked up the whole situation was. Watching a kids heart get ripped apart and watching their entire world turned inside out in the blink of an eye is bad enough, but knowing that Police bureaucracy, bullshit accountability and arse covering protocols dragged it out needlessly for the family still makes me feel sick.

We, the people on the ground did everything right. We do it all the time and we are good at what we do, we work well together and don't have to ask each other to help out, we all know what needs doing and we crack on and do it. We don't like getting other people involved as we can deal with the vast majority of jobs ourselves, and we can deal with them quickly. The problems come when we have to get other people involved who aren't there and who don't really give a shit - to them it's just another call to make, another list to check, another CAD to update.

They can't see the childs tears. They aren't talking to the next of kin and hearing the distress as every possible outcome is running through their mind and ripping it apart by the second. They haven't seen the worlds best paramedics and frontline trauma teams doing everything they can to stop the person they've never met from passing. They can't see the once feeling and loving eyes glass over to nothing, to emptiness, to pain for those they will never see again. They don't care.

To us thirty seconds is a lifetime in a situation like that. To them thirty minutes just is another step closer to going home on time, and it can't pass quickly enough.

I've always said that it's the one job in a hundred, or even a thousand, with a proper victim to help or a proper criminal to catch that makes the others worth dealing with. I joined this job to help those people when I can, and it makes me sick to know that some people I have to work with don't share that view, or have forgotten it if it ever existed, or that distance themselves from it to make sure their arse is covered. I know people who are terrified of the thought of getting put back out onto the street having festered in an office after getting off the frontline as soon as their probation finished. Others we work with have absolutely no concept of what we actually do, and they don't care about that fact either because they'll never have to deal with it.

They don't want to deal with the things we do and they have no incentive or motivation to do things with a sense of urgency when we ask them, as that invariably means cutting corners or stepping on toes and they won't risk it.

I make no apologies for hating a very large number of people both inside the Police and outside, this job has given me more than enough evidence to justify every stereotype or prejudice that I've got, but I still care about people who are in situations they never asked be in or did nothing to bring on themselves. These are the people I want to help; the people who are unable to do anything to help themselves. Proper victims.

I know that sometimes, more often than not in some places, we can't get to some calls from the public. A lot of the time we don't even get to hear about them as there are always more serious things coming through to us, even though it occasionally turns out some of them aren't exactly as we were told because someone has deliberately lied about the incident to make sure we get there. I'm sorry that we can't get to your burglary report because a shop has lied about how 'violent' a low value shoplifter is because they are sick of us saying we have no units to deal, or that someone has called in a hoax knife/gun threat just to see how long it takes us to get there "if they ever actually need us" or because they think it's fucking hilarious.

The Police officers who are still on the frontline teams, working 24 hours a day answering 999 calls want to help people. We care about the fact that normal tax paying members of the public, who are no different from our own families, are victims of crime, or victims of fate through no fault of their own.

We want to help them, I want to help them, because I still care despite all that other bullshit.

Metcountymounty.

So... who started it? an update on vids.

2009-01-29T09:21:00.007Z

Short and sweet, here's a couple of vids found by Plastic Fuzz which I think look pretty good and give a good indication to which side wanted the fight, especially the guy in the second video who says "we're trying to get to the Israeli Ambassador and they're protecting him, so that's why it's kicking off" If you follow the links at the bottom of the video when it finishes, there are loads more from the 10th now.

First one.

With no hint of irony, given that accelerant was thrown at the Police officers on the gate, here's the second vid to the relaxing theme tune "Firestarter"
1.49-1.53 was my serial.

Metcountymounty

Meet the new Boss, much the same as the old one.

2009-01-27T21:31:00.013Z

Contrary to what Sky's Martin Brunt thought when he said that Sir Ian Blair's resignation would cause a drop in morale throughout the Met, on the afternoon he announced he was leaving I've never seen so many people in the canteen talking about him with smiles on their faces. The next day a skipper I know said "it's great news isn't it, if the Met canteens had a laugh-o-meter in them, they would have blown up yesterday afternoon"

So now that the "PC PC" has finally gone, Sir Paul Stephenson is going to be the new Commissioner of the Metropolis. I've never met him and I probably never will, unless something goes horribly wrong somewhere, and the most I'll see of his new direction and 'leadership' will be a weekly podcast on the Intranet that I won't watch. We may get some policy directions that will be changed by countless levels of chinese whispers, so by the time they get to us they will do nothing but serve the needs of the borough Commander or the divisional Superintendent to make sure they get their year end bonus for meeting targets and budgets.

Sir Ian Blair set the direction of the Met as Commissioner but it was Sir Paul Stephenson who actually ran things from an operational perspective. Whilst I'm well aware that there are things Sir Ian wanted and everyone was required to do, here's a few things I am certain that we won't get in the immediate to near future -

(1) a doubling of the number of response officers actually deployable for every team, on every division and borough in the Met.

(2) a doubling of the number of response vehicles and vans (that actually work and don't break down all the bloody time) to accommodate the influx of officers back to response and the significant increase in prisoners that will result.

(3) the opportunity for response officers to actually proactively patrol and engage with the public because the vast majority of the bullshit calls we are sent to have been cancelled because we shouldn't even be going to them, or they are significantly downgraded to the level they should be in comparison to an actual emergency.

(4) Taser.

(5) someone with any substantial rank standing in front of the news cameras immediately after a substantial event to give the people the information that WE had at the time, even if we are being criticised by people (including family) who have no idea what actually happened.

(6) someone who will tell the Home office to get rid of the National Crime Recording Standards and to stop trying to micromanage how we work.

(7) the complete return of discretion, in line with the office of Constable, instead of directed policy.

(8) specific targeting and extreme harassment of each divisions top 50 criminals until they are locked away, move out of London, or kill themselves.

(9) the return of local knowledge to control rooms by basing them in divisions and alongside teams instead of in 3 remote bases staffed by people who rotate daily, haven't got a scooby which road is where, who is who, where our borders end or what specialist teams exist to deal with specific things. This won't mean much to anyone outside of the Met, but to those in, it will mean everything.

I'll be more than happy if I'm proved wrong on any of those points, but after yet another knackering nights weekend of mayhem, close calls and not enough people to deal with it, I'm a tad pessimistic that anything will change for the better.

Metcountymounty.

Update - some quotes from the Boss -

“Ian Blair did it his way. I was a loyal deputy. Now I am going to do it my way”

“One of the key issues is keeping the communities on board to give us a mandate to go in there and use some pretty intrusive tactics to stop kids killing kids.”

"We have to be intolerant of violence, no matter where that violence comes from"

"It is my aim to be a top-class police leader of the biggest police force in the UK and one of the best in the world." Interesting he used the words Police force instead of Police service, it's not something Sir Ian Blair ever said, which is a good start.

Is peaceful protest possible?

2009-01-18T13:15:00.006Z

Of course it is. I've worked on loads of demos over the last few years ranging from calls for life to mean life, children's charities, anti war, anti capitalism etc and only a very small number have ever deteriorated to the stage of people being arrested, and even less turning into large scale public disorder. The vast majority have been attended by dozens to hundreds of people, and even a couple where a few thousand have turned up and there have been no incidents or problems. Compared to last week at the Israeli Embassy, I can attest that the 'flash mob' protest at Heathrow Terminal 5 was a considerably more jovial affair.

As usual the differences on numbers were wide apart, 500 from the organisers, 250 for the official Police estimates, from where I was standing we estimated the number to be around 350. The protest was reported by some media outlets as creating 'chaos' at the airport but it was anything of the sort - there was an area set by for the protest to be held in, security at the terminal was out in force and we had plenty of level 3 officers and a couple of level 2 serials to prevent anything getting out of hand.

We were briefed that BAA had actually given permission for a protest to be held within the terminal, contrary to existing legislation, which made things considerably easier for us to plan around. An area was set aside by the airport staff (which wasn't used eventually), level 3 officers were patrolling the terminal and the level 2's were in place behind the security access to the departure lounge. If the protestors got through us there, the terminal would have been shut down and we would be looking at a 'search to contact' of the entire terminal (and possibly even 'airside' which would have been an absolute nightmare) and every nook and cranny until everyone who wasn't supposed to be there was accounted for and removed. As we did that, the airport would be shut down which is why there is specific legislation prohibiting demonstrations within airports.

It was a gesture of 'goodwill' by BAA to allow the demo to go ahead but if it went wrong, the disruption would have been enormous to both passengers and the airport, and a number of people (including some of our senior officers) would have been out of a job by the late afternoon. A point which we were made aware of and reminded constantly about in the run up to our deployment!!

We were told to expect the demonstrators around 12 noon, and that they would be there for between 15-90 minutes, depending on how many turn up and how emotive they are. From where we were at the departure lounge entrance we could see a few people in the distinctive red t-shirts underneath coats milling around, the vast majority seemed to be women and children. There were a few men around but it seemed to be more of a family atmosphere to everything and not in the slightest bit hostile. When the time came all the coats came off and the crowd that had gathered near the main exit began jumping around and singing, there was quite a bit of jeering and throwing red balloons and sponges around, and at one point a few people got half-nekid and did the congo. All in all, a reasonably loud, relaxed and very friendly demonstration

After a few more songs and chants the group started to thin out quite quickly after about 30 minutes, by 45 minutes they had all gone. Once the bosses were happy that the demonstrators had left or that there was no threat (from them anyway) of a security breach, we were stood down. We waited for redeployment to central London to assist with the anticipated demonstration at Trafalgar Square but as there were only a couple of thousand people there we were 'dismissed with thanks' and headed back to go home.

I spoke to a mate who was at the demo as we headed back to our nick, "I've seen a few of the knobbers who kicked off with us last week, but apart from that there's hardly anyone. Most of them are loud but alright, looks like loads have stayed away because it kicked off so badly last time" I got a text from him not long after I left to go home "as expected, a few have kicked off, going to be a long one, laters"

And so, as expected -

Telegraph

Daily Mail

Ealing Times

FIT Watch

ITV

Yahoo News

Metcountymounty.

So.... who started it?

2009-01-11T19:19:00.015Z

Around 100-120k people marched yesterday. We were briefed that the public order branch expected, and had been told the plan had been arranged for around 15-20k, despite it being all over the media and sites like Indymedia that around 100k were due to turn up. The estimates on numbers are usually somewhere between the Police ones (invariably considerably less than there actually are) and the organisers who seriously ramp up the turn out. On this occasion however, the front of the march reached the embassy as the back had not long left Hyde Park, a distance of just under 1.5 miles, and it was packed, literally building line to building line across 4 lanes of road. We were told (at around 3pm) the official Police estimate was 20-25k, which was complete and utter bollocks. There were a hell of a lot of people, at the front end were families and old people, at the back were mostly young males.

As usual we had been told that our role was to facilitate the lawful demonstration and that we were effectively 'community Policing' unless the situation changed and things became violent. Crucially, we were told that despite the fact that nearly every march relating to the Gaza/Israel situation had experienced violence, this was not sufficient evidence to suggest that THIS march would become violent. As such, because the senior officers are so afraid of offending the wrong people, we were NOT in possession of riot helmets or shields which were left on the carriers, although we all were in our protective gear and coveralls under the yellow jackets. We were wearing our normal everyday beat helmets and to say some were not happy about that would be a slight understatement.

Unlike at football matches where fixtures are given categories to judge the expected level of violence based on previous experience (A = virtually nil, C+ something like Millwall v Chelsea, Rangers v Celtic etc) these aren't used at demos, which is why we have FIT - forward intelligence teams - who identify specific individuals based on known previous history, in order to judge the expected level of hostility.

My serial was one of the several dozen at the front of the march. The organisers had loads of volunteer stewards whose job was supposed to be to facilitate the movement of the march although they were all as emotionally involved with the march as everyone else there. They were organised at the front in three separate ranks, with the 'celeb' marchers in between the 1st and 2nd, and the rest of the march behind the 3rd. Not long after we set off a group of about a hundred young males broke through their own stewards and sprinted off towards the Police serials at the head of the march. After some negotiation with the stewards, they agreed (eventually) to rejoin the march behind the stewards and celebs. Our serials at the front were stretched out along the sides of the march, with a couple of officers every 50-10o meters or so.

Things were pretty peaceful for the whole length of the Bayswater Road and although very emotive, there was quite a bit of banter between the Police officers and the demonstrators and things stayed that way despite the massive numbers until the head of the march got to the North Gate of Kensington Gardens. Inside were a couple of PSU's on the other side of the gate, and as we passed there was nothing more than a bit of shoe throwing and jeering. We carried on down towards the front entrance to the Embassy and our end stayed pretty much the same. All of a sudden we heard calls from one of our other serials that dozens of people tried to break through the gates to get to the embassy and were climbing the fencing, throwing anything to hand, throwing burning flags at the gate and that they needed more units to help out. Within seconds we heard the call that no police officer wants to hear "more units now, urgent assistance, we're under attack, officer down"

What had started as a several dozen turned into a hundred or so and the officers were being attacked with missiles including glass bottles, balloons filled with paint, scaffolding clips and metal poles, and a couple had been dragged into the crowd and were beaten to the floor. One officer was knocked unconscious by a scaffolding pole, two received really bad facial injuries and the other officers (male and female) were kicked and punched repeatedly until a couple of PSU's managed to get to them. At the time we were not allowed to wear our protective helmets and were still marching towards the Embassy.

Not long after we got to the Embassy gates the crowd stopped to shout and jeer at the gates (as they can't get close to the Embassy itself) and there was a bit of banner and shoe throwing. From where we were the crowd couldn't see the gates and all they knew was that they had stopped. Immediately they blamed us and lots of people were asking us "why have you stopped us marching?" It's a simple fact of numbers, 100,000 people won't fit down a street at the best of times, let alone when the head of the group has stopped because they wanted to demonstrate, we hadn't blocked anyone in at that point.

Within a couple of minutes we received the order to get our shields and helmets from the carriers after the extent of the attack and injuries received by the officers at the North Gate was fed back to the commanders. Because of the scale of the march, at least half the demonstrators hadn't seen any Police presence and to see a few of us here and there trying to get our kit gave them more than enough opportunity to shout abuse and thrown coins, cans, bottles etc as we tried to make our way through. The RVP point for the vans was changed because of the hostility we were getting to make it easier to get kitted up without having to walk half a mile or so up the road through a predominately (at that point) hostile crowd.

We got back to our posts near the front of the march to be told that a couple of shops opposite the embassy had been attacked and ransacked and that protestors had been seen stealing bottles and knives which were distributed through the crowd and subsequently thrown at the officers at the front gate. We were then informed by a serial at the gate that they had had several bottles of accelerant thrown at them which failed to ignite. At that point PSU's were brought in to contain the crowd which did effectively block them in, the hope being that they would dissipate out the other end. The confrontation became even more violent, demonstrators destroyed the fencing that was keeping the pavements clear for the shops and emergency evac units, and some of the fencing was used as a barricade to stop the Police PSU's from getting into the crowd to arrest people, specifically those from last weeks demo who had been recognised by the intelligence teams.

We then used filter cordons to try and dissipate the crowds to get the vast majority of people out of the area, this consists of a couple of ranks of officers with people still able to pass through. The people responsible for destroying the shops and throwing the missiles/accelerants were still in the crowd outside the embassy so they were contained. When information about the cordons started feeding back into the crowd a number of demonstrators tried to break out and were using anything and everything to attack the officers on the cordons, including the barriers themselves.

As the violence increased, our escalation increased, and for the first time in almost 8 years (in the Met) full deployment of longshield units was authorised, it was probably around 8pm at that point. Short of watercannon, rubber bullets and teargas, this is the highest state of force we can use in a public order situation and the decision to authorise it was not taken lightly, because it is so obviously aggressive.

Over the next several hours we had to use more cordons to force back crowds that had gathered on all sides to dissipate them as some (but not all by a long shot as there were a lot of normal demonstrators mixed in with them) of the group contained in the embassy continued attacking officers, vehicles, property, horses etc. We kept the cordons in as the protestors were taken out of the embassy cordon section individually where they were videoed for evidential purposes (to check against CCTV later) and searched for any items taken from the stores, they were then allowed to leave. As the number of people in the contained area shrunk we were able to move the cordons in further which released more officers to assist in searching so the whole group could dissipate quicker. Our cordons and teams were eventually taken down around half ten, having been in place from around four when it first started kicking off outside the embassy.

Here are a couple of vids already on youtube, make of them what you will.

The march along Bayswater Road and then Kensington High Street, just down from the embassy after we were ordered to get our full protective gear and shields.

At the gates of the embassy, note the bloke singing "all Police are pigs, lets kill coppers" which was pretty much the order of the day from the majority of the people attacking officers.

missiles being thrown and fencing used as barricades.

Metcountymounty

Burning Flags

2009-01-06T12:34:00.009Z

On one of the demos I worked on the other day the topic of flag burning was raised during the initial briefing, in response to the huge number of people in Trafalgar Square on Saturday holding a veritable bonfire before they started off towards the Israeli Embassy. At present in the UK, flag burning is not a specific offence in criminal law and there is case law that states simply burning a flag isn't enough to charge or convict for racial incitement of violence or to charge or convict for any public order act offence. The high court decided that the act of burning a flag was nothing more than destruction of personal property, if the person doing the burning owned the flag.

A couple of years ago some officers from ACPO suggested making flag burning a specific offence in order to prevent groups deliberately causing extreme offence to others and unnecessarily escalating demonstrations into violent conflict. There are always going to be people at demos who will try and provoke other people or have a go at the Police to get some 'good' images on Indymedia, and they really don't care how they go about it. I've worked on plenty of demonstrations that have been rather pleasant and perfectly legal, as well as a few others where a minority have been there to do nothing but start a fight.

Personally, I find flag burning extremely offensive. It's more than just a piece of cloth with dye on it, it's a symbol of identity and history and burning it is intended to cause offence and intimidate people into reacting. I've been at demos where some people do it just because it's the 'in thing' to do and they don't care or can't understand why some people are extremely offended, because they (by their own admission) don't care about their own country, flag, its meaning or its history.

A couple of the demonstrations over the last couple of days have been extremely heated but ultimately peaceful, and even as the thousands of people rallied around speakers they didn't get the flags out to set them on fire and they all (for the most part) dispersed afterwards without any incident. The longer the trouble in the Middle East carries on, the longer the demos about it over here are going to continue. Most will be passionate but peaceful, others will be violent. The large demo on Saturday turned pretty ugly after the protestors left Trafalgar Square and Police officers were pelted with bottles, bricks, banners and anything else to hand until it was later brought under control.

After the unbelievable indecisiveness by senior officers at the Notting Hill carnival this year to relieve untrained and unprotected Level 3 officers with properly equipped and trained L2 or L1 officers after they were subject to sustained attacks with bottles and bricks (and were literally begging for additional assistance and support) it was actually quite refreshing to hear a ground commander on the radio pull the officers out and send in the specialist riot teams of the TSG along with L2's within a few minutes of everything going pear shaped. I've no doubt one of the commanders taking a direct hit to his own head influenced the speed of the decision making.

With more demos planned for the foreseeable future including advertised rallies of the same nature on Saturday and Sunday, we're going to have some interesting days ahead in the Capital, along with the usual day to day Policing requirements and requests from the public!

After 12-15,000 people had a relatively peaceful if somewhat heated demo in Trafalgar Square, here's what happened when most of them decided to march to the embassy via Pall Mall and St James's Street -

This vid was footage after it kicked off from around Kensington Gardens -

And yes, those officers on core response teams were still answering 999 calls, despite having had most of their public order trained officers stripped from normal team strength for the day!

Metcountymounty.

Animal Police

2009-01-02T23:37:00.006Z

Due to some unfortunate business in the Middle East having ramifications over here I'm not going to be around for a few days, so in lieu of a proper post here is a vid I saw on TV which I think you'll find amusing!

Metcountymounty

Happy New Year peeps!!!

2008-12-31T18:10:00.003Z

Here's last years London fireworks for anyone who never saw it, for those of you working in town tonight I hope you have a view of this years, it's about the only thing that's going to be enjoyable!!

See you guys in 2009,

Out.

Metcountymounty

Good will to all men

2008-12-28T23:00:00.008Z

Christmas Eve

Busy night judging by the number of bods in custody, I spoke to a mate on the other team as I took the vehicle over, he looked completely shattered. No one had a break (as usual on nights) and they were live dealing with constant calls from early car at 6pm until we came in the following morning for 7am. There were only a couple of calls outstanding, a couple of drunks on buses refusing to get off, shop alarms going off, so we cleared them up and headed back in for briefing. They had quite a few people in custody considering it was the night before Christmas Eve.

The next couple of hours were lots of calls to alarm activations then we had the first ‘proper’ job of the morning; executing a court order to seize travel documents of a three year old whose mother was threatening to remove from the country permanently. A Judge in the high court has seen enough intelligence to determine that a child is at risk of abduction and has seen fit to order the Police to execute the court order “as a matter of extreme urgency” to seize all and any documents related to travel, but has not provided us with the intelligence pack and has only authorised a power of arrest if the officers have reasonable ground for suspecting that any person has not complied with the order.

There is no power of entry or power of search, and no information as to exactly which travel documents we are to seize. Short of someone slamming the door in our faces, we can’t really do anything other than ask ever so nicely if they wouldn’t mind handing the bits over, as we don’t know what we’re looking for.

I call the court up to check exactly which documents we are supposed to be seizing and ask a couple of reasonable questions - does the child have a passport? Where has the intel come from that the child is at the address? Is there intel that a flight has been booked or other travel arrangements have been made? The answer from the court is they don’t know anything. Not very helpful. We get no joy at the address, or with any agency related to travel documents as Christmas Eve is a discretionary day for civil servants, and they all appear to have taken it off. It’s not as if a suspected child abduction is anything serious anyway. We manage to find some other addresses as well as the court issued one and check each of them. No luck, to be honest the mother has probably taken the child already.

We all contributed to putting a buffet together so each crew on our team can get some food and we can at least experience a modicum of festive cheer in between calls to shoplifters, arguments, dippings, people getting drunk and fighting etc.

Later on we get the best example of instant karma I’ve seen for a while. A bloke trying to shoplift sprints away from security, decides to cross one of our main roads to lose them, and promptly gets gobbled up by a taxi. Thankfully the taxi driver and his passengers were unharmed, and after LAS checked the guy over and confirmed he only had minor injuries he got nicked. It turned out he was also wanted on a warrant for burglary. The warrant wasn’t backed for bail meaning we couldn’t release him and had to keep him in custody to put him for the first available court hearing.

Unfortunately for him, the first court wasn’t until the 26th. Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha. Merry Christmas.

Christmas Day

So much for expecting to have a nice chilled day. As I walked down the corridor to get the car I walk past the front office and see a mountain of exhibits scattered around the place, loads of seized clothing and a couple of the nightshift guys sitting on the floor cataloguing everything. One of them looks up and see’s my rather puzzled face “R&B night” he says. I shake my head and ask “how many injured?” without looking up again he says “four separate GBH’s that we dealt with, one’s in a really bad way, there are a couple of scenes as well. It went pretty tits up when the clubs kicked out”.

I was surprised it was only four then his colleague said “there were a few other ABH’s but they didn’t want to know (didn’t want to make a crime complaint to Police) and LAS dealt with them”

The hospital and scene guards took up most of the morning and tied up pretty much everyone, then as yesterday there were lots of alarm calls, a couple of building searches, a couple of domestics (one was quite nasty apparently) and then lots of driving and walking around deserted side streets looking for people to search, if appropriate, obviously. We had some good vehicle stops and searches and got some good intel although we didn’t get as many bodies in compared to a normal dayshift.

We did manage to actually get a bit more proactive patrolling done than usual and the visitors with nothing else to do did seem to appreciate seeing lots of Police officers around to take photos with. Considering some Christmas days that I've spent at work, it wasn't actually that bad really.

Boxing Day

We’re standing in the back yard listening to the radio and it seems that every cock and his mate has decided to visit our patch and cause mayhem for the families out shopping and the shop staff trying eagerly to sell them everything possible. It got so bad during the day a Section 60 was authorised in the hope that some aggressive searching and Policing would discourage most of them to bugger off somewhere else. A couple of vehicles come back in for a quick handover and after the usual pleasantries and friendly insults we chuck our kit in the back and head out.

Despite having extra people on, plain clothes units out targeting steaming teams (thieves who swamp an area enmasse to cause mayhem and steal as much as possible) there are calls coming out all over the place for Police assistance to stores and from other units requesting back up. We get a couple of urgent assistance calls which ended up in several people arrested from different jobs, we also had a couple of officers injured at each one. With the majority of shops closing, the calls dropped off a bit but those who came up just to cause trouble just went to other parts and carried on. Group robberies, assaults, steaming off licences etc carried on for a bit and for the first few hours of the shift was a case of blues to a call, jumping out, throwing whomever in the van and then blatting off to the next.

It was stupid.

After the shoppers went home the calls eased off a bit as the pubs started filling up and we managed to get a brew in, it then went pear shaped again as the pubs kicked out and the clubs started filling up. We had quite a few pub fight calls with doorstaff requesting support, “innocent people assaulted by doorstaff” and units requesting backup after queue fights and ejections got continually out of hand. As the drink and Christmas cheer really got going we had a couple of nasty GBH’s and a few ABH’s involving some of the most unpleasant casualties I’ve met in a while who started the fights but failed to get the first punch in and then tied up desperately busy ambulance crews.

Another ‘victim’ was found in a bleeding heap outside a hotel, fortunately for him the first crew on scene had already dealt with him earlier on after seeing him and a couple of mates square up to a group of blokes, they circulated the description of the suspects who were picked up not far away. I can’t go into too much detail, but they had very stupidly linked themselves to the attack on the victim and we were literally in stitches as we got them out of the van.

We then spent the remainder of the shift ‘encouraging’ drunks to grow up and go home, such as the idiot who decided to step in front of the car and shake his cock at us whilst we were on blues, until he realised we were the Police and not an Ambulance, and that we were neither impressed, nor amused.

All in all, it was a rather busy and somewhat unpleasant blur, and reinforced my view on a couple of things -

1) I hate drunk people.
2) I should have booked it all off.

Metcountymounty.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-23T19:21:00.003Z

If you're working, you're not the only one, just remember to keep the eyes in the back of your head wide open, especially at the seasonally festive domestics.

If you're not working then well done for convincing duties to let you have a life.

And for those readers who aren't in the job, thanks for visiting and contributing to my blog, I'll let you know next week how my joyous Christmas was spent as my crystal isn't working at the mo.

From me, to you, have a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year, I hope it's a safe one!

Metcountymounty.

Cops with cameras

2008-12-20T19:29:00.006Z

As most frontline coppers do, I like to watch stuff like Road Wars and some of the other Police Camera Action type programs when I'm on my days off. It is very 'job pissed' but handy for a bit of shouting at the TV, snippets of useful procedures and techniques and a bit of a laugh at what some people do on camera, no matter what side of the criminal justice fence they operate on.

One program that got my interest was called "cops with cameras". Compared to some of the others it's not that great but the basic premise works quite well - strap a load of miked up body cams to a team of officers from different units and watch what happens.

One particular clip caught my eye, two response officers were searching for a guy with a huge knife threatening random people in the streets, they split up to search a building line and one runs into the suspect who doesn't decide to drop the knife and come quietly. Funny that. The ensuing fistfight and struggle was caught on both cams as the other officer went to help and it looked exactly the same as any other violent struggle - lots of punching, lots of screaming and shouting and not an iota of Steven Seagal-esque flawless armlocks or body throws to take down the suspect in a couple of 'nice on TV' moves.

Needless to say it didn't look particularly nice, but then anyone who as ever had to try and restrain someone who doesn't want to be restrained will tell you that violent use of force doesn't look nice. It's not supposed to.

A couple of weeks ago the Mark Aspinall video brought out the same criticism of the Police that usually happens when a routine arrest appears to go over the top. I think there are three things missing from the video which would have given a considerably clearer picture of what happened - the other 7 minutes of CCTV conveniently missing from the news stories, audio of the entire incident, and close up audio/video that would have been recorded had the officers worn cameras. Having watched the vid a couple of times, the strikes/punches were clearly Home office approved officer safety techniques to deaden a muscle group - they are aimed at the shoulder and stop when his arm goes back into the cuff. Despite the hundreds of armchair experts saying we can't use punches, we can, it's approved, trained, and used when we need it.

The only thing I would have done differently in that situation would be to pin the guys head to the pavement with both hands and all my bodyweight, exactly as I described in this post, which funnily enough says about biting - which Aspinall did. As soon as you pin the head you neutralise the use of the neck, shoulder and back muscles which makes it considerably easier to get someones arm into a cuff, which Aspinalls clearly wasn't at the time he was punched.

Last year the video of 'epilepsy sufferer' Toni Cromer caused exactly the same stir and the media was all over it with accusations of brutality, racism and victimisation after PC Mulhall used several strikes on her during a violent arrest outside a club. The story ran for a couple of days until Cromer admitted during an interview on Sky News about having drunk a bottle of Brandy, having never had an epileptic fit in her life, admitted that she did not suffer any injury inconsistent with a restraint (arm bruises and cuffbites), admitted that she had pleaded guilty to criminal damage and admitted that it had never crossed her mind to pursue an allegation of assault by the Police, despite the video being shown in court. That was until convicted racist Ruggie Johnson decided to try and make a name for himself and released the video to the press claiming racism. PC Mulhall was dragged through the mud, and worse.

After investigation the IPCC and the CPS confirmed that the use of force was completely justified and legal, PC Mulhall was exonerated. The media never gave as much coverage to this fact as they did of the original story, even after PC Mulhalls apparent suicide a year later. I cannot help but wonder if he had a camera on him, with mike, would it had prevented those allegations in the first place?

There is only so much you can describe in a statement about an arrest. Even if you go into 8-10 pages describing everything about the scene, the suspects actions, your actions, what observers did, history etc, it still doesn't show the incident as well as video footage. As they say, a picture says a thousand words, and I've always firmly believed that writing how someone was violent, aggressive and fought whilst being arrested pales into comparison when you show a video that could be an outtake from '28 Days Later'.

There are obvious limitations with CCTV such as range, coverage and lack of audio. There are also going to be occasions where an officers memory of an incident differs from the footage, especially when extreme stress, violence and adrenalin are factors in perceptual distortion, which can lead to accusations of lying. I was involved in an arrest a couple of years ago where a drunk bloke was threatening people outside a club with a knife and a broken bottle. My mate and I rushed him and ended up struggling on the floor before we managed to get him cuffed. Thinking about it right now I clearly remember being only a couple of feet away and fighting to control his arms and disarm him for several minutes before a van turned up. The CCTV however showed that we were around 15-20 feet away before we ran at him and we managed to get him disarmed and cuffed in less than a minute, and the van arrived almost immediately.

I believe that for the vast majority of arrests and incidents, an eye's and ear's view would show courts and the public what it's really like when we deal with people - specifically those who don't want to be dealt with - and how completely unrealistic many of the expectations of how we should deal with suspects actually are. Given the current problem of Police officers accounts not being believed by the media or the public (despite evidence supporting the accounts) I think that frontline officers having body worn cameras is a vital tool that we could benefit from.

Metcountymounty.

Computer Says No

2008-12-15T16:10:00.003Z

For some reason I can't log into my blog site (although I can get onto Blogger?!?!) through my laptop so I'm using a funky iPhone which has now convinced me to get one. When I can figure out what's going on I'll put another post on!

Please, get me out of here.

2008-11-26T20:14:00.007Z

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) is a piece of legislation that governs Police (and other agencies) powers to interrogate technology such as computers and mobiles for the purpose of criminal investigations, to prevent serious public disorder and to protect security interests, amongst a few other things. It was brought in for a number of reasons, mainly to legislate in anticipation of the increased use and requirement to analyse technology during investigations. I believe it was also to put some serious stops in place to prevent us nasty untrustworthy Policemen from stitching innocent people up (as we clearly always do) and just doing what we want with suspects phones, computers, email accounts etc without someone way high up the chain of command offering their head to the block if it all goes wrong. Cynical I know, but it was the Labour party who brought it in, and they're not big fans of the Police.

As a front line Police officer my use of RIPA is not as regular as CID or special branch for example, but when I do have to use it, it would cover things like mobile phone traces, interrogating mobiles for intelligence on suspects movements, putting together covert recce's on premises before executing warrants or interrogating seized computers during an operation where time is critical.

I dealt with a job recently that highlighted to me the serious problems of having such high level authorisations needed for something so apparently simple as a cellsite trace. Cellsite is what we call the triangulation of a mobile phone using information from the service providers cell masts. How it works is we contact our liaison department at each of the service providers, they then check their records to see which masts have been hit by the phone when it connects at regular intervals or when it was turned off, and depending on signal strength from various masts they can triangulate and give rough area of where the handset is.

To give an idea of how rough, for the job I was on, we were given a central location but a search area of 400 meters from that point. You can imagine how difficult - and almost pointless - an area that is to search in the middle of the most densely populated city in Europe. Different companies can give varying results, I have heard of differences in search areas from 20 meters to half a mile from the central location. Because the cellsite data comes directly from the service provider the Police have no control over how long it takes them to collect the data, triangulate and get back to us. They also charge for the service, I was told on our job that the Met would be charged £5k for it.

Cellsite data can be forensically examined in extreme detail as happened in the Soham murder investigation. By analysing the exact strength of the signal from relevant masts, the investigators were able to prove that the mobile belonging to one of the girls was located at the front door of Ian Huntley's house before being taken inside and switched off a couple of feet inside the hall.

For investigative purposes a cellsite request has to be authorised by an officer of the rank of Superintendent or above and that authorisation can only be granted if the officer believes that there is serious risk of harm or a serious threat to life. When you're running an historical investigation where you have a murder (for example) there is no problem in getting the authorisations as the need for the data is obvious and unquestionable. For a fast time operation, such as a vulnerable missing person, a suspected abduction or a silent 999 call, the opinion of the level of threat is extremely subjective, and just because one person thinks the threat justifies cellsite, it certainly doesn't mean everyone in the command chain agrees.

The decision has to be based on the information immediately available, including history of the subject, informants, suspects and circumstances of the call/investigation. I won't go into too much detail but a job I was on recently involved requesting cellsite as part of the investigation into the apparent disappearance of a female. I'd got in early for a Sunday day duty as usual along with a mate, and to do the night duty a favour we took a vehicle out to clear up some of their outstanding calls. After we'd resulted the half dozen or so calls and were on the way back into the nick for parade, we received a request to attend a street to meet with an informant reporting her friend missing.

We got there just before 7am, only a couple of minutes after the control room had got the initial call. The informant who I'll call Rebecca worked in a club and had seen her friend Jessica in there with a guy who Rebecca had never met. Jessica told her that he was a friend she'd recently met, and a couple of hours later as Jessica and the guy left, she told Rebecca they were going to go to another club that stayed open later. Not long after Rebecca finished work at about 0530, she had received a text from Jessica that read "Please, get me out of here" Rebecca sent a text back and a couple of minutes later she received a phone call from Jessica who sounded drunk and appeared to be crying. Jessica told Rebecca that she didn't know where she was, she was drunk and wanted to leave and the guy wasn't letting her go.

Rebecca then spoke to the male who gave her an address of where he was but told her not to bother coming round as he loved Jessica and she was safe. He then hung up, and switched the phone off. Rebecca tried several times to call Jessica back with no joy, after a short time she called a couple of friends and they got in a taxi to the address the guy had given, and when they found it was a Doctors clinic, they called the Police.

We did all the checks we could at the scene, short of putting the clinic's door in. Rebecca, Jessica and her friends were all no trace on intelligence checks or the Police national computer suggesting that none of them had ever come to Police notice before. Rebecca seemed completely honest and genuine, the text she received was exactly as she had said and everything else checked out. On the information that we had, both my colleague and I were seriously concerned for Jessica's safety, to the point of thinking we could be looking at another Martine Vik Magnussen, given the similarities in events leading to her disappearance. The only possible lead we had at that time was to get a cellsite done, especially it was still relatively recent to the first message from Jessica.

The duty officer disagreed and refused to put the request forward to the duty Superintendent, based on that information, as he decided there was not an established threat to life or risk of serious harm. We debriefed Rebecca and her friends to try and get as much information as possible about Jessica's lifestyle and habits, we went round to her address and after gaining entry to her room we interrogated her laptop for any possible leads or clues to what she was like.

By the time we left to go back to the nick we had a possible suspect who was ident to the male Rebecca had seen Jessica with, an address he lived at and enough grounds to arrest him and search his flat and vehicles. We got back and the investigation was now in full flow, a Detective Chief Inspector was in charge as this was now classed as a high risk missing person, and his first call was to put the cellsite through. As far as he was concerned the evidence suggested reasons to suspect serious harm was likely, even before we searched Jessica's flat and proved she wasn't there asleep and recovering from a hangover. By the time cellsite came back, it was some seven hours after we first attended. The duty Superintendent by the way, didn't bat an eyelid when they authorised the cellsite request.

Jessica was later located, she said that there was some 'miscommunication' between her and Rebecca and she denied saying what she had in the phone call, despite the text message she'd sent. The address that Rebecca was given was remarkably similar to the one Jessica had actually gone to, we'd even checked that street as it sounded similar but we found no building number that matched. It turned out to be a flat number. We'd confirmed that she was less than 100 meters away from the central point that the cellsite data gave us, but realistically there was no way we could have searched every possible place, it would have taken literally hundreds - if not thousands - of officers to search within any useful time frame.

The information that we had suggested to us that Jessica was in potential danger and merited further aggressive investigation. Thankfully it turned out that she was in no danger, but over a hundred Police hours were taken up (wasted?) determining that, as well as the cost of the cellsite. As much as we would love to be able to, it would be virtually impossible to put that much manpower into every missing person investigation. This one job was classed as high risk and tied up nearly every person on my shift, as well as the duty CID team for the majority of the day.

As for silent 999 calls, or even calls with seemingly innocuous conversations being heard in the background as happened in the very unfortunate case with Hannah Foster, we simply do not have the resources to deal with every single one - there are around 5.5million silent or believed unintentional 999 calls in the UK every year, with less than 1% of them later being confirmed as genuine.

Metcountymounty.

A brief pause

2008-11-20T23:49:00.005Z

Apologies for the lack of postage recently. Thanks to a combination of quick swings, way too many extended duty days, hardly any rest days, being run ragged thanks to being significantly understrength on team at the best of times, and then having our teams treated like a bottomless pit for aid (instead of actually paying people to come in) which has left us even more short staffed than I could have thought was actually legal, I've been left with a rather unpleasant dose of man-flu, the first sickness bought I've had for a few years that's not injury-on-duty related.

To say the morale on my team at present was 'low' is like saying Harold Shipman was just 'a bit naughty'. It's shit. Proper shit, in fact, and I know I moan, but I've been like a veritable ray of sunshine recently compared to some people (dockyard oysters aside) who are trying at the very least to get out of the borough, some murmurings have been about getting out full stop.

Picture the scene - you know that, on a good day with everyone in, you are only a couple of people above your minimum strength levels. The minimum strengths are decided by the SMT as the minimum 'safe' level of officers to deal with the anticipated volume of calls and to provide a level of resilience should things go tits up, as they invariably do. Given abstractions like court, sickness, courses, annual leave etc, you also know that you will ALWAYS be under strength because your team simply doesn't have the number of people it should. You put a leave application in to get some time off with your family which is rejected by the duties office, as usual the answer is "unable to authorise as officer numbers are below minimum strength"

Fair enough, you think, it was a long shot anyway, that's why you only try and plan stuff on your rest days - if they aren't cancelled.

And then you turn up to work on the day you wanted off to find that two thirds of your team for the day have been taken off duty to do some aid (a demo, Op Blunt, court security etc) on another divisions ground, leaving you with a couple of vehicle crews for the whole shift. You ask where the main bulk of the aid is and realise you have a mate on duty there so you text them to see how short they are today "we're ok actually, really flush, even got some walkers out, why?" is the response. The outrage train has well and truly left the station, and you're driving.

This happens virtually every single day and if I described the boundaries of my patch and how many people we actually have to Police it (physically out on the ground answering 999 calls and patrolling, not in total on duty as we only make up about 4-5% of that number), I'm pretty sure I'd have my legs done under the new 'damaging public confidence' regulations.

Thankfully I've got leave booked over Christmas (that I had to book in January, those who left it until March onwards have had some or all of their applications for leave refused because we're under strength on team) so between now and then I'm going to be mostly working and sleeping and won't be doing much posting.

I'm glad to see ZaNu Labour's efforts to increase officer numbers to 140k over the country has worked out so well for us on the front line.

Metcountymounty

Researching the validity of conferring

2008-10-24T12:25:00.013+01:00

As some of the comments in the last thread obviously show, the topic of conferring is a contentious issue at best, at worst it is seen by some people as Police officers lying through their teeth to cover perceived mistakes. Whatever your view is, there is no perfect answer, short of downloading peoples memories into a computer to be analysed, so the best answer has to be one that achieves the highest quality of evidence possible. There has been extensive research in the areas of memory formation and retention which suggests that the current practice of conferring is one of the ways to achieve the best evidence.

In reaction to repeated calls by the IPCC and the MPA, the Met has commissioned Portsmouth University to conduct studies to determine which methods would be best for not only achieving best evidence but also for the welfare of the officers involved. There have been extensive studies already conducted in the US which suggest that the current practice of conferring IS the best method of obtaining accurate evidence, the problem we face is the public simply don't trust that medical and psychological evidence and think that we are colluding when we sit down, debrief to reconstruct the incident and our own individual actions and then write them up.

The following is an article from the Metline magazine published by the Met Police Federation and discusses the outcome of research commissioned by the Met Fed into how errors in recall can occur. Have a read if you want and feel free to discuss, critique or lament et cetera.

The Write Approach - New research sheds much needed light on how the brain processes memory in high stress encounters and calls into serious doubt suggestions that officers should not be able to confer over notes after incidents.

Officers who confer and write a report after a firearms incident are likely to produce a more accurate account of the event than officers who do not confer and are interviewed. That is the conclusion of a research team which carried out an experiment in which volunteer firearms officer were put through a challenging simulation of an incident and were afterwards required to demonstrate what they had remembered of it. The events during the simulation were recorded by three CCTV cameras so that the officers recollections could be checked against what actually happened.

The primary aim of the study was to examine the validity of current theories about how memories are generated and their relevance to Police officers involved in high stress incidents, but it also examined the effectiveness of achieving accurate recall of events from individuals afterwards. The experiment was carried out by the Force Science Institute, which is conducting a number of scientific research programmes for the Met Federation. The researchers realised that the study had to be realistic enough to create genuine stress among the participants, as well as requiring them to make the sort of 'action decisions' that would be vital in a real life encounter. It also had to be arranged in a way that the outcome would be changed by the officers actions and novel enough that the officers would have to read the situation rather than rely on experience.

The answer was to rig the gym at Hendon to resemble the reception area of a hospital ward, complete with waiting patients sitting around. The officers were given a scenario, learning that they were being posted as guards for a man who had been wounded in an armed robbery and was in a locked ward. As they walked through the reception area to their posts, they were confronted with a conflict - which they had not been told about - between the 'brother' of the wounded man and the receptionist (the receptionist having denied the brother access to the ward) of such an intensity that the officers were obliged to intervene. While their attention was taken up by this incident a hostage taker burst through a door beside the reception desk with his left arm around a hostage and a double barrelled shotgun in his right arm. The hostage taker discharged his weapon twice into the floor before pointing it at the officers, who then needed to control or shoot the man. Once he had been disabled, the action ended.

Forty six officers participated in the study, divided into teams of two or three. When it came to recalling the incident some were asked to write reports after conferring with colleagues, some wrote a report but without conferring, some were questioned - after conferring - by a third party while a fourth selection of officers were each interviewed without conferring among themselves.

The researchers, meanwhile, categorised the officers recollections into two types. The first type - called 'internal' - encompassed recollections of the officers own thoughts and behaviour. The second - 'external' - dealt with recollections about the other players and the environment. Each of these types was then further divided into "narrow" (a specific focus of attention) and 'broad' (a wider overview).So, for example, if an officer remembered thinking that he or she had to move to a pillar, the recollection was graded 'internal narrow', while if they thought they were in danger it was an 'internal broad' recollection. A recollection that the shotgun had two barrels was recorded as 'external narrow' while the memory of someone falling to the floor was 'external broad'.

In this way, it was easy to see what sort of things were most likely to attract an officers attention, and which things they were least likely to pay attention to and, consequently, fail to memorise. The different methods of eliciting their memories - written reports, interviews, conferring and non conferring - were also graded for their effectiveness in respect of the number of things officers could recall and the accuracy of those recollections. Overall, the officers recall of 'external' things was more than 400% better than their memories of what they themselves were thinking or doing. And within the 'external' category, their recollection of specifics ('narrow' focus) was almost twice as good as their recollection of the broader picture.

The researchers report comments: "this 'tunnel vision' or 'selective attention' is characteristic of all humans who engage in this type of encounter... this study indicates that this phenomenon also occurs in well trained Police officers." It continues: "the important element of an 'external' focus of attention particularly an 'external' and 'narrow' focus of attention, is that the process of focusing allows the officers to focus on what is important to them at the time but that they can miss other items that may later turn out to be important. For example, if the officers attentional processes at the moment of the shooting were on the alignment of the gun, they did not note anything about the specific movement of the subject, their clothing, the subjects action towards the hostage etc"

The researchers say that this narrow, external focus facilitates great performance but renders officers 'attentionally blind' to anything they are not focused on. Their memories therefore became less accurate, or non-existent, about things upon which they were not focused. The report points out: "They were quite often inaccurate or unobservant about the hostage and almost never noted the behaviours or action of anyone other than the shooter. They almost never noticed the presence or action of the shooters brother and even other officers."

The researchers cite one officer who described how his two colleagues 'froze' and how he fired his first shot before either of them had drawn their weapons, but the video showed them all drawing their guns almost simultaneously, with one - who was just two feet away - firing immediately afterwards. Another officer spent a great deal of time describing how he pushed an individual out of the way, while the video showed him putting his hands as if to push the person but then recoiling back and taking cover. The different methods of getting officers to reconstruct events after the incident - writing reports after conferring, being cognitively interviewed without conferring - had wildly varying error rates.

When it came to recalling those things upon which the participants were 'externally' and 'narrowly' focused upon - that is things to which they were more attentive - the officers who conferred and wrote reports recalled 314 correct details and only made two errors, representing an error rate of 0.14 per officer. The researchers describe the statistic as "amazing". The error rate per officer of the 'external narrow' recollection of the report writing group who did not confer, although still small, was 0.6 per officer. Officers who were interviewed provided, on average, more than twice the amount of information that the report writers did, but their error rate soared. For example, officers who conferred and were interviewed about their 'external narrow' observations recalled 765 items of which 66 were incorrect - an error rate of 4.5 per officer.

Worst for errors were those officers who did not confer and were interviewed, whose error rate in the 'external narrow' category was 6.6 per officer - that is, 47 times greater than the confer/report group.

Commenting on the big discrepancy between report writing and interviews, the researchers comment: "The primary source of the errors dealt with information on the edge of the constables focus of attention. The constables worked hard to provide accurate information but the interviews apparently led them to expand on items that they were less knowledgeable about." The researchers point out that the primary aim of the experiment was to demonstrate the degree to which 'focused attention' occurred in high stress incidents and the manner in which it affected the officers perception afterwards.

The effectiveness of the different methods of eliciting memory recall was only a secondary study and did not meet the criteria of a full study, which would require more officers to participate. But they conclude that, nonetheless, their findings indicate "reports produced less information but are more accurate in their detail" They add: "when constables are going to have to report on an incident, the most accurate reporting of the details is going to be provided by those constables who had a chance to confer. A further conclusion might be that the less the officers provide about the incident, the fewer errors they will make, especially if they report only on the behaviour that they were most specifically focused on"

The article was based on the research report entitled "A study of the presence of perceptual distortions in firearms officers" and raises some very important points which the study by Portsmouth University will go into much greater depth. The issue regarding statements is always going to be the perceived credibility or ability to trust those submitting the evidence, but the ultimate aim is to provide evidence to a court for trial or coroners inquest. There is only so much error in a statement that a jury will tolerate before bringing the whole statements reliability into question. With regard to the accuracy in statements, the problem we face is to decide if we want an extremely accurate statement whose credibility will always be questioned by some people, or if we want less accurate but more detailed Police witness statements that face being deemed unreliable because of the vastly increased number of errors.

As always, it seems we're damned if we do, and we're damned if we don't.

Metcountymounty.

Statements

2008-10-09T21:53:00.008+01:00

Given my last couple of posts have been short cathartic rants, this post is a long one, but hopefully I'll explain why.

Following recommendations by the Metropolitan Police Authority after Stockwell, the IPCC recently called for the practice of Police officers being able to confer whilst making statements to stop. This was in direct response to criticisms of Police by the family of Mark Saunders who was fatally wounded by armed officers after he went off his nut and started shooting into other peoples houses and didn't stop when asked. This is the third time the IPCC has called for the practice of conferring to stop after the tragic deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes and Harry Stanley, both of whom were shot by Police officers and were later confirmed to not be armed.

Nick Hardwick of the IPCC said: "The IPCC welcomes the recommendation in the MPA’s scrutiny report that the practice of officers conferring to make their notes following an incident should be discontinued and procedures put in place to demonstrate that the accounts individual officers give are their best and genuinely independent recollections.”

Mr Hardwick added: “We are confident that the investigations we have conducted into fatal police shootings, are rigorous and capable of withstanding public and judicial scrutiny. But we recognise the concern and suspicion this practice sometimes generates amongst bereaved families and many members of the wider public. That suspicion cannot be in the interests of families or the officers concerned.

“The IPCC has a legal duty to secure and maintain public confidence in the police complaints system. As the public body charged with oversight of the Metropolitan Police Service, the MPA’s support for our recommendation confirms the IPCC’s own view that the public do not have confidence in the current procedure in which police witnesses and civilian witnesses to the same incident are treated very differently

“Both the MPA and ourselves recognise the uniquely difficult and dangerous job performed by firearms officers. The IPCC is clear that its investigators do not treat officers as suspects unless there is evidence that an offence has been committed. We recognise that the firearms officers are lawfully carrying weapons and we do not treat them as suspects in a crime unless there is evidence to do so. However, when the state takes a life, we believe that there must be a rigorous investigation and the families and public are entitled to the fullest possible explanation of what occurred and why. This is the approach we have taken in all 14 fatal shootings we have investigated since 2004.

“The current post-incident procedure limits our ability to obtain the best possible evidence from police officers involved in an incident. Each case is different and the importance of the officers' notes will depend on the other evidence we have available.

"The IPCC also recognises that changing the procedures following fatal shootings has far wider implications and may affect the way the police service gathers evidence for criminal investigations. Current guidance reflects the convention that police officer witnesses to an event are permitted to confer before writing their statements. This is a principle in daily police practice. It is not within the IPCC’s power unilaterally to alter policing practices and we recognise that the Police Federation has strong views on the subject.

"While the courts may, in time, come to a definitive ruling on the question of officers’ notes we think ACPO, the Police Federation and the other police organisations need to quickly recognise the current situation is unacceptable. We think it would be possible to develop post incident procedures that provide reassurance to families and the public that best evidence has been obtained and reassurance to officers that they will be protected from unfair treatment for just doing their difficult and dangerous jobs. We seek to work with ACPO and the Police Federation to do that.”

It is a well known fact that Police officers witness statements and other witness statements are obtained in very different ways, as acknowledged by the IPCC. There are a number of extremely obvious reasons for that and a couple of not so obvious reasons, all of which must be taken into consideration before calling for the practice to end.

Firstly, a number of people have said that Police witnesses should be treated no differently from any other witness. As Police officers, we are trained to take statements from witnesses and write our own, and obviously how much practice you get can affect the level of quality of a statement. When an incident occurs we don't get all the witnesses then sit them in a room on their own and ask them to write their own statements, if we did, the vast majority would be completely un-useable in a court and would be missing massive chunks of information as well as having irrelevant information, hearsay and time lines would be all over the place. When we take statements we have to cover rules established under the caselaw of R v Turnbull and follow the ADVOKATE acronym -

Amount of time the suspect was under observation
Distance between the suspect and the witness
Visibility
Obstructions to view
Known or seen before
Any reason for remembering
Time elapsed between observation and identification
Error or material discrepancy in description

In addition to getting a full account of what happened, we interview the witness and ask probing and open questions to get specific details which can then in turn be expanded upon. A key area to completely breakdown in the recall is the sense of time and the order in which events occur. This can obviously damage the credibility of a witness if everything is later shown to be wrong and ripped to shreds in a court. It's not impossible to imagine a defence solicitor challenging a witness "Quite clearly this event happened before that one........ if you can't even get that bit right....... how reliable is the rest of your evidence?"

I have seen statements from PCSO'S that have been 10-15 lines long which I have then had to retake, expanding them to over 3-4 pages. It wasn't a failing on their part, just a lack of proper statement training, a lack of understanding of the chain of evidence or of identification requirements and a lack of training in criminal law such as offence wordings and points to prove. Considering that PCSO'S are at least regularly involved in Police incidents and occasionally have to give statements, if we had members of the public write their own following incidents they hardly ever deal with, they would for the most part, be worthless.

The complexity of the involvement or the type incident does change how much you can actually recall. Just walking down the street and seeing a shunt and a heated argument can last just as long as someone coming up to you, screaming in your face and demanding your wallet but your recall would be expected to be wildly different between the two. The more traumatic the incident the harder it is to get certain information, as soon as you get a raised heart rate and stress response kicks in the less your brain actually holds onto, especially if you haven't experienced it before. This is called perceptual distortion and is subject to an extensive body of research by psychologists and physiologists, I'll be putting a separate post up about it later on because it's too significant to be just a two or three liner but I've written a bit about it here.

When we write our own statements we very often write them together and get a brew or some food to eat at the same time as it's a good opportunity to get refs breaks. Because our statements are expected to not only present the incident as we saw it, but are basically the backbone of the file, they should contain all of the relevant data for the incident. This would include exact times, descriptions, relevant history, street names, callsigns, authorities, incident numbers etc, most of which we would not have to hand before or during the incident.

As I said earlier, one of the main things to go in memory immediately and soon after a traumatic event is the sense of time and order of events. Whereas we can interview a witness and expand on specific details to make sure the statement is accurate, it's extremely difficult to do this to yourself. Considering how many police officers we usually have on duty, it would be an incredibly enormous and wholly unjustifiable drain on resources to have to have another Police officer who wasn't involved in the incident to obtain our statements for us. There simply aren't enough Police officers to do that.

A decent statement takes an hour or so (at least) if it is a complex incident and you know nothing about it. For a shift of ten police officers each arresting one person every couple of days, most serious incidents happen around the same time (thanks kindly to Murphy's Law) and involve more than one officer, we'd need to increase the number of police officers by at least 3-5 just to take statements from other officers to allow the investigations to be completed expediently. In order to stop the extra officers from being deployed and tucked up with jobs they would have to be specifically for statement taking - so they might as well not be Police officers - but in today's bureaucratic world they would not be employed just to take statements. Heaven forbid they had a couple of days or even a few hours where they didn't actually do anything and just milled about, the fact that they would have to have other requirements in order to even justify their position means that they would run the risk of not being able to take statements immediately.

By sitting down and debriefing the incident and then writing our statements together we can get all of the other bits of information together that we need for the statement, tie up time lines and generally piece together the incident. I've no idea how many times I've been dealing with something and someone has suddenly popped up and then disappeared just as quickly. Gaps in memory and uncertainty about decisions made at incidents are proven triggers for post traumatic stress disorder and eliminating the causes as soon as possible helps to prevent this extremely damaging psychological injury. I wrote about this a bit more here.

The fact that we deal with arrests and violent incidents all the time reduces the influence of perceptual distortion thanks to stress familiarity but it doesn't extinguish it. A bog standard gobby drunk getting floored and cuffed after a short struggle is far from being on a par with someone trying to put a knife in your neck, or having to use extreme or even lethal force. Only by being able to properly debrief every incident are we able to deal with them, the severe pressures on our time such as dealing with calls and prisoners and subsequent admin mean that the only time we can do this practically is when we put our statements together.

Metcountymounty.

Is she taking the piss?

2008-10-04T09:18:00.007+01:00

I'm in nights mode which means at the present stage I'm knackered and my ability to mince words is zero but this, I'm afraid, just HAS to be said. Jacqui Smith on Boris Johnson's 'invitation' for Sir Ian Blair to remove himself from post -

Speaking on BBC's Question Time, Ms Smith said: "There's a process in place that the mayor chose not to respect"

WHAT? you mean like YOU did with our fucking pay negotiations last year and are still doing by completely destroying the fair process that has existed for 30 odd years, simply so you can control it on your terms?!?

She then went on.....

"What is important when you are both choosing and when you're supporting somebody that you're asking to do a job like that is that you keep party politics out of it"

REALLY?? So you're saying that you'll be willing to give the job to someone who is blatantly right wing in their views and who thinks that the Police should be terrorising real criminals and harassing them until they stop committing crime, move, or kill themselves?? Give me a break you fucking hypocrite. The post of Commissioner is everything about politics and everyone knows it. It shouldn't be, but then you bastards have been trying to get the Police under your thumb for a hundred years, exactly how stupid do you think we are?

Home Secretary, as a serving Police officer and one who wants nothing more than harass drug dealers and burglars and their ilk every single day, I for one cannot WAIT until the Tories get in, for no other reason than you'll lose your seat and you'll have to fuck off back to something you actually know, like teaching, which is the only thing you're actually qualified to do.

I've been pissed off about that comment since I read it on the train yesterday afternoon and now I've said my piece I'm going to sleep.

Metcountymounty.

ABOUT BLOODY TIME

2008-09-30T19:51:00.007+01:00

Courtesy of the BBC -

A group of retired Gurkhas fighting for the right to settle in Britain have won their immigration test case at London's High Court. They were challenging immigration rules which said that those who retired from the British Army before 1997 did not have an automatic right to stay.
Prominent supporter actress Joanna Lumley said it was a "chance to right a great wrong".
The government said it would now review all Gurkhas' cases.

'Debt of honour'

The regiment moved its main base from Hong Kong to the UK in 1997 and the government had argued that Gurkhas discharged before that date were unlikely to have strong residential ties with the UK. That meant those who wanted to settle in the UK had to apply for British residence and could be refused and deported.

The judgement could affect some 2,000 former Gurkhas who retired before 1997.

The judge, Mr Justice Blake, said the Gurkhas' long service, conspicuous acts of bravery and loyalty to the Crown all pointed to a "moral debt of honour" and gratitude felt by British people.
He ruled that instructions given by the Home Office to immigration officials were unlawful and needed urgent revision.

Lawyer Martin Howe said:

"Today we have seen a tremendous and historic victory for the gallant Gurkha veterans of Nepal. This is a victory that restores honour and dignity to deserving soldiers who faithfully served in Her Majesty's armed forces. It is a victory for common sense; a victory for fairness; and a victory for the British sense of what is right."

All I can say to the judgement is GOOD, it's about bloody time. The people in the Home Office who originally made this decision are a bunch of spineless bastards who wouldn't know what a debt of honour was if it smacked them in the face with a Kukri. To deny these men and their families the right to stay in this country, to work and claim medical and financial benefits that they have more than earned was a disgusting display of hypocrisy, only equalled by the maltreatment of injured service men and women after the closing of military hospitals and treatment centres. There has been a complete breakdown of the Military Covenant by Labour, and they don't care.

We (the Police) deal with more people with 'insufficient ties' to this country every day and yet many are still here, begging, stealing, robbing, committing burglary and generally taking the complete piss with council housing and benefit claims and yet the Home Office will do nothing about it above paying lip service for fear of being branded as racists by people with more than a couple of axes to grind. Immigration won't even try and remand people when we nick them on suspicion of illegal entry any more; they just get released and asked to attend the immigration centre in Croydon in a couple of days time.

Funnily enough not many turn up.

Heaven forbid you're an easy target like a working teacher from Canada (for example) who is known to the immigration system after doing everything right and is easily traceable through tax payments, but was still threatened with removal a couple of weeks before their temporary leave to remain visa expired.

There are people in this country who should not be here in the first place let alone after committing crime. We know that. Everyone else knows that. Yet the Government refuse to deal with it and would rather turn their backs on the problem and disrespect an honourable group of soldiers who have only ever asked to live in the country that they have sworn to defend with their lives. Fifty thousand of whom have done so since their inclusion into the British Army.

Not that it means much, but I take my hat off to Mr Justice Blake for seeing sense, now lets see if the Home Office will do the honourable thing?

Metcountymounty.

Vile

2008-09-26T11:56:00.008+01:00

There are very few things in this world that shock me any more. Some might be a bit gross and make me cringe, like the ankle bit in Hostel, other incidents I have been dealing with have had me a bit awestruck, like seeing someone eviscerated after a knife fight, which was both amazing and seriously bloody painful at the same time. Others piss me off no end with the sheer selfishness of the act, a great many of the things that have shocked have been as the result of burglars. I hate them. After rapists and paedos, they are the one group of people I hate so much that I honestly believe they should, at the very least, have both their arms removed at the shoulder. With a blunt tea spoon.

This would of course make them dependant on people to help them as they would be disabled, and you can be damn sure that that help would come from tax payers money so they would continue to be a drain on society for the rest of their lives.

For this reason I'm a big advocate of a couple of rounds in the head and then dump them in the sea to let the fish sort the body out. This is controversial at present, obviously, but I've been saying it since my parents house was burgled when we first moved back to the UK permanently, especially as the bastard lived over the road (caught on the way out by the local beat officer) and I had to see him everyday until they were eventually booted out of their council paid house. Since then I have never once gone to bed without going round the house to make sure all the windows downstairs are closed and locked and all the doors are locked. I have met a lot of people who have been burgled and I dread to think how many burglary reports I've taken, I have absolutely no doubt that most people who have been burgled do exactly the same thing to try and stop anyone getting in again.

It's a violation that hits people in their most vulnerable place, in their home, the main place they should feel safe and secure, and that is why it is so painful to victims of burglaries.

There is one other place that you are supposed to feel safe, where you hope that nothing bad will ever happen to you and where you think everyone around you is there for no other reason than to make you feel safe.

Your hospital bed.

We had a briefing slide that went out to all the local divisions that I saw for the first time recently.

"officers are requested to help identify the following CCTV image of a suspect for a recent burglary. This male walked into a ward at the children's hospital, went into a room where a young patient was receiving treatment and stole the laptop computer as she was asleep"

Bastard.

Utter, utter vile bastard.

Forgive me for not feeling a damn thing the next time I find a burglar screaming in pain after they fall out a window and send their leg bones in directions they weren't designed for, or through a skylight and break their back, or sever an artery and a couple of tendons on a window they broke. As far as I'll always be concerned, no amount of pain or suffering they get will make up for what they put their victims through. As far as I'm concerned, we'll continue to blat to a 'suspects on premises' call and we'll continue to pursue burglars trying to escape in cars, even if the mass readership of the Daily Wail or the Guardian slag us off for it.

I don't care, I hate them.

Metcountymounty.

A factor of Five

2008-09-19T10:54:00.009+01:00

Does prison reform criminals and provide enough of a deterrent to stop them ever going back?

Er, No. According to studies by the Home Office, between 75 and 80% of adult male prisoners are re-convicted within two years of being released from prison. The Police federation, taking into consideration allegations of crime where a named suspect (with known previous convictions or precons as we call them) who were not charged, and incidents where Police dealt but no crime allegations were made, suggest a more conservative estimate of upwards of 90% of convicted prisoners being involved in crime after being released from prison. Even if you are of the "innocent until proven guilty in court" brigade, upwards of 80% is still pretty damn high.

Some people argue that prison doesn't stop people committing crime because we have more repeat criminals than ever. The fact that sentences are considerably shorter than ever before and you have to do a hell of a lot to actually get a custodial sentence because of the increased prison population is lost on them. The kind of people who argue that prison doesn't work are also the ones who believe that simply getting arrested by the Police would devastate their lives, they have little or no experience of actually dealing with criminals 'at the coal face' and the thought of going to prison terrifies them. I read a great line the other day on The Coppersblog during a discussion about sentencing guidelines in reference to prison -

"It's like doubting aspirin works because you took one 3 months ago and now you have a headache"

Personally, I don't care if criminals are reformed. If they commit a crime, go to prison, get reformed and then never commit another crime for the rest of their lives then great, that can only be good for society and the people like you and me who want to live honest lives. If they don't get reformed, but never commit another crime for the rest of their lives because prison scared them so much that they never wanted to go back, then also great. Same result, different paths to get there, but at the end of it no one else has to suffer.

One thing is certain about prison - if someone is inside, even if only on remand, they're not able to be out committing crime, and that can only be a good thing. The fact that re-conviction rates are so high means that the only respite from the vast majority of criminals is when they are locked away. I am well aware that other crimes are committed by people in prison such as drug use and assaults on Prison Officers and other inmates, but at least they aren't out screwing over innocent peoples homes or otherwise making their lives a misery.

When I was first looking at joining the Job, I went out on a 'ride along' for a night shift. Whilst out in the area car I experienced my first hunt for a burglar who had been disturbed in the process of breaking into someones house. It was, quite frankly, awesome. The officers I was with predicted the identity of the suspect based on his MO (modus operandi or method of operating) and then successfully tracked him down, as they knew his usual haunts and what routes he would use to get there that kept him mostly out of sight. Once they had him stopped the dog unit tracked back to the house, and that was him in the bins (custody) for the night.

Job done, and I was hooked.

They knew that the suspect had not long been released from prison, and as he was a prolific offender, his release had been circulated to the officers as "one to watch out for". The suspect had in excess of 50 convictions for various offences but mainly burglary and possession of class A drugs. As a habitual hard drug user, he used burglary as his method of getting the cash together to get his fix and by his own admission (he had a number of outstanding burglaries TIC'd or taken into consideration, confessing to them to get leniency at court) he was committing around 2-3 every couple of days. This by the way is not a lot, I've heard of people doing 5-10 a day.

Despite his numerous previous convictions, he never got more than a year of actual jail time when convicted at court because he never had aggravating factors such as violence or weapons, hardly ever targeted homes where the owners were in, always TIC'd a few burglaries and always pleaded guilty at the first hearing. As much as I hate burglars (number 3 on my list of criminals I hate after paedos and rapists) he would be classed as a low risk offender, even a nice burglar in the eyes of the court, if there can be such a thing.

Clearly he wasn't reformed, and the risk of going back obviously did nothing to deter him from violating peoples homes. By his own admission however, every single day he spent in custody physically stopped him from being able to burgle someone.

Since joining I have had dealings with hundreds, if not a couple of thousand, of people with criminal convictions. I can only remember a handful of those with less only one or two precons, it actually comes as a somewhat pleasant surprise when you get a court print of someones precons and there is hardly anything on it. In stark contrast, I've also seen prolific offenders with a precon list running into the 200's. Just think about that for a moment, over two hundred convictions at court. Then think about the number of times they would have been arrested and not charged, or committed offences and were never identified as the suspect, let alone the amount of Police and court time taken up by just one person.

I don't think I've ever met a Police officer who honestly thinks that sentencing of criminals in this country is appropriate to the crimes committed. We often have discussions at work about what kind of sentencing system would be more effective at stopping criminals. Examples of suggestions would include enforced cold turkey for drug addicts, hanging, shooting, 400 year prison sentences like they have in the states and building a huge wall around the Isle of Wight and dumping them all there to fight it out amongst themselves - Escape from New York style.

My personal view is that the more someone chooses to commit crime, the more they should have the possibility of them being able to commit crime removed. The only way to do that is to remove them from society by locking them up in a cell. Yes, they may have more gucci kit than a benefit scrounges council house, better meals than I would ever be able to get in a canteen (and free) and all the DVD's they would ever want, but at least they won't be able to stick a pint glass in your face when pissed, kick your front door in while your kids are asleep, or stamp you to death for asking them ever so politely to bugger off somewhere else at 4 in the morning instead of getting drunk outside your house.

My ideal would be a minimum tariff, irrespective of the crime, that escalates exponentially with more convictions as it would eventually completely remove those people who chose to turn to criminality. Here's how my sentencing guidelines would work - firstly you start off with a weeks custodial, regardless of the offence. If they commit an offence that would attract a higher custodial sentence for a first time conviction (like murder) then the higher sentence takes over. After the first offence conviction, you increase every subsequent sentence by a factor of five. A second time offender would get a minimum of five weeks, third would get twenty five etc. After no more than five convictions someone is going to be locked away for at least twelve years, if they are stupid enough to get a conviction after that then they're going to be locked away for the rest of their useful life. Their problem, not mine, and I think five chances is four more than they need to get the hint.

This system of sentencing is extremely harsh, but then that puts the emphasis on the person to make sure they keep their noses clean and not get in trouble. The thing I love about it is it's fair, it doesn't discriminate, if you're a criminal or feel that crime is the easy way out, or you don't care about anyone else and get drunk and lamp people for no reason, then hey, you're going to pay for it by being locked up.

As long as there are people who have never been victims of crime, don't live in areas where criminals make peoples lives hell, but who will defend the view that locking criminals up isn't the right answer, then I'll continue to be arresting people with 50, 100 or 200 previous convictions. In the meantime we all get the benefit and joy of living in a society where criminals exploit our refusal to lock them up and throw away the key.

Annoying, isn't it?

Metcountymounty.

Innocent? or simply Not Guilty?

2008-09-11T22:48:00.022+01:00

Consider the following definitions. As they say, the devil is in the detail, and as every Police officer, lawyer and Judge in the country knows, one does certainly not mean the other.

Not guilty - to be declared legally blameless of a crime.

Innocent - did not commit a crime of which they were accused.

The differences between those two terms, and the public perception that they mean exactly the same thing, has annoyed me from about a week into my Police career. As part of my training I went to get a feel for what a trial is like and see exactly what my part in it would be. I sat through two trials, because one ended considerably quicker than expected. The first case I sat through was a simple drink drive, a guy was arrested at around 3am having left a mates house where he had a few drinks and ate some pizza. After he left, the driver was heading through the quiet city streets with no headlights on when he was seen by a passing Police patrol and stopped. Funnily enough, he failed the roadside breath test and was arrested so that he could be taken to the station to provide an accurate sample to confirm the level of alcohol in his blood. The driver was just under three times the limit and was charged with driving whilst over the prescribed limit for alcohol, he was then bailed to attend court a month or so later.

When he appeared for his first hearing, the driver had elected to plead Not Guilty and so a date was set for trial in another couple of months. As I sat down in the public gallery, my training officer told me that the solicitors would go through some legalities with the judge and then the defendant would come up and the trial would begin. As the arresting officer was also the officer in the case (OIC) he was not in the court as the solicitors started to discuss the ins and outs. After a few minutes the defence solicitor raised some technical issues that they felt greatly undermined the prosecution case. It turned out that at some point between providing the sample (the machine was working correctly and the reading was accurate) and the charge, some administration errors were made on the drink drive form by the custody Sgt. The bench decided that because administration errors were made, any prosecution was deemed unsafe because of abuse of process. The defendant was called in, and then told that he was being found not guilty because of mistakes made by the Police and he was then released.

To many people outside of the criminal justice system, the simple fact that someone is declared Not Guilty following a trial means to them that the person did not commit the offence they were charged with. Does that mean that the defendant wasn't drink driving? That he was not found to be 3 times over the limit? That the Police made it all up and arrested a random and innocent man simply minding his own business? It was the fault of the Police officers dealing for making the admin error that allowed the driver to get away with drink driving; it was not because the driver did not commit the crime he was accused of.

With the exception of some jobs such as domestic violence cases or sexual/serious assaults, I stopped taking interest a long time ago in the outcome of the majority of my cases and the penalties imposed. This is mainly because seeing ridiculous sentences like someone get 20 hours community service (that they won't complete) for 50+ residential burglaries, can get a bit soul destroying, but equally as depressing is when you get a result like "Not guilty, no evidence offered". What this result means is that when the case went to trial, the CPS prosecutor decided for any number of reasons that they were unable to try the case. These reasons could be a witness not turning up or being hostile (as often happens in domestics), exhibits or the case file being lost, or occasionally an off the books plea bargain where they drop one job to get a guilty plea on another. Bear in mind that the decision to charge in the first place comes from a CPS prosecutor who reviews all the evidence and the case file in its entirety, so it's hardly ever because the evidence simply isn't there and they don't feel they can prosecute it.

I had a case a few years ago with a guy for multiple domestic violence incidents against his wife, with injuries ranging from common assault through to GBH. Because the guy only ever beat his wife when drunk and didn't care who saw it, all of the incidents were witnessed by several Police officers and nearly two dozen independent witnesses. He had been prosecuted for assault a number of times before, but because his wife had always refused to give evidence he was never convicted. I remember a distinct conversation with him in custody when he said that he'd been found innocent of the previous charges. My answer at the time was "you weren't found innocent, you were found not guilty, that doesn't mean you didn't do it, it just means they couldn't convict you of it"

The case took ages to put together, but eventually I had the guy remanded and got agreement from the head CPS prosecutor for the city to go ahead with prosecution despite the wife refusing to co-operate. Unfortunately no one told this to the prosecutor on the day of his first hearing (who invariably knows nothing about the cases they are to try until that morning when given their caseload) and as soon as they heard that the victim refused to attend court they offered no evidence and he was acquitted. I and nearly 30 people witnessed him beat his wife (to unconsciousness at one point) so there was no question that he did not commit the offences but having been acquitted and found not guilty he is presumed by many to be innocent.

Just as an aside, he beat her to death a few months later and was given a 10 year custodial sentence having pleaded guilty to manslaughter. To say this sad conclusion made me go even more ballistic than when I got the initial 'no evidence offered' email, is an understatement.

The concept of being innocent until proven guilty has been with us for the best part of a millennia, along with the rights of Habeas Corpus, or the right not to be detained by the state/crown without reason. These rights were enshrined in law because at the time people were locked up for no reason, because of their faith, malicious allegations, or because someone in authority wanted to prove they could do what they wanted. Before the introduction of forensic and scientific evidence, trials at the time centred on witness testimony and the most basic of evidence such as an item found in a place linked with the suspect. I have absolutely no doubt that there were a great many miscarriages of justice at the time, it is not hard to imagine a number of people getting together to provide malicious evidence against someone they didn't like and who could not provide an alibi.

In the present day the concept of innocent until proven guilty still stands, and recent miscarriages of justice (such as the Birmingham Six) or collapses followed by separate prosecution (Damilola Taylor) or simply collapsing because evidence is deemed inadmissible (Barry George) show that investigations are not perfect or impossible to manipulate. These types of incidents are extremely few and far between given the number of cases sent to court each year and certainly do not represent the norm. The fact though, that they still happen, seriously undermines the criminal justice system and the way that the Police are viewed by the public, especially our motivations to prosecute some people. As the venerable PC Bloggs put it in one of her posts, I couldn't give a toss about the vast majority of people I arrest, and even if I absolutely believe that someone deserves to be put away, I certainly don't care enough about them to risk my house, liberty and future by trying to stitch someone up.

In my capacity as a Police officer one of my main roles is to investigate people for suspected offences, then present the evidence to the court to allow a trial by a panel of magistrates or by a jury. Nearly all offences in criminal law contain the wording "a constable may arrest, without warrant, a person who they reasonably suspect is guilty of the offence" or words to that effect. In order to arrest we have to suspect that the person committed it, either by having witnessed it ourselves or by having 'viable' witnesses (i.e. who saw it and are willing to give a statement to that effect, or who can point out the offender who will have been witnessed by other means such as CCTV) so that they can be questioned in interview under caution about the matter.

Further to the belief established at the scene that a suspect is the person who committed the offence, each separate criminal offence has its own 'points to prove' which must all be hit for the offence to be complete, and thereby allow us to arrest and investigate. For example, the offence of Theft has six separate points to prove, each one having been analysed in great detail by previous trials to nail down exactly what it means. The wording is "a person is guilty of an offence if they - dishonestly (1) appropriate (2) property (3) belonging to another (4) with the intention (5) of permanently depriving (6) the other of it" During the subsequent investigation, if the points to prove have been not been hit, or if the suspect has a valid justification for any point, the offence has not been completed and the suspect cannot be charged.

This means that we simply cannot randomly select any number of passersby or someone who loosely fits a description as there not only has to be more to it, but we have to believe or at least suspect that the person did it. Once arrested there are a number of stops in place to make sure that detention is both legal and necessary. These include - presenting the evidence of arrest to a Custody Sgt who can authorise or refuse detention, having the evidence and detention reviewed at specific intervals by an Inspector, if detention goes on longer than 24 hours it must be authorised by a rank of at least Superintendant, after 36 hours detention can only be authorised by a magistrate who is told the evidence and reasons to continued detention, up to a maximum of 96 hours, again after periodic reviews. Once the investigation is complete, authorisation for charge has to be sought by the Crown Prosecution Service who will review all evidence and decide if the case is to go to court. Detention/further investigation can be refused at any point if someone at the appropriate level decides that there is insufficient evidence or justification to continue.

Following this, the probability of someone getting to court (let alone being convicted) is extremely slim if they are completely 'innocent' and have had absolutely no involvement in a crime.

There are occasions where someone's guilt must still be decided by a jury where they have shown an involvement in an incident that cannot be readily determined at the evidence gathering stage as to whether or not they are responsible for committing a crime. These include the use of statutory defences, such as an emergency responders use of road traffic exemptions, or self defence to justify force which results in injury or death. There have been cases such as the prosecution of Chelsea Bennett (stabbed another girl during a fight and successfully pleaded self defence) where the CPS decided to charge and leave the decision to a court. As with everything, the evidence of each case is viewed on its own merits and others such as Tony Singh (shopkeeper who fatally stabbed a robber) was not charged as the CPS decided that the evidence suggested self defence and there was no need for a trial.

No one can argue that public faith in the criminal justice system, or more specifically the Police, hasn't got progressively worse in recent years. I believe that a perceived inability to prosecute people successfully has contributed to this a great deal, along with a number of other reasons. Celebrity solicitors such as Nick 'Mr Loophole' Freeman argue that they are only doing the best they can by their clients, as they are obliged, by exploiting technical loopholes. The aim of an increasing number of trials seem to have moved from 'did he do it or not?' to 'can we show the Police made a mistake while investigating whether or not he did it' which further undermines the intention in establishing guilt or innocence.

Metcountymounty.

PS. I know that was a particularly long post, but when people really don't get the difference between the two meanings, or completely miss the point for investigations, it bugs the crap out of me - especially on Sky News!!

Kit Monster

2008-09-09T15:03:00.007+01:00

So there I am, at the end of a long set of nights contemplating my well needed train sleep, followed by the seemingly endless paint, brick dust, plaster and noise that I've been dealing with for the last few weeks. I'm looking at my belt kit hanging neatly on the cubicle door in front of me and my body armour sitting on the floor, and it reminded me of a post I put up a little while ago about the Growth of Policing. More specifically, the lines "You can identify them (newbies) by the amount of fancy new equipment they carry. A ten billion candlelight power torch, pens that write in the rain, a ballistic vest rated to stop tomahawk missiles, and an equipment bag large enough to house a squad of marines"

It probably will not come as a surprise that I was indeed one of those kit monsters, I don't think being an Army sprog helped much as I was surrounded by new and shiny kit that did stuff my whole life. I was looking through some old photos at my parents a while back and there is one of me as a five year old wearing webbing, a bergen, a helmet, and a pair of Scooby Doo pants.

Anyway.... I'm not quite sure when the change to carrying less kit happened or whether it was gradual or not, but I remember a time in the not too distant past when I had so much kit on my belt that nothing moved and there were no spaces between the items on there. The fact that over the years I've had ankle, feet, back and posture problems directly attributable to wearing belt kit and a vest, probably spurred me on to ditch some of it.

When I was at training school there were a number of kit catalogues going around and people were buying things that at the time seemed pretty cool, but in the long run were a complete waste of money. Whilst moving a lot of stuff recently I found my old stash of 'kit porn' as it has been called and there are catalogues for (in no particular order) Niton, Protec, 5.11 Tactical, Arktis, USMC, RVOps, Oakley and Under Armour. I'm not sure whether I've bought something (or a few things) from each one, but the probability is quite high.

On my belt kit I had - Issued handcuffs in holder, spare fold up cuffs in holder (handy when you've got 3-4 bods and only two of you there), CS in holder with ultra strong lanyard, a first aid pouch with face shield and steri wipes, a pouch for gloves, a 'probie pouch' with all the forms that would fold up easily, a rescue knife for cutting seatbelts with window punch, a leatherman, a 4 cell maglite and loop holder, a mobile phone pouch, a radio (heavy brick type) holder, multi positional baton holder, a 'key silencer' hanging thing, glove clip (seriously) and lastly a small bottle of alcohol gel on a clip.

At the time my force did not issue body armour so on the (good) advice of the guys on my team I bought my own and wore it routinely, as they all did. I thankfully was never shot, but it did stop a couple of nasty slashes to the gut and chest, a screwdriver stab to the back and also took the impact of a couple of fat drunk screaming heffers stamping on my back whilst wearing stilettos. In my body armour pockets I would have yet more forms, my notebook, diary, a supply of normal pens, a packet of dextrose energy chewy things and a pen with a torch in the end so I could write in the dark.

When I was posted to a panda I also took along my 'shafted bag' containing books and emergency food in case I was stuck on a post somewhere, in which I would also put my folder with every conceivable form (for statements, sudden deaths, traffic accidents etc) and also a spare torch.

As you can tell, I carried an awful lot of crap around every single day, most of which was only used occasionally at best.

Nowadays, I now only carry on my body, things that I am required to by SOP's (such as my personal protective equipment) and items that I occasionally need immediately to hand if I'm dealing with something. Everything else is either slung on the back seat in a bag or someone will bring it out if desperate. On my belt I've got handcuffs, CS and baton - all in met issue holders, a leatherman, an airwave clip, a belt loop for my public order baton (saves taking it off every time) and a pouch with a few pairs of gloves and a field dressing.

In my body armour I've got my stop/search forms (the new Met ones are soooo much better than the foot long home office approved piece of crap that takes ages to fill out, and are funnily enough like the old ones I used to use) my notebook, diary, a couple of pens, my mobile phone and a £3.50 LED torch from Millets.

Neither my baton nor my CS see the light of day for more than a couple of times a year (if that) as they are virtually useless, but if I don't carry them and something happens then I'm up the proverbial creek. My cuffs are the most used and indeed useful piece of kit, the leatherman does its intended job of fixing Police cars and bikes, opening packets of food, and occasionally as a ligature knife and seatbelt cutter upper. I have to stock up on gloves quite regularly but more worryingly, I've gone through a dozen field dressings on members of the public in the last four months thanks to numerous violent assaults, a stabbing, two glassings and a nasty RTA. I would be surprised to have to break one out every 3 months or so only a few years ago.

As I said earlier wearing lots of stuff on my belt kit buggered my back up a bit, as most coppers find, which is probably the main reason after realising they don't need most of it, they stop carrying it all. At present the Met doesn't issue chest rigs unlike most of the other forces in the country, mainly due to cost and also because of disagreements about evidence of wearing weight around the hips. I've also heard lots of senior ranks (in my old force) say that they don't like chest rigs because they look "too militaristic". The fact that the military learned over two hundred years ago that a man could carry more weight, and for longer, if it is moved from his hips to his chest and that it prevented back injury in the process, is completely lost on them.

There are officers who don't carry any kit around with them, mostly CID who don't want to be 'shown out' at the pub but others who simply choose not to. One of the Inspectors at my nick is a proper old school SPG/TSG (basically first riot teams through to present ones) who occasionally goes out in a civvie jacket when he's bored with nothing but an ear-pieced radio and a pair of cuffs. Every now and then he'll call up for a bod for us to deal with but he still gets stuck in when he can. I asked him why he didn't take anything out with him and he said "I've still got all the kit the job has ever issued me, even my cape. And then I've got the two fists that the streets of London taught me to use. After 30 years doing this bollocks, I know which has never failed me"

Fair comment, I think.

Metcountymounty.

Having a laugh

2008-08-03T22:48:00.003+01:00

Police humour has always been known as macabre and and is often perceived as inappropriate, especially when the public hear it or the papers get hold of examples of it. This is no different to the military, the NHS or other emergency services and is a direct result of the level of pressure regularly endured from shifts, disruption to family life and of course, to the types of incidents we deal with. An equal level of 'release' is needed to counter it, otherwise the pressure turns to stress, and that's not good.

It's another form of disassociation and a coping mechanism and usually takes the form of a bit of pissing about during work time, or making light of situations that you really shouldn't get caught making light of, or it could just be a bit of venting. As unhealthy as people think it is (that 'evil' canteen culture again...) the alternative is you'd just end up doing your head in - quite literally in some unfortunate cases. Being able to have a laugh and a joke is as essential as being properly trained to deal with the given situations you are expected to attend, and helps the team to get along and bond well, which is essential in our job.

Thanks to mobiles and the ease of being able to record anything and everything I've seen and heard lots of examples of 'destressing' that would look awful on the front page of a newspaper, simply because people either don't get it, or don't think we should be having a laugh at work. The vids that the Daily Mail got from facebook of someone being cuffed to a chair in the writing room, or a DPG officer doing a silly walk and falling over are absolutely nothing, but as I said if you can't take a minute or two to relax and have a laugh then you'll lose it. What also didn't surprise me was the complete hypocrisy of some of the commentators about sharing a joke with colleagues during work time, along with the usual "is this what we pay our taxes for...." comments.

The following is a recording that has been doing the rounds for a while, I guess it's from the US given the accent and terminology and just goes to show that the run of the mill rubbish aimed at the Police over here is universal.

"Hello, you've reached the Police Departments voicemail. Please pay close attention as we update options regularly, as new and unusual circumstances arise.

Please select one of the following options -

To whine about us not doing anything to solve a problem that you created, press 1

To enquire whether someone has to die before we'll do something about a problem, press 2

To report an officer for bad manners when in reality the officer is just trying to keep your neighbourhood safe, press 3

If you'd like us to raise your children for you, press 4

If you'd like us to take control of your life, due to your chemical dependency, press 5

If you'd like us to instantly restore order to a situation that took years to deteriorate, press 6

To provide a list of officers you personally know, so that we will not take enforcement action against you, press 7

To sue us, or tell us you pay our salary and will have our badge OR to proclaim our career is over, press 8

To whine about a ticket AND/OR to complain about the many other uses for police other than keeping your dumb ass in line, press 9

Your call may be recorded to ensure proper customer care and support, and please remember we're paid to save your butts, not kiss them.

Thank you for calling you local Police Department, and have a nice day"

Metcountymounty

Swampies

2008-08-01T13:53:00.006+01:00

In a few short days quite a few of my team mates are going to be having fun at another 'climate camp' down in sunny Kent. I however am going to be sunning myself in the garden (or looking at rain, who knows?) whilst they are on a week of 16 hour days in full kit playing hide and seek with swampies. They will also have the delight of being deployed at strategic points anywhere from pillar to post by people who aren't anywhere near the ground that they will be working on.

The last climate camp was at Heathrow in the summer of last year, protesting against the expansion of the airport to incorporate a third runway. Personally I agree with them that it is a bad move and the environmental damage that'll be caused is grossly disproportionate to the demand for air travel, especially when we're facing a recession. The new runway will inevitably devastate the surrounding countryside as well as the majority of the delightful little village of Sipson. I was down there for the best part of a week, with 0430 starts and 2200 finishes on most days, and for the majority of the time, experienced a significant amount of boredom in between.

There were some 'highlights' that stick in my memory such as being paid - along with 20 other officers in my serial - to guard an empty field next to a fuel depot many miles from the protestors "just in case they tried to get in and disrupt operations by blockading aviation fuel"

Funnily enough, no protestors turned up and we were seriously bored. A great use of Police resources, although Murphy's Law says that had no one been posted to the site, someone would have scaled the fence and we would have been caught with our pants down.

Although we didn't see any protestors there, what we did find however, were vast wild bushes of blackberries, loganberries, gooseberries and raspberries and a random pear tree. Being on a Police carrier helped quite a bit, as we had plenty of evidence bags in which to store said fruit, so a few of us spent each slow walk around the field in our bright yellow jackets picking berries.

There was also a MASSIVE Rottweiler chained (albeit an extremely long chain as we found out) to a post outside a caravan, who wasn't too impressed with people walking past his territory. Thankfully the chain stopped him just short of the path but the low drumroll of landshark feet isn't hard to forget, especially right before seeing a Rot fly out of some hedges next to you!

Other days we were stationed outside the RAF barracks on guard duty as it housed our main mess and supplies area and acted as the forward control point from which resources and specialists were deployed. Being an MOD establishment and operational military base it was also guarded by armed MOD Police and also armed soldiers. And there we were, in our yellow jackets and with our acrylic batons and CS spray, protecting them....

Things did get interesting when some groups attempted 'breakouts' from the climate camp, not that they were in prison or anything but it sounded dramatic in the newspapers. Some of the groups attempted to break through Police lines to vulnerable buildings others tried distraction tactics and were being a general pain in the arse. Others attempted to force confrontation by attacking forward intelligence teams and on one occasion an entire PSU (Police Support Unit comprising of around 25 officers) were forced off the site having been attacked by a large group. A few officers were kicked and punched on the ground as they tripped over tent lines but as the main reason for going into the camp was to try and assess hostility/planning levels and not actually arrest anyone they were withdrawn a short while afterwards.

When the 'day of action' occurred on the Sunday there was the usual disarray as far as our senior commanders were concerned as things were happening in fast time and they simply could not react quickly enough because of extended lines of communication. An officer wearing full public order kit (without riot helmet) looks almost in distinguishable from an officer wearing a pair of black trousers, black waterproof jacket and a bright yellow hi/vis jacket over the top. It's not until you swap a beat helmet/flat cap for a riot helmet that you can really tell the difference, especially at first glance. Given that the level of hostility faced up to that point was sporadic at best, it was decided that the majority of officers were not going to be authorised to be fully kitted up.

This was despite repeated requests from the Inspectors in charge of a couple of serials who were facing the main brunt and were actually standing in front of the crowds and could see the hostility. Had we actually been kitted up there would have been considerably less bruising after being attacked, and no need for us to be relieved later on by several other serials just so we could go and get changed into full kit in the street. We could have also had more tactical options available to us immediately (such as shields to disperse crowds) whereas all we could do at the time was try and maintain some form of cordon to keep the protestors from getting into some of the surrounding vulnerable areas.

At the front of the main group were a load of protestors carrying pictures of faces and placards with slogans on, each picture was mounted on an acrylic board with arm straps - just like our public order shields. As the protestors walked towards the Police lines they chanted "Armed with science" and as they tried to push through the Police lines officers were kicked repeatedly with steel toecap boots to the legs and groin. On camera it just looked like they were trying to push through with their arms in the air holding placards, but we all had the bruises on our shins and thighs to show they were anything but passive!

The next few hours consisted of lots of pushing and shoving with only a handful of protestors actually proving themselves to be more of a pain than the rest. A couple of them found it great fun to get a couple of females in front of them and then use them as a shield to try and run through the lines. Needless to say the pictures of Police officers shoving women back into the crowd didn't look too great, but then charging Police lines isn't a good idea anyway if you don't want to get shoved back.

After quite a few hours in the heat and having push 'n' shove matches with a few more determined protestors, the kevlar body armour and high quality (not) polyester shirts were taking their toll, and we were all sweating buckets. At one point we were held up near a junction and had been joined by some specialist teams including FIT (forward intelligence team) and EG's (evidence gatherers). As the EG's were taking photos and describing several of the antagonists into their dictaphones we were in a pretty tight cordon and my mate was standing directly to my right.

As we were both looking at the crowd he started waving his hand about next to my head saying "get off, get off" he then said out of the corner of his mouth to me "why are you stroking my f&cking neck?" I told him I had no idea what he was on about and we both looked over our shoulders behind us. It turned out we had also been joined by officers from the mounted branch, and one of their horses had decided that she was going to lick the salty sweat off his neck. The rider was in stitches as was one of the EG's who was standing behind us and my mate squealed like a girl when he tried to get away from the horses huge tongue.

After that was a 7 hour slow march to the BAA headquarters (with quite a few members of the public shouting "get a job" whenever the protestors shouted to them) where we then stood outside for hour on end until someone finally made a decision and relieved us with more officers. They then stood outside overnight to prevent anyone storming the building and because they were fully kitted up with shields and batons the pictures looked pretty good. After finally getting back to the nick at about 2300 we had to be back on the bus at 0500 so a few people crashed in the nick, some had hotels and a few stayed with friends but everyone was ratty as hell the next morning.

We then spent a couple of days pretty much the same as before with random postings and the odd scuffle. We were eventually called off a couple of days earlier than planned and by then end of it we all needed a long soak and some kip, but it was fun and we've still got quite a few in-jokes about things that happened over the Op that I'm never going to discuss outside of work! There were quite a few pics and clips floating about the net afterwards, of which a few are in my personal collection, and I've no doubt there will be even more after this latest job, especially on Indymedia.

There are going to be thousands of officers from dozens of forces involved so if you're reading this and are going to be there, have fun and say Hi to some swampies for me!!

Metcountymounty

Overtime - not always a good thing

2008-07-17T12:49:00.014+01:00

Just before Christmas I was working on one of our usual 'Operation Overkill' jobs that the SMT (Senior Management Team) put together to show an overwhelming Police presence at times when lots of visitors or tourists are around such as the Christmas period, school holidays, Notting Hill etc. As usual, the only people actually earning overtime were those on ring fenced squads who the duties office 'forgot' to warn early enough and the office dwelling shiny arses who only ever turn out for double time, the rest of us were on a cancelled rest day. For those not in the know, this is a rostered rest day between shifts where we are ordered to work unpaid overtime in exchange for a rest day back, the kick in the teeth is that we are usually not allowed to take them, let alone normal annual leave, because we are always under strength, so they just get 'banked' and sit unused for months on end.

The nature of the op was the same as it always is, swamp a given area with ten times the normal number of Police officers on a Friday and Saturday night duty without providing extra custody space or a charge centre, no extra vehicles or computer terminals (can't use the locked offices as they are apparently personal issue and woe betide anyone who uses one at night) and role out people for official visits like MP's, 'strategic partners' or Judges so they can look at how many Police officers work at night. The response officers then role their eyes or shake their heads in disgust as said visitors say things like "wow, I thought Policemen complain they are always short staffed"

I was on a post near one of our 'high footfall areas' (or 'busy' as I like to call them) with a couple of guys from my team, all equally miffed at losing our weekend and finding out all the other people in our area were being paid overtime as we stood in our obligatory bright yellow vests which apparently makes people feel safer. Our job was to 'provide presence and reassurance' and also to discourage anti social behaviour from large groups of drunk/sober/young males and/or females and to proactively enforce local policy and prevent crime. Basically what we try and do every single weekend, but on a much larger scale so that when the SMT look at all the arrest figures on Monday morning they can pat themselves on the back and all sit in their group huddle wringing hands in glee.

Along with all the comments from people surprised at seeing ten Police officers on one street let alone a hundred or so in a small area, as a guy walked past me he said "alright lads?? On overtime are we??" as though he was talking to a five year old with his hand in the cookie jar after being told he couldn't have any. Before I could answer, one of my colleagues said "actually no, we've had our weekend cancelled so we're working for free while everyone else is being paid, and I personally have had to cancel a holiday that I'd already paid for because of it, so we've been royally shit on. But thanks for asking" The guy walked off with his mates in stunned silence, obviously unable to use his witty retort, had we said yes.

But this got me thinking, there are an awful lot of misconceptions in the public about how overtime is paid, who is eligible, what rate it's paid at and how available it is. After the pay dispute march there were loads of comments on the BBC's Have Your Say pages with people claiming that we can get all the overtime we want, that we get lots of days off to 'swan about' and that we get to pick and choose what jobs we get to do.

Firstly I would like to point out that overtime is exactly that - OVER TIME. Just like every other organisation in the UK, the Police are governed by the Working Time Regulations which restrict a working week to 40 hours. The shift patterns that we work all average out to 40 hours a week over the year whether we work 8, 10 or 12 hour shifts. Obviously if you work 12 hour shifts you are working a long day but the upside of that is you get a rest day for each day worked (such as 4 on, 4 off like the Fire Brigade although they get to sleep on night duties) whereas if you work an 8 hour pattern then you get the equivalent of a 2 day weekend after 5 days working. We already work as much as we are legally supposed to so any over time that we do work is above and beyond our existing shift, and we are compensated for it by having rest days or paid overtime should we be required/requested or instructed to work more.

My personal view now, is that my free time is worth at least as much to me as the organisation and if they want it, then they can buy it off me. Also, I'm entitled to my rest days just as much as everyone who works and if I wish to 'swan about' when everyone else is at work and I'm supposed to be off then that is my business! I quite like the saying "this is my weekend, I work shifts" when people ask me why I'm off at seemingly random times.

Just like the vast majority of officers I often worked without claiming any overtime or even hours in lieu. When I was a probationer I really had no clue how the overtime system worked or what I was actually entitled to take such as expenses for subsistence when working away from my normal base, or double time when given less than 8 days notice as it was at the time. I turned up, worked when I was told to, worked when it was offered to me and went in on my rest days to clear my paperwork tray down and book on for time in lieu for the hours I was there. When my payslip came through if I got paid overtime then great, if not, then I wasn't really bothered. The flip side of this was that I was permanently knackered and slept through my rest days, had virtually no work/life balance and saw my family, let alone my friends less than once a month if I was lucky.

The rules and regulations for how and when overtime is paid is strictly adhered to because of budget constraints and if there is any reason what-so-ever that the duties office can actually get out of paying us then they will. There are three main types of overtime that we can work - planned paid, planned unpaid and unplanned. The latter is the easiest one to explain, if we are at work and arrest someone and have to work over our rostered finish time then we would incur unplanned overtime AFTER the first half hour from when the shift is supposed to finish. We don't get paid for the first half hour at all however if you claim all the overtime as unpaid leave then you can claim that time back.

Unplanned overtime has to be authorised (in the Met anyway, other forces have different procedures) by the Duty Officer who is of the rank of Acting Inspector or above and is usually given strict limits such as 2 - 4 hours or as necessary and justified on a regular hourly basis. Each team has a strict overtime budget for the year and the team Inspectors are penalised in their annual PDR if they exceed the budget, so it is in their interest to not pay overtime if it can be avoided and will encourage the job being handed over to someone else, or even outright refusing to pay as I have seen a few times. Unplanned overtime is paid at the rate of time + a third after the first half hour is deducted. In the days of the overtime binder (it's now all electronically based) the different types of overtime were written in different coloured pens so they could be quickly identified. Unplanned as such is referred to as 'black' because it is standard paid overtime, doesn't need checking or confirming and was simply written in black pen.

Planned paid overtime happens when we receive either a warning for duty from the duties office, or if you are on rest days and called to be offered to work for a specific Op, such as manning up the core team when short staffed (hardly ever happens) or more regular 'Aid' warnings such as demos, football, Op Safeguard (housing prisoners at Police stations due to prison overcrowding) or role specific tasks for specialists. If we are warned with less than 15 days notice then we are entitled to be paid time + a half for the number of hours worked, referred to as green, or if the warning is less than 5 days notice it is paid at double time and is referred to as red.

Planned unpaid overtime happens when we are warned well in advanced for things like 'Force cancelled rest days' which would be New Year or Notting Hill for example where everyone has their rest days cancelled and are required to work unless they have already submitted leave applications that have been authorised. They are also used more often and more recently for expected high level public order events such as football fixtures where everyone eligible (such as public order trained or specialists) are cancelled as soon as the date is announced to avoid having to pay them overtime. Once the people ordered to work on those days are confirmed, anyone surplus to the operation has their rest days reinstated.

The main bone of contention at the moment is the extensive use cancelling rest days meaning we are unable to plan leave or get the leave applications refused only to find we don't get used, by then it's too late to plan as partners/families are unable to take leave at short notice with their employers. I have been cancelled for two days in a row to prevent me from claiming a recall to duty (as below) and then only ever getting one day back if worked. Unplanned unpaid overtime is also counted against budgets so the SMT's are penalised against the number of rest days or hours left on their books, the more outstanding untaken rest days, the higher the penalty.

This penalty means that the SMT invariably refuse requests from teams to work unpaid days to do things like team training, courses outside of normal work days, team planned ops such as ANPR (automatic number plate recognition system - scans intelligence databases for reports against specific vehicles/drivers), drugs/arrest warrants or rapid entry jobs. When I was a probationer and would go in on rest days I actually found out I wasn't supposed to but because I had work to show for it, it was honoured, however there is no way that we can do that now due to the budget costs.

In addition to the rates at which overtime is paid there are regs covering 'recall to duty' which is starting more than an hour before the force working day of 0700 hours or just over an hour going into a rest day following a night shift. These cover incidences such as in early morning raids where we start at 0400 (for example) or are supposed to finish at 0700 following a night duty and then work past 0815 following an arrest. A recall following nights has to be authorised by the duty officer and to get it passed it will have to be a 'decent' arrest such as a drink driver, serious assault or robbery, nicking any old rubbish will usually result in being told in no uncertain terms to sod off! A recall can be lucrative as it is a minimum of 4 hours and one hour travel at double time however after working a set of nights, most people are too knackered and to go actively hunting at 0600 knowing you will be doing at least an extra 2-3 hours after a 10 or 12 hour shift just isn't appealing despite the money, although most teams have at least one overtime bandit who actively seeks it.

As we are unable to simply pick and choose when we can do overtime (unless called and offered, but to refuse is a sure way of never getting called again) a good way of becoming more eligible to be allocated overtime is to get a specialist skill such as advanced driver, PSU driver (to drive public order carriers), public order trained, public order specialists, search trained or POLSA, custody Sgt, call handling/control room or to be surveillance trained etc. These courses are hard to get and we have to work towards them by evidencing suitability to even apply to some, let alone joining the back of a long list of people already waiting. They are invariably subject to minimum tenures at division or minimum levels of service/training before hand, they are also a double edged sword as although you are making yourself more eligible to work paid overtime, you are also making yourself more eligible to frequent cancellations and reallocated rest days.

Some specialists do get more pay by having mandatory overtime, however there is no extra pay for just being a specialist (such as firearms) everyone at the same rank gets paid the same for length of service regardless of skill sets or level of responsibility. Some specialist teams work an 8 hour shift pattern but have a mandatory 4 hours overtime so they work 12 hour days and get paid for the additional overtime, but get less rest days due to the 8 hour pattern. It is not for everyone, especially if you like to have your rest days, but I have a few mates in some specialist posts and depending on your needs it can be a good option.

After the 7/7 bombings and the subsequent attempts on 21/7, there was a massive amount of overtime going for a good 4 months which cost the Met tens of millions of pounds to run reassurance and extra security patrols around strategic and vulnerable sites. This did have quite an effect on crime within the areas that were being policed but there were also a lot of people physically run into the floor by having no time off to recover, which is why the Met now operate a policy of working no more than 7 days straight without a rest day, although it still happens. It also has meant that there is hardly any money available for normal overtime due to contingent budgets and the fact that the Met is still trying to claw back as much money from everywhere possible to make up for it. Contrary to some of the comments I've read by people on blogs and on news sites, we can't just walk into work and book on for double time on a whim.

Metcountymounty.

Growth of Policing

2008-07-10T21:37:00.007+01:00

Another amusing email from a mate, an exceptional driver with severe (Police) tourettes and a penchant for home made Aero milkshakes. There have been a few different versions but all ring true in one way or another!

Years of Policing - One to Four.

For most officers, this is their first time outside of the middle class bubble. They have never seen a dead body, never seen life threatening injuries, never dealt with a domestic, never witnessed the shit some people call 'home life', and never really understood the phrase 'Man's Inhumanity To Man' until now. Everything is new to them. You can identify them by the amount of fancy new equipment they carry. A ten billion candlelight power torch, pens that write in the rain, a ballistic vest rated to stop tomahawk missiles, and an equipment bag large enough to house a squad of marines. They love it; they show up early for their shift. They work way past the end of their shift without even considering an overtime slip. They believe rank within the job is based only on ability and those in the upper ranks got there by knowledge and skill in police work only. They believe everyone is competent; everyone is on the same page and working towards the same high minded goals. When they finally go home to their significant other, they tell them everything they did and saw. Some of the more 'eaten up' purchase a police scanner so they can hear the radio calls while at home.

Years of Policing - Five to Six

They now show up for work about 2 minutes before their shift, and they are hiding about 30 minutes before end of the shift, writing reports so they can just throw them in the sergeant's in-box and leave ASAP. Some have to get to their second job to earn money to pay for the divorce that is pending. They bitch about everything, some drink excessively, some chase women, and all hate the public, politicians, and media. They feel they have more in common with the hookers, thieves, druggies, etc. but hate them too. Those pens that write in the rain are no longer needed. Writing traffic tickets can be a lot more trouble than they are worth, even on a nice day. To write one, or to write anything while standing in the rain, is a sure sign of madness. Their spouse is no longer interested in hearing about all the gore and heartache. They get the 'you spend more time with the cops than you do with me' speech. A lot.

Years of Policing - Seven to Fifteen

This is when cops are at their best. They have survived changes in administration and many have survived at least one career threatening incident. They know how the political game is played, both inside and outside the job. They know who they can trust and who they can't. They have select friends within the job, and stay away, as best they can, from the nuts and boot-lickers. They know the legal system, the judges, prosecutors, defence solicitors, etc. They know how to testify and put a good case together. They are usually the ones that the gaffers turn to when there is some clandestine request or sensitive operation that needs to be done right. These cops are still physically fit and can handle themselves on the street. They will stay around the station when needed, but have other commitments, such as a second spouse, a second girlfriend (sometimes both) and most of their friends are non job.

Years of Policing - Sixteen to Retirement

Now the cops have a single objective... retirement and pension. Nothing is going to come between them and their monthly payslip. The boss, the force, the idiots around the station, and the creeps on the street can all go to hell, because they could come between them and 'sitting on the beach'. There is no topic of discussion that can't somehow lead back to retirement issues. These guys are usually sergeants, detectives, scenes of crime officers, community, or some other post where they will not be endangered. They especially don't want some young stupid newbie getting them sued, fired, killed, or anything else causing them to lose their 'beach time'. They spend a lot of time having coffee, hanging around the station, and looking at brochures of things they want to do in retirement.

Thirty years of hell behind them....

The retired cop usually dies within five years of retirement, saving the force a bunch of money.

Of course, nothing is ever 100% true, but if you are a cop, were a cop, know a cop, then you will certainly recognise some of the above statements!!

Long cold lonely night

2008-07-05T19:48:00.009+01:00

I’ve driven round that corner countless times before and since and I am still surprised there aren’t more accidents there. A simple two lane left hander before a roundabout with a concrete wall on the outside edge that ‘encourages’ the drivers on that side to cut the corner, forcing drivers on the inside to brake sharply. The council helpfully placed a lamp post as far out on the pavement as possible to light the corner a few years before. The problem though, is being right on the apex, should you try and mount the soft edged kerb to escape the car cutting into your lane as you both go round the corner, you’re buggered and have no where to go.

The driver of the estate car is standing next to our car having unfortunately found himself planted well and truly into the lamp post, the driver of the car responsible has obliviously carried on, having made no attempt to stop and see if he is ok. Apart from being understandably pissed off when we first turn up, he has chilled out now and is going through the motions of the traffic report with me. Keeping a half ear on the radio as always, I hear the call go out “a unit to attend please, winter estate, ambulance on way to report of a male stabbed, requesting Police support, male at location previously violent to officers and paramedics”

I bet you guys get quite a few calls like that, he says, that place is a shit hole. I agree that it isn’t the nicest place in the world to live but say that we don’t get too many people getting stabbed there, usually just drunk and throwing fridges off the balconies when we turn up to their normally pathetic domestics about who runs the TV remote. I carry on for the next few minutes topping and tailing the bits I need to fill the report and as I am taking some photos of the car position I hear the familiar voice of my tutor on the radio “control, we’ve got one detained for attempted murder, the paramedics are working on one guy now but it’s not looking good, can you jack up CID and get the skipper here ASAP please”

As I finish off with the RTA my driver says “The skippers just phoned me, I’ll have to drop you off at the nick to finish that off, and then blat him round to the address” I jump in and we make our way back to the station. We’d gone straight out to the call after parade so knowing it was going to be yet another busy night I manage to get some food down my neck before I sit down to fill out the traffic form. I grab myself a coffee and sit down in the unusually deserted writing room; everyone available has gone to help out. I’m filling the various stats questions and drawing the scene plan out and I listen to the updates on my radio. I’m gutted I’m not there to see what’s going on but I can get a good idea of what it’s like from the radio traffic.

The victim has all but died at the scene, the paramedics took him straight to A&E but he was pronounced dead on arrival the second he got through the door. Over the next half an hour or so the duty SOCO (scenes of crime officer) has attended along with CID and started their preliminary processing of the scene. They decide that due to the time of day (about 10pm now) it would be better to secure the scene and let the day turn come in with a full team to start the investigation proper in the morning. The suspect was taken straight to A&E as well to be treated for slash marks and was being guarded by two of the guys from my team. I call up the driver I’m posted with and inform him that I’ve finished the traffic report and am ready to be picked up and he tells me to hang around and get some food. I’ll need it along with a book apparently.

As the duty team probie I’ve done scene guard and constant watch god knows how many times and although inevitable and necessary, it doesn’t make it any less mind numbingly tedious. I grab my ‘shafted’ bag out of my locker which contains a book, a scarf, a couple of bottles of water, some boiled sweets and various nibblies, I then go on the hunt for some reasonably new magazines. As I walk into custody I see the custody Sgt and ask her if she knows anything about the murder job. In her broad Geordie accent she says “Yeah, W just phoned me to give me the heads up for when his bod comes in, stabbed at least 8-9 times in the neck, chest and face, apparently over some fuck ugly fat bird. I hear you’re going to be sitting up there all night, you’d best have these, pet” she then hands me a couple of unread newspapers and a mag that is on the desk, she then gives me the rest of her Cadbury’s chocolate éclairs, which is nice.

I go out into the back yard to wait for my lift up to the address and he pulls in a minute or so later. I chuck my bag on the back seat and as I go to get in my driver says “go and grab a fleece and your big coat, you’re going to be sitting outside and it’s freezing up there, they’ve turned all the electricity in the flat off” Oh great, I hear myself say out loud. Seconds later and I’m back in the car on my way out and the driver fills me in with the info. Apparently two mates were getting extremely drunk when one accused the other of fancying his wife, the argument got extremely heated as the wife started to wind her husband up, it came to blows and then the husband grabbed a knife from the kitchen.

The victim apparently chased his mate round the house slashing at his arms and back until the suspect grabbed hold of the knife and stabbed him repeatedly in the upper body and head. The 12 inch serrated kitchen knife did an incredible amount of damage and the paramedics only took him to hospital because they couldn’t ‘call him’ (pronounce death) at the scene. As the wife was on the phone the suspect had apparently disposed of the knife before anyone turned up, it is still outstanding.

As we drive into the main entrance to the winter estate it reminds me, as it does every time, of some of the army estates I used to live on, huge high rise buildings, a token park in the middle and only one main road in. At least we didn’t get people dumping stolen cars and setting them alight every weekend. As I look up to the main building opposite the entrance I see the guys standing outside the address on the 4th floor balcony, the hi vis strips on their jackets reflecting our headlights. I grab my bag and start making my way up to the flat, the stairwell is in desperate need of a clean and a coat of paint and the stench of urine hits me in the back of the throat.

I get to the flat and meet the two officers at the door. A photographer is inside taking preliminary shots so the SOCO team can be properly briefed in the morning. I look into the hallway and see the carnage inside; there are splats of blood on the carpet and up the walls. The lights are off but I can see blood trailing into both of the rooms in front of me. One of the guys sees the look on my face and says “that’s nothing mate, you wait to you get inside” As the photographer comes out he briefs me.

There is a plastic chair in the hall that one of the neighbours lent us, there are SOCO blocks on the floor (raised blocks on legs to make a path without disturbing the evidence) leading into each room, and the power is off so we have to use torches as he shows me in. We go into the hall and round to the kitchen to the right and I see the black pool on the floor where the victim laid and the bloodstained boot prints of the officers and the paramedics who attended. There are empty saline bags and bandage wrappings on the floor. As we go further into the house the metallic smell of blood and death reminds me of an abattoir we visited at school once.

I’m told that I can only go as far in as the hall, ideally I need to stay on the chair to make sure no one comes in. The photographer and the two other officers cheerily wave good bye as they leave to get a lift back to the nick. I sit down on the chair and then look up. The blood is all over the ceiling. I knew that arterial spray was strong, but this house looks like someone chucked a grenade in a vat of blood. There are spray lines, pools and bloodied handprints all over the walls, I look on the floor and I see drag marks and more handprints. What the hell happened here? The smell is making me sick and I try not to look at the walls. It is almost as if someone has used the house to film a scene for a comedy horror flick there is that much blood, but this isn’t funny.

I get my book out of my bag and try to ignore the world of sheer death that I am sitting in the middle of. I can’t get the image of the kitchen out of my mind and I keep re reading the same page. A car then turns onto the estate; the headlights shine right through the door and illuminate the flat. As the car moves the shadows on the walls change as they sweep across the glistening blood still drying slowly in the freezing cold. The temperature has dropped even more and it starts to rain outside.

I look at my watch, it’s just gone eleven and I am going to be on scene until the day turn relieves me just after seven. I can’t read because I'm listening to my radio and every time I lift my eyes from the page I see blood. I keep turning round to look at the kitchen and imagine the awful fight and the terrible injuries that were inflicted on both men, with the woman screaming in the background.

I don’t want to be here.

Metcountymounty.

You might be a copper if...

2008-06-29T12:51:00.004+01:00

This list has been doing the rounds for years, it's very funny (to me anyway) so here it is along with some of my own thoughts, just to mix it up a little. I'm crazy like that.

You have the bladder capacity of five people (after a few days kitted up on aid, drinking loads and not going to the loo, I think it was dehydration more than capacity, but it did seem odd)

You have ever restrained someone and it was not a sexual experience (once or twice!!)

You believe that 25% of people are a waste of space (of the people I deal with, I'd say closer to 75%)

Your idea of a good time is an armed robbery at shift change (after 12 hours all I want to do is collapse in a snoring heap on the train, however, nights going into a rest day is a different matter, kerching!!)

You call for a name check on anyone who is remotely friendly to you (because most of the time they are drunk and taking the piss, but the smell of alcohol is usually a good give away!!)

Discussing dismemberment over dinner seems perfectly normal to you (along with discussing what we're going to get for food while standing in the same house as a dead body, yes we do this a lot)

You find humour in other peoples stupidity (if you can't laugh then you'll only cry, and some people are really really stupid)

You have your weekends off planned for a year (having just looked, my diary actually goes up to Jan 2010, quite scary when I think about it!)

You believe the government should require a permit to reproduce (a bit serious this one, but if you look at a kid and just know that they are just f&cked for life then the answer presents itself)

You believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says " it sure is quiet around here" (it does, it's not a joke and you only ever say the 'Q' word if nothing is happening AND you actually want it to kick off in a big way, otherwise, calm, peaceful, still or serene are good substitutes and thus far seem to work)

Your diet consists of food that has gone through more processing than a computer can track (I do try and take decent food in, but sometimes Nando's or even a McDonalds breakfast is without equal!)

You're the only sober person in the kebab house (I'm not a kebab fan but when I get the orders in for other people, yes I am indeed the only sober person. The guys serving even drink which I'm sure they aren't supposed to but there are bigger problems in the world)

You believe chocolate is a food group (unfortunately true however a can of ice cold cherry coke and a Lion bar is an excellent pick me up at 4am when my brain it trying to comatose itself)

Having alcohol at 7am seems relaxing (if you work nights and have the opportunity to go to an 'early house' after your set of shifts finishes then DO IT, no matter what job you do. There is nothing like having a decent cooked breakfast and a glass of your favourite tipple after working a set of nights. For one, you get shitfaced soooo quickly and two, you sleep like a baby. Not good if you miss your stop and end up miles away from home or even on the way back into London, but having a drink after nights is ace, despite the logistical risks)

You have ever wanted to hold a seminar called "Suicide, getting it right the first time" (yes...... yes I have. I had the following conversation with a repeat drunk suicide threatener a year or so ago "how many times have you called us or the ambulance service to say you're going to kill yourself?" "loads" "and how many times have you successfully killed yourself?" "twice" "you seem to have made a remarkable recovery, stop wasting our time and get in the van")

You believe "Too stupid to Live" should be a valid court outcome (along with "and so I authorise for your bank account and all the belongings held in your name and within your home address to be seized and sold to increase pay to our armed forces personnel who actually deserve it")

You have ever had to put the phone on hold before you begin to laugh uncontrollably (yes along with taking the phone off of a colleague having a near argument with an obvious wanker and saying "Hi, do you know who this is? No? bye then" and hanging up)

You have heard the Sergeant muttering down the hall, "Who is in charge of this mess anyway?" (in addition to greeting the custody Sgt with a smile and for them to look worried and say "oh great, what have you brought in this time? are they going to try and kill themselves?")

When you mention vegetables, you're not referring to a food group (occasionally but usually in serious conversation as it gets everything across that you need to in one simple word)

You think caffeine should be available in IV form (along with entonox - laughing gas - we should be allowed to keep that stuff in the cars, it's brilliant. In fact, I think they should legalise it and sell it in pubs in single shot doses)

Your prisoner states "I have no idea how I got here" - and neither have you (usually in company with the question "so why have I been arrested??" for the 86th time!)

It occurs to you suddenly one night that you are policing the twilight zone (picture 3am, central London and a freezing cold and uncharacteristically empty iconic site. I'm out walking alone so I stop to absorb the ambience when a guy who looks like Morgan Freeman walks out into the centre. He unfolds a stool, sits down, unpacks a viola and starts playing the theme tune to The Godfather followed by a couple of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The acoustics were fantastic)

Your favourite hallucinogen is exhaustion (see the above point about the early house, also I like to stay awake for as long as I can after nights, helps kick start the body clock and the feeling is akin to being off your face on codeine. It's the only time the film Barn Yard made me cry with laughter because its not even that funny, just don't drive, not good)

You nodded and laughed at all of the above, and realized what a sick bunch we all are (yep!!)

Metcountymounty

You have two cows.

2008-06-24T13:58:00.009+01:00

This post has absolutely nothing to do with Policing (although the American Corporation model sounds like the Home Office and we definately live with a Socialist Government) but a mate sent it to me and made me laugh, so here you go -

Economic Models and Business Strategies explained with Cows.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes one of them and gives it to your work-shy neighbour.
They laugh in your face.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for the five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States , leaving you with nine cows.
No balance sheets are provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, block the roads and set fire to cars, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You don't know where they are, you decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows.
None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the shit out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy...

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office for the day and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive

Readers Contributions -

NU-LABOUR GOVERNMENT
You have two cows, milked by the cow tsar.
One is black and one is white to ensure racial diversity, the black one fancies the white one thus ensuring we have suitable variation in sexual orientation.

THE ULSTER CORPORATION
You have two cows and pay protection for the milk

SCOTTISH CORPORATION
You have two cows (the hairy highland variety)
You dip one in chocolate, cover it in batter and deep fry it, just to see if it works

ZIMBABWEAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They produce lots of milk for the people.
The State beat you up and steal your cows then give them to someone who has no idea about looking after them.
The cows die and there is no milk
It is all the fault of the Britain and America

BRITISH POLICE SERVICE
You have 2 cows.
You give them a selection of tasks, including making sure that no-one is rude to any other cows for any reason, even if the cows haven't complained. You ensure that they have the correct ethnic proportion of cows for all the fields in the country, notwithstanding that there are almost no minorities in this field. They are so busy doing these tasks this that they have no time to be milked, so you buy some cheaper cows who don't produce any milk but look as though they should, and you hope that because you can see these cows, everyone will think that there is stacks of milk.
To fund this, you feed the real cows less so they couldn't produce any milk even if they weren't so busy doing non-milk producing activities.

Metcountymounty

Why I'm not a big fan of CCTV

2008-06-21T23:33:00.011+01:00

This was actually a response of mine to a question on another post, I've decided to expand on some of the points and offer it over for discussion.

My view on CCTV, is that just like anything else the government have brought in, they did it half arsed. It's very good when it's used properly and to it's full potential but without sufficient resources to use it fully in all cases, or to store and use in court proceedings, it is almost worthless most of the time. CCTV can be invaluable in fast time incidents where the control room or an experienced operator can give the officers on the ground not only the information they actually need, but a mental image of the scene prior to arrival. As an eye in the sky, in many cases it beats a plane or chopper hands down with value for money and versatility, but ONLY when used live.

As for trawling through hours and hours of CCTV for incidents it has to be viewed and used in real time and costs hundreds of thousands in man-hours every year, although some of the evidence that can be gleaned can be pivotal and can make or disprove a case. In courts they still demand the CCTV on VHS tape as they haven't got duplex (ability to view lots of camera angles recorded at once) or DVD players because of cost. Most council and private CCTV facilities now store onto hard-drive because it is more cost effective than additional storage or tapes and quicker to access and can burn off easily onto disc. The cost in time alone of transferring to a system that is nearly 30 years old from DVD's to VHS tape, is completely rediculous.

Added to this, is the fact that most police computers have the CD drive locked out to stop people listening to music or uploading software (which they never could or did anyway, as with the internet they blocked access before anyone ever got the chance to abuse it through fear of looking bad in the press or to the public) even viewing CCTV becomes a complete pain in the arse and cannot be done quickly or easily. Virtually all of the time we have to view it at scene in order to get all the information we need for the crime report or to relay to other officers. I also have no idea how many times I've been to a job where the person who knows how to use or even access the system isn't there, or no one actually knows how to use it as the head office just installed it without showing anyone how it works.

It's all well and good bringing in the cameras if you can use them properly and the infrastructure is behind them to actually use them effectively as evidence in court or investigation, but it isn't and in most cases it is collected and stored as unused evidence at the behest of the CPS. In many cases it's collected for negative evidence as the cameras aren't actually that good, it is also collected to cover arses as it is almost certain that somewhere a CCTV camera has seen some part of an incident and even if the footage is worthless, we can't be seen to ignore it.

I have no idea how many people think that CCTV is as good as on TV or in the movies, it categorically is not. In most cases such as shops or some old council cameras the image is shocking, due to poor quality equipment and an unrealistic expectation of its value. CCTV used to be a good deterrent when it first became popular, but nowadays many criminals know that it is practically worthless. They know that their brief will be able to bring the quality into question anyway and also that the chances of every frame of every vid being analysed and watched properly is incredibly slim. Whereas areas that install CCTV see an initial drop in crime, after time the crime rate creeps back up to its existing levels as they simply don't care if they are on camera any more.

There is also no such thing as digital 'zooming' of an image that can be used for everyday investigations, the reason for this is a computer program is used to extrapolate the information in the image to enhance it digitally, which is technically nothing more than an educated guess. An image only contains a certain number of pixels (such as the ratings used to show the resolution of digital cameras) and whether you have 1k pixel images or 10 mega pixels, if you zoom in too much you just end up with a big pixel on the screen. There are systems used by the military and other government agencies however they are not admissible in court. The reason it is not admissible as evidence is because one computer program could give one result and another could give something else and so there develops a question of doubt. Even if the system is proved to be 99.99% accurate, the 0.01% of doubt is an issue a good defence brief would bring up and capitalise on during trial, with the view to getting the evidence deemed inadmissible.

You can use a computer program to clean up an image by clearing static 'snow' pixels or enhancing the colours of existing ones. This type of enhancement was used by the FBI labs in the Milly Dowler case to ID a car, but there is nothing usable in court today of the same level as in the film Blade Runner where they zoom in almost indefinitely to a photo to get an image.

A perfect example of the expectations and limitations of technology is the photos that Police officers took at the 'Jack the Ripper' murders. They photographed the eyes of one of the victims in the hope that in the future the technology might exists to zoom in enough to get an image of the murderer. However due to the resolution of the film and prints, you can't blow up what isn't there in the first place and using a computer program to try just gives an indication, not proof. The same goes for a digital image and a tape frame.

In a case a few years ago, I had traced a car via CCTV through a large part of the city I worked in, from the location of the incident to a few hundred yards away from where the suspect was arrested in the same car as ID'd by the description of his face and the number plate. When I took the 15 odd tapes from the different cameras to the tech guys at HQ they did all the cleaning they could, but I was amazed at how little they were actually able to do to the image through possibility of corrupting the evidence. I learned that even in near darkness they could determine the colour of a car by analyzing the colour reflections from the headlights, but even that was not accurate and only gave a basic indicator such as red, green or blue. I had to use another car of exactly the same model that was luckily parked up at the roadside on one shot to prove the car we were looking at was the same model. As for zooming in and seeing the number plate or even the drivers face; not a chance.

A further problem I faced was the time index on each individual camera was actually different. In order to prove that it was the same car from each camera and not two conveniently placed cars of the same make, model and colour travelling at high speed from the incident I had to work through every camera in real time to get the difference, and then had to do the same to our radio comms channel, the incident log and the Police national computer. Every single clock was different, including the watch on my arm and the only way to get a proper reading was to sit on the phone to the talking clock. Without going through the pains of calculating the differences, which took hours, the CCTV could have been inadmissible through doubt of worth. As investigations go it was extremely interesting and worthwhile in the end; however the question of proportionality to the offence has to be raised. Imagine having to do that for every incident, let alone having to view every tape in real time anyway.

I had a guy recently come into the station to ask advice with regard to damage to his car. It was parked in a bay and he new there was a council camera about 50 meters away that looks at it and wondered if the traffic department would seize the tape and view it to get a picture of the driver. I was honest with him and told him that they probably wouldn't, simply because CCTV is so over rated. Some record at only one frame every second - sometimes every 3 seconds - and the likelihood of actually getting the car, driver and registration number for insurance was incredibly slim. We filled the form out for him anyway, but I had to be realistic that the chances are he would be footing the bill himself unfortunately.

At incidents where you have different accounts of what has gone on you can use recorded CCTV to give an indicator as to who is telling the truth but without sound and live record, it is still not great and you can never get the nuances of body language on one frame a second video footage. There has never been a conviction based solely on CCTV evidence, there has always been some other corroboration so as the governments answer to solving crime it's not all it's hyped up to be. At nearly every incident I attend now we have people saying "the CCTV will prove it, go and watch it now" and to be honest the fact that there is CCTV everywhere (and thanks to TV programs) it gives the public an extremely unrealistic view on its evidential value and potential.

It's a very simple tool in the box, nothing more.

Metcountymounty.

Not so unwritten carrier rules

2008-06-18T12:10:00.017+01:00

When operating in a public order environment or even just on normal boring-as-sin aid for protestors outside Parliament, arms fairs or Embassies, there are lots of different rules, regulations and SOP's (standard operating procedures) that we have to consider. For use of force authorities we have common Law giving normal 'any person' powers to use force to prevent injury, save life and limb and for self defence. Under The Police and criminal evidence Act '84 we've got Section 117 and under the Criminal Law Act '67 Section 3, both sections give us specific authority as a constable to use as much force as is reasonable in the circumstances to effect arrest, defend others/ourselves etc.

If we have to search people we've got powers of search under Section 1 of PACE (with reasonable suspicion) Section 23 of the misuse of drugs act (for drugs, funnily enough) Section 60 of PACE (search anyone in a given area without suspicion under authority) as well as Section 44/43 of the prevention of terrorism act, again for searching anyone in a given area under authority.

In addition to these basic tools in the box there are authorities for cordons and containment, SOP's for use of different levels of expertise and deployments of reserve units or specialists like dog units or mounted branch. When we undertake public order training we go through the various authorities and SOP's, as well as when we go to officer safety training so they are well and truly drilled in. This is mainly so we can justify actions in statements and can answer questions if we ever find ourselves in the box gripping the rail, but also in case anyone (usually with a hidden camcorder) actually asks us under which authority we're operating under by restricting their liberties.

More important than all of these however, are the host of unwritten rules which exist to make the duty pass considerably easier and to make sure everyone knows where they stand. A lot of these unwritten rules are cast as that evil 'canteen culture' malarkey and are incredibly discouraged, even if accepted as the norm and somewhat essential. In a situation where you have extreme boredom for long periods of time and have 7 people in a carrier, you need some kind of ground rules otherwise you'll end up pissing some or all of the others off and it just makes an unpleasant or boring duty even worse. The chances are you'll be working with them again and that doesn't help. The other aspect to consider is that because in a public order incident you operate as part of a close team, the sooner you have good camaraderie then the more likely everyone will be to trust you if it does go pear shaped. The unwritten rules apply to everyone regardless of age, rank or gender.

A while ago I was severely bored and immobile so I wrote some of them down (mainly after one of the guys on our team pissed a few people off on aid) if you have any of your own then feel free to send them!

*If you're the carrier virgin then you buy the doughnuts or an appropriate substitute - we did, so should you, its just rude if you don't. Healthy alternatives do not count.

*The carrier virgin (or team member with least service) must bring a quantity of extra long elastic bands, easily available from the station office. Being in a field in the middle of no where is boring, these will come in handy.

*The Operator is responsible for spare airwave/radio batteries, assembling reasonably new newspapers from around the nick, ensuring there are at least 2 decent maps on board, bringing an appropriate bag of sweets for the driver, sorting out a bin bag and making sure the last team didn't leave any skanky food on the shelves. Not nice when you put a hat up there to find a week old Met-issue Tuna Wrap stuck to it.

*The jump seat (next to the side door) MUST be offered first to either the Sgt or the Inspector, then it should go out in height order.

*Despite its name, the jump seat is not for jumping out of, especially when moving, you'll hurt yourself and make the rest of the carrier look stupid.

*The BINGO seat is the one furthest back from the door, after the jump seat, this gets offered to the Inspector if they want it, before you look dumb for asking, it stands for "Bollocks, I'm Not Getting Out"

*Always volunteer to get the snacks. Upon receipt, the snacks must be dished out as quickly as possible on return to the carrier.

*You can never have too much water, even if its cold and miserable, any water hanging around is yours - reallocate it to your carrier as soon as possible then at the end of your duty always dish it out, if no one wants it then stick it in your locker.

*The Medic is not a 6 headed monster, you are allowed to talk to him/her even if they are from another nick, whilst they are on your carrier, you're one big happy world hating team.

*During operational feeding, everyone on the carrier must stop eating and eyeball the incoming group to prove that they are not as good as you.

*The carrier virgin is NOT allowed to pack the kit bags, they'll earn this right only after forgetting that their hi vis is in the pocket furthest away from the door, and at the bottom of the pile because they thought they'd never need it.

*Bring an mp3 player, preferably with speakers if you have decent music, earphones if not. You will need it.

*Prior to the Aid you'll more than likely stop off to get nibblies and papers, it's customary for each person to get a different one so chip in.

*If you really must fart, have the courtesy to fess up and laugh as loud as possible while everyone wretches, entombed in a moving metal windowless stink pit.

*Double time or not, if someone is sleeping then photos are acceptable - elastic bands flung off a baton MP5 style at high speed to the groin, are not.

*If you're on Double time and everyone else is on a reallocated rest day - or even core shift - then get the McFlurrys in, you're being paid enough.

*If you choose to bring some playing cards, make sure they're normal ones, it's not nice to get a group bollocking if someone sees the FHM deck and decides to have words in front of the whole food hall.

*We know you're excited but it must be emphasised that you are more than likely going to be walking around in your big hat/bowler and hi vis - you probably won't be getting kitted up and sticking anyone today unfortunately.

*No, you aren't going to be carrying any Halon, it's just for show.

*Despite what the person on the other side of the desk says, there is no limit to the number of biscuits you can have from the Police room at football stadiums. It is your duty as carrier virgin to return to the carrier with an excess amount of biscuits, just don't get caught walking out with a box, their head might explode.

*The rules to the game 'who'll shit first' are simple - in order of rank followed by specialism then length of service, everyone puts a quid in the kitty and picks one of the public order horses. If your horse shits first, you win the kitty. Easy.

*And finally, yes it is true, every other nick DOES has fitter people than yours.

Metcountymounty.

Didn't see that one coming

2008-06-16T23:11:00.007+01:00

It's night duty, a few weeks after being signed off to patrol independently and I’m crewed with my team tutor and mentor who I shall refer to as W. Having a massive three and a half years service (anything more than a year was massive at the time) and having already served on a proactive surveillance team, he has my complete trust and respect. A couple of years older than me, quite a bit shorter, and considerably more ginger, he has no issues in fully utilising his officer safety instructor skills to gain the upper hand with everyone I have seen try to fight him (at least a dozen at that point, which was loads) Whilst tutoring me, he was always serious. He still answers any question I have sincerely, no matter how stupid or based on having been told complete lies. Like me, he's come from a Services family and had been aiming to join the Marines to follow his dad but chose the Police instead. Having worked with him for a few weeks since my last course at the training unit he is completely different, more relaxed, and more of himself than when he is in teaching mode.

We're skulking around one of our rougher estates looking for anyone to spin when the call comes through the radio “a unit to attend 40 South Street, call from a family member, drunk male attacking his wife” I later read through the incident message and the exact words the 17 year old caller used were “please help, he’s drunk again and punching my mum, I can’t stop him, please help”

It's after pub kicking out time and the roads are relatively empty so we get to the address in good time. As we are walking along the path up to the door, I can hear a man shouting and the sound of furniture being thrown about. W asks me to get an update to the control room and get a van running. The hall light isn’t on but I see the front door open as the caller comes out. He’s 17 and looks like any normal kid although he is upset that he can’t protect his mum from his dad. Apparently he’d got back from the pub drunk after watching the football, his team lost, so naturally, he took it out on her. Again.

The kid says he called us, he tried to stop him from hitting his mum but his dad just pushed and kicked him out of the room. As we walk into the house, W goes in first and tells me to get the kid out of the way. We go in and I see the stairs on the left of the long hall and I tell the kid to stay outside the room. I hear a woman sobbing from the front room off to our right, the door is ajar and I can see her sitting slumped on the floor, she’s hiding her face from him as he is standing over her screaming into her ear about something but I can’t make it out. W pushes the door open and we start to go into the room. The man doesn’t acknowledge us, he keeps his back to the door and just shouts “I told you to get OUT!!” The woman lifts her head up and looks at the door, her left eye is bleeding and is already starting to swell closed, her bottom lip is cut badly and blood is pouring down her chin, I can see the cuts on her legs, more than likely from where he was kicking her on the floor.

For a second she can’t understand what she is looking at, and then as she realises her face contorts in horror, this gets her husbands attention and he turns around to look at us. For a moment he is shocked and then angry and shouts at us “get the fuck out of my house, you’re trespassing” W says to him “I don’t think so pal, step away from her, you’re going to be coming with us” He shouts at us again to get out then sees his son behind me and screams at him “did you call them you little fuck? You’re done, I told you to keep your nose out you little bastard” I tell him that we could hear him down the street and neighbours called us but he ignores me and stares straight at W who has already got out his baton. As he racks it and starts moving into the room, I move to his left.

We’ve done a few takedowns together and as he took the time to practice with me and a couple of the other guys in the back yard I know W favours going in from our right side to control the left arm. W moves in and raises the baton, placing the tip on his right shoulder, he then shouts at the man “I said get away from her NOW” We get closer as the guy starts to turn fully square to us. He starts to drop his head and roll his shoulders forwards, as he starts to bring his hands up I know that he is about to move on us. W has stepped forward again, closing the reaction gap and I move with him. Just as the man launches forward and goes to grab him, W drops down low and strikes the guy as hard as he can across the left knee causing him to scream in agony and fall forwards. We both move in taking our respective arms, folding them up behind his back and we use his momentum to push him face first into the floor.

As we all hit the floor I hear the wife shouting “please don’t hurt him” I look up at her and can’t believe what I’m hearing, this man has just literally beaten her black and blue, probably scarring her for life given the state of her face. W shouts at me to get his arm round, he’s already managed to get a cuff on the left arm and he has it half way up his back, ready for me to get the right one in. As I try to pull his arm up he pulls against me screaming and swearing at us. He manages to pull his arm round enough to start to tuck it under his chest. The only thing I can do to control the arm is to punch out his bicep, causing it to deaden to give me enough control to turn his arm round in the socket allowing me to put a ‘goose neck’ lock on his wrist. Once I get the lock on I can then bring the hand back round behind his back and force it into the handcuff.

As I start to punch the arm the son shouts out “why are you punching him, you can’t do that” as he starts to walk towards us, W shouts at him to get back. I again punch the arm and get a good hit in but the only thing going through my mind is “what the hell is wrong with the people in this family?!?” As I lift the arm out I manage to turn it round, locking out the elbow and turning the wrist towards it giving me complete control of the arm, I then get the hand down and W pulls the wrist into the cuff. The guy is still screaming and swearing at us but I hear the diesel engine at top revs and I see the flashing blues in the window telling me the van crew has arrived. A second later I hear them bang through the front door and into the hall, shouting out to us to check we’re ok. As one of the guys puts his head round door, the son shouts at him that we’re beating his dad up and my colleague says to him “hang on a minute, didn’t you call us?”

The man hears this and goes ballistic, he screams out “ I fucking knew it you bastard, you called them” he starts thrashing around on the floor, trying to turn to W, biting out to try and get the nearest thing to him. W asks me if I’m ready to go, I change my leg position to get ready to stand up and as I do so W nods at me. With our arms locked around the guy’s arms and shoulders and with the help of adrenalin, we lift him up easily. As we start to move to the hall my colleague goes to the front door to hold it open and I see the son move further up the hallway into the house. At least he’s now out of the way. W starts to turn so he goes out through the door first, the hallway is narrow so we have to go sideways with the guy bent forwards. As we get into the hall the man is still screaming and swearing but he’s now started spitting, he tries to head butt W and kick his legs out, missing and falling forwards as his weight shifts. We fall against the stairs and I bang my head and I hear the son screaming now “what are you doing to my dad, get off him, you’re hurting him!”

I ignore the son and regain my footing, pushing the guy further forwards to keep his head down, at least that way he can’t see what he is kicking at or trying to head butt. W shouts at him to stop resisting but he’s still thrashing his legs around as we try to move him down the hall. We’re bouncing off the wall and the stairs as we get closer to the door, trying to shuffle through the hall with someone trying to kick out isn’t easy. By now we are both screaming at the guy to stop resisting and trying to kick us but we are nearly at the door so W starts to move out to his left, giving him space away from the guys legs to make it harder to kick out.

As W is right at he door I feel a huge impact at my right side, knocking me forwards. I realise that the son has just tried to jump on my back and as I turn to look at him, I lift up my head to see W let go of the dad and jump towards me. As I turn to my right I see the son with his right arm up in the air, moving towards the back of my head, W throws a punch straight towards me and before I can finish thinking ‘what the fu…’ I see his fist move past my face, striking the son straight in the mouth, causing him to fall to the floor. As the son collapses in a heap I see him drop the biggest Phillips head screwdriver I’ve ever seen.

This kid, who had called us to stop his dad from beating his mum up, has just tried to stab me in the neck with a screwdriver.

I started to fall on top of the dad as we were both completely off balance, W scrambled over both of us and jumped on the son, as my colleague holding the front door moved in to grab hold of the dad’s right arm. W pinned the son to the floor as we got the dad out and dragged him – still screaming – to the van, putting him into the cage. The van driver rushed in behind us to help W handcuff the son, who was then walked out and put into the back of our car while someone requests another van to take him. I'm stood next to the front gate of the house, my hands shaking from the adrenalin and the fact that I was just nearly stabbed, all I can picture is the screwdriver on the floor. W walks over to me and says “that was close. I didn’t see that one coming. Are you alright?”

I just look at him and say “I need a fucking brew”

Metcountymounty.

How many does it take?!?!

2008-06-07T23:09:00.018+01:00

I have no idea how many times I've been asked how many Police officers it takes to restrain someone. Usually it's a rhetorical screech in my ear, others it's some drunken arse counting us all out as loud as he can. Anything more than one on one, and we get accused of excessive force. The problem with one on one is when trying to restrain someone who doesn't want to be restrained or is actively fighting, you need to use even more force in order to control them. This inevitably leads to injuries which we are then criticised about.

Unlike two blokes having a fight on the street with the intention of ripping lumps out of each other, the methods that we use are designed to do a number of things instead of just putting someone on the deck and walking away. First and foremost is to actually cause as little long lasting injury as possible to the person being restrained and secondly to minimise the risk of injury to the officers involved. By having a number of officers controlling a limb or the head and another just concentrating on handcuffing, you can safely prevent someone from lashing out and injuring themselves. It is considerably better to walk into custody with someone gobbing off that it took five or six officers to hold them down, than one or two walking in with someone bleeding and battered, having been sprayed and batoned to the floor.

Invariably if someone can be handcuffed easily then they will be, it is much easier to get them into a van if they are compliant. It also makes the custody procedure quicker and minimises the possibility of having to do 'constant watch' on someone (sitting on a chair outside their cell watching them for the duration of the shift whilst seriously bored) if they think they have been mistreated and have decided they'll just try and kill themselves in the cell to get one up on us.

Another consideration is that while most people will just watch, some will stand there screaming abuse at you because the person on the deck "ain't dun nuffink" while others will attack the officers, either because they are vulnerable or because they want the person to escape. If there is a crowd of 200 people we'll be lucky to get one or two who will actually help if we're on our own (most will get the mobiles out and film it for youtube) which is why as many officers as possible will come in, control whatever they can get hold of so the person can be cuffed or strapped and then removed. In addition to remaining in control of the incident by ending it quickly, it also prevents the likelihood of positional asphyxia, which can be fatal.

If you have a look at the picture above, you'll see that there are four officers involved in restraining the guy on the floor, the fifth officer standing up has either dislocated floor-guys left hip and is holding his leg, or more likely is holding back the guy to his right. The female officer at the front is holding the head against the floor, although this may be uncomfortable, it stops him head butting the floor (which happens a lot) and creating injuries to blame the police later on, as well as leaving them free to spit at/bite the officers closest to him. It also puts her in a position of control where she can speak/shout directly in his ear so he can hear the instructions such as 'stop resisting' or 'put your hands behind your back' etc. Pinning the head can reduce the likelihood of him fighting as most people tend to calm down when their head is restrained.

The male officer at the back is holding his legs to prevent him kicking about and also from using his leg/back muscles to try and lift himself off the floor. The most common method we use to control legs when some one is face down is to bring the feet up to the buttocks, cross the ankles then hold the feet there. Most of the time this can be done by one (large/strong) person however if you have someone who is drunk/drugged or is high on adrenalin then it may take two people. The reason for crossing the legs over is to put the largest muscles of the thigh in a position of mechanical weakness which prevents them being used, it also gives a level of pain compliance that can be applied or eased off as appropriate with the ankle joint, especially if the person being restrained has a muscular build or is not very flexible.

The officer on floor-guy's left side is holding the arm over the back so that he can be handcuffed. Depending on the strength or mental state of the person being restrained, getting the arms out can be pretty difficult, especially if they have a high drink induced pain threshold. The natural instinct when being pinned is to go into the foetal position with the arms in to the chest to protect the stomach and head, and bring the knees up high to protect the groin.

This is why most people pull their hands in front of them, although occasionally you can have someone hiding or trying to get to a weapon or drugs. Either way, the person is being restrained and cuffed for a reason in which case the best place for the hands to be is behind them so that they cannot strike out to the front, even if cuffed. By having one person on each arm you can apply pain compliance in the form of locks or strikes which either immobilise the muscle groups or deaden/shock them for long enough to be manipulated into position.

Once you have the persons arms into position to be cuffed then either of the arm controllers can handcuff, although it is often preferable to have someone else come in to handcuff separately. This could be because the person is still trying to pull their arms round in which case they still need to be held, which means that the officers are unable to get their cuffs to apply them. In addition to the issue of getting handcuffs out, when your own adrenalin is pumping it is very difficult to apply them without catching clothing, their skin or your skin so if possible it's much better to have someone else do it.

While someone is on the floor in the prone position (face down) one of the most dangerous situations we have to consider is positional asphyxia, where the chest is compressed by their own mass or the weight of officers pressing on them, meaning that the person on the floor cannot breathe. This is the main reason that we tell people to calm down and stop resisting so they relax, meaning we can get them off the floor or put them in a better position (on the side similar to the recovery position) so they can breathe much easier. The last thing anyone would expect us to do is just stand up and leave someone alone who is violently thrashing on the floor, as I said already this can cause more injuries, it also looks seriously unprofessional just letting someone thrash about in handcuffs with everyone watching them.

Positional asphyxia has caused some people to die at the scene or soon after (up to 24 hours in some cases) where a lack of oxygen to the brain creates medical problems that were not there, or in some circumstances aggravated ones that were. If someone has been trashing about on the floor or in a violent struggle before hand, the oxygen deficit is huge and even a small amount of pressure can restrict the ribcage. One of the stages that can occur before unconsciousness is a violent outburst of strength. This is basically the bodies last ditch effort to get air in the lungs and oxygen to the brain and can be a subconscious action, the problem for us however is that it is impossible to tell a conscious struggle from an unconscious one.

In order to reduce the risk of positional asphyxia, the easiest way is to get the person cuffed and controlled immediately. Sometimes this can mean six officers on one person, which can look bad to those who have no idea what has been or is going on. The public perception of this is nothing compared to that of a death in custody and the inquest later. One of the main justifications for the Police use of Taser for violent or armed suspects is that it is a form of instant pain compliance, which does not need officers to be virtually sitting on and crushing a suspect while they are handcuffed.

It is much better to use a weapon that has immediate effect, does not contaminate anyone else, and has virtually no risk of broken bones - apart from falling to the ground. I personally would much rather see someone controlled or dropped instantly with a Taser than jumped by five or six blokes who have nothing more than a steel bar, brute force or a chemical agent that is more likely to effect them than the suspect. The risk of injury is considerably lower if you actually look at all the tactical options and risk related to each one properly - especially as word of mouth has already seen the threat of Taser to be more effective than virtually anything else.

Metcountymounty

Target profiling

2008-05-29T15:26:00.009+01:00

No matter what the Police do, someone somewhere is going to be offended, aggrieved, persecuted, upset or discriminated against in some way. In short, we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t, so most of the time we crack on anyway after lots of checks and rechecks to make sure that the action to be taken is proportionate, legal, accountable and necessary. We then take the flack later and deal with it. One of the extremely hot political potatoes of late has been concerning the use of target profiling to identify and deter suspected terrorists or criminals.

My view on the subject is this – if we have an identified threat from a specific group or gang then we should target them with aggressive intelligence gathering, stop checks and arrests in order to disrupt their activities and identify and prosecute where criminal offences have become apparent. This way the vast majority of the public will not be harassed and they will see that we are tackling problems that affect everyone. By making an environment too hostile to operate in, the targets (or potential targets who see a benefit in crime/terrorism) will then move onto a softer option elsewhere. The better result is they hopefully decide that they cannot comfortably work anywhere and that the risk of capture is too high to justify the act, so they quit and do something else instead, like become a politician.

Take for example, a group of criminals using mopeds in order to quickly enter and exit a given area to commit burglaries at specific types of premises. This tactic is by no means new, as most Police pursuits of mopeds will be cancelled if there is an element of danger. You only have to watch Road Wars or Traffic Cops to learn that riding on footpaths, no helmets, lots of pedestrians etc fulfil this criteria, then that particular form of transport becomes desirable for committing crime as you can use the things virtually anywhere.

In order to deter criminals from using mopeds to commit the types of crime that we KNOW they are being used for, we could do one of three things. 1) stop everyone from using mopeds, 2) randomly check any moped rider whether or not we believe that they could be a suspect or 3) target specific riders based on intelligence such as age, clothing, behaviour, time of day or other known elements of their MO (modus operandi or method of operating)

The first option is unfair, disproportionate to the problem and will alienate not only those who do use mopeds and don’t commit crime but those who think it’s unfair to target everyone to eradicate an extremely small minority even though most people will never ride a moped in their life.

The second option is equally unfair and could be considered a complete and utter waste of time as it would appear you are merely stopping people who you don’t suspect to be a target in order to balance the books, they will also generate plenty of responses from innocent parties along the lines of “do I look like a 15 year old burglar?”

The third option is the preferred choice as it gives a higher potential hit rate for stops, it is fair and proportionate to the threat, it also has a higher potential for success as it narrows down the target profile significantly.

I think most will agree that sending police officers out in high visibility jackets and vehicles to randomly stop vehicles and people who they don’t even suspect are related to the crime, in randomly picked areas, is an absurd waste of time. The people and vehicles stopped would be searched and personal details gathered for no reason other than it is believed that random checks have at some point deterred a suspect from committing a crime and it is therefore a valid tactical option.

The Police officers will be well aware that they are doing nothing but filling out forms for forms sake as well as getting on peoples nerves for making them late for work/college/pub needlessly. Even if the senior management maintain that doing random checks on random people could possibly maybe perhaps deter someone from committing burglary in the area, everyone feels that resources would be better used in specifically targeting the actual suspects instead of everyone else.

This is what currently happens with stop searches under Section 44(1 & 2) of the Terrorism Act as we are told “no one knows what a terrorist looks like, they could be anywhere and everywhere so don’t stereotype people and check anyone and everything” The Police officers cannot refuse a lawful order as the legislation is designed to be used to stop anyone and everything in a given (large) area and time frame, so legally there is nothing wrong with the order, as rediculous as the action may be.

During the IRA/RIRA/PIRA campaigns in the 80’s and 90’s, if you were a white male or female in your early to mid 20’s, had an Irish accent and people didn’t recognise you then suspicions would have been raised. If you were in an area where no Irish people lived or gathered then the chances are that you would have been stopped and searched. When I was a kid we used to have TV broadcasts on the BFBS (British forces Broadcasting Service) telling everyone to look out for exactly that profile and to report them to the Royal Military Police, because that is where the threat came from at the time. If you were black, Chinese, Asian, Fijian or Arabic, not many people would have suspected you of being a member of the IRA, again because people from those ethnic groups were not at the time considered to be involved in the threat.

Searches under the ‘Sus’ Laws and later S.1 of PACE still happened because they could however I very much doubt that anyone of those ethnic groups would have been told that they were being searched because the Police officer thought that they were members or supporters of the IRA, unless the police officer was conducting a questionable search and used that as an excuse for it.

In the UK the current threat from Al Qaeda and affiliated groups is real, there are literally thousands of known or suspected members or supporters. On the news a few weeks ago Sir Ian Blair stated that several credible plots have been stopped and hundreds of cells are being tracked by the security services which is causing a nightmare for resourcing personnel. Using all of the current intelligence, the Security services are able to build up a profile based on background, beliefs, hobbies, friends, activities, web browsing, habits etc which give indications as to whether or not a person who fits that specific profile is deemed a threat and worth investigating.

Profiling has been used extensively by countries such as Israel on their national airline El Al. Along with increased security such as covert and overt air marshals, it has been used to good effect. They use profiling at borders and stop checks and have stopped attacks by doing so. The fact that they continue to be attacked and that the terrorists change tactics shows that profiling works as the enemy has to change continuously. This takes time, and subsequently gives their security services a chance to gather intelligence and reassess the threat.

Given the current threat I do not believe that it is proportionate sending officers to tube stations, bus stops or crowded places to search randomly selected people, just because some believe that using profiling could be seen as stereotyping or discriminating. Searches under S.44/43 are extremely random and virtually pointless, I have only known of a couple of arrests for specific terrorism offences while doing S.44 stops in groups or as tasking. There have been plenty of arrests, however they have been for other criminal or traffic offences after hundreds of random stops.

There have been many instances where the people stopped and searched have been so far removed from the known terrorist threat that is has been laughable, and yet we are still told that randomly stopping vehicles and people is a valid tactic as it “keeps them on their toes” and that we should not use any form of target profiling.

Metcountymounty

Organised community retributive action

2008-05-16T13:50:00.008+01:00

Or being a vigilante as it is sometimes called, depending on your point of view. Vigilantism is an extremely emotive topic with arguments both for and against, and there are lots of people who will vehemently fight for both sides of the coin. Personally I am undecided on the subject, as a Police officer I am of course one of the people sworn in office to uphold the law of the UK and defend those who are unable to defend themselves. The problem is that we (the Police and more importantly the criminal justice system as a whole) have been failing on the latter point with increasing and alarming regularity. Things are not as bad as they could be, but they are definitely worse than when I first joined at the beginning of the new millennium, and considerably worse than when I was a kid.

The media have always used vigilantes as a subject for comics, movies and books, one of the most recent films that come to mind is the film Outlaw with Sean Bean. If you haven’t seen it already then I would suggest watching it, it’s not brilliant but the basic story line is something that most people can relate to, especially if you happen to live in an actual non-gated, non-taxpayer funded house in a normal community. A group of guys find each other after a series of personal tragedies and they decide that enough is enough and that they should take the fight to the bad guys as the Police (of whom most can’t lay in bed straight according to the ridiculously clichéd Bob Hoskins character) are unwilling or unable to do anything about it. It’s not film of the century by a long shot but it did get me thinking a bit.

Long before the Police existed, communities ran themselves and the Government was a long distant figure that demanded considerably less tax than now. Judges were sent round the country on Circuits to do the court thing so that they would experience life (and crime) in many areas of the country and not just where they lived. Crime was at a level that would seem like the pearly gates compared to now. The main reason for that is people knew that they didn’t have to put up with any hassle, and if it was too big for one person to deal with, a group of them could get together to sort the problem out. Even after the Police were set in statute with the Metropolitan Police Act 1829, communities could still look after themselves and address anything up to a major issue with a bit of common sense.

Children learned that they had to respect other people or face the consequences and that they couldn’t just do what they wanted, when they wanted to do it. This was still the case when I was growing up although the wonderful fruits of the 60’s mentality of doing away with discipline and giving annoying children a hug were still growing in popularity in schools and social opinions.

Nowadays there is no way that the majority of people feel they can take it upon themselves to challenge behaviour from fear of being arrested and charged after too many cases of initial victims being arrested while the suspects are let off or even compensated. Even worse is the fear of being kicked to death in the street for asking a bunch of drunk tossers to stop smashing your car up as sadly happened to Gary Newlove, or being kicked to death for protecting your boyfriend who was attacked for no other reason than how he dressed, as happened to Sophie Lancaster.

When I was 12 we lived on an Army estate just outside a small German town, there was one main road through it with blocks of flats (fenced all the way round to stop people going into the farms on either side) and a couple of play grounds. We had German friends, some of the wives who chose to learn German worked in local shops or the Army admin buildings along with some of the locals who were employed by the Army, and for the most part everyone got along. We then started getting problems with a group of Turkish lads in their late teens to early 20’s who would come onto the estate from their own housing estate a couple of miles away.

They would pick on some of the younger kids, cause damage to cars and windows and generally cause a nuisance kicking over bins and graffiting buildings at night. For the most part, the adults would actually be able to chase them off however couldn’t do too much as it would have put the Army in a bad light. The RMP (Royal Military Police) stepped up patrols after complaints from families, although they were actually powerless to do anything. The Local German Police were also increasing patrols however due to racial tensions at the time (the 80’s saw a huge influx of Turkish migrants who were seen in much the same way as eastern European migrants are now in some areas of the UK) they were reluctant to actually do anything worth while.

Things got steadily worse over the summer with army kids getting beaten up and groups of kids throwing stones and cans at cars driving onto our estate. Then there was a big exercise and the whole battalion was away for 6 weeks, which meant there were hardly any men around. It didn’t take the gang long to realise that there was no one about to chase them off. They then came onto the estate for longer, making it virtually impossible for any of us to play outside, some of the women who worked in local shops were harassed on the way to and from work. Things came to a head when a group of 20 – 30 Turkish lads came onto the estate and went on a rampage smashing flat windows and setting the playground alight. After that we couldn’t go outside, our estate had become a no go area for the local Germans, as well as the Army families who lived there.

After the exercise our dads came home to see how bad things had gotten while they were away and one weekend we were told explicitly by our parents that we had to stay inside, no matter what. The gang came onto the estate as usual about 20 strong until something happened. Two ‘four tonners’ – army workhorse trucks – turned up and blocked the estate off at either end. No one could get out of the estate because of the fence around it. Men in combats and balaclavas were everywhere, they started to fight with anyone who wasn’t in combats, they were dropped to the floor, tied up and thrown in the trucks. Once everyone had been rounded up, the trucks drove off. The people rounded up were beaten, stripped naked and left in a field about 30 miles away from their own estate.

I lived on the estate for another two years and after that night no one ever came round again.

If that happened now there would be a massive investigation with people getting arrested for kidnap and GBH at the least and the media would be in an absolute frenzy about it. No one was arrested by the German Police or the RMP, nothing was in the local papers and no one ever admitted to being in the group who rounded them up, although everyone knew about it.

I have heard of similar things happening (although not on that scale) since I’ve been a Police officer. In a particularly rough town not far from where I live, four teenagers who were prolific car thieves and burglars caused misery to the people living in a couple of roads. They caused havoc until they were rounded up by people considerably harder than them, one managed to escape but the other three didn’t. Bricks and feet were introduced to parts of bodies that were only designed to be treated nicely and others which were essential in the control of a car.

They too, stopped for quite a while afterwards, mainly because of long hospital treatment. If they did carry on as they had, they certainly didn’t do it in those streets. There was a bit in the local paper about a gang of teenagers being viciously attacked by local men, the local councillor expressed her outrage at people taking matters into their own hands and the local divisional commander said outright that it would never be tolerated and that they would catch the offenders. To my knowledge, they didn't. I went to training school with a couple of guys who worked on the division, privately, they said everyone was well happy that it had happened. The ones beaten deserved every second and it solved the problem. They knew that all they were able to do was arrest them if they could catch them and then send them to court. Each already had a string of previous convictions and knew full well that nothing substantial would ever happen.

The main problem that society has with vigilantes, is the fear that once the problem that starts them off is sorted, that they will continue and eventually become worse than the original problem unless they stop and disband. The courts and the government will also not tolerate anyone circumventing their authority. I have known police officers who have given very serious consideration to using an unmarked van to round up and dish out a bit of social justice to specific targets, the question everyone wants to know is, would it solve anything?

Metcountymounty.

Speed Kills!

2008-05-11T20:42:00.008+01:00

Actually, it doesn’t. Where speed is a contributing factor to deaths on the road, it is the inappropriate use of speed for the circumstances or prevalent environmental conditions that has lead to an incident where the risk of death is more or less likely. The problem is, you can’t fit that explanation easily onto a poster with big yellow writing to scare people. This also leads to other complications such as perceived double standards and blatantly inexcusable fund raising through speed cameras.

You only have to read through the papers or look at news stories involving speeding and the police, or traffic matters to see that large sections of the public are unable or unwilling to separate PC’s on the street whose job is solely to respond to 999 calls and the council run ‘partnerships’ responsible for enforcing speed restrictions. Personally, I hate speed cameras. I think that they are divisive, ill placed and serve no purpose other than revenue generation. I can’t remember which paper it was in otherwise I would link to it, but I read a story about a year or two ago where an undercover reporter went to Gatso stating that they were from a council considering putting up speed cameras. Part of the sales pitch from the company was along the lines of “if you target school runs and rush hour, you’ll make more money in a week than you’ll know what to do with”

If Gatso were all about saving lives and the nobility of penalising drivers, then I would think the company would donate all their profits to charities like Brake. They don’t though, they are a very profitable company that has had a boom since the major role out of cameras in the UK by councils. The only reason that the councils run the ‘partnerships’ with the Police is because only the Police have the jurisdiction in law to enforce traffic legislation and without the Police partnership (of which they cannot opt out of as the Home office requires them partake) the councils could not enforce the speed cameras. It doesn’t take much to see that the reputation of the Police in the UK has been almost damaged beyond repair thanks to the introduction of speed cameras and the reduction of traffic departments. All people see is the word Police, they don’t think that it’s the local council that is sitting back rubbing their hands together and counting the cash. The local Police force only get a small percentage of the revenue made from cameras, almost as a token gesture or so they can say "look, the Police make money from it too"

Where I live there are a lot of schools and a lot of 20mph zones, if there was a speed camera outside the schools to catch the taxi drivers and idiots who blat along the roads outside them at 60mph plus then fine, I think the majority including myself would accept them. But they are not, they are on the main arterial roads and on the slip roads out of the city. When was the last time you saw a speed camera in a 20 or 30mph residential zone? And even if you have, I’ll wager that there are considerably more on the main roads in and out of the town or city than where your kids play in the street or where you take the dog for a walk.

The main roles of traffic (or roads policing) departments is to cut road deaths, enforce traffic legislation, to educate other drivers and to deny criminals the use of the road. It is a considerably more effective deterrent to bad driving and criminal behaviour having a marked Police car driving along the road with experienced officers who will watch how you drive, or where you have come from and can stop you at any point to see how much you’ve had to drink. By getting rid of traffic officers and replacing them with static cameras or unmarked mobile units whose sole purpose is to prosecute speeding motorist the roads are left open for people who don’t have driving licences, have no insurance, get drunk at the pub then drive home or use their cars for criminal behaviour.

The first two might not seem like a big issue, but just think how pissed you'd be if your other half was in an accident caused by some kid with no licence? Or if your child was run over by someone with no insurance? The latter part of using it for criminal behaviour is another one that people rarely think about - funnily enough no one walks around with bags labelled swag and a balaclava. I know traffic officers who have arrested more burglars than most response officers, simply because they find them in their cars on the way out while we are scouring back gardens looking for the start of the trail for the dog unit.

As a response officer I use traffic as a means to get my head into peoples cars, have a nose around and find out who they are and more importantly what type of people they are. Any copper worth their salt can tell usually within seconds if someone is going to be known to Police either having been stopped lots of times previously or having previous convictions. This is usually because of stereotyping and I make no apologies for that, if I’ve stopped someone it’s for a reason and I’m rarely wrong about someone having a criminal history. If I do stop someone who is a genuine normal member of the public who has never had any dealings with the Police or the courts, its usually a pleasant surprise (for me anyway) and is the result of some indiscretion that I am usually able to deal with by having a chat with them. The only time most of us ever process someone is if they fail the attitude test or are simply driving like a knob and don't care. We stop people in cars all the time, and to be honest, it’s more of a pain to write out tickets or a summons book than to have a chat and just remind some people that there is a reason for speed limits or traffic lights and that they need concentrate.

As far as traffic legislation and prosecution goes, the Home Office don’t count it for anything which is why they put pressure on forces to reduce the expense and personnel in traffic departments. Contrary to popular belief (thanks to speed cameras) we don’t get any points/stats/bonuses or figures for issuing speed tickets or any other traffic process. If we stop someone and they are unlucky or unless they are seriously taking the mick by doing double the speed limit in residentials or jumping reds while on the phone, then the chances of actually getting stuck on by a Police officer is remarkably slim. This is in stark contrast to speed cameras which don’t care if you’ve never been stopped before, that you pay your taxes and don’t burgle your neighbours. Once you’ve been caught you need to be able to afford an extremely expensive solicitor otherwise your licence (and insurance premiums) is in jeopardy.

The other major problem that the 'Speed Kills' slogan creates is it leaves us (the Police and other emergency services) wide open for calls of hypocrisy and double standards as we regularly use the legal exemptions from the speed limits in order to attend calls. All Police and emergency service drivers have degrees of training that permit them to drive at certain speeds or in certain conditions such as patrol, response or pursuit. The contrast in training and experience between Jo Bloggs who passed his test a few years ago and drives to and from work every day and an advanced Police driver who clocks 500+ miles a week as a Police driver in addition to their own, is like someone who is a weekend fun pilot versus a professional pilot.

In order to remain in complete control the driver needs high levels of training and continuous exposure and has to be able to handle the car beyond its own limits in the conditions that it is going to be used in. Driving at 130 miles an hour on a race track is easy, wide smooth un-cambered tarmac is very different from a council maintained two lane B road where 60 miles an hour can be hairy, and as such all Police driver training is done on the road to give as much realistic exposure as possible. Another point to consider is that the exemptions are only permitted in situations where the Police (or Ambo/fire) driver is using them in the execution of their duty. Outside of work or even at work and outside of a situation that enables the exemptions, we are just as liable if not more than everyone else, regardless of what the papers say with inflammatory headlines like “150 Police drivers caught speeding AND NOT ONE PROSECUTED”

If we get caught speeding outside of work we go through the same process as everyone else and usually higher penalties if we go to court. We then have to advise the professional standards departments who will consider whether discipline is needed. If we get caught at work and it was a perfectly legal use of the exemptions then the ticket is scrubbed, it would do no one any favours at all to prosecute every emergency service driver for every legally breached camera or red light, there would be no one left to answer calls within a weekend. With no one able to drive emergency vehicles with the legal exemptions, road deaths would increase exponentially if live saving first aid is delayed even by a few minutes, purely because we would be unable to use speed or traffic exemptions appropriately to the conditions and the circumstances.

Metcountymounty

Noise, bricks and flames.

2008-05-01T00:12:00.014+01:00

It's about half nine in the evening and it's dark. The only light is the orange glow of the few working street lights, and the occasional bright flash of petrol bombs either directed at us or the other units running around the place. We’ve been running about for the best part of 8 hours, my throat is raw from constantly shouting at the top of my voice, every muscle aches and is screaming out for fluids as my trousers and top underneath my coveralls are completely drenched in sweat. The various bits of armour are digging into places that I would rather they didn’t and my knee pads have developed an annoying squeak every time I move. Through my heavily misted visor I see him poke his head around the corner of the alley just off to the right, at the same time my colleague calls him out as loud as possible to the rest of the serial “ALLEYWAY TO THE RIGHT, PROTESTOR!”

As we turn the shields to face the threat, he launches a couple of bricks in our direction, no bother, they impact squarely on the shields which take the hit well and he buggers off back around the corner. Our serial Sgt has already told us our objective is to secure and clear the alley complex before we can move up to the next junction. Once we’re there we can relieve the PSU (Police Support Unit) that is currently taking a battering from bricks and petrol bombs so they can move on and give the protestors some good news. It shouldn’t be too hard, the alley and courtyard is only about 15 meters deep.

Mateyboy pokes his head back round and then jumps out again to throw some more bricks before ducking back in. I feel a heavy tap on the shoulder so I look at my colleague, we both see him and hear him shout over the din of heckling and exploding petrol bombs “the next time he comes out, I want you two to get in there and f&cking do him, clear?” we nod in unison. We start to move up to the alley entrance, it’s about 3-4 meters away and badly lit so we can only see up to the first corner. We step over the bricks as we move and discoloured shards of broken glass smash and crunch as we walk over them. Rolls of charred ignition paper still smoulder as they burn up every last vapour of petrol.

As we get ready to go in, I lift my visor slightly to wipe the steam and mist off so I can at least see the shape of the alley. It’s just wide enough for us both to fit in side by side, on the left the 2 meter high wooden fencing is charred from countless incendiaries, the concrete wall on the right is black with smoke to well over ten feet high. The first corner is about another 10 feet in before it bends to the left, opening out into the courtyard. I try to regulate my breathing so I don’t steam up the visor again, the slow deep breathes helping to bring my heart rate down.

After hours of exercise and overheating my heart beat has been blasting in my ears making hearing extremely difficult, the adrenalin tends to shut hearing down anyway but at least my vision is up, every slight movement and flinch keeping me focused. I’ve been holding it the same way all day but I check my grip on the long shield again, top left, bottom right. It must be in the right position to get as strong a hit as possible, if I can get in close enough to blade him with the shield I will do, it’ll serve him right for chucking bricks at my head anyway. I remember the instructor’s words “think about your target area, lift high and strike anywhere from chin to knee with the bottom edge, no one will walk away from that one happy, and they’ll certainly think twice next time”

We watch the alley for any sign of movement; we both see the foot poke out from the corner as he starts to come at us again. That’s the cue, there he is, our turn now. We both lift our shields and sprint towards him screaming “POLICE, POLICE!!” as we go in. He stands at the end looking at us as we move on him, within a second we’re into the alley, closing on him as he stands at the corner. He turns and starts to run back to the courtyard. As we get to the corner we can see the alley opening up and then I see them, two petrol bombers waiting for us, a ready bottle in each hand. One is standing on some stairs up to the gangway and the other is hiding behind the fencing, both obscured from the alley until you get to the end. It’s a trap, and we’ve just sprinted right into it.

Almost immediately as we see them the first two bottles are launched at us. I shout “MISSILES!!” as my colleague shouts “OH SHIT!!” as he sees the same thing. No time to turn and run back, we get ready for the impact, a split second later then BOOM, one explodes at out feet. Another immediate BOOM as the second hits the wall to our right spraying our feet, legs and shields with glass and petrol. The flames have nowhere to go in the confines of the alley other than upwards and we are instantly surrounded from head to toe by searing hot fire, the impact from the rapidly combusting and expanding gases knocking us back. I remember the cover up drills to escape the flame, hold the breathe you’ve got, chin down to get a good seal with the visor on your chest and then drag back with the shield for protection.

We both get into the cover up position as the flames surround us and we start to pull back, stamping our feet to shake off the burning petrol and dragging the shields on the floor to use them as cover. Then more bombs come in before the first have the chance to burn out, a third and a fourth explode at our feet, encouraging the flames around us to grow even higher, every part of our bodies engulfed in bright orange fire. All I can see through my visor is my arms and shield, everything else a hot bright yellowy orange as the flames heat up without anywhere to dissipate to, the alley seemingly turning into a blast furnace.

I can feel the heat on every part of my skin, even through the fire resistant coveralls, armour and soaking wet clothing. It takes no more than a couple of seconds to get out but it feels like an age, my lungs are burning as the breath inside is trying to get out, my body screaming for more oxygen as my heart rate sky rockets.

As we get to the entrance of the alley I can’t hear a thing but I see the white smoke of the halon fire extinguishers blasting around us, subduing the flames on our legs and feet. We stamp our shields on the floor to get rid of the last little splashes of petrol and I look at them to see the previously clear Perspex is now completely black from the flames. I look over at the man wearing the orange tabard who sent us in there and say “you did that on purpose didn’t you?” he laughs and replies “of course I did, that was well funny! Good cover up drills by the way lads” my colleague looks at him and says “Yeah. Thanks for that, staff”

As the instructor walks over to confirm the next actions with the PSU commander my colleague says to me “That was hot. Bastard” I nod in agreement “yeah, just a bit” We finish up the incident and go for the team debrief in the hangar, we discuss what went well and what lessons we learned. In the cold air every one of us has taken our coveralls down and upper armour off, steam is rising from everyone as the sweat in our clothes evaporates. Everyone looks red faced and knackered but most are smiling. Our instructor has won his own rivalry contest with the other instructors, overall we did rather well getting through the incident in a quick time. Despite a couple of hiccups, we performed considerably better than one of the other PSU's from a neighbouring force who came to train with us.

A couple of hours later after having a drink at the bar, my kit is hanging up in the room, stinking the place out with petrol fumes and sweaty clothes. I get a cracking nights sleep in the short narrow plastic bed despite the world’s loudest frogs outside, thanks more to exhaustion than comfort. The next morning we get up to finish off the rest of the training and incidents, after getting dropped back at the nick, it's home for some well needed sleep and a damn good wash of body and kit.

There are many things about our job that suck, and it’s obviously not everyone’s cup of tea but public order training has always been one of the highlights for me. Although I personally haven't taken petrol bombs outside of Gravesend yet, I can tell you that scaffolding clips, bricks, bottles, broken paving slabs and sharpened coins are pretty regular attenders at the football matches and large scale disorder jobs that have gone pearshaped when I've been at work!!

Metcountymounty

Why are my hands shaking?

2008-04-28T13:28:00.005+01:00

At some point, usually when you least expect it, someone else is going to force a situation that leaves you no option but to deal with it. If you’re unlucky, you’ll be on your own in the middle of nowhere with a radio that doesn’t work and a nutter who is intent on completing his life’s ambition of kicking a coppers head in. It doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, 20 or 50, married with kids or single, all they see is the uniform and what they want to do to it. This kind of situation doesn’t happen that often to be fair, but you owe it to yourself, your colleagues and your family to be as prepared as possible to deal with any given situation. That could be first on scene to a major incident, a serious sexual assault allegation, a burglary, or backing colleagues up at a fight.

The latter can often be a serious bone of contention, most people don’t like to think that our job is as violent as it really is. The fact that most paramedics nowadays routinely wear body armour (especially at night) is testimony to how dangerous our society has become where people who’s one and only job is to save lives and yet people still attack them. Despite the growing trend in attacks on emergency service personnel, our officer safety training is pitifully inadequate and does not reflect what it’s like to be fighting with some drunk unit on the floor whilst wearing full (polyester) uniform, belt kit and body armour. The role plays at training school are so far removed from reality that personally I think they do more harm than good. They instill false confidence that can and has come back to bite people seriously hard in the arse.

Only recently have the recommendations and allowances for real life started to work their way into the Police management mentality, especially in Professional standards departments. This means that it is becoming accepted that we do not receive enough training to expect everyone to be able to remember or use the home office approved techniques when the situation is going banjo. Sometimes the quickest and easiest way to drop someone or shock them enough to be able to gain control is a good old fashioned punch to the face. This tends to look really bad on camera and bystanders who are obviously experts in everything criticise you, but needs must, and you resort to what you know when your heart rate goes through the roof and fine motor control is diminished because of it.

Handcuffing is a classic example of this, at training school we were taught something like 20 different ways of putting the things on and taking them off. Most operational police officers have one or two techniques that we like and use and in the heat of the moment you turn to what your muscle memory has been programmed to do, they come out, they go on and you sort out how to get them off at the station. As long as you put them in the holder properly, you can be pretty certain you’ll be able to take them off with the minimum of fuss – as long as someone in custody remembered to take their cuff key out with them.

CS spray is another piece of kit that is hardly ever used, I’ve only threatened it a few times and used it twice. Personally I hate the stuff as it turns me into a heaving snot monster, and if you think about the type of people that it affects the least, you start to realise why most police officers don’t use or like it. We are taught that CS doesn’t work on people with mental problems, who’s adrenalin is high, who have become used to it through exposure (such as armed forces), people who are seriously drunk and have ridiculously high alcohol assisted pain thresholds, disciplined or focused people (such as proper martial artists) or about 25% of the rest of the population. What you can be absolutely certain of, is if someone gets the stuff out and uses it, the main people affected will be the Police officers.

Some people may have had experience of being in a fight before they joined, others practice some form of martial art or boxing but most people have never been in so much as a shouting match prior to picking up their warrant card. Sparring or fighting someone and trying to get away is completely different from the type of fights you have as a Police officer, most of the time you’re trying to restrain someone safely which is considerably harder than actually dropping someone or knocking them out. Virtually everything we do is influenced by how it looks to the public and knocking ten barrels of shit out of someone looks much worse than 4 or 5 people taking them to the floor and cuffing them. As usual you’ll get the “how many does it take?” comments or some idiot counting you all out loud, but it’s much better than a Police brutality headline and someone’s photo of them black and blue splashed across BBC or Sky News, whether they deserved it or not.

Most of the people I work with (including me) hold to the belief that we can’t really trust someone until we’ve either seen them in a fight, or know that they’ve been in one. It doesn’t matter whether that officer is young or old, male or female, if they haven’t been in a fight then they are an unknown quantity and therefore a liability. Something I absolutely cannot tolerate is being involved in an incident and watching the duty probationer doing the moonwalk over to the van or a witness – especially if they’ve actually wound the person up in the first place. There are a number of reasons for this really and as a trainee Police officer they have an obligation to become experienced in all areas of the job, especially ones that they don’t like or are afraid of. If they are unwilling to get involved in a physical confrontation then you cannot know for sure that if something kicks off and there are only the two of you, that you can trust that person to back you up all the way and not leg it. I have seen specials literally run to a car and lock themselves in and I’ve had people wind someone up and then expect me to deal with it as they buggered off to speak to the doormen.

If you have never been in a fight then the best time to get the experience in a relatively safe environment is when there are other colleagues there to help out, if we’re out in the main public order areas with a probationer who we know is inexperienced then every single one of us will be looking to that person to get involved, if not take the lead. Just because you thought you were good at doing an elbow strike on a pad in the gym counts for nothing if you can’t land a decent strike or get a proper arm lock on someone who is intent on taking home some trophy bruises.

Until you’ve actually experienced the effects of adrenalin and know what you can and can’t do whilst it’s going through you, then you will not know what to expect at other incidents, not just fights. If your pulse doesn’t rise and your hands don’t shake at your first proper RTA, foot chase or jumper then you’re lucky. If it does and you don’t know what to expect then you could not only make mistakes, but you could also leave the incident with self doubt which, if unresolved, can lead to other complications, especially with confidence. Not being able to write or hold something without shaking is perfectly natural and if you expect it then you can deal with it. Once you realise that people only see what you show them, it doesn’t matter that you’re scared and your heart is trying to burst out of your chest and you are taking short sharp breaths. As long as you give off an air of calm and confidence, most people will actually back down before you have to get into a fight. The problem is that most of the time you actually have to experience a fight before you work out how to avoid them without backing down yourself.

If you’re the kind of person who joins the Police thinking that you’ll get through your whole service without ever having a fight then to be honest you shouldn’t have joined. You owe it to yourself to experience the bits of the job that scare you as ultimately you could find yourself alone with someone who wants to take you on. If you’re not confident that you can win the fight, the very last thing you want to do is show the other person that. You can be certain it will give them a confidence boost that they’ll take advantage of and you’ll be in a world of hurt. If you are a Police officer and you have yet to actually have your first proper fight then I would encourage you to get stuck in when you can, especially if there are a few of you and the chances of you actually getting injured are slim. It’s not macho, the experience could actually help you save someone’s life once you know what it feels like to not be fully in control, that life could even be your own.

Metcountymounty

Calm down dear, it's just a job.

2008-04-24T13:46:00.008+01:00

One thing that really irritates me is flapping. Ultimately all it does is distract the person flapping, as well as those around them from dealing with and completing the task at hand. That could be a file that needs upgrading, a member of the public complaining about a Police officer who looked at them the wrong way or a 3 car pile up with severe trauma casualties. Flapping is usually a sign of a confidence issue that is a result of a lack of knowledge or experience, perceived or actual. Flapping also leads to stress which is never a good thing, especially if you don’t know how to deal with it, and to be honest most people don’t because the job doesn’t care until the stressee loses the plot through no fault of their own and they are then obliged to care and deal with it.

Breakdown is usually as a result of some unresolved post traumatic stress, but it can be a build up of unchecked pressure through workload or bad management. We hear every now and then about someone who has gone off on long term stress leave and upon searching is found with file upon file stuffed in lockers, wardrobes and attics. Not good.

I know a few people who I would consider to be consummate and routine flappers, although most people have a flap every now and then which is understandable, if somewhat irritating at the time. I believe my last flap was dealing with an unexploded calor gas bottle that once LFB (London Fire Brigade) cooled down sufficiently was cleared away and disposed of, the scene was closed down and the roads re-opened. The fact that my voice went up a couple of octaves while dealing with it told everyone that I was starting to get too caught up and back at the nick I deservedly had the piss taken over the obligatory tea and biscuits. Virtually everyone on my team has at one point or another done that and the jokes come out every now and then, they serve as a very good reminder to keep calm, composed and to focus, but more importantly – don’t flap.

When you flap you can lose objectivity and concentration, under most normal circumstances (ie in an office environment) the most that will happen is people avoid you and you might miss a deadline or two, these could have business impact consequences but you can be certain no one is going to wake up dead. In our job you might miss a blade or drugs on searching, or not put the right info out over the radio leading to complications in investigation, or possibly insufficient info to the paramedics leading to a lower grading for response which can put lives on the line. Flapping can also occur if you get too involved in a situation and take all the related stress of that incident upon yourself, if you’re the kind of person that does that then you will burn out in no time at all. It’s a very horrible lesson that every one of us has had to learn at some point but at the end day no one has shoulders big enough to take the world’s problems home with them, so don't try. You will fail, and it'll hurt.

There are a number of ways that I have found to tackle flapping and worrying, the most effective being to compartmentalise the situations I deal with. They all go into the great big box labelled ‘work’ in my brain and at the end of every shift I tape the box up and shove it in the corner over the short trundle to the station to go home. This doesn’t always work and every now and then something particularly nasty will creep out and play around, but dealing with situations that we do this is going to happen. I’m not hiding the problems away either, because I know that the box is there, and when I’m at work I deal with the contents of the work box.

If you can accept that thoughts and feelings will haunt you for a bit then you can deal with it. Problems occur when you tell yourself and everyone else that you’re ok but deep down something nasty is bugging you, whether that is fear of consequences, guilt for not doing everything you could or you’re just pissed off that the situation arose and there was nothing you could do about it.

Another way is acceptance. My personal motto is ‘shit happens’ and as soon as you realise and accept that there are many things outside your area of control that will directly affect you then you can deal with the consequences and move on. If you get too hung up on something that happens during an incident then you could get distracted, if you are dealing with a casualty then you might miss a secondary injury, if you are dealing with an uncuffed prisoner the little git might try and do one. All you can do is deal with it, you can’t go back in time and stop it from happening so there is no point in worrying about it.

Situational debriefs are a good way of coming to terms with what happened, they can also help you to understand why a certain scenario occurred that you had no idea about at the time, it will also help clear up the uncertainty the causes flapping in the first place. We actually do a lot of this already, albeit unintentionally, when we sit down to write up arrest or incident notes. I’ve lost count of the times either I or someone else have said “ah that makes sense, so that’s why what’s his face did that and you appeared out of no where” The Police have been slated in the press for sitting down and writing notes together (most recently around the De Menezes incident) but there are reasons for it, both evidentially and mentally.

Properly organised debriefs should include everyone involved in the incident, from the radio operators, police officers and paramedics to line managers and senior officers if possible. Invariably though it’s only really possible to have the officers at the scene and maybe a random Chief Inspector who was just asked to turn up, due to the hassle in getting radio operators or the other services.

The aim is to help everyone involved come to terms with the incident and to fill in gaps in memory which can lead to doubt. We do these every now and then at the end of a shift or at the beginning of the next one if something particularly big went on or an incident went pear-shaped and there is a lot of ill feeling about it. They invariably start up as a slagging off session but ultimately people have feelings to vent and questions to ask and it is important that these come forward. If you can't vent then feelings can grow into big horrible stinking monsters that eat away at them leading to more potential flapping or worry at the next job. Once you’ve got past the inevitable bitching session you can actually be constructive, as long as whoever is leading the debrief understands that this is going to happen and lets it take its natural path.

Another important issue is that no one should take rank into the room. Everyone should be able to discuss anything relating to that incident, whether that was a Sgt or Inspector who everyone believes made a bad call or if there was something procedural which inhibited a certain action.

Everyone is going to respect someone who can stand up and admit that they made a mistake or bad call (especially if they have rank) and it helps no one to hear the words “well that’s because I’m the Inspector and I don’t have to explain myself to you” We’re not idiots and if there is a reason behind a given decision then whether we agree with it or not, it is better to know that than just think that the person is a knob who you can’t trust to make a decent decision and you want nothing more to do with them. Ever.

Lastly, I have my five point checklist, these are five simple questions that I ask myself when dealing with anything, graded on the severity of the types of incidents that we actually deal with. If the answer to any of these is yes, then obviously there is a need for concern and it needs to be dealt with effectively until all answers become no.

Is action or inaction likely to lead to -
1 You being dead?
2 Anyone else being dead?
3 You suffering any injury either serious or otherwise?
4 Anyone else suffering any injury either serious or otherwise?
5 You or anyone that matters losing their job and/or going to prison?

If at first look all the answers are no then take a second, have a deep breath and ask yourself, why are you flapping?

Metcountymounty

Look how the red line goes down......

2008-04-21T17:44:00.006+01:00

It must be said that in today's world there is an awful lot of shite that anyone who has anything remotely to do with the Government has to put up with. This is mainly borne out of the view that in order to justify ones existence (and expenses) they must be accountable, and the easiest way to account for something is for someone to make a graph so that they can point to it and say "look how good we are, that red line has clearly gone down while the green line has gone up, so we must be doing things right!"

I'm not a big fan of statistics for statistics sake. In the last 10 years the Government have all but brought the Police to their knees with paperwork and targets, the same can be said for GP's, Hospitals and teachers. The problem is that the people who set the targets don't really understand the problem and they massively over simplify, which subsequently creates problems that everyone but the target setters see coming a mile off. Not that this matters to the Government.

The National Crime Recording Standards (NCRS) were originally conceived after calls from certain sections of the public who were aggrieved that the Police were not taking their allegations of crime seriously and that we were failing them. In some cases they were perfectly justified in saying so, in others they certainly were not. There were also calls for the Police to be held considerably more accountable to the public purse, and the best way to do that of course is to be able to have a list of everything you’ve dealt with.

To appease certain sections (ethnic minorities with perfectly legitimate calls at one end and time wasting losers with nothing else to do but report each other for 'harassment innit' who, unsurprisingly weren't being taken seriously at the other end of the scale) the Government suggested that if a person thinks a crime has happened - whether it actually had or not - then the Police had to treat it as a crime and investigate the incident to prove one way or another. If the evidence suggests that a crime has taken place then the offender would be put forward for prosecution if the evidence passed the threshold.

NCRS also stipulates that the Police should record a crime even if the victim doesn’t want to know or is refusing to assist Police with investigation (conceived to tackle ‘honour’ and domestic crime) and also to make a report in anticipation of a crime allegation even if the victim doesn’t actually know they’ve been a victim yet such as burglary or criminal damage where the victim is not aware.

Now this is where the problems start seeping through the cracks, because NCRS applies across the board to everything and not just certain stipulations for certain types of crime. The people who rightly said that the Police were not treating them seriously thought that now the Police HAD to take them seriously, then all their grievances and crime allegations would be dealt with quickly and effectively making their lives better.

This was not to be the case, as even though the Police did treat them seriously because we had to, we also had to treat every other person in the country seriously, no matter how moronic. Now that everyone had to be treated the same there became so many more crime allegations that the Police had to deal with and investigate, and Police numbers never increased sufficiently to effectively deal with the increased workload.

The only thing close to workable under the new regime was to remove officers from frontline positions and to put them into crime management units, force recording bureaus and various other admin roles to try and keep up. Naturally this meant the number of officers physically able to pop out to take the report went down and the workload for those few remaining officers increased exponentially.

Almost every crime (bar the most serious such as murder or the political hot potatoes) became a ticky box investigation that if it was not laid out in front of the investigator then it would be boshed as soon as possible to allow them to move onto the next one in an ever increasing pile. The net result of this, is the sections of the public who were being previously unfairly failed by the Police now joined everyone else. The problem is they are still being failed, but at least now that everyone is getting bad service, it's fair isn't it?

When I used to patrol around if we saw a bus shelter or a phone box with a broken window then all we would have do is get the control room to call the relevant company to give them a heads up so they could fix it the next day. Signs of damage and disorder reduced, public feel less like they live in a complete shit hole.

Now because of NCRS, even if the victim doesn’t actually know that they have been a victim, the Police still have to report the incident as a crime and fill out the relevant crime report in anticipation of the victim making a complaint of criminal damage. Filling out a crime report could take anything up to an hour depending on the details of the incident but usually about 30 minutes. Now compare this to the previous procedure of the ten second radio message from the Police officer, and two minutes to create and type up the incident message from the operator and it is hardly surprising to find that no one now calls in to report the phone boxes or bus shelters as being damaged.

If you were to drive around and see two phone boxes and one shelter smashed, that’s at least an hour and a half to write it up which is an hour and a half away from the street and actually being visible to the public, as well as criminals that we seek to deter. This isn't Police officers being lazy, we know all too well how much the public want to see us out and about and none of us like being stuck behind a desk.

The companies never reported the criminal damage incidents to the Police before hand due to the cost in additional administration to them versus the already accepted and budgeted costs of routine repair. Now that they don’t know the next morning that one of their units have been damaged, it could feasibly add another couple of days before the routine repair requirement is identified, which also means more time for people to walk past and think that the area is going down hill.

The problem is further complicated when the government looked at the sheet of lists of crimes and said to ACPO "this is clearly not acceptable, there are too many robberies and burglaries (for example) so you have to cut the numbers"

With less police officers on the street to actually deter and detect crime (as well as pathetic sentencing of those who were caught, charged and convicted) the only way that the Police could actually reduce the numbers was through a process of reclassification performed by crime management units and CID departments responsible for 'overseeing' the crime reports. Robberies became theft and assault, burglaries became walk-in-thefts, attempted burglaries became criminal damage, assaults were down graded, violent disorder and affray became pathetic Section 5's. Sometimes the job would be handedover and it would be NFA'd (no further action) because it's deemed not in the public interest. The list goes on, and the only people to benefit from the police having to report anything and everything are the criminals because there are less Police officers available to make their lives as uncomfortable as possible.

Metcountymounty

The Speech

2008-04-18T12:29:00.005+01:00

There comes a time after every Police officer has gone through training school that they turn up on day one with their new team. They will find that they'll actually spend more time awake with these people than virtually everyone else in their lives until they eventually find some kind of work/life balance. Most will be aware that they need to prove themselves to their new colleagues, regardless of what experience they have already outside the job or what level of respect they think they have already earned in their few short months.

Within hours of meeting my first team I found myself locked in the back of the new station van, and feeling like a bit of a plank. After making everyone a brew as payment for my foolishness in allowing myself to be locked up, I had my first sit down meeting with my new Sergeant. I'd met him a couple of times whilst at training school, when I moved my kit into my new locker and that morning on my first proper parade briefing. Apart from niceties, we hadn't really had a proper conversation yet. There was considerably more laughter and piss taking at parade than I had come to expect after the 'mock briefings' we had done at training school, but I was soon to learn that 'Sanford in Westshire' was more than a world removed from real policing.

He invited me into his office, closed the door and sat down. After an extremely uncomfortable and piercing stare that felt like it lasted a lifetime he said* -

"Welcome to the team, we've all worked together for a good few years, the guys will look after you if you do your fair share and get stuck in. I only have a few things I want to say to you, they are basically my ground rules and everyone else on the team knows them and follows them so I'm not asking anything of you that I wouldn't do myself or ask anyone else to do. First and foremost, forget everything you learned at training school with the exception of the law, you'll come to find which pieces of legislation you'll need to know inside out and which ones you'll never use but the statutes are just extra tools in the box, we'll teach you how to be a Policeman.

This is a hard city with lots of extremely hard people in it and we have to Police some of the things we deal with equally as hard. Watch your colleagues and learn, if you try any of that role play stuff, you'll end up getting your head kicked in and I'm not a big fan of the vending machine tea at A&E. If we give some of these people an inch then they will take a mile, if they don't do what we're telling them to then they get nicked, no second or third warnings, no compromises. 90% of the rest of the people are honest and hardworking and expect nothing but honesty and courtesy in return, but always watch your back.

Always keep one ear on the radio, listen to what jobs are coming out, listen to where people are getting sent to and where your colleagues are checking people. Contrary to popular belief things rarely just happen and if we're being sent to the same addresses or the same pubs then something is going to kick off sooner or later. I will occasionally ask you who's doing what and where, if you don't know then I'll want a bloody good explanation. As you'll come to hear, when something goes wrong and someone needs assistance you're only really going to get a road, shop or pub name and I expect you to know roughly which one it is so we can get there and help them out.

I want you to volunteer for bodies and get stuck in, we have all been in your position before and I know full well how much evidence you need to get to have your PDP (personal development profile) signed off, your tutor will help you get that in no time, but even if you've dealt with something before I expect you to put up for it if you're around, and I will know if you are.

Be nosey, that's what you get paid for, if you don't like the look of someone then talk to them, if you're still not happy then spin (search) them. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up for a reason, you just won't know what that reason is to start with, so do some digging and find out.

These are my three rules of Coppering, follow them at everything you do and you won't go far wrong.

1) Believe no one. Whether intentionally or not, people lie and you'll hardly ever hear 100% of the truth from anyone as most won't want to get themselves in trouble, even if they never actually will. Ask questions and you'll soon get the answers you need.

2) Assume nothing. Never take anything for granted, especially as the quiet ones are usually the ones with the blade or psychotic tendency that you never saw coming.

3) Check everything. If you're the OIC (officer in the case) of a job you need to know it inside out as you'll look like a fool in the box if you don't know something, also never assume that someone looked in the bin in the garden, they might not have, if you're unsure check it.

Last but not least, I take my tea white with one sugar and preferably with a custard cream or two if there's some in the box. See you later on in the bins (custody), have a good shift"

Believe no one, assume nothing, check everything. The 3 rules have saved my neck - quite literally - on more than a few occasions, both out on my tod and in court!!

Metcountymounty.

*obviously not verbatim given it was a few years ago, but the the main bulk is there!

Peel's Principles

2008-04-15T09:51:00.005+01:00

A couple of summers ago I was working outside a prestigious but not politically important building when I was approached by a couple of guys who turned out to be close protection officers to an American 4 star general who was inside. One guy was ex-FBI and the other ex-NYPD. Naturally we started talking about the differences and similarities on either side of the pond, particularly about the use of firearms etc, when the ex-NYPD officer said "week one of my training, Robert Peel, the Metropolitan Police and how policing has evolved through the years and its role in society, always stuck with me that did"

This amazed me for a number of reasons. Firstly, week one of my training consisted mostly about diversity and about how we were all to be prejudice non-discriminators, this was also just post Macpherson, so I had the joy of finding out that I was a racist. Apparently.

Secondly, at no point throughout any of my training at my home force or at training school did anyone talk about Robert Peel or the history and evolutions of Policing. We did learn a bit about the 5 priorities of a Police officer (listed below) but that was for about an hour and was as close as we got. The only thing I knew about the Met was that they were big, got paid more than we did, that Labour hated them after the Miners strikes and that they had so many people that some of them got to stay in carriers while others walked with protesters. I also found out when I travelled to London to pick up a prisoner once, that they occasionally had their meal breaks together as a whole team and that they had canteens with staff in them.

We, however, still had a couple of Police bars at the time, so at least we upped them on that one.

There is an old adage that says "you can't know where you're going if you don't know where you have been" and I think that this is very relevant to Policing. Not learning about the origins of Policing and how the structures came to be and why they changed after specific events, is like the military not studying the work of Sun Tzu or the battles of Agincourt and The Somme.

Personally, I think its a disgrace that we never learned the history of what is really a fundamental pillar of our society, it almost seems like The Job is actually ashamed of where it has come from. Knowing the type of people in ACPO and the Government, I wouldn't be surprised if that was really the case.

As part of the foundations to the Metropolitan Police Act 1829, Robert Peel developed nine principles that were considered to be the first guidelines for Police officers and Policing in general, and having actually read it all the way through, they are considerably less boring than PACE. Listed below, they all still ring true today, nearly 180 years after the Act came in to place. We could do far, far worse than follow their guidance again, and to be honest these principles are what 95% of the popultation of the UK believe the Police should be about anyway.

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.

2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.

3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.

4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.

5. Police seek and preserve public favor not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.

7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.

9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

When I was applying to join, one of the exercises was to put the 5 priorities in order and discuss why they were relevant, we also sort of covered these in week one, but not much.
They were -

1) To Protect Life,
2) To Protect Property,
3) To Prevent Crime,
4) To Detect Crime,
5) To Keep the Queens Peace.

Nowadays we seem only to be concerned with the 4th one of detecting crime as all the others can only really be considered as countable if we have actually failed to achieve them when 1) someone dies 2) something is destroyed 3) crime actually takes place and 5) the peace is actually broken.

Looking at the way in which the Government have sought (and to a degree succeeded) to micromanage Police officers and completely remove discretion, it seems clear to me that The Principles are as dead and gone as the role of Constable is sure to be if they carry on at the rate they are going.

Metcountymounty.

Are you calling me a Vichy?

2008-04-13T00:36:00.006+01:00

It is better to let 100 guilty men go free, than to imprison an innocent man.

Personally, I firmly believe this, as historically around 80% of them will come back anyway, but I digress.

Many people have slagged Police officers off in the past (especially with the protection that the anonymity of blogging provides) for being acquiescent with the system and being nothing more than a 'Vichy Cop' as someone eloquently put it. The very same people also over use the comments 'if you don't like your job then quit' and 'you knew what you were getting in to so deal with it' when Police officers complain about the ridiculous amounts of bureaucracy that we have to put up with.

Just as an aside, Nurses and GP's complain about the amount of forms they need to fill out in order to meet government targets and stats collation, instead of caring for patients as they joined to do. I don't hear people slagging them off for complaining about it even though most of the bureacracy was in way before a lot of them started.

I think its fair to say that the majority of people who join to be a Police officer do it for a limited number of reasons, be they to help people, catch bad guys, drive fast cars or simply because they always wanted to do it and finally found that they could. It certainly isn't because of the pay, as those who do tend to last less than a year of working on the street. There is way too much crap to deal with and its simply not worth joining for pay alone - unless they escape to an office somewhere to grow some shiny arsed trousers.

At first it's all new, some of it completely unbelievable, but most of it good as you've never really experienced anything like it before. You'll be completely knackered as the toll of shift work, learning and pushing yourself to prove to your colleagues that you are worth your salt kicks in but for the most part, it's all good. Then after a year or so you realise that you're dealing with the same type of people and the same type of problems over and over. You'll have said 'why exactly do we need to do this? it's a waste of time, no one reads it anyway' so often that people don't answer any more, you'll also realise that most of your colleagues say the same thing all the time.

For the most part, virtually everything we do is thankless and viewed with suspicion or scorn by people outside the job. There might be a good reason for some of it, certainly not good enough to justify most of it, but ultimately you know that a lot of what you do is pretty shit.

And my god, will you bitch and moan about it. Maybe not at work, but certainly to your other half and a few mates, most of whom will wonder why you still go to work if you really hate it so much.

And then every now and then, you'll get a job that makes up for all the crap and it's what you joined for - catching a burglar bang at it, helping a family after a tragic incident, nicking a rapist and seeing them get charged the same day, seeing someone completely turn their life around after you helped them out. You might get someone giving you a sincere thank you, or even taking the time to write a letter to your bosses about how happy they were with what you did for them. Relatively minor things, but in a job where you deal with the worst that humanity can throw at you (and each other) the small things really make up for it.

The problem is most people don't see those things, they don't see you at 4am with your knee in some wife beaters neck after he tried to stab you as well, or dragging a burglar out of some kids bedroom after he broke in while they were asleep. All they see is The Bill, or whatever has made media story of the day - whether that's 6 coppers dragging a drunken woman to the floor or someone popping into Tesco to get lunch after parking on double yellows. I'd place a wager that they won't be encouraging everyone to give you a pat on the back next time they see a Police officer walking down the street on the one occasion that the blue moon shines.

Each of us has our own cache of 'good stuff' tucked away inside and occasionally you might think about it when things are 'proper shit' as one of my colleagues regularly puts it, or if you see one of the people involved a few years later.

If society is willing to accept that in order to do the proper thing in preventing an innocent person from being incarcerated they must accept that bad people must go free and bad things could occur a hundred times over, can we can not use the same rationale? Surely it is better to accept that the 1% good is worth the 99% bad, and that its better to be in the position to be able to do the good thing, instead of sitting in an office working for a faceless shareholder?

As much as I moan about how much shite we have to deal with, as long as I know that I have done the right thing when it has been right to do so and that I'm backed up by my colleagues for doing it - even if the majority of the public never hear about it, then I'll keep on doing this job.

And bitching about it.

Metcountymounty

First Post

2008-04-12T11:47:00.003+01:00

Ok... so I've decided to actually write a blog after being on the blogging periphery for a couple of years. I first heard about blogging after stumbling across the excellent 'Policeman's Blog' a while ago when someone printed a post about detectives, and put it on the wall of our writing room. I have absolutely no intention of making this thing my life's work, nor will it be updated 8 times a day due to the ever decreasing number of rest days I get and the fact that I still have to do my fair share of the housework! I will be posting some stories about things I've dealt with and people I've met, things I generally consider to be both good and crap about The Job, occasionally commenting about other blogs and things I find interesting about life in general.

Firstly though, the blog name - Sheepdogs & Wolves. It is more than a passing nod to the work and thoughts of Psychology Professor Lt. Col (ret'd) Dave Grossman and I use it here as an acknowledgment to the excellent work he has done, and also to those he writes about. I first heard about his work when I read his first book 'On Killing' about 10 years ago which sought to understand and explain the psychological damage that combat and the act of killing has caused men and women through the ages, but more specifically since science and conditioning was used in training after the massive casualties experienced on all sides during the Great War.

As an Army Brat I've been subject to military life as a dependant and experienced the many things, both good and bad, that this life offers, such as travel across Europe and living with people from many many cultures, to being raised mostly by my mum and 'The wives club' and not actually getting to know who my dad truly was (or indeed how bloody funny he actually is!!) until he retired from the Army when I was around 18. Both sides of my family have a long military history in all the Services and all the major wars that the UK have been involved in since the Great War, and naturally I was always steering towards the Military career path. My Dad was an instructor for a great deal of his career and I spent quite a few weekends on the ranges with him and out camping.

I found the methods of training and why they actually work quite interesting and stumbled across Dave Grossman's first book a few years later. I eventually found my way into a Police career instead of the military, and having joined a county force I later found myself in The Met, to experience the considerable contrast in scale of just about everything I had dealt with before.

I was pointed towards Dave Grossman's 2nd book 'On Combat' by the esteemed PC David Copperfield who undoubtedly read it as part of his required reading before moving off to work in Canada. On Combat is a study on the psychological and physiological effects of extreme stress and combat that the Armed Forces and the emergency services experience through the very nature of their work. I would absolutely urge anyone in The Job to buy this book and read it, there is a reason that it is required reading in most Police Forces in the US and other countries, and that is because it is brilliant. It is a bit American from the 'warrior perspective' but if you can get over that bit then you'll find his studies and findings extremely interesting.

Dave Grossman looks at all the various factors that contribute to extreme stress levels such as sleep deprivation, hunger, training and a lack of understanding about how to deal with the psychological aftermath of incidents. The latter is all too common in the UK Police as it simply is not seen as a priority - we just get on with the job at hand and deal with it. The book goes into great depth about perceptual distortions, memory recall, breathing exercises, coping mechanisms and debriefing strategies to be enable the reader to handle the different jobs/incidents that we deal with. It has also helped me with a couple of things I have been through too, which was a welcome bonus!

One of Dave Grossman's observations is regarding the differences between the mindset of Police and military personnel, anyone remotely interested or active in trying to help other people and prevent criminals from prospering, and those who happily sit back and live their lives in ignorant bliss. He suggests that there are 3 different mindsets to consider, and the best way to understand their differences is to classify them as Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves.

The Sheep go about their lives, vaguely aware that the Wolves exist, hoping that they never have to actually see or encounter one. There are considerably more Sheep than Wolves and the vast majority will live out their days having never seen one, although most will know another sheep that has had such misfortune, but they're not really too bothered, as long nothing happens to them. The Wolves prey on the Sheep, occasionally picking one or two off here and there, usually when it's dark so the majority of the flock don't know about it. The Wolves tend to lurk away in the shadows so the Sheep don't notice them, although they have no problem coming out in the open every now and then as they know the Sheep won't really do anything to stop them if they scare them enough.

The Sheepdogs however, know that the Wolves exist, they know where they live, sleep, eat and play. They know that the Wolves will prey on any Sheep, but that they prefer the smallest, weakest of the Sheep who can do nothing to protect themselves, and the Sheepdogs hate the Wolves for it. The Sheepdogs however, have a bit of a problem. As much as they want to protect the Sheep, they tend to look a bit like Wolves, and the Sheep don't really like that, and a few don't trust them because of it.

The Sheepdogs also serve to remind the Sheep that Wolves exist - something they would rather ignore and forget. Most of the Sheep know that the Sheepdogs aren't Wolves and whilst most tolerate, a few welcome them, as long as they never have to actually deal with one. The few remaining older Sheep know that the Sheepdogs are around for a reason and like to see them, because most have seen or experienced over the years what the Wolves can do if there are no Sheepdogs to help them. They also know that the Sheep can become a Sheepdog with the right attitude and a bit of training but the majority of the Sheep don't like to think that they could ever become something that looks like a Wolf and so they distance themselves from the thought.

The Sheepdogs accept that most of the Sheep don't really like them or want them around, but they hang around on the outskirts of the flock anyway because they know all too well what the Wolves will do if they didn't bother. The Sheepdogs try and walk through and speak to the Sheep, to reassure them that they will do everything they can to keep the Wolves away, but still the Sheep are wary of them.

Every now and then the Wolves come and the Sheepdogs try to fend them off, most of the time the Wolves leave after seeing the Sheepdogs, but occasionally there'll be one or two Wolves that think they can take the Sheepdogs on and they'll have a go. The Sheep will see the fight between the Wolves and the Sheepdogs and it scares them, with teeth and claws everywhere, it serves to remind most of them that the Sheepdogs can be just as vicious as the Wolves (if not more so) and that they were right to keep a distance from them.

Even though hardly any Sheep get involved in the melee, most will look on and continue to not trust the Sheepdogs, a few of the Sheep who are saved by the Sheepdogs will be happy as they realise how close they came to becoming supper to the Wolves but they'll mostly keep it to themselves as they know the rest of the Sheep don't like to hear too much about it because it scares them. One or two of the Sheep might get injured by the Wolves despite the best efforts of the Sheepdogs, a few will occasionally blame the Sheepdogs for not protecting them enough, some will blame the Sheepdogs for their injuries after they had stepped in to protect them and fought with the Wolves on the Sheep's behalf in the first place.

Despite this though, the Sheepdogs continue to try and protect the flock, all too aware that the Sheep don't really like them or want them around, no matter how often they try and tell them that the Wolves are about and that the Sheepdogs are there to try and help them. The Wolves included people such as Billy Burglar, Tommy Twocker, Roger Rapist or Darren the drunken friday night fighter.

So, Sheepdogs & Wolves it is then. I hope I can help shed some light on why we do the things that we do, why we continue to try and protect the flock against ever increasing pressure and bureacracy from the Council of Sheep, and why I absolutely love Paramedics, but more on that later.

Metcountymounty.