Feel The Love

Reading PS.com I realise how lucky I am being in the force I am in! I cant believe how badly some forces treat their specials!

Some forces dont issue personal issue items so you have to get a sweaty old stabbie out of a cupboard not knowing whether it will fit or not!

Gross.

Im Sorry . . . . . . . Not!!

I read an article on the bbc news site which can be found here. Its basically a great new idea that young criminals can avoid court if they apologise to the victim!

"The plan is one of a number of measures proposed by Lord Falconer to help speed up and improve criminal justice."

Improve?? I dont think so. Some call it "summary justice" but if I had a scroate at my door wanting to apologise to me for throwing that brick through my window, he wontbe greeted with a cake and a can of coke! More likely to have a kick up the arse, but were not allowed to do that!

Fair enough, currently warnings reprimands etc do bugger all at the moment but do they really think that this is an improvment to the criminal justice system??

Doesnt seem right to be honest, especially as you see the same little shits week in week out who are always up to no good, nicking stuff, yet are constantly in and out of the nick, yet none of this appears to effect them! They just know how to play the system, isnt it about time the system came round and bit them in the ass??

What do you think?

Can I, Can I?? Please Sir!

When people first join/are interested in joining there is the ever increasing amount of questions which are asked.

There are sensible ones:

"Can I arrest people?" (yes you can)
"Do I get to drive?" (yes you can mainly)
"What duties do I do?"


Then you get totally realistic ones (not!)

Can I get an advanced driving course so I can bomb about in Volvos with the blue lights and sirens and ram people off the road and hit the over the head with my baton, oh can I buy a bigger baton as the one that the force has issued me isnt long enough, and oh oh can I turn it into one that zaps people and oh can I be a PCSO as well and be PSU trained as I will need that every day of the week incase Mrs Miggings down the road ever has problems whilst I am off duty and need to turn into robocop and save the day as in now a sworn police officer and have to report every offence I see and will I get paid, I think I should get paid as I am giving up my own free time to do this for free so should get paid, and they should teach me to fly the force helicoptor even though its based the other side of the county and has a full time pilot assigned to it and doesnt actually need a special to do it but hey, oh does the helicopter have blue lights on it because that would be sooo cooool. Oh and back to batons, can I have two at the same time because then I can do some Jedi moves and kick some ass with both of them, and what if I need to carry them off duty incase I need to arrest someone for parking on double yellow lines, can I have my airwave with me?

No? Oh.

When I Grow Up

Clearly I have been brought up the wrong way. Why bother with years of education and hard work when I could have simply become a drug dealer?

Recently I was with a plain clothes "boshing door down" (plain clothes in the heat is fantastic as its so much cooler than a hot stuffy unform!!) team and we executed a drugs warrant on a house where one of the main local drug dealers lived (with his parents). He was about 17/18 years old.

So we get to the property and leg it up to the front door with other officers at the back. One officer uses his big red key to, quite literally, cause the front door to fly of its hinges. We all run in checking the rooms for people, but the house was empty. Except ofcourse, for the pet dog which shit on the floor and hid away (bless it).
So we start the seach looking for bits to do with drugs and proceeds of crime type stuff. On entering the house, you can tell something is not right. The house was in a scummy part of town and the insides of the house were lovely. Now this isnt to say that people cant live in shit areas but have nice houses, because as im sure we all know, they can! However, with this "jobless kid" and single mother living together, with her poorly paid job, it was obvious that there were issues about money and how the house was this nice.

This lads bedroom, two full leather sofa's, a projector hooked up to a Playstation 2, Xbox, Sky + and surround sound system. Huge double bed (not a cheap bed too!) More designer clothing than a shop, not to mention over £2000 in his draw.

Is this the kind of money/stuff I had at 17/18?? I wish!
Anyway he turns up, gets arrested (we found a small quantity of drugs - he isnt going to have his stash at home is he!) He got loads of his items seized under proceeds of crime act and other legislation too!

It does make you think though why are we all so law abiding? Not that it is a bad thing ofcourse!! It does go to show that crime does pay! However, I would far rather stick to the good side of the law!

As always please feel free to add your comments on this type of people/warrants you have done etc etc!

Oops - Textbook Style

A very "interesting" event I am going to blab on about, it happened quite some time ago and was totally unbelievable!

There were several of us on an autocrime operation and tied specifically to this. Two collegues who will be known as John and Paul were in a car and I was with another collegue who we shall call George (obviously all these names are made up!)

John and Paul had parked outside a large out of town store to briefly talk to someone. This was what started everything off! Shop staff came out of the store and told them they had detained two shoplifters.

What should have been done: "Sorry sir, we are currently assigned to a specific operation, but I will get onto control to get an officer sent here to deal with this incident"
What happened: "ok, whats happened then". Oops, John and Paul have now began to dig themselves a hole. They went into the store, handcuffed the detained persons and didnt do much else. Myself and George then turned up as we heard they had an arrest and thought "fantastic! the operation has only been going 20 minutes and they have an arrest"
How dissapointed we were when we arrived!! I got onto control and told them the situation and how we were on a specific operation and could someone else deal with it. Unfortunatly it was a controller who seems to forget about you very quickly. Eventually it was decided that we would transport the detained persons (note that I am not saying prisoners . . . all will become clear!) and that a regular officer would obtain statements and book crimes on etc. Fair enough, better than having to do the lot I suppose, albeit John and Pauls job!

Halfway to the nick George gets point-to-pointed from John who asks him to caution the detained person who we are taking to the station, my collegue doesnt ask him why or anything, I had no clue what they were talking about as I couldnt hear!

So we get to the station and the others are behind us. We get out of the car and wait for Paul and John to get out to take over with the detained persons, which they do! So now these detained persons are in the back yard wanting a fag, so now they are uncuffed as they "dont post a risk" and allowed to carry their bags to the holding bay whilst going through them looking for their fags. All I can say is thank goodness they didnt just pull out a gun or knife or something!
So now all this is sorted, myself and George bugger off and carry on with our operation expecting the others to be done in an hour max (all they had to do was book the detained persons in!!)

About an hour later George gets a point-to-point. Take a guess what it was about . . .

"Who was the arresting officer??" You have to be shitting me!! It turned out, believe it or not, that neither John nor Paul had actually arrested them!!! Myself and George were absolutely gobsmacked!! Last time I checked, and have dealt with a shoplifter and handcuffed them, as strange as it sounds, I tend to tell them they are under arrest and caution them!!! Seriously, how can you forget to do this!! And from very experienced specials too! Thankfully this was a one off and was resolved, and they should just be thankfull that the detained persons were not clued up on PACE!!

In all honesty I expected to finish my shift and have Jeremy Beadle waiting by my locker!