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!

The Bitter End

A recent thread on PoliceSpecials.com got me thinking. Why do we do what we do? Obviously not the pay.
Give up hundreds of hours to do this "wild exciting" role. But what does it entail?

Losing your humanity as you simply become a resource. You are no longer allowed to express emotions, eat in public, drink in public, not allowed to laugh and have a joke.
You get treated like shit by the public who seem to blame you for the lack of delay/police policies/that the offender cant be identified with zero evidence
That as we do it for free we are more than willing to spend 8 hours watching some drunk in a cell which another officer has brought in and gone home
There are numerous other things which im sure you all know of!

It gets to the stage where I think to myself "why do I bother doing this?"

I have been to numerous incidents where all I have had is grief for "how long it took me" to get there and how crap I am. Yes sir, it did take me ages, even though I had the call 5 minutes ago. Quite tempted to say "yes I do apologise, but had I not decided to come in this evening then you will still be waiting so shut up and be glad that im here dealing with you"

On another note I revamped how my blog looks as it looked a bit depressing!

People Lie About Crime

I found this news story online at BBC News. It is basically about people admitting they ring up the police and make up incidents/over exagerate in order to get a police response. Obviously I will leave it to Life of a Comms Operator and A Year In the Life of a Police Operator who have discussed the "non merits" of doing such a thing. However, it begs the question why do people do this.

Often (depending on the controller and their mood etc) will get sent to a "juvinile nuisence" and before I get sent the controller will occasionally add a comment. The most frequent one being "im sure its nothing except them just being young". What do they mean by this?

MoP View: "As they are young and hanging around, they will be waiting to pounce on someone and rob them and kick them in and kill them and vandalise my house and every other bad thing under the sun

Youth View: "There is bugger all to do in this dump so I am going to hang around the park kicking a ball about with a couple of mates until its time to grab some food"

Quite a difference. When I go to these jobs not only does it annoy me that I have been sent to it, it annoys the "youths" also. It annoys them because it makes them feel "criminal" when they have done nothing wrong whatsoever. We often tell them that their only crime is "being young" and sadly people just have a stereotype of a young person being up to no good all the time and nothing they do can be good.

Back to the original news story, what benefit do they have making something up? It gets a police response. Thats it. What happens when they genuinly need a police response but cant as police officers are currently otherwise engaged dealing with a made up report of youths kicking a car in and setting it on fire (as I was the other day). It turned out that these youths had just arrived on the park, this car had been set on fire the day before (it was stone cold, and no wet around it from where fire would have no doubt put it out and it wasnt there the day before the day before!)
The caller wanted me to give him the names and addresses of all these "hoodlems and little shits". When I told him I couldnt and wouldnt, he got a bit pissy at "my attitude" and the fact that it took me "half an hour to get there" (yes mate, im sure it did - I got sent here 5 minutes ago from the other side of town, so actually it didnt take me half an hour, it took the police service half an hour)

He was writing a "report" on my town (ohhhh nearly wrote my force name there without realising!!) which he was going to send to some newspapers/magazines. It was examining how much we are paid and where this money goes (as in deployment) and the hours we work. I was very tempted to "uriniate on his pile of combustion" and tell him that 1) I do this for free 2) will go home when I get fed up 3) have done 4 nights this week for free 5) he would have had to wait longer for a police response had I not got my lazy arse out of bed that day. Ofcourse being such a nice kind officer I am I simply made him feel happy about what he was doing . . . but alas, where does this tie in with the original story (I digress yet again!)

I reckon, that if it were only "actual police related calls" (I use that term in the best meaning way possible) that response times would increase as we actually have officers available to deal with proper jobs rather than silly little arguments which are of a civil matter and have shockingly actually been dispatched to!

So before you pick up that phone to make a call to the police, think about is it actually necesary! (Obviously if its an emergency do call! I am talking about the innocent group of youths playing footbal who are somehow when it gets to us, beating someone up and injecting each other with heroin!)

Unmarked Car

Recently I have had the chance to take out an unmarked police car equipped with lights and siren. This is a rarity as the only departments to have these cars are traffic and the proactive area teams. However, after befriending a sergeant, he is more than happy for me to take this car out if its available.
Now, the local "professional scumbags" know all the unmarked cars as they have nothing better to do than to commit crime and therefore obviously want to know what cars the plod are using. To the ordinary members of society, they have no clue.
So I am driving along to a non urgent job when what comes screeching round the corner at umpteen miles per hour? Johnny Happy and his mates. So I decide to follow them to see what naughty things they get up to with them totally oblivious to what is behind them . . . that is until some magical buttons are pressed and the car turns into a christmas tree on wheels!

"Oh I am sorry I was driving like that im really sorry"

*Checks PNC/Local system*"Ahh, so you have driven like a muppet before laddy?" (there is intel that the car has been driven like a race car!)

"nooo not at all!"

"Are you familier with S59 Police Reform Act"

"oh shit, dont take my car off me"

Anyway, he got a warning for it as he had not had one before so was fortunate enough to keep his car!

The local scroates also get a nice shock when you get right up to them and jump out on them, whereas in a marked car they will see you a mile off, and well, leg it!

Its mostly however, the ability to shock motorists. I was following a car which had gone through a red light (not just changing, but blatently red) and stopped them. They did not expect it at all. What was their defence?
I was in a hurry?
I didnt see it?
I am too pissed to notice stupid things like that?

Nope, none of the above! All they said was "had I see you I wouldnt have done it!!"
Madness!!

Marked cars may show a great presence on the roads and deter people from doing stupid things at that time, but if your not there then maybe they will do those stupid things!
Simple fact of the matter is that you shouldnt do things that are illegal, and plain stupid at anytime of the day whether or not there is a police car! More unmarked cars I say to bring up driving standards!!
On another note, got quite a few people on their mobile phones! Hoorah I am sure I hear you say!!

And finally - you never know - that car behind you may be an unmarked plodmobile!