Boo Hiss

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of the day I would grow up to protest for police industrial rights and fair pay.

I dreamed of arresting children for slapping each other in the schoolyard, of filling out five-page reports about a five minute conversation. I longed for the time I would be allowed to generate reams of paperwork covering a 13-year-old boy's "disappearance" to go out drinking with his mates. I aspired to achieve the highest detection rates for my force, to tick the greatest number of victim satisfaction check-boxes, to attend community meetings about dog mess and to prevent children playing on every street corner. I also hoped very much to learn lots of new legislation to make illegal stuff even more illegal.

Somehow, in the last ten years, somebody has persuaded the British public that police officers grew up aspiring to all this. That we didn't join the job just hoping to catch baddies and lock them up. That we somehow agree with the mass of legislation, policies and Home Office targets that has been inflicted on us over the years.

Do our Chiefs and senior officers take some responsibility for that - for silently accepting the burden and casting it downwards? Do frontline officers take some responsibility, for not speaking out loudly enough for what we believe in?

Well now the Federation is butting heads with the Home Secretary over pay. Since it has failed to bother over legislation, policies and targets, I doubt the public will have much sympathy with this particular fight, however justified it is (and it is).

When I grow up, I hope I don't stop standing up for things, and not just when they affect my pay packet.

Quote of the week
Jan Berry: "Home Secretary, what is it Mr Balls has but you do not?"
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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in all good bookstores and online.

Did you vote?

60,000 police officers have voted on our right to industrial action, with 86% in favour. This landmark occasion signals the start of a period when the Federation will consider starting to begin to signal the start of lobbying for police industrial rights, initially.

Dan Collins rang to ask which way I'd voted. I told him I did vote, but due to an administrative error whereby our ballot papers arrived two days after the deadline, no one in Blandshire Constabulary has had their vote counted. We really are our own worst enemy sometimes...

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in all good bookstores and online.

Don't be Squaddist

Gordon Brown has today silenced his critics and proved he is a true 21st Century Politician.

Discrimination against military personnel in their uniforms is to become a criminal offence. In true 21st Century fashion, this decision follows a report commissioned by none other than Prime Minister Gordon Brown. I am pleased to see that the PM is happy to follow advice he approves of, whilst ignoring advice that is a bit inconvenient.

I fully support this new law. It is only a small step for the public from victimising squaddies to protesting against wars they disagree with, and THEN where will the government be? I mean, it isn't as if it's already illegal to beat people up just because of how they are dressed. ** I do, however, think it should also be made illegal for armed forces personnel to discriminate in a drunken way against people NOT wearing military uniform, especially on a Friday and Saturday night in Blandmore town centre (or anywhere else).

In future, I hope to see laws making it illegal to discriminate against police officers. The term "PIG" should be outlawed, and "Assault Police" should be made a specific criminal offence. Er...

Anyway, I digress, it isn't as if there's a problem with people hating the police.



** I apologise for the use of the word "Squaddie" and eagerly await government guidance on the politically correct term to use.

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in all good bookstores and online.

A Good Plan

The Chief Constable of Blandshire Constabulary is leading the way on matters of police pay. **

In general, pay is graded accorded to levels of service, so the newest police officers get paid the worst. To address this inherent unfairness, my Chief Constable plans to abolish pay for the newest police officers altogether. He will then cunningly compensate them by paying random sums of money into their accounts, which they will be unable to predict and may not even know they are receiving.


In other news: fears that Blair may have left behind two clones to spy on the new Prime Minister are compounded when Gordon Brown orders Jacqui Smith and Harriet Harman to be sure they are wearing different colour suits at all times, so he can tell the difference between them...

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in all good bookstores and online.

** He isn't really. It's an "analogy". Or something literary.

Police brutality on the streets of England:

I have read today in horror about a poor plumber thrown in jail for dropping an apple core.

It is an absolute disgrace that PCSOs are out there trying to prevent littering and antisocial behaviour when clearly they should be catching burglars. It is even more disgraceful that when the offender refused to pay the £50 ticket, the Police Community Support Officer took the draconian step of having him arrested. If people refuse to pay fines given to them by the police, they should just be forgiven.

But the tale of police brutality does not stop there. Once in custody, the offender spent 18 hours there, DESPITE HAVING A HEART CONDITION. He was seen twice by the doctor. Vulnerable people like this should not be arrested at all, and if they are in custody they should be dealt with immediately regardless of whether or not they have seen a doctor. If the police do cruelly insist on having prisoners checked out medically before interviewing them, there should be a doctor allocated to every patient, installed in custody for 24hrs and standing by with a stethoscope at the door to each cell.

As you can tell, I have strong feelings about this story. But all my angers melted away when I heard the BBC Breakfast's guest commenter say:

"I mean, this guy who stopped him was a PCSO - you know, just someone like in the Territorial Army doing police work on his days off. He probably works full-time round the corner from the plumber."

I am so glad that the government has explained the role and purpose of a PCSO in a manner explicable to intelligent broadcast journalists.

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in all good bookstores and online.

Why grief-stricken parents should not make laws...

Point of View 1:
"He was definitely mumbling stuff like a drunk person would but he wasn't shouting or being aggressive apart from when he was shooting. The shots were very loud. They were absolutely terrifying."

" I just ran for my life and my passengers all did the same. Everyone was completely terrified."

"There was a man opposite my house shooting into my daughter's bedroom. We thought they were firecrackers. He was at the window with a shotgun... an armed officer went straight to the broken window and the gunman fired at him. You could see the guy directly across the way, aiming. The policeman crouched down and returned fire, but I don't think he hit him."


Point of view 2:
Mr Saunders' father questioned why police had needed to shoot his son. Rodney Saunders said he did not believe the lawyer necessarily posed a lethal threat. "We will want answers as to why police shot him."

Conclusion:
It must be the police's fault.

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in all good bookstores and online.

The truth... revisited

As a follow-up to the NCRS scandal, now the Daily Mail is reporting that police officers in Norwich are being told to under-record offences like criminal damage.

I want to move to Norfolk. Here in Blandshire, we pride ourselves on being one of the best forces in the country on ethical crime-recording. I can barely attend an incident of dog barking without coming away with three crime reports. Far from being told to consider whether smashed car windows are really crimes, we are frequently asked to consider whether lost wallets and dropped phones ARE actually crimes. They nearly always are.

In case you missed it, yes, that's right, police forces are MEASURED on their ability to MEASURE crime, and it is one of the factors taken into account in their yearly rankings. You cannot fault the thinking in Blandshire's Senior Management Team: they've given up actually preventing or detecting crime, and instead are sinking all their money into just recording it bloody well. Which means ensuring that every caller to the police, however frivolous or time-wasting, is given their very own crime reference number and sent away happy.

Incidentally, I am pleased to see Norfolk DCC Ian Learmonth using the saga as an opportunity to speak out against NCRS. I mean, what is a Deputy Chief Constable for if not to stand up for the Home Secretary's beliefs?

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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in all good bookstores and online.