The world of the news

At last, the police have been brought in to investigate the press.

I think it's fair to say that the nancy-pansy liberals have had their own way for long enough and it's time to CRACK DOWN. First, there's Damian Green, endangering NATIONAL SECURITY by blabbing embarrassing secrets to the press. Then, an upstart blogger deigned to win the Orwell Prize by TELLING THE TRUTH. But they were soon shut down.

I am gratified to see that the Criminal Justice System is finally putting its well-practised machinery into use to stifle the voices of dissent that plague our country. If only everyone would stop complaining, everything would be just fine.

Now is the chance for the police, acting as the long arm of democracy, to put down problematic investigative journalism once and for all. All those years spent building up a web of tangled bureaucracy to shield our operations from scrutiny can be put to good use.

As a police officer myself, you might think I'd be confused by the increasing use of our powers to tackle the inconvenient things in life. You might think I'd be alternately angry, resistant, and terrified, that one day I'll find a search warrant or arrest request, put in my docket by a politician and followed up on by a bureaucrat. If you think that, you've forgotten that police officers don't have brains, principles, or the tools to make their own decisions. We don't understand the big important things anyway.

The fax machines in the Ivory Tower are whirring with messages from Whitehall. From the balcony, great golden fingers pinpoint at random the priority for the day, or year. The hands that bear them are lost in the clouds above.

And down on the streets of Blandmore, there are drug-dealers, armed robbers and relentless burglars, going about their day-to-day business untroubled by the machinnations of the state.



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

Recoil from Prison

Every other day in Blandmore a fax is received at Headquarters announcing that someone somewhere on our "patch" has been recalled to prison.

A person is released early from prison when they've been extra good and managed not to stab anyone during their jail term. They are recalled back again if they misbehave when out, the way they did to get them put in jail to start with. To put things in perspective, it's pretty difficult to get yourself locked up nowadays. So if you manage it, it's quite likely you're going to keep doing whatever you did to get put inside.

In case you were wondering how the probation service decide who gets released early, they weigh up all kinds of factors such as likelihood of reoffending, history of offending, severity of crime, etc, and then kick them out anyway because they need the cell for someone else.

As a police officer, I get passed the fax telling me to go and bring someone back to prison. Usually with their address given as the bail hostel they are supposed to be living at, and which they aren't living at, hence the breach. I go to the hostel, find that they aren't living there, and put the fax in the bin. If the person never commits another crime and so never comes into contact with the police again, they will never, ever be caught. Funnily enough, we're not too bothered about locking up people who haven't committed any more crime. A prize for the reader who guesses how often that happens.

The stupidest, most idiotic and troubling thing about the whole laughable charade is that nine times out of ten the probation service know full well that these people are going to breach their conditions when they release them. But they do it anyway, because they need the cells.

We all know that ridiculous sentences are being handed out daily for crimes as heinous as rape and murder. We all know that in most cases the offenders will not serve even half of the time announced. And yet we are surprised that thousands of people are at large who shouldn't be, and that they're out there repeating the crimes that sent them to jail in the first place.

I'm aware that I sound somewhat like a Daily Mail reporter. I'm not devoid of compassion, and believe it or not consider myself fairly liberal. I just have this old-fashioned, backward attitude that the Criminal Justice System might run more effectively if the police didn't have to do every job twice.

Apart from saving money, we might even- gasp- save lives.

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

The Abyss of Nights

One of the little-discussed stresses of being a modern police officer is that of working shifts. In the past, as long as you picked up a paper once a week or met up with friends on a day off, you could keep abreast of current affairs pretty easily. Now with the fast-moving Twenty-First Century media, it is possible to fall far behind in just a few days.

When I work a week of nights I often surface to discover I have missed out on an entire news cycle and the rest of the world appears to be on a different wavelength to me. This is exacerbated during the summer, because even if I do wake up in the day and turn on the TV for half an hour, I am confronted either with a civilised flashback to the 1930s, or a house full of people who have no more idea of current events than I do.

Here are some things I missed while I was working nights:

• The London Bombings
• The Buncefield depot explosion
• Michael Jackson's death
  

Obviously I discover about the events later on, but by then you can only piece together information from snippets such as, "the de Menezes are demanding a full enquiry" or "Karen Matthews looked a shadow of her former self as she was led away". It loses its immediacy and you are forever catching up with people who saw it unfold live.

As a police officer, let alone as one who blogs, I need to have my finger on the pulse of modern thought and feeling. Instead, sometimes it's a struggle to feel my own pulse.

Still, the joy of the modern media is that whether or not you have missed out on a juicy news story altogether, you can be sure that an identical one will come around within the year.

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

Another blogger falls

The day has come at last. PC Ellie Bloggs' secret persona was uncovered in front of a crowd stamping their feet and yelling. The identity of the mystery blogger has been revealed to be none other than ex-Formula One racing driver Michael Schumacher!




The blogging world remains unimpressed:

"PC Bloggs' identity was revealed months ago to be rally driver Ben Collins, so this is clearly just a stunt to get more readers." (PC Copperfield)

"To be honest, I've always suspected she might have been Schumacher." (Inspector Gadget)



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

Booking Off

Three police bloggers have nightjacked it in this week, out of fear of possible repercussions, including Max, Metcountymounty, and Plastic Fuzz. From my own point of view, I don't say anything on my blog that I don't go on about at work (no doubt to the tedium of my colleagues), and I guess if it's misconduct to harp on about what we'd change if we could then a few of us would be out of a job.

Once again, the latest subject is Resources. Blandshire Constabulary has come up with an excellent solution to the never-ending problem of failing resources. I like to call it the Resource Spiral, and this is how it works:

• First, it is identified that there aren't enough of a certain kind of police officer, for example Detectives.
• On discovering there is absolutely no resilience in any department to take detectives from there, drastic measures are needed. All Criminal Investigation Departments (CIDs) across four stations are immediately combined into one great big CID covering all four areas. This means two-thirds the amount of detectives are able to provide 24hr cover.
• Over time, it is realised that the needs of the four areas are slightly different, and that really they could each do with their own CID. For a while, the detectives on the Uber-CID are run ragged covering all four areas at once, until they gradually start to apply for other forces or areas. Uber-CID is just coping with half the number of staff they used to have.
• Finally, the department is split into four and based at each station like before. Only with half the number of detectives they had to start with.
• The Resource Spiral is complete.
  

The brilliance of this cost-cutting should not be under-stated. What other business can halve their staff without reducing workload, without anyone noticing?

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

It would be inappropriate to comment...

It seems to be commonly accepted that it is unwise to comment on an ongoing police investigation. Which is why you will often read in the press phrases such as "enquiries have begun into..." or "police have been called in..."

In actual fact, there is rarely any reason why commenting on an ongoing police investigation will jeopardise anything. And yet when I find myself standing on a cordon guarding a scene of intense public scrutiny, I am usually phoned by the press officer and given one of select few phrases to regurgitate to any passing journalist, including:

1. "Police have been called to investigate reports of a disturbance."
2. "At 0500hrs, an assault took place. An investigation has been launched."
3. "A police incident is taking place and the following roads are closed..."

Half the time, this leads frustrated journalists to try other sources. On one occasion a reporter actually sneaked past my cordon and entered the scene of the Police Incident at great risk to the Seventeen Year Old Male In A Distressed State. Perhaps if I had been allowed to say, "Look, there's a guy up there threatening to kill himself, we're in the process of talking him down and if you stick your big nose he could throw himself off the roof and on your head be it, possibly literally," I think most journalists would keep a respectful distance. Either way, it's not going to make them more likely to interfere.

Through this blog and my book, I've met journalists/editors/producers in print and radio, TV and Internet. I have found them without exception to be reasonable, respectful individuals, albeit often with a different agenda to me. So why are journalists I meet at work so often obstreperous, obstructive and abusive, as opposed to those I meet as PC Ellie Bloggs? I believe it is because Ellie Bloggs tells them the truth about frontline policing, however unpalatable. At work, I tell them only what my employers want me to (which isn't lies, but isn't always the truth).

Of course, I could throw caution to the wind and blurt out whatever I wanted to the press on my cordon. A large part of me wonders if the results would really be as disastrous as the press officer seems to think. Leaving aside cases of ongoing kidnap/terrorism, where we sometimes have to play a tactical game with the media to avert tragedy, when would it really hurt to say: "Well we're looking into the expenses saga because on the face of it, it looks as though some MPs might have acted illegally. We'll keep you posted on what we find." Would this really undermine a future prosecution?

I don't anticipate this kind of frankness appearing in the media any time soon, especially not triggered by the police.

Mr Justice Eady believes that the nation is desirous of "openness and transparency". How ironic that it is the anonymous police bloggers he is trying to shut down who have actually had the more trusted and open relationship with the public.

Our bosses should be taking note, and figuring out how to get this relationship between police and public to work officially.

Thank you to all my visitors this week who have reached me via Woman's Hour. The BBC have loose plans to turn my book into a TV comedy too (to be confirmed), so soon the world will be bombarded with the truth about policing, whether or not Mr Justice Eady approves.

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

Live by the Sword

Episode 4 of Radio 4's dramatisation this week, and Day 4 of my week of daily blogging. If you're new to my blog, which two-thirds of you are, I don't normally talk so much about being a blogger, and you can expect a return to vindictive, pointless sarcasm next week.

I read in The Telegraph today blogging described as an art form, and anonymous public sector bloggers depicted as brave wandering heroes of the Internet. I never thought of myself that way, but I will buy a scabbard immediately. I doubt very much that any public sector blogger went into it to achieve hero status, and most of us try very hard to come across as bog standard examples of our profession. It has been surprising and gratifying to read the flood of public support for Nightjack's predicament, and I think it's fair to say that if the public were this supportive of the police in general, most police bloggers wouldn't feel the need to exist.

They aren't supportive, because the public aren't stupid, and they know they're not getting the full story from politicians and police chiefs. Bloggers aren't appreciated by those who believe facts should be diluted and prepared for public consumption, as if poor old Britain should be protected from the nasty mean truth.

In 'Diary...' today, you can hear me single-handedly attempt to take out a vicious robber, resulting in a pile of thrashing police and robber limbs. One of the dilemmas for police, and the situation that often results in headlines of "brutality", is that in 90% of violent confrontations, two unavoidable facts make our input less than effective:

1) We only want to arrest the person, we don't want to hurt them.
2) They want to get away far more than we want to stop them.

As a lone, somewhat lightweight female with minimal training in combat, it simply isn't possible for me to effect an arrest of someone who doesn't want to be arrested, not without severely swinging the odds in my favour. I'm not a cage fighter (you'll be disappointed to hear), and I don't go into combat situations wanting a "fair fight", but only when necessary and when I expect to win. This means swinging the odds in my favour with a baton strike, deploying my incapacitant spray, or a serious amount of punching/kicking. If all my opponent wants to do is get away, I am always going to come across as the aggressor, because I am.

The fact is, it can be a frightening business policing the streets alone. I enjoy it, and I think all police officers should be capable of lone patrol and able to handle themselves until back-up comes. But most of us didn't join the job to get our faces kicked in, and we face that prospect with the full knowledge of little support from the public or the criminal justice system.

It is that knowledge that leads us to blog, in an attempt to remedy one or other situation. I am most grateful for the support of my readers, and I hope some day it will translate into support from my 'customers' too.

But it's worth keeping a perspective. What we do off-duty is not heroic, it is informative and (hopefully) entertaining. What we are sometimes asked to do on-duty is where the fabric of our hero status is tested.

PC Gemma Maggs:
What "Living by the Sword" really means.

PS Daniel Finkelstein obviously didn't appreciate my input on his column yesterday - despite publishing numerous comments critical of The Times, mine didn't make it past moderation... I'm sure it's just an oversight.

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