Going for a Massage.

I read a lot on other blogs and in PC Copperfield's book about the state of the nation's crime figures. Nothing makes me madder than to suggest that we police are dishonest in recording crime with the ultimate aim of showing how it is decreasing.

I do not know about other forces, but in Blandshire it has been made clear to us on numerous occasions that we are to record as much crime as possible, whether detectable or not. We even have a whole department of civilians dedicated to creating crime reports at the mere sniff of a complaint from a Member of Public.

This is how the process goes:

1. MoP calls the police to report an incident.
2. Call-taker creates a "job" and if urgent enough, dispatches officers to it. Meanwhile, the Mop is put through to the civilian enquiry centre.
3. The Civilian creats a crime report. This can take some creativity as not all callers will actually specify an offence and, believe it or not, some Members of Public don't even have training in law! Moreover, the options on the drop-down menu for "offence" do not appear to relate to UK law.
   
4. PC Bloggs arrives on scene and establishes that although there has been some kind of argument/incident, there are no actual offences.
5. PC Bloggs leaves the scene with a job well done and everyone happy.
6. Two days later PC Bloggs is scanning through crime reports in her name when she discovers an assault/criminal damage/theft appearing on the system in relation to that incident. Baffled, she informs the crime desk that no actual offences took place.
7. The crime desk know that PC Bloggs is lying. This is because PC Bloggs is a malevolent shift bobby and therefore always lies to avoid work. The crime desk will not get rid of this crime report without proof that the offence did not happen.
8. "But," says PC Bloggs, "There was never any proof it DID happen, just someone shouting down the phone and then changing their story when the police actually arrived."
9. But it is too late. The crime report will now exist forever Undetected. On limited occasions, where absolute proof is obtained that the offence never happened such as secret CCTV and/or phone-tapping evidence, it might be possible to remove the blight from PC Bloggs' name, but this should take at least six weeks in the hope that she will forget all about it in the meantime. In those six weeks, it will also have been counted as a negative statistic and even if it is removed later, nothing can un-etch it from the Daily Bulletin.
   

The classic example of the above is the Domestic. We all know that the police do not care about women being beaten up and want them all to die.

The only way to prevent this is to create a crime report of assault as soon as the word "He" is mentioned by a caller. The aim is to make it easier for the police officer to just arrest somebody than try to explain that no actual assault took place.

This successful system is now pushing the honest coppers underground where they belong: whereas before they used to be able to say there had been a bit of a scuffle but both parties were equally to blame, now it is better just to lie and say that no phsyical contact took place whatsoever. I think you will all agree that this is the best outcome for society and the victims of crime.

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YOU decide:

BEFORE AND AFTER:
















I can't bring myself to comment.

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Help Us!

Illegal Immigrants have rioted in a bid for freedom. I just think we are not tough enough on these evil malingerers who come to our country and filch off the state. After all, attempting to move to the UK is a criminal offence and should attract hefty prison sentences, unlike the misguided acts of poor British youths for whom a couple of months doing community service will suffice.

I remember seeing a Kurdish woman with her twelve-year-old son removed from Blandmore nick to one of these marvellous holding centres. I don't know what all the fuss is about: she was allowed to keep two items of clothing and was even allowed to know which centre her son was going to. Well, she would have been allowed to know - it is hardly the escort van's fault if she didn't speak English.

In any event, the critics of our immigration system just do not understand the complexity of deporting people. It is a little known fact that many illegal immigrants don't even have passports identifying which country they came from! How on earth are we to know where to send them back?

The answer is that we have to write to the foreign embassies/passport offices and wait for them to issue the person a passport. These offices are very helpful in assisting us with the DNA profiles and three generations of lineage for these fleeing refugees from war-torn regions, and it only takes 6-7 months to get the passports through. It helps if UK officials are able to get the immigrant's doctor to countersign the back of the photo - without this, what do we expect?

Of course the immigrant must be allowed to appeal and in line with UK law, any appeal against any justice system must take at least a year to run its course. While this process unfolds, it would be lunacy to allow these people to take employment or learn English while they wait. They will get the message that Brits work for a living and in the event that their application is finally approved, they will be unable to function as a state-sponger.

I say we should expand Harmondsworth and even build it an airport, with free air travel into it, for more efficient handling of this terrible modern curse.

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Check Your Trashcan Now!

When I read this article I rushed to work on a rest day and deleted the entire contents of my trashcan. It is all over a video of a man being decaptitated falling off a flyover with the caption "Don't run from the police". Before continuing, please take my poll.

Have you ever forwarded an email from work that you know you shouldn't?
	Yes
	No
	Email? Is that the same as a letter?
pollcode.com free polls

The first things that struck me about the story are:

• The investigation took five months.
• The incident is perceived as racist.
  
• The president of the BPA is not happy with the outcome.
• No wrongdoing has been found by anyone over the level of sergeant. (Please bear in mind that most inspectors can't use email.)
  

So far this could describe any police investigation.

The only difference is that 140 officers have been disciplined over it and apparently this just isn't good enough. I would have liked to see all 440 officers who received the email fired immediately, and I hope an Inquiry will be opened soon.

If you want to know how un-racialist I am, please see below.

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PC Borat.

Daniel Finkelstein has declared that if cops are racist, statistics are the way to prove it. I disagree. I believe that if cops are racist, Borat is the way to prove it. We could send him in undercover to do "Ride-alongs" in UK panda cars and see what happens.

Here are five comments I would be highly surprised if Borat hears in Britain:

1. "Shave off your moustache, pal, you look like a terrorist." Surely the guy who made this remark knows that it is a BEARD that makes you look like a terrorist.
2. "A 9mm is the best gun with which to shoot a Jew." We only shoot Brazilians here.
3. "Stop singing that comical spoof of a foreign national anthem." Comical spoofs of foreign national anthems are the Brits' bread and butter.
4. "You have met someone from what is known as the Gay Community." Here we just say, "He was a bender."
5. "Women should be educated and not stay at home." In Blandmore, if not the rest of Britain, it is the lifelong ambition of most women to stay at home having the maximum number of children possible for the biggest state benefit.

Politics is too high-brow a subject for me, however, so in a week when Britain is devolving and a Russian spy leaves a trail of radiation across the nation, I would like to focus on the important story of the week: a man whose trousers were struck by lightning.

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Wasn't he Fired?

Have I missed something? When did David Blunkett get reinstated as Home Secretary?

Today he is sounding off against microphoned CCTV and he has thrown in the name of a famous novel - which shows how much he means it. I would have thought Blunkett of all people would be ecstatic to think that finally he could gain some benefit from secret cameras, but apparently this idea is slipping over "the edge".

This is from a man who brought us Force Mergers and the three digit non-emergency national number for the police which will apparently be in use by the end of 2006. He is also the guy responsible for the fact that I cannot file any job and will receive an email every day until I have ticked a little box which says that I have told the victim we will never catch the person who stole their hedge.

The idea that triggered his tirade is directional microphones to monitor conversations taking place in crowds during the Olympics. Yet again the government has managed to come up with an idea that will spawn conspiracy theories among those who think the police have nothing better to do than sit around listening to people's private lives. My biggest worry is the suggestion that a "senior officer" will be needed to authorise the use of this system. This means yet another Chief Inspector being seconded from my force and will lead to an inexperienced sergeant taking over as inspector and someone like PC Bloggs becoming sergeant. My day will come...

What amazes me about the whole thing is:
A) We have microphones that can record from 100m away.
B) Someone seems to think the system will be working and switched on when it is actually needed.

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Watch Our Backs.

I got some interesting responses to this. Before anyone asks, no that is not a picture of me, and yes I am sure that policewoman doing some kind of gesture in the shadow of her coat. Furthermore, yes we do all look that enormous when we wear our yellow coats and no, she is not a hunchback.

Today I have read about the increasing number of assaults on rail staff. Apparently some workers have had to take weeks off work. And others have been beaten up. The solution to this is - as with most of life's problems - security guards. These train bouncers will sit in carriages and evict troublemakers, whereupon they will no doubt take one or more of the following courses of action:

• Beat up the troublemaker.
• Fail to write down a description or take any details of the troublemaker.
• Let the troublemaker go and then expect the police to catch them again.

I think this is marvellous and would like to see proposals for Police Bouncers. It is just not right that we expect our nation's police officers to stand around getting assaulted with no legal protection. The Bouncers would travel around in police cars and when trouble arises they would leap from the car to protect the officers from assault. They could then administer on-the-spot justice in the form of the highly-effective Penalty Notice for Disorder or, if the felon seems unlikely to bother paying, Penalty Notice for Disorder. Hand-in-hand with the introduction of Police Bouncers would be powers allowing the police to shred any reports of excessive force used by them.

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Tagging

I have just been Tagged. For those of you who are now scanning my page for some sort of spraypainted logo, apparently "Tagging" means that I now have to repeat some kind of exercise being carried out on other blogs. This will involve overcoming my instincts and conforming to a movement where people with a common purpose copy each other to produce a sort of huge amorphous mass of repetitive material. As a police officer, I will find this hard.

In the name of which, here are ten things I would never do:

10. Watch I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
9. Eat tomato and cucumber salad for breakfast.
8. Pretend to be dealing with a burglary but secretly go home and back to bed.
7. Say "Innit" and mean it.
6. Buy a Citroen Saxo and "soup it up".
5. Forget the dates of birth of my own children.
4. Own a cat.
3. Stroke a cat and mean it.
2. Say, "Gosh what a cute cat."
1. Transfer to the Met.

Now I am supposed to tag ten more people. I have decided to tag five of my sidebar links: Bystander, Extra Special Copper, PC Dogberry, PC South West, Bitseach. And five randomly selected blogs: Monkeys for Helping, Funky Monkey Pictures, Kung Fu Monkey, Monkey Law, Recess Monkey. Well OK, so they weren't totally randomly selected.

Oh no, I just realised one thing I thought I'd never do was respond to a chain letter.

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How British Is Your House?

It turns out that once you have been in the UK for fifty-seven years, you have to take a citizenship test to prove your Britishness. Here is a sample question which reflects the style of the exam:

To be British means you should...
A: "Respect laws, the elected political structures, traditional values of mutual tolerance and respect for rights and mutual concern."
B: "Share in the history and culture of an island nation with a character moulded by many different peoples over more than two thousand years."
C: "be part of a modern European democracy, one with a tradition of sharing our ways with the world – and allowing the world to bring its ways to us."

I can think of a few Blandmore residents who might stumble over that, so I have devised my own Britishness test for the good people of my hometown.

What time do you have lunch?
A: 12.30pm
B: 1.30pm
C: 13.00
D: I can't tell the time.

What should you do on November 5th?
A: Have a home fireworks display and a barbecue.
B: Nothing.
C: Eat a turkey.
D: Run into the park stripped to your waist and fire rockets at unsuspecting strangers.

What should you say if you are stopped by the police?
A: I am so sorry, officer.
B: Here's £50.
C: Here's £500.
D: F**king C**ting Feds get off my back!

What is a red pillarbox for?
A: Posting letters.
B: Depositing bombs.
C: Fine art.
D: A message board to scribble notes in spraypaint for your friends.

Unless you answered all D's, sorry, you are not a true Brit.
If you answered A's, you have not progressed since 1960.
If you answered B's, you probably live in the Middle East.
If you answered C's, you probably live in Europe.

Interestingly, the mother of the male in my original link gave a truly British observation on her son's situation:

"It is a lot of Bull".

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Thank you Thank you...

I am about to be late for work, which would never do, so this will be a quickie.

I just wanted to offer my thanks to the numerous anonymous commenters who keep me up-to-date on the latest cases where females are imprisoned for false allegations of rape. Being female I do struggle to surf the net effectively, and I can never hear enough stories about lying women.

You guys know just what I want and how to give it to me...

We don't feel the need for speed.

Today I have read the statistic that 82% of speeding offences and 97% of dangerous driving offences are committed by men. The former may even be higher as men supposedly tell DVLA that the wife was driving to avoid a ban.

I use my intuition to react to most news as - being female - it is highly honed. Intuitively, therefore, this does not ruffle me. I mainly attribute it to the fact that most traffic cops are men, and nothing annoys a bloke more than to see another bloke who makes more money zooming by in a faster car.

The Association of British Drivers has responded to the report by pointing out that most women drive about all day with their kiddies in the back so are bound to drive slower. I am more swayed by their argument that it must be because all sales reps are men, a rather convoluted path of reasoning.

The writer of the report itself helpfully points out that women are "more compliant in their behaviour" - a fact my boyfriend will be pleased and amazed to discover. I will get the iron ready.

There may be many reasons for the data, but unless they publish alongside it the statistics for how many drivers hog the middle lane on the motorway, knock over bollards and smash off their wing mirrors during simple driving manoeuvres, the debate about which gender drives better will not be resolved. Just to stir up the argument further, apparently women require 51 hours of tuition before passing their test as opposed to 36 hours for men (this is from the print version of the same article). I can only put my hands up and say that we are just too busy thinking about puppies to drive properly.

I have an odd suspicion that many men will react to this report with smug self-satisfaction rather than the shame and regret that we all hope for. Personally I have taken it as an insult to the speed I drive and I shall be winding up the throttle to try and even out the figures.

The thing I find most bizarre in the whole debate is the fact that The Times adorned this article with a picture of a woman driving around a blow-up man-doll. Are they blaming HIM for the speeding?

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PC Bloggs and the Unusual Case of the Email Harassment.

I deal with frequent cases of harassment. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these include some form of electronic communication, usually texts but also emails. I say unfortunately, because there is no possible way for British police officers to investigate these offences.

If I read the texts the victim has received in order to establish whether or not a harassment has taken place, I am acting lawfully. But as soon as I take crazy actions like reading the texts for the deliberate purpose of writing down the telephone number they have come from, I have over-stepped the mark. In practice I do this anyway, but hey, I'm just a rebel.

I once "investigated" a case of EMAIL HARASSMENT. I can almost hear you gasping: "Investigated? Surely not!" This is the course my investigation took:

1. Attended address and read emails sent to victim.
2. Agreed that the emails constituted rather nasty death threats including the words "garotte", "entrails" and "die". There were exaggerating features such as the fact that the vicitm was involved in problems with mafiosi in Pakistan.
   
3. Used my superlative TRANSFERABLE I.T. SKILLS to download the email headers.
4. Submitted the contents to the Department of Paper-grinders to authorise a trace on the headers.
5. Received response that as Yahoo was an international company, this was impossible. Never mind the fact that the sender was thought to be in the UK and you can buy software that will trace the sender to his home computer for under £8 ($12).
6. Informed the victim there was nothing the police could do, but for £8 an unscrupulous net-service could do the job in a second.

The victim was not particularly happy. Fortunately this was not one of the cases where she was later stabbed to death.

Note:
You might be asking yourselves at what point during the investigation did I consider the option that the victim might be an ex-KGB spy who had defected, who was at risk of poisoning at any moment?

The answer is, I ALWAYS consider that option - it's more of an undying hope really.

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Supernanny Goes Large!

Once again a charity has managed to get a mention in the news by opposing a new scheme. This time they are moaning about Blair's plan to improve parenting.

The scheme involves helping the parents of antisocial kids to "parent" them effectively, the idea being that this will prevent the behaviour. I am both astonished and delighted that the Labour Government have managed to develop a DNA test that can accurately predict which two-year-old is due to become the next local ASBO-holder, in order to administer the aid to parents in time for it to be useful.

If applications are opened for the posts of Blandmore Borough Supernanny, I will be submitting mine. My basic principles of parenting are:

• Children should wear clothes (this includes shoes).
• Children should eat food.
• Children should wash.
• "Wot" is not actually a word.
• If you spend your benefit money on Plasma flat-screens which are larger than your front door, there is a high chance you will not be able to afford wholesome family outings.
  

I have more, but I feel if certain families could master these basics at an early age, there might be hope. My first lesson for tearaway kids would be to line them up in a row and walk the parents along them saying, "NO" loudly to each one.
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Child Pro-tek-shun.

Following on from yesterday's controversies, I thought I should enlighten my readers on the approach expected of the modern police officer to Sexual Offences where children are concerned.

Whereas in the uncivilised past, children were unfeeling objects with no emotions or intentions, Twenty-First Century children have minds of their own. They are now expected to advance their own desires for how best to protect them and this forms part of the "strategy meetings" held by the police and Social Services to decide a course of action. This might mean over-looking certain sexual offences if the child does not wish to make a complaint or will not consent to a medical (usually this applies to children over 12), or keeping the child with their parents unless there are pressing reasons why they should not stay there.

Teenagers who are having consensual sex with other teenagers will generally not be prosecuted unless their parents complain enough and attend the same golf club as the local MP. This lack of Detection-ing by the police is yet another example of the insidious INSTITUTIONAL COMMONSENSE that still lurks within some police force and Crown Prosecution Service employees. Gradually the government hopes to stamp out this creeping menace and cases will be judged not on their own merits but on their potential to provide a positive conviction statistic for the Home Office.

There is another side to the modern child, however. As well as having minds of their own and being able to make mature decisions about their future no matter how tumultuous their home lives, they are yet unable to commit murder unless they are at least fourteen. A couple of COMMONSENSE decisions by judges were allowed to slip through the net, but in future years we should expect to see the courts applying proper standards to cases involving wayward kids.

As for the views of CC Terry Grange I posted on yesterday, I was pleased to see that some Sun readers dropped by to leave their remarks. My avid checking of that glorious paper's website has today turned up this story. And this one. And... er... this. I am glad to see that the media is assisting us in the crusade against COMMONSENSE and that by warping enough quotations from high-profile public figures, we will soon be able to prevent any police officers from daring to state their views at all.

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Walking on Eggshells?

CC Terry Grange has taken a brave step this week in stating that boys aged twenty who have sex with thirteen-year-olds are not necessarily paedophiles.

I am now checking The Sun website daily waiting for their "Terry Grange gives the green light to paedophiles" headline which is bound to appear soon. This is the paper that brought us some novel Twenty-First Century approaches to tackling paedophilia:

• Men accused of sex offences should not be allowed legal advice.
• Convicted paedophiles should not be allowed into off-licenses.
• No matter how minor the offence, anything related to children should involve a life sentence and preferably hanging.

Judges must love presiding over cases involving paedophilia, as it gives them to chance to send a child-rapist to jail for a couple of years. For this we have to thank the wonder that is Sentencing Guidelines. These all-important rules restrict judges in passing sentence and if they are strayed from there is a good chance that an appeal to a higher court will be successful. The Guidelines are rarely tackled head-on as a political issue as it would just give rise to too many appeals and this would confuse lots of people - something which must be avoided by any party hoping to gain votes in an election.

One example of the impact of these Guidelines on court cases is Robbery (a violent theft). They state that if minimal force is used, the range of sentence available is just 1-3 years. If an early Guilty plea is entered, this means between 9-24 months can be given out. With good behaviour this means as little as 18 weeks could be spent actually behind bars for an offence that carries up to Life imprisonment under law.

I think this is a marvellous thing, as by tinkering with the Guidelines, we can basically stop anyone from ever going to prison again no matter what they do.

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I'm off...

I won't be posting much over the next day or so, but I thought I would update you on the mysterious case of the elderly bag-snatchers:

A source tells me they DID know it wasn't their bag, they have turned themselves in and been cautioned!

On the Run!

Two vicious criminals are fleeing police following a theft on a train.

Gosh, I think even I might be able to run faster than them.

Old people just do not commit enough crime. I would love to deal with a few more OAPs as I could guarantee a Detection out of every one. This is mainly because they are so slow at committing crimes that they are invariably spotted and identified. They were also first arrested before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act existed and tend to regard solicitors as words beginning with "C"s. This can only aid our cause.

This makes me wonder about the right to legal advice in police stations. Most custody blocks are now recorded on tape and camera and interviews are all taped in any event. There are strict rules about oppressive tactics such as "silence" and deprivation of cigarettes/drugs. Soon most custody sergeant posts will be civilianised meaning that there will be a person in the block whose only aim is to protect the prisoners' welfare, who has nothing to gain by assisting the investigating officers to breach rules.

In light of all this, what on earth do we need solicitors for in the police station?

The only reasons I can think of are:
A) To hold the suspect's hand during interview as he or she will be so scared of the mean police officers.
B) To advise the suspect what the law is - a bit late in most cases.
C) To describe possible defences and allow the suspect to choose from a list.
D) To tell the suspect to say "No comment" to prevent him being caught out in a lie.

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The Age of Policing.

I did some good solid police work this week. By which I mean I completed the following superlative examples of Twenty-First Century Policing:

• I wrote out a ten-page statement for the victim.
• I wrote three statements for me regarding various things I did - and did jolly well too.
• Witness statement - five pages including the description "Lads in hoodies".
• Enquiries at shops for CCTV.
• Enquiries with taxi companies - the response to all my phonecalls was, "DUNNO".
• DNA sample taken from victim.
• Victim's clothing seized.
• Computer-based enquiries looking for possible offenders committing the same kind of crime.
• Two houses searched.
  

All of this took a total of about twelve hours over several days. It should have taken Detectives twelve hours instead of a little old shift officer without many brains, but they were too busy Detectiving at their desks.

Would anyone like to guess which of the above enquiries led to my arresting two felons?

The answer is, this one: I was mooching around one evening (in a vehicle, I might add) when I saw two guys matching the description. A visit to their homes confirmed they had been out there that night and hey presto, two more arrests to inch towards to my monthly target.

Detectives will now begin Detectiving in earnest, as with two chaps on bail there is a strong chance they will get a Detection. One thing people forget is that shift officers like myself are only there to deal with crimes where there is no hope whatsoever of catching anyone. The really highly-trained Detectives are best saved for those investigations where an offender has already been identified and is ready to send to court.

Once in court, of course, most of the work I have done will be destroyed by the fact that I forgot a numeral in one of my six-digit exhibit codes, or by the genius who will decide that the DNA-store is too full and will throw out my evidence before trial. Plus the offenders will come up with a totally convincing account that the most discerning farmyard goose will believe without hesitation. It won't matter that they lied in interview because it will be shown that "they didn't understand the questions" or "they were oppressed". The fact that the victim identified them in a parade will be negated by the fact that the DVD used during the procedure was red instead of blue, and their accidental confession while smoking in the custody yard will count for nothing because the custody assistant who heard it was Welsh.

I think you will agree that we live in a glorious age of policing.

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Celebrations are in order.

It is my 146th Post Today!!

In time-honoured Blandshire tradition, I am celebrating this momentous occasion by a discussion of a policing strategy AND a survey. You can't get more Twenty-First Century than that.

Bobbies on the Beat: What are your views?

For as long as I have been alive and aware of things called newspapers ie for a short period aged 18-21, people have demanded more police officers ON OUR STREETS. Year on year, the public and media have called for greater numbers of police and to raise great cheers from voters, a political leader need only bellow, "More police officers ON OUR STREETS" to meet with a riotous cheer. Look what has happened for a Witney MP since he made the call five years ago.

It is a "Golden Cow" of modern policing that we all strive for. Nowadays any old backwater force can promise more bobbies on the beat and immediately get some positive press coverage. Even the Telegraph seems to think that we could stop police officers from being shot if we only mooched around our neighbourhoods on foot more often.

I have managed to gather what people mean by this bizarre desire to see police ON OUR STREETS:

• A local bobby will stroll past and doff his/her cap in the morning, lean on the post and rail fence and comment, "What lovely daffodils, Mrs Lupin."
• The bobby will lurk in areas of high crime and pop out to collar the criminal in the act of breaking into a car/house.
• The bobby will have cups of tea with the elderly and the head of Neighbourhood Watch.
• People will rush up and tell the bobby all kinds of local secrets.
• The bobby will break up groups of antisocial youths and haul them home to face the music.
• The bobby will say, "Hello, hello, hello, what's all this then?" and "Move it along - Nothing to see here".
  

For those misguided fools who buy into the above illusion, let me explain what PC Bloggs being "on the beat" would mean for your neighbourhood.

• PC Bloggs can cover about five miles in a day allowing for attending incidents and all the cups of tea. Blandmore would need approximately four hundred more officers for each one of PC Bloggs that exists currently, in order that most roads could be visited once per shift. This would cost £540,000,000 in salary alone just for one town.
  
• Most of PC Bloggs' day would be spent tootling up and down the road, listening to incidents on the radio that are happening half a mile away that she cannot get to before they have finished.
• PC Bloggs will be lucky to catch one criminal in the course of a crime. For some reason they just don't seem to happen when she is standing next to them.
• If PC Bloggs has to attend an incident, she will have to walk back to the nick, which could take an hour, to fetch her paperwork.
• People might rush up and tell her local secrets, but that happens to me all the time anyway. If someone wants to tell you a secret, the fact that you are in a car won't stop them.
• If PC Bloggs manages to take a miscreant youth home, his/her parents will screech, "My Ashlee wouldn't hurt a fly" and slam the door.
  
• PC Bloggs will have to say "Good morning, sir/madam, how are you doing?" and "I am afraid I am not able to comment on the current situation" instead of the desired phrases in order to avoid receiving complaints.
• The upshot of it all is that PC Bloggs will spend seven out of every eight hours in the day doing nothing other than walk up and down the road. Crime might well go down with four hundred of us doing the same... or it will just wait until we have walked past.
  

When I am in a marked police car, I can zip all over my area, I can put prisoners, victims or witnesses in the back to take them places, I can carry all my paperwork (some of which I regret to say is actually needed). I can take a spare jumper or coat if it rains rather than having to go back to the nick. I can carry a big map book and all kinds of trinkets that people might need - such as postcode pens, leaflets, you know, all the stuff members of public seem to love. I can stop vehicles committing traffic offences and through this identify local burglars. I can hop out and patrol areas where a particular problem is occurring, but still be ready to jump in the car and zoom to an incident if required. I vote for more cars. And possibly a couple of mopeds.

Villages used to consist of a few hundred people, now there are thousands. Cities used to be hundreds of thousands, now they are millions. Ninety-five percent of these people will barely see a police officer in their lives and will be better for it. Let's get some members of public out in the cars with us, or out on foot, to see what a Twenty-First Century police officer actually does, before they bleat for more of us ON THE BEAT doing absolutely nothing useful.

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Caution: May Contain Irony.

Jamie Oliver today announces his latest celebrity fad show: Jamie's Prison Dinners.

Given that the TV chef's ASBO-avoiding school dinners have failed to do what they said on the tin, the Naked Chef has changed his sights to where most of his rice-guzzling teenagers have ended up: Inside.

On visiting some of Britain's most deprived prisons, Jamie was horrified to discover that not only were the prisoners being fed unorganic and fattening foods, but that the cooks had no training whatsoever in preparing gourmet meals. "You might even think," the celebrity gasped, "That they were therving time in the thlammer themthelveth!"

And so begins Jamie's next crusade, to improve the eating habits of our nation's prison population. He hopes that by switching cold turkey and detox for small and regular doses of methodone, the prisoners' Human Rights will be protected AND their behaviour will become more mellow and relaxed. Admittedly, in early trials, concentration levels were lowered somewhat and coma was a regrettable side effect of the diet. Jamie is confident, however, that if he perseveres, he might just make a shedload more money in time for Christmas.

We have neglected the addled brains of our young offenders for too long: if we do not act now some of them might stop taking drugs altogether.

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It pays to go cold turkey.

Oh dear. We have finally hit rock bottom by paying compensation to prisoners who were forced to quit drugs "cold turkey".

Apparently it is an abuse of their human rights. We really must campaign for more drugs to be allowed in prisons.

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We've a little way to go...

... until we catch up with the efficiency of this Indian court, which ruled that a woman who had been raped was "involved" with her rapist and therefore not allowed to remain married to her husband. That'll teach her for making an allegation that's hard to investigate!

We shouldn't expect any reforms to the court system any time soon, however, as Gordon Brown has made it clear that TERROR is his priority. Having seen the price for making Public Services the standard by which your party is judged, Gordon has opted for the easy target. No religious leader that wants to be taken seriously can speak out in favour of terror, and other types of leader can always count on it to stoke up support during a lack of sensible policies. The funny thing about Britain is that we generally all agree that people who spend their lives plotting to blow up random members of public are pretty evil. Do we really need that spelt out for us yet again?

The terrifying news also broke this week that MI5 are investigating THIRTY plots at once. I am sure it is very important to inform the wider public of the fact that they may be killed brutally at any moment, but the question I think most of us want answered is: what is MI5's Detection Rate and does it include Administrative Detections?

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Send them down!

It will not be long before we can send people to prison for causing death by careless driving - Hooray! This will make the offence "Recordable" which means that I will get a Detection if I charge someone with it - an incentive if nothing else.

We do not send people to prison for burglary, robbery or rape nowadays, so we need something to bump up the prison numbers.

Here are some other things we could legislate to send people to jail for:

• Causing death by leaving the gas on.
• Causing death by playing that game where you whirl about with your arms flying through the air.
• Causing death by not cutting up a child's food small enough.
• Causing death by frisbee.
• Causing death by tripping over.

In the future the nation's criminal justice resources will rightly be spent detecting these despiccable offences, meaning we would no longer have to bother giving out decent sentences for breaching ASBOs, mindless vandalism and theft. Well at least we're halfway there.

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The "YOU" in UNIFORMED policing...

I am constantly amused by the range of slogans adopted by our nation's police forces, which range from the Politically Correct ("Together - Working for Safety and Justice" - West Mercia) to Nauseating ("Putting People First" - Cleveland).

Here are some of my favourites:

• GMP - "Fighting Crime, Protecting People"
  
• Surrey - "With you, making Surrey safer" (talk about poor grammar)
• Essex - "Taking a lead in making Essex safer" (Taking a lead? Who else is supposed to be making Essex safer?)
• Staffs - "Be safe, feel safe"
• The winner for brazenness goes to Warwickshire - "The Safest Place to Be"

These slogans are emblazoned across marked vehicles across the UK to reassure the public and a jolly good job they do too.

I would like to propose the below as Blandshire's new slogan:

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Good Old Britain.

Following on from my last post, I do not think people realise just what the majority of police time is spent on. When we aren't filling out checklists and files or catching genuine baddies, we are sitting in a decaying house listening to the woes of someone about whom society has forgotten. Unfortunately this often means the elderly. Whether barking mad or just lonely, the old have learned that whereas their family can just ignore the pesky ringing of the phone, the police cannot.

The reasons for the call are usually one of:

• I think I've been burgled but I don't know when, how, or what's been taken.
• I've fallen out of bed/my chair.
• My last light bulb has blown.
• It's them kids again.
• I'm old. Help me.

These people have every right to call us and PC Bloggs is more than happy to attend and sit between two stacks of books dating from the turn of the last century, while Mrs Dora Biddles recounts tales of her war-time marriage. Dora lives in a ground floor flat and hasn't technically been "Mrs" for thirty-five years since her husband died of alcoholism, but in her heart she always will be.

"John had a mean temper," she will tell me. "He wasn't a nice man. Or handsome. In fact, you could say he was one of the ugliest people you could find."

She will now rise, declining all offers to pass whatever it is she needs or help her up, and totter around the living room searching through a metre-thick perimeter of ornaments to produce a battered old photo of Major John Biddles. I note that he was indeed a hideous specimen.

"But then, we loved each other, you know." Now Dora will cry for a few minutes while I locate some tissues.

I stay for half an hour and make Dora a cup of tea. By the time I leave, she has usually forgotten why she called the police and thinks I am her daughter Marjorie. I will be the only visitor she will have until the home-care woman drops in the following morning to put some milk in the fridge. Dora has family - three daughters in fact - but they prefer to leave the job of providing comfort and companionship to specially-trained crime-fighters in stab-proof vests.

Less and less can I make time for Dora. I almost feel the emails pouring into my inbox as I sit with her, most of which will tell me that I have forgotten to tick a box on a form and it has been sent back to me for ticking. It is almost as if the originators of these emails don't care about anything except statistics!

Note
A general rule of old people's houses is that the area of free floor space decreases with each year that passes, as if each square metre represents the number of years the person has left to live. In the end the useable space in the room will consist of a single armchair, adorned with a squashed floral cushion and next to a side-table covered in cigarette packets, medication and the TV controller.

That is where the old person lives, in that chair. One day their possessions and memorabilia will become too numerous and demand the final space on the cushion, and I will break down the door to find them dead and alone under a heap of unpaid electricity bills.

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Social Services Questionnaire

Please take the following questionnaire to find out how you would rate as an employee of a 21st Century Social Services department.

1) You are the Emergency Duty Social Worker when you receive a call from an anxious PC Bloggs telling you that she is with an elderly female whose boiler has broken down and the temperature is under three degrees.
Do you:
A) Provide emergency accommodation for the lady at great public expense.
B) Immediately call for a gas-man to go round.
C) Offer practical advice such as raising the lady's relatives, finding a mains heater etc.
D) State that you are the only person on duty and can therefore do nothing, and that since the police have attended it is their problem if the old woman dies.

2) You are a Community Mental Health Worker whose job it is to provide support to mental patients in the community. One evening you are on duty when a patient calls telling you she has taken an overdose and is about to hang herself.
Do you:
A) Remain on the phone to her while driving to the address and calling an ambulance with the other hand.
B) Dial 999 and begin to make arrangements for a duty officer to attend the address.

C) Dial 999 and be ready to attend if required.
D) Dial 999 and go back to bed, turning off your phone and switching on the answerphone message that goes: "We are not coming out of our warm office until a police officer has personally threatened to sue us."

3) Once more you are on duty at Social Services when PC Bloggs calls up telling you she has just taken a ten-year-old boy into police protection because he has been assaulted by his father and is scared to go home.
Do you:
A) Go straight to the police station and take responsibility for the lad, relieving PC Bloggs to go back on patrol.
B) Have a few cups of tea, put your feet up and attend in four hours. The boy is safe with PC Bloggs and she won't mind babysitting him for a while.
C) Phone around foster-homes to get accommodation for the boy which you can instruct PC Bloggs to take him to.
D) Ask to speak to the boy and inform him on the phone that he has to go home and should learn to do as he is told. Tell PC Bloggs she cocked up by taking the boy into police protection and suggest that the paperwork is thrown into the bin as this will make it easier your end.

4) You have been shafted as duty officer five nights in a row and this time PC Bloggs calls to say that she has arrested a fourteen-year-old girl for shoplifting and her mother won't attend the police station as she has two other small children at home to look after.
Do you:
A) Go to the police station immediately so that the girl can be interviewed and released.
B) Wake a colleague from bed who has no training and send them instead.
C) Phone up the girl's mum and threaten to take her child away from her if she will not attend.
D) Tell the police there is nothing you can do and the girl will just have to be either released or kept in a cell for 8 hours until the next duty officer comes into work.

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How did you score?
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Mostly A's: You are hardworking and compassionate. Apply elsewhere.
Mostly B's: You are excellent at delegating jobs to other people, but you do it far too quickly to be a really good Social Worker.
Mostly C's: You are just too practical to do this job.
Mostly D's: Congratulations, you are ready to apply to Blandmore Social Services.

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Victory!

According to some of my readers I have now been blocked by the Met. This is a double victory I feel as apparently I am regarded as "pornography". I KNEW I shouldn't have put that stick-woman in...

On another victory note, anyone else notice that we got our 3% pay rise? Apparently we will be paid in March which will mean a nice little bundle of money... although I wonder what will happen to the interest Blandshire have been accruing on the dosh in the meantime.

Here we go again!

An officer is suing the Met for discrimination. This time it is because he failed security checks to get onto one of the Met's many useful squads (one of which is the little-known Specialist Crime Directorate Econominc and Specialist Crime Extradition and International Assistance Unit - how about that for a snappy name).

Apparently it is just because he is a Muslim, although the Met say two of his children attend a mosque connected to extremism. Call me old-fashioned, but I say that there is nothing wrong with attending a place of worship where the clerics advocate terrorism. Just because you know a lot of the congregation and some of the preachers support all that death stuff doesn't mean you do too. The Met are just being prissy: they should think outside the box and take a few risks when it comes to National Security.

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Blast those pesky happy people!

Why oh why are people allowed to have fireworks displays when PC Bloggs is on nights and trying to sleep! I propose a new law banning it.

I also propose to ban:

• Postmen.
• Sales calls from electricity companies to my home number.
  
• The Duties department phoning me on a day off to tell me that I am on a day off so not to bother coming in.

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Black and White Justice.

Oh dear. Click the link for a bit of an error by this country's great Criminal Justice System.

Thank goodness for CCTV!

I can only imagine that this error was caused by the Self-classification system for ethnic groups. This basically means that when an officer stops somebody, he/she is not supposed to inflict on that person his own perception of what their skin colour is, but to ask them to self-define. After all, it is racist to say that someone looks Asian when they might consider themselves to be White-Irish.

The felon initially stopped by police in the above story (who was white), probably identified himself as Black, which was then recorded as fact somewhere in the paperwork. Under the recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence enquiry, police officers have to accept the self-classification no matter how strongly they suspect the person to be ARSING AROUND.

The Enquiry made stopping and searching people a hairy business for white middle class police officers. Whereas before we could just stop people who matched the description given for an offender, for example a theft committed by "a young white male", we now have to ensure that the person we are stopping really is white by asking him.

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News Update.

Being on nights, I am officially still asleep, so here is a condensed version of the day's news:

• Apparently more Muslim women than ever are wearing the veil now that Jack Straw has said it makes him uncomfortable. If only Jack Straw would speak out against imprisonment for young offenders and advocate stiffer Detection targets for police forces, we might get somewhere.

• Schools have come up with another alternative to expelling pupils who just won't wind their necks in. Kids who fail the drug-testing can be given "Counselling". Bless.
  

• Saddam Hussein is going to be hanged. Fortunately he wasn't tried in England or he would have been given a Rehabilitation Order.

• Having realised they can only eat one pigeon at a time, Pelicans have launched a mass strategy to take out their rivals.

• Finally... a shift officer in GMP decided yesterday that it was time his team got a new car.

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Glitch

Sorry to anyone who tried to post comments today and couldn't - a glitch occurred. (I blame the Labour government.)

The Other Side...

I'd like to know what this judge was thinking when he gave "community orders" to two girls who stabbed another in the eye with a pair of scissors. Apparently there was "another side" to the girls.

I just love Community Orders and think we should use them more. What can be more frightening to teenagers than to have to turn up somewhere on a regular basis and DO WORK. What's more, if they fail to turn up, they will have to go back to court and get a good talking to. No wonder we are winning the war on crime.

While on the subject, I recently applied for an ASBO. The Council decided not to support my case in the end as the lad who had committed eight shopliftings in a month was "disturbed". Tell me something I don't know.

The daily papers will tell us that ASBOs are failing because two out of three are breached - this is just astonishing. I just can't believe that a toe-rag who has been terrorising his neighbourhood with petty crime and vandalism won't keep to a bunch of restrictive rules designed to stem his behaviour. It just goes to prove that ASBOs don't work: this is because they are only ever placed on people who are ANTISOCIAL. If we would just slap them on law-abiding citizens the figures would improve drastically.

So what was the government thinking? Is it possible that the invention of the ASBO was some kind of crazy plan to give you one last chance to fix your behaviour before being sent down? Perhaps it was always intended that they be breached, to give greater sentencing powers for otherwise minor examples of criminal damage and theft?

I apologise, I drifted off into a fantasy world for a moment. I mean, it isn't as if the courts have any power to send you to prison for breaching an ASBO...

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Bad Form.

Just to give some respite from the debate on privacy, I thought you'd all like to know that our Hate Crime unit has just brought out another form. It is another risk assessment for special kinds of domestic/racist violence. Whereas we used to just fill in one five-page form on attending domestic incidents, Blandmore officers are now lucky enough to get to fill in TWO five-page forms for one incident.

Having done a short stint in the unit where these forms end up, I can tell you exactly what happens to the form after I leave the address:

1. Risk assessment questionnaire filled in by PC Bloggs at scene of domestic incident. Or more likely, filled in afterwards by guesswork or memory because PC Bloggs forgot to bring any forms with her. She will either forge the victim's signature or put "Refused to sign".
2. Risk assessment signed by sergeant who does not read it. Alternatively, PC Bloggs can just forge the sergeant's signature, as no one will ever check (except in event of pt.10).
   
3. The risk assessment arrives in the Domestic Violence unit to be reviewed by specially trained officers.
4. An officer with no extra training whatsoever, who is off frontline duties due to pregnancy, stress, laziness or stupidity, receives the risk assessment and puts it in a pile.
5. A few days later the untrained officer reads it.
6. The officer phones the victim and fills in a "secondary" risk assessment questionnaire on the phone. This includes the question, "Is your partner mean to the dog?" (I kid you not.)
7. The officer writes stuff on the form and selects the risk level - High, Medium or Low. The grading is chosen at random depending on the officer's mood.
8. This officer's sergeant now reads the form and decides whether or not to agree with the grading. So far two officers and two sergeants have been involved in the completion of this form.
   
9. If the grading is High, a snotty email will be sent to the officer who attended in the first place telling them how to do their job, and a copy to their sergeant. If the grading is Medium or Low, the form goes into a file of the corresponding colour.
10. Here is the clever bit: if the victim is murdered, by producing the form and looking back at which signatures are on it, the IPCC knows who to fire.

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What are we really worried about?

Yet another B-list public official has ranted about our transmogrification into a "Surveillance Society". Mr Thomas is the government "Information Commissioner", which says it all really. Like Blandshire's "Head of Critical Emailing" and "Case Investigation Management Directors", this role is just another way of paying a lot of money for someone to state the obvious in email form. By the way I made those job titles up, but not the jobs.

If you are worried about CCTV cameras following your every move and the police state encroaching on your private life, I would suggest you are one of two things:

• A criminal
• An idiot

If you could see the form I have to fill in to get permission for CCTV cameras to follow you around, or to put a bug in your home, or if you had met the Superintendent who has to sign the form afterwards, you wouldn't be worried. Unless you are Abu Hamza, the UK police are more likely to try two paper cups tied together with string than they are to bug you in your own home.

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The case of the sacked detective.

Someone has finally been sacked for failing to prevent a murder. One of the reasons this story about a botched investigation has made it into headlines is because it involves a "Derbyshire Detective", which is just so catchy it is worthy of the evening news.

It does send a serious message though, about how we must deal with cases of harassment properly. The murdered woman had reported harassment on six occasions and the police DID NOTHING! I just can't believe it.

When I am in a motivated mood and on a good day, this is how I investigate harassment:

Step One
Report of harassment received and passed to PC Bloggs.

Step Two
PC Bloggs attends and discovers the following generic facts about all harassments:

• The nutter is an ex-partner.
• He is obsessive ("He" used for ease, and because men just can't let go).
• The word "Stalking" is used by the victim.
• Threatening text messages have been sent in their hundreds and yet the victim has not changed their mobile phone number or blocked the nutter's number.
• The victim's new partner has been warned off.
• On several occasions the nutter has driven past the victim's address in a harassing manner.

Step Three
PC Bloggs divines telepathically that out of the ten identical cases she has dealt with this year, THIS is the one that is going to end in murder. More likely, she recognises that there is no way to avoid dealing with this job - she will have to take a statement. Statement taken, crime report created. On a really good day, PC Bloggs gets statements from family members testifying to the harassment.

Step Four
PC Bloggs arrests the nutter. In interview, he says that the victim texted him just as often and called him, and he just happened to drive past her house those times on the way to work. He cries during interview and says he loves her (not PC Bloggs, the victim - usually).

Step Five
CPS deliberate, cogitate and digest, and with persuasion from a motivated PC Bloggs, agree to charge the nutter, although it goes against their better instincts. The decision is only swung by the use of the words "escalating pattern of domestic violence" and "likely to end in a serious incident" by PC Bloggs (who has been brushing up on her Investigative Jargon).

Step Six
The custody sergeant remands the nutter in custody to prevent any further harassment.

Step Seven
The courts release the nutter on bail.

Step Eight
The nutter behaves for a couple of weeks during his bail period, turns up in court and pleads guilty for a lower sentence. He is given a suspended sentence and a restraining order which he has ignored before setting foot on the pavement, and released back into the victim's neighbourhood.

I have no idea whether Derbyshire's investigation followed this course, but I suspect this happened at some point. At the end of all this, step nine is:

Step Nine
Seeing the nutter outside her house again, the victim makes a complaint, not about the courts but about PC Bloggs.

The alternative Step Nine is that the victim is murdered and PC Bloggs goes off with STRESS. In either event, not much happens to the magistrate involved.

Derbyshire may well have utterly cocked up this investigation and caused this poor woman's death. Unfortunately the chances are that even if they had done everything in their power, she still would have been killed.

The point is: If you are being harassed, DO NOT call the police, just uproot your entire life and move away under a new name. Trust me, it's the only way.

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I'm transferring...

... to the Met. Just to drive this.

Judging by the angst-ridden comments to my post on stress, we could all do with a relaxing day out in this bad boy.