Is being rude a criminal offence?

"Public Order" is a funny old thing. A good proportion of my Detections arise from the Public Order Act of 1986, which makes it illegal to be physically or verbally threatening in the street, or to abuse passing Members of Public, or even just to be abusive to no one in particular (if a passing Mop is upset by it).

Despite this straightforward definition, there appears to be some confusion in Blandmore about exactly how to commit a public order offence. Here are some tips:

1. The word "F**k" always does the trick. Even when said in passing conversation to a friend, this is a very upsetting word and is rightly clamped down on by most police officers, especially those short of their Detection target that week.
2. Urination. Depending on the force and area in which you live, this can be committed virtually anywhere as long as a police officer spots you doing it. If you are female, urination is even more disgusting and should be treated twice as harshly by the courts.
3. Waving your arms about. Whilst also a tactic to prevent crime, a judiciously-waved arm can constitute a public order offence if, as stated, the passing officer is short of a Detection.
4. A raised voice. Regardless of what you are saying and why, shouting is highly antisocial and will not be tolerated in a civilised society.
5. Asking someone the time. Just don't do it.
   

I give out an £80 fine for public order every couple of weeks, which is more money than the local Magistrates Court sometimes fine people in a month. Each time I give a ticket, I have "brought someone to justice", whether or not they ever pay the fine. This is an excellent form of policing, as it involves filling out a form containing someone's personal details, filling out a crime report containing the same details, writing a short report and sending an email - which as we all know are four of Peel's principles of policing)*. Sometimes I go to town and give out two or three tickets in a night. You can, of course, still obtain Detections from public order the old-fashioned way: arrest, fight, custody, charge, court case, etc., but that would be missing the point, wouldn't it?

Our local leaders take steps to ensure that we do not forget about the many advantages of public order, and to that end we are encouraged to detect it even in the unlikeliest of places, such as in passing a deserted alleyway, or someone's window. Occasionally a PC will encounter difficulties where no Mop was around to hear the abuse or see the urination, in which case the Crime Auditors will bounce back the Detection. Therefore it is always good practice to put in your statement that you DID see someone looking disgusted in the background, even if you were unfortunate enough not to catch their name before they boarded a bus to the West Country.

So, as you can see, being rude IS a criminal offence, and rightly so: without it we wouldn't have a hope of meeting our weekly target.

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* In case you are wondering, the other five Peelian principles are:

• Faxing something.
• Completing a file.
• Photocopying at least ten pages.
• Getting a detection.
• Achieving positive media coverage.