Target Practice

For anyone who has been living abroad or in a delightful fantasy world for the last ten years, we currently police by target in this country. Recently this culture has received wide condemnation as we have seen police officers arresting children for throwing cream buns and elderly pensioners for shouting a bit and shaking their walking sticks.

I feel it only right to speak out and say that targets are there for our own good and that's all there is to it. Without them, most police officers would simply be incapable of identifying situations when people needed arresting. We would see balaclava'd men with swag bags shaking hands with cops and going about their business. We would have victims of domestic violence lying dead in every household.

Blandshire has developed several ways of encouraging PCs like myself to meet our targets. First and foremost is the horrifying threat that if we continually fall short each month, we may have to have a meeting with our sergeant. I suffered one of these a while back and I can tell you that half an hour of hearing about how targets do not matter but I had better meet them anyway has really kicked my arse into gear.

Some other methods are largely subliminal. Pictures in the toilets of smiling police officers gathering detections. Emails that bear the subject line "Just 10 more to go..." Lists of the highest performing teams and officers stuck up on prominent walls where we can glance at them as we rush out to urgent jobs.

But ultimately the Blandshire bosses know that PCs will never fully grasp the strategic importance of meeting these targets nor understand how it can help the bosses with further promotion. And so our targets are assisted from on high. A wanted thief may be sleeping happily each night knowing that he has made arrangements to turn himself in on Sunday, only to have his door put through violently by a team of target-getters on Wednesday, who will whisk him from his bed and thrust his name onto the computer before midnight in a week when arrests are low. A young offender on a final warning may find him or herself blessed with a second second chance: it is far easier to give out yet another final warning no matter how persistent their offending, than risk CPS advice and losing the detection altogether.

The results of these techniques speak for themselves: my arrest and detection rate is high, my victims are confused and my morale is non-existent. In this I am in good company. I think I might finally have earned the title of Twenty-First Century Police Officer.

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