The Wheels on the Bus...

The hard shoulder has been in use in Blandmore for the last year, to great effect. We have successfully proven that if you take the number of police officers required to police a town, halve it, add one, then divide by the number you first thought of, you will still have enough police officers to police the town. Moreover, the emergency measures you had in place whereby officers could be asked to work long shifts, rest days and have annual leave cancelled can be operated all year round without any detrimental effect whatsoever.

Last week in Blandmore I thought the wheels were going to come off. Two shifts were working the "busy" hours, their hours cunningly overlapping to give double the manpower when most needed. The residents of the town were basking in the radiance of yellow jackets flooding the streets. Then, within the space of a "golden" half hour between two and two-thirty, every single officer in Blandmore arrested somebody. Every officer, that is, except for me: I was halfway through a bacon sandwich at the time.

Not a problem. I am more than happy to police Blandmore single-handedly, as long as it does not mean getting out of my car. I was poised, bacon sandwich at the ready, in front of the television, as the other twelve police officers on duty queued up in custody with their prisoners.

At this point, there was a shooting. I am not ashamed to say that I continued to eat my bacon sandwich as I roared to the scene, decked out in my brightest yellow jacket as the duty inspector's way of ensuring I would deflect any stray bullets. Also as I roared, I radioed up the same duty inspector and told him that the proverbial faeces were just millimetres from the big whirly thing and maybe he might want to see about opening the box of police officers in his office.

Unfortunately I had been misinformed: the inspector does not keep a box of police officers in his office. It appeared that the train wreck that is Blandmore's resourcing situation had finally left the tracks and was hurtling towards a block of flats at an alarming rate. This was a Very Good Thing.

You see, if an utter disaster were to occur, such as a lone PC being shot in the line of duty due to lack of back-up, or even better, if a member of public were to bleed to death due to the shortage of police officers to come to their aid, it would mean press coverage, Inquiries and, ultimately, maybe, more police officers. Nothing less will do the trick.

I got to the scene of the shooting and was able to identify the noise described as a car backfiring. Not only that, but backfiring some distance away. Ten minutes later, two or three officers were released from custody and the thin blue cushion was back under the inspector's backside.

It could have been a shooting. It was close. Very close.

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