Blackberry Picking

Inspector Gadget has reminded me of a piece of local police incompetence and I feel it my duty to pass it on to my loyal readers.

It may amaze you to know that Blandshire Constabulary invested in some Blackberries a few years back. I occasionally come across a colleague who received one of the "Pilot" Blackberries and am always flabbergasted to see them studiously logging in and checking emails on their days off. The one advantage of being able to do this is to discover when your court cases have been cancelled, so you can take the day off and go in the next day claiming you had no idea the case had been cancelled and you spent eight hours sitting in the waiting room. If they bother to audit your inbox to find out that you read the email, you can just claim that the Blackberry crashed.

It may further boggle and bamboozle your mind to hear that Blandshire did not buy state-of-the-art, reliable, versatile, expensive pieces of equipment. This would have been pointless, as even though there would be budgetary savings from not having to replace them in two years, within two years you can bet the superintendent who dreamt up the scheme will have been seconded to the Met and the one who has taken over will think they are a waste of time and scrap them.

The result of this economy is that the Blackberries appear to have a slight downside. Namely that if the battery goes flat while you are logged into your email, you lose all the current emails on the screen. No, you don't just have to log in again at work, nor do you make a quick phone-call to IT Services to sort the problem. They are just gone. Forever.


Unripe blackberries: unpalatable, but free.







You might think there's a simple solution - just don't ever let the battery go flat, ie turn the thing off when you're not using it. WRONG! These genius pieces of equipment CANNOT BE TURNED OFF. They are on, whirring away, sucking power from their lifeline, the entire time.

My colleagues in possession of these delicate creatures have learned to time their use with infinite precision, judging just when to unplug the charger and rush away with a good few hours of email-checking time, and when to drop everything and run home to plug it back in.

As a result of this endearing foible, I have developed a master-plan: whenever I take charge of a particularly irritating, futile or unpleasant crime report, I will log into the crime report system on one of these Blackberries, open said crime report and wait for the battery to run down and expunge it for good. Not only will I never again have to arrest Melinda Hodge for Harassment, but it won't do Blandmore's crime figures any harm either.

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