Let Us Pay

You may be aware that tomorrow is the National Day of Prayer for the Police Service.

Churchgoers nationwide are supposed to pray to keep us safe, direct our Chief Constables wisely and help us to do our job better.

















What you are probably not aware is that the Senior Management Team of Blandshire Constabulary actually embraced PRAYER as an official police tactic some years ago. It was around the time when the government introduced seven figure budget cuts for most forces, at the same time as increasing the workload of the average PC. Blandshire's response included:

• The "roll-out" of Neighbourhood Policing, which is police jargon for getting civilians to do the job of a police officer.
• Zero-based budgeting. Which means building your budget up from scratch without any of the big expensive things that take up all the money like police officers and training.
  
• Reduction of official minimum staffing levels so that PCs could be lost from the frontline without dropping below these Health & Safety limits.
• Re-assessing whether certain crimes really do need police officers to attend after all.
• Employing Ricky DeRennaux as the new police vehicle supplier.
• PRAYER to be the first choice response to all major/critical/serious incidents.

The official policy on Prayer can be found on the Force intranet under "Standard Operating Procedures". These are not generally distributed to the public at large, but I think I am safe enough in quoting a passage verbatim:

"On realising that Blandshire Constabulary do not have sufficient means to respond to an incident whether through lack of staff, equipment or complete and utter systemic failure, the Duty Inspector should immediately attend the scene and begin to PRAY. The Prayer should be directed to the Lord God Almighty, although if the Lord God Almighty is not available then an Archangel can listen to the Prayer, providing the Lord God is informed as soon as reasonably practicable.

"The Prayer may be verbally uttered, but should be followed up in writing within 24 hours. It should contain the words 'we hope everything turns out ok' and 'please cover the arse of Blandshire Constabulary in the event that anything goes wrong'."

Whilst this policy has stood us in good stead for over five years now, we must not be complacent. The Senior Management Team are constantly reviewing the process of Prayer and hope that the Lord Almighty - and the Home Secretary - sends them the wisdom not to get a police officer killed this year. ***

In other news, the government is "not shying away" from another confrontation with the police as they plan to slash the budgets of five forces (to start with). Plans to recruit hundreds of new officers will be abandoned if this goes ahead.

God help us all.

*** Please note: This post was in no way written just to offend Christians. It is in fact supposed to offend all denominations of all religions. And, hopefully, the Home Secretary.

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