This is the official blog of ex-Sgt Ellie Bloggs. I was a real live police constable then sergeant for twelve years, on the real live front line of England. I'm now a real live non-police person. All the facts I recount are true, and are not secrets. If they don't want me blogging about it, they shouldn't do it. PS If you don't pay tax, you don't (or didn't) pay my salary.


(All proceeds from Google Ads will be donated to the Police Roll of Honour Trust)

Thursday, August 18, 2011




















Which sentence would make YOU think twice before committing the same offence?


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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Dropped. Penny. No?

April 2011: "Kettling" ruled unlawful.

May 2011: PC Simon Harwood charged with manslaughter over the death of Ian Tomlinson.

August 2011: Nationwide surprise that the police were loath to use full-on confrontational riot tactics in dealing with mass public disorder.

Perhaps something good will come of all this after all, but it's a shame so many people had to lose their homes and their livelihoods to demonstrate to the country just what the police are facing.
 


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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

London's Not So Burning

The famous lone woman takes on the crowds:



Clapham Junction: onlookers cheer as police make an arrest surrounded by hostile crowds:



And applaud spontaneously (er, I presume), as police drive by in the morning:




Riot Clean-up:



Hundreds of arrests have been made around the UK.  A few youths tried to riot in Blandmore, but ran away when they realised no one had noticed.

Let's watch the courts closely and see what kind of sentences get meted out for those charged.


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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Fetch the Engines

 Last week, the powers that be were feeling pretty pleased with themselves.














This week, they're discovering why the police and police bloggers have been banging on about our weak Justice system and feral youth.














They're discovering how poorly resourced the police really are.














Am I in London?  No, I'm sitting here in Blandmore, wondering just what the rest of us are going to do if we need a public order serial here.  Just how we'll deal with the next nutter holed up in his house threatening us with knives.

Is there a way to bring this to an end?  Yes, with baton charges, water cannons and rest day working.
And to prevent it happening again?  To lock up everyone convicted for serious periods of time, regardless of how many baby-mothers they'll leave behind.  Apart from sending out a message to the other rioters, it will also solve many areas' burglary, robbery and violence problems overnight.

Unfortunately, most will not be charged, as the CPS folds under their stories of "I was just walking home", "I tried to stop him".  Most will be back out the same day, and back out on the streets.

It's what we've been trying to tell you for ten years.





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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Sunday, August 07, 2011

Young People Are Angry





The aftermath of a fundamentalist terrorist attack.









 Young people being angry.





You can understand anger at the police when an unarmed man is accidentally shot by an officer wearing too-big gloves in a raid based on malicious intelligence.  Incidents like that are embarrassing to say the least.  Yet the residents of Forest Gate did not see the need to rush onto the streets and set fire to their own local shops.

Mark Duggan, who was shot on Thursday, came within a whisker of shooting dead a police officer before he was "gunned down" - as the papers describe it.  The Daily Mail, Independent and Guardian have been quick to quote friends who called the gunman "a good daddy" and "not a trouble-maker".

Now local dismay at Duggan's death has been hijacked by arsonists and rioters, who have created scenes similar to those seen on London's streets after the July Bombings.  Yet the usual apologists are already out bemoaning police action to every BBC camera crew they can find.  If the killing of an armed attempted murderer justifies widescale looting and petrol bombing, and the hospitalisation of eight police officers, you wonder how the family of Jean-Charles de Menezes - a genuinely innocent victim of botched police work - restrained themselves from blowing up Parliament. 

Young people may well be angry.  The police are now angry.  Boris is fuming. 2000 officers are due to be cut from the Met, and if Blandshire Constabulary has used up its year's overtime budget in four months, I dread to think how London's two forces are faring.

The tide is turning against law and order in the Capital, and those responsible for stopping it it are facing total decimation of their role, working conditions and pay.  It's not a happy time for the people of Great Britain.

On the plus side, I'm soon due to receive £5 a month for a year from a guy who assaulted me two years ago. 

Updates:
Community organisers say "the police are absolutely culpable" for the rioting because no senior officer came to speak to them between 5-9pm on a Saturday/Sunday night.  Trust me, nobody can get a senior officer to speak to them on a Saturday/Sunday night.  Maybe next weekend when I'm trying to get hold of the Duty Super, I'll throw a flaming missile through the window of his office.

The Guardian quotes a source saying Duggan's handgun was found in a sock, and the police officer was shot by friendly fire. If true, this is a disaster.  If not, now no one will ever believe the truth.  If people think we on the front-line enjoy this kind of misinformation and confusion, think again: most of us would prefer our senior managers released far more information to the press to prevent rumours/unjustified IPCC statements.




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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

You must never go down to the end of the town











Without wishing to sound irresponsible, and without the vaguest intention of undermining public confidence, town centres in Britain are scary places. Whilst you can be robbed, burgled, raped or beaten just about anywhere, it's a lot more likely in an area with a buzzing night-time economy.  

Going further, certain offences occur almost exclusively in town, for example:
  • Commercial armed robbery (eg banks/jewellery shops)
  • Bottling (if you don't know this term, it's what it sounds like)
  • Shoplifting
A good number of rapes can also be traced back to town centres - both date and stranger, not so much the domestic/child abuse type.  Not only is it then possible to wind back the tapes to view CCTV of the offenders for use in identifying them, but the CCTV operators tend to work 24/7 and spend the day and night scanning the town for crimes in action.  This means if you are mugged, your car broken into, your shop robbed, or you are followed by a stranger, there is a high chance that the cameras have captured you and/or the suspects at some stage in the proceedings.

All of which is why the public should feel somewhat uncomfortable to hear that towns all over the country are turning off their CCTV cameras to save money.  Publicised cases include Penrith, eleven towns in Cornwall, and are looming in the Forest of Dean and Devizes.  

But this week it happened in a town just over the border from Blandmore, and the news doesn't appear in any local paper or online.  Just like that, with no warning, CCTV cameras are off.

How many other councils have cut the funding for this vital crime-fighting tool, without any publicity, debate or warning?  And who will pick up the shortfall, when it is decided that we really can't do without Big Brother after all?

One guess.















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'Diary of an On-Call Girl' is available in some bookstores and online.

 

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