So, I’ve come up with a few more best, worst type shifts / aspects of the police to comment on to continue my Significants Memories series.  I’ll get straight to the point.

Most Scary Incident

Funnily enough, the scariest thing that has happened to me during the police or since was very recently when I was attacked by some low-life in a hoody for not giving him money or a cigarette.  In typical police fashion, I donated my jumper, the left sleeve of which was covered in the hoodie’s saliva after being wiped from my face, to the crime-fighting cause of catching the scumbag who did it and who has likely done this to many other people more vulnerable than himself, giving the police solid evidence as I am certain this individual will have been arrested by police before for a recordable offence, therefore having to provide a sample of DNA, and what gets done?  Nothing!  Is it any wonder victims I dealt with in the past were so disgruntled with the police when so many cases are dealt with in a slap-dash, haphazard manner?  As I expected, about a month on from the incident, I have heard nothing and nothing has been done with my jumper.  It remains in the stores at Wandsworth Police Station, where it will undoubtedly get lost with a knife used in a murder.

But, back to police incidents.  There have been many things that have happened to colleagues which have been terrifying like, for example, two colleagues who had acid thrown in their face after stopping a male wanted for a serious crime, scarring them for life, but to me personally, I think the scariest time was when we just went to deal with a fairly standard call of some kind of neighbour dispute in a council estate.  This is the danger with working in the police, you really have absolutely no idea what you are going to and how dangerous a situation may present itself to you.  The text of a call can be very misleading and often inaccurate so you really have to treat every call as a potentially dangerous situation until you know otherwise.  This call was in a council estate in Roehampton where the blocks of flats were in a big square with an empty court / grassed area in the middle.  It was an estate where there were regularly problems and many people living in the estate that hated police (not at all  an uncommon thing in this part of town).  The call we were dealing with wasn’t about anything particularly serious in the end from memory and turned out to be no cause for police action but while we were there, things were getting more and more heated and one particular male was shouting louder and louder at us as we were out on the balcony which looks over this court and I noticed a significantly large number of people were gathering.  I remember seeing about 30 people all together shouting various forms of abuse to me and my one colleague on scene stating how they would kill us and are families etc. (fairly standard stuff again) and I remember absolutely cr@pping myself and thinking, how the hell are we going to get out of this without being seriously assaulted.  We called for more units and some time later, as most were tied up doing non-essential paperwork, enough units arrived for us to escape with all limbs in tact but for a moment there, I feared it may not happen and I think I had to change my badly designed police trousers fairly promptly.

Best Aid Ever!

Aid is something police officers, particularly those on response teams, have to do a fair amount of.  Aid is basically where you are taken off your normal duty to perform some other function, often off your serving borough (although it can be on your borough) for, well, pretty much any reason at all.  There are many, many examples of aid, such as policing football matches, demonstrations outside parliament, Counter-Terrorisom patrols (otherwise known as standing like a flourescent banana somewhere you are not familiar with with 100s of other officers and being constantly pestered for directions – I tell you, it’s tedious) etc.  Aid is normally fairly tedious, and like many things in the police, completely not thought through with hours wasted before you are actually needed and then hours of overtime being paid at the end as we are forced to continue working well beyond the shift was due to finish.  Poor planning and lack of common sense are normally responsible for this.  Anyway, occasionally aid is considered to be very good and lots of fun and one such aid is policing the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament.  In my first year as a Met Officer, I was lucky enough to be randomly selected for this and I loved it and had an absolute ball (looking back, it is the only time I can truly remember really enjoying the job for any sustained length of time).  The aid lasted two weeks and it was very long hours, which we all knew about, and lots of overtime money too but it was also loads of fun.  I was working in a really great team with people who knew how to work hard and play hard and I can honestly say it was a most pleasurable two weeks.  We started every day at 8am and finished most days about 9pm and it was absolutely boiling hot.  It was tough standing all day in the heat with met vests and long sleeved shirts (some pointless initiative from someone fairly important – no short sleeved shirts allowed) but there was such a fantatsic buzz around the streets and the ground that you couldn’t help but get sucked in by it.  We got to watch some of the games on the centre court and court 1 too and we got to get up, close and personal with quite a few celebrities and I even managed to do a stop and account on Audley Harrison without realising who he was.  Getting to talk to Patrick Vieira was probably the highlight of the two weeks but I think what made it special was the people we worked with for two weeks.  It almost brings a warm feeling inside me thinking back on it, which just so rarely happens when I think back on police experiences so it’s nice to have that.

All Time Most Frustrating and Crap thing about being a Police Officer

I’m fairly certain I’ve mentioned several times throughout this blog the absolute disgrace of a shambles that is court but I couldn’t help but mention it just one more time as it was a fairly large contributing factor in to why I left.  Briefly again to summarise – for less serious cases that would go to magistrate’s court and are likely to only last one day, a date is fixed.  If for any reason the case doesn’t get heard that day, a new date will be allocated about 4 weeks later or something similar, so, for magistrate’s court, despite the fact that there is no planning conducted by the CPS about who they actually want to take the stand for a case so 90% of the time you sit around all day waiting to be called only to find out you are not needed, at least you know where you are with it and what dates you will be there.  Now, at Crown Courts, where slightly more serious cases will be heard, and where cases will often go over a day, there is no fixed date.  A two week period will be fixed where at any point in that two week period you may be warned the night before (normally around 6pm) to attend court the next day.  It matters not whether this is your rest day after working for 10 days on the trot, whether you have just come off a night shift etc., if you are warned to court, that’s it, you simply have to go.  Now, that’s all well and good if you only have one case going to Crown Court but imagine when I worked in the Burglary and Robbery squad.  I, at one point, had two week overnight warnings constantly for about a 4 month period meaning that essentially, I couldn’t do anything or go anywhere without fear of it having to be cancelled.  I wouldn’t mind if each time I attended court I was needed but those who make the decisions about who gets called for court have absolutely no respect for police officer’s private lives or any understanding of how poorly the whole thing is managed.  The Old Bailey, for example, will often have you on a three month overnight warning!  Three months I ask you?  Is it reasonable to be expected not to plan anything or go away in that whole three month period?  To me, absolutely not, but apparently, that’s just the way it is and if I didn’t like it, I needed to leave.  So, that’s another big reason why I did.

OK, that’s it for now.  I am sure there are many other stories I could tell in this category so I’ll try to collect some in my head and get them ready to share with the world soon.  Be safe.

I wanted to write a post about my best, worst, hardest etc. shifts / incidents dealt with in the police as it allows me to share some specific memories and stories for no other reason than just because I can!  I’ll start with the easiest one to categorize as it’s one I often thought back to when I was having my more uncertain moments about whether I should leave the police or hang on for a little longer.

The Most Boring Shift

I remember this night so clearly as it was my first taste of the very many tedious things that police officers have to do.  People often wrongly imagine that the police are always running around dealing with one incident after another and that the job is full of excitement. Ahem, not so!  There are three things as a fairly new PC that you don’t like to hear in briefings as you know it is going to be you covering that duty: constant watch (where you sit at the door of an open cell in custody to ‘constantly watch’ someone who is either violent or likely to harm themselves); hospital guard (the name speaks for itself); or crime scene cordon.  All three duties are such that you are unlikely to engage in any brain activity whatsoever for the whole shift, you are unlikely to get relieved for food and toilet breaks and you are likely to get relieved very late at the end of your shift as the next team replacement will not be in a rush to start this duty.  This was my very first night shift, a 12 hour one, with my new team after finishing Street Duties and this most boring of shifts involved a crime scene cordon.  There had been a murder in Putney on the common and most of the common was cordoned off as it had yet to be searched properly. A unit was sent to each corner of the common to guard the cordon and make sure no one entered the restricted area mostly.  I was posted with a chap from a different parade site who I didn’t know at all and for most of the shift we were stood at different ends of the cordon.  It was winter and it was freezing and there I stood in the middle of Putney Common, underdressed for the occasion, with no relief for the toilet, food or drink and I waited.  I waited for 12 hours and I counted nearly every minute just praying for the end of the shift and I remember this being the longest 12 hours of my life.  It’s hard to imagine anything like it unless you are a police officer and then you will be all too familiar but just imagine someone told you to go and stand in a field overnight, when you can’t even call your friends and family, and just left you there for 12 hours.  You would go out of your mind!  I did.  This wasn’t even that rare a shift, but this one, this was the worst and a nice taster of what was to come.

The Hardest Thing I Ever Had To Do

This one, again, is very easy to recall as it really stands out from everything else I dealt with in the police and whilst I dealt with most fairly horrific or tough circumstances fairly well, this day left me feeling really quite depressed for a couple of weeks.  This one concerned the infamous ‘Death Message’.  Again, I was only about two weeks out of street duties and on a Sunday early turn (7am start), the Sergeant at briefing explained that there was a death message to deliver and that it would be a fairly tough one.  No death message of course is easy, don’t get me wrong, but, a large majority of the time, they concern an elderly male or female whose family are largely expecting the news.  Being a brand spanking shiny new over keen probationer I foolishly offered to deal with this CAD (the record initially created about an incident) and went to the control room to pick up the extended details.  I am not going to go in to the details on here but the death was a 17 year old boy who had been away travelling.  I found out as much as I could from the embassy number available and made sure I went round to the address armed with every bit of information I could possibly get and off we went.  Myself and my driver turned up at a lovely big house in one of the posher parts of our ground and we sat there.  We sat there for about half an hour in fact.  It was a Sunday morning, about 8am by this time, I was sure the family were in as the curtains were drawn and two cars were parked in the driveway.  I just couldn’t bear the thought of turning their world upside down and I felt like until I told them, in their world, it hadn’t happened.  Eventually, my colleague and I decided we had to just deliver this news no matter how hard it was.  And we did, and it was hard.  So so hard.  I will never forget the little things I saw when I went in the house with the measurements up the door frame for the little boy at various ages and the family photos everywhere and the way the parents screamed and cried at the same time and the way I felt like crap for being the one to tell them.  How do you tell someone that?  We don’t get any training for this kind of thing, you just do it and in some ways I’m glad it was me that turned up that day as there were some officers who would have delivered this news in a far less tactful manner but even so,  they were of course devastated.  We left the address about half an hour later and were called straight to deal with four juvenile females who had each stolen a scrunchie from Primark (no, I’m not joking) and I didn’t get a moment to reflect on this first incident until I got home and I cried my little heart out.  For days I couldn’t stop thinking about the family and how they would probably never forget my face as the person who told them this world shattering news and what they were going through and I felt so awful for them.  Anyway, so, that was a tough day.

My Best Case

Sadly, there are far more bad memories from being a police officer than good but for all the hard work involved in this case and the many late shifts where I single handedly gathered the crucial evidence and put the case file together, this was a good and very satisfying case!  Without getting too much in to the nitty gritty, this case was one of my first major ones in the burglary squad after joining CID and it was a case of aggravated burglary.  Now, people often assume burglary is only about entering as a trespasser – and stealing or intending to steal – but actually there are other offences that once done after entering a premises as a trespasser, or intended to be done, constitute burglary, GBH being one of them.  This was a case like that, aggravated by the fact that the suspects entered the premises with weapons, namely a rather large hammer and a crowbar.  The victim (who had been a suspect in many other cases) basically got beaten to a pulp by these two dudes who were making such a noise about it that the neighbours had only gone and called the Old Bill who turned up at the door to catch them stood there with said weapons in their hands and said victim in a crumpled heap covered in blood.  Anyway, a long investigation ensued and I ended up getting some really good evidence which was just impossible to argue against and about 6 months later when it made it to court, the two suspects pleaded guilty and actually got some prison time, in this case, two years (out in one)!  You may be surprised that I would comment on the custodialness of this sentence but it is such a rarity to get custodial sentences, even for the most serious of crimes, that this was quite an achievement.  In my view, anything that keeps some very nasty dudes off the street for a year is a good thing and I was satisfied to be a part of that – these are the things you join for.

The Most Humiliating Moment

This, I’m sad to say, was partly an error in my judgement and partly the result of me being far too keen again!  About a year in to being on response team, the Sergeant at briefing explained that two people were needed for a photo shoot for a police magazine and that they preferably needed a female and a male ethnic minority for the picture and no other details were disclosed at this point.  This occurred on a spare shift so from memory, there were only four of us on and I was the only female so I asked a bit more about it, knowing I’d probably have to do it anyway.  It turned out a photograph was needed for the front cover of a police magazine called The Sharp End showing two officers poised on the athletics track at Battersea to showcase an article all about the police preparation for the Olympics.  My very reluctant colleague and I agreed to go as I had never seen this magazine anywhere in our borough canteens (and I was familiar with all the usual police mags) so I assumed I would be relatively safe from public ridicule.  Little did I know this was the first issue of what turned out to be an extremely well distributed magazine around not only the Met but the whole of the UK and my incredibly unphotogenic face was to be centre stage of this well distributed publication.  Anyway, the long and short of it is, I had the p*ss taken out of me for months and every station I attended to deal with a case, there seemed to be copies everywhere I turned.  They were slipped inside every glass cabinet at work with moustaches etc. drawn on them and frankly, I was sick of the sight of my own cartooned face!  Oh God, I have just found a picture of the front cover of this issue on the web (without very much effort I am disturbed to say).  For your amusement and my ongoing ridicule, here it is:

I’m going to break for now as it tires me out to visit my institutionalised memory lane but I do enjoy bringing to life some of the old memories as for all the bad things about being a police officer, I was certainly never short of stories to tell!  I’ll continue this soon…

I wanted to write a post about the reasons why I left the police.  It’s hard to do this retrospectively as the final departure was a culmination of a huge number of things, some minor, some major and leaving was not a decision I came to lightly but I will try to summarise some of the main reasons here. 

Work-Life Balance

I remember when I was at Hendon, PC Bob said to us that one of the reasons he had found himself at the training centre was that it was the first time in twenty years that he actually had some idea when he would finish his shift.  At the time, I thought this must be an exaggeration but I now know that it really wasn’t.  In my time in the police I worked in three different units / departments: response team (uniformed); robbery / burglary squad (CID); and case progression unit (CID).  Without exception, and particularly in the  latter two, I never knew when I would finish my shift and regularly at the last minute I would find myself being stuck at work for another few hours.  At times, I would find myself stuck at work for a further 12 hours, for example!  I remember one particularly nasty shift when I was in the robbery squad.  The Governor, who I was very fond of and respected greatly, despite the fact he worked us in to the ground, had arranged a 6am set of raids for outstanding burglary and robbery suspects.  This meant meeting at about 5:30am at the station.  The whole team had to be there, regardless of what shift they were doing on the rota the night before or on the day of the raid.  I was unfortunate enough to have been on lates the night before, so finished about 11pm and was also on a late shift the day of the raids meaning that regardless of how the raids went or what time they finished, I was still going to be at work until at least 10pm the following day.  Armed with a couple of hours of sleep, I got fully involved in the raids, and they were successful, with a number of outstanding suspects arrested.  I then went on to do my normal late turn shift.  We were understaffed again and there were just two of us in and from memory, we were still dealing with some of the cases from the raids (at some point in a future blog, I will talk you through what is involved in dealing with a typical case, it brings tears to my eyes even thinking about it and all the red tape that has to be hurdled).  Then, disaster, a phonecall from Wimbledon station (in Merton Borough, not Wandsworth) saying that they had arrested two suspects who were suspects in a burglary on our borough.  My heart sunk, it was nearing the end of the shift and I had snapped every matchstick I could get my hands on to try to stay awake but I knew we would have to go and deal with this as well.  We hot-footed over to Wimbledon, interviewed and charged the suspects (this takes several hours by the way and mountains of paperwork) and finished off about 3am.  I then had to come back the next morning at about 8:30am to accompany the suspects to court as I wanted to oppose bail.  Anyway, by the time all this ended, I was a complete and utter mess.  I lost about a stone and a half in the police, completely accidentally, just from running around dealing with things like this and not having time to eat.  Don’t get me wrong, this type of shift wasn’t a daily occurrence but it wasn’t a once in a blue moon occurrence either and the difference to most other jobs is that you literally have no choice.  You have to stay on late / come in early / come in on your day off whenever you were ordered to do so or you would simply lose your job.

Added to the long shifts, meaning that on the few occasions I had arranged to see my friends or family I was late or ended up having to cancel, there was the fact that your ‘rest’ days, which more often than not fell on a week day, were not your own either.  There is a carte blanche to call whoever you like, whenever you like in the police, with little respect for their privacy or personal time as you are, apparently, a police officer 24 hrs a day and this is what you signed up for.  Particularly in the CID, rarely a rest day passed without someone calling me about a case.  Court cases were another thing that took your free time away from you.  Cases can be heard at different courts but robberies and burglaries are almost always heard at a Crown Court.  Crown Court dates are not fixed and the way it works is that you get given a two week period and told that at any point in that two week period, you may be warned to attend court the next day.  You get called the evening before, normaly between about 5 and 7pm and that is your notice.  Now, this may not sound too bad if you just have one or two cases going to crown court but I got myself in a position in the robbery squad where I had a huge number of cases going to court and I had two week court warning periods constantly for about three months!  In this time, you can’t really go anywhere or do anything as you need to be available to drop everything and come to court with less than 24 hrs notice.  The witness care unit who make these calls seemed to have very little understanding of this when they called you as they work Monday to Friday and always get their rest days (the weekend) off.  What’s worse is that fairly regulalry, the two week period would pass without the dreaded phone call and then you would get allocated another two week period where you could have no life!  Honestly, sometimes I was beside myself.  This continued well in to me leaving the police by the way as well, where upon I was expected just to drop everything and attend court sometimes with no notice at all when I was working back in a normal IT job with normal hours!  Clearly I wasn’t prepared to do this unless my attendance was absolutely necessary but it did lead to some rather interesting discussions between me and the witness care unit (where I was still being told I was ordered to attend and I reminded them I didn’t work for the police anymore and would only attend court with a witness summons so I didn’t have to use up all my annual leave at court).  What they failed to understand is that each time they called me, that wasn’t my only request to attend court that week, it was one of several and that to attend them each time (when I would say at least 75% of the time, you are not called to take the stand and you sit all day in the police room twiddling your thumbs) would mean I was never at my new job!  Thankfully, this has all stopped now but it took about 6 months.

The long and short of it was that being in the police meant I was unable to give the time to the things I really cared about in my life such as friends and family, not to mention the fact that all my hobbies and dreams went out the window.  I even forgot how much I love to sing when I was in the police,  What a travesty!  Phew, I feel exhausted just writing about it.

Paperwork

You will hear officers moan about paperwork until the end of time and I heard all this before I joined but nothing can prepare you for the sheer volume and the absolute lack of necessity for most of it.  I like to question things, it is in my nature, particularly if something just doesn’t appear to be working and a very common answer to my questions in the police was, “Natalie, it just works like that OK, I don’t know why it is like this but it is not for us to question it, just get on with it OK”.  I never stopped challenging things (hopefully in a constructive way), but I never got any decent answers to my questions either.  The frustrating thing about the paperwork is that there is just so much duplication.  There is all your paper notes and the special forms for each type of incident you attend and there is all the duplication of online forms you have to fill.  Is it any wonder most officers look so fat?  Most of what you perceive to be their natural body mass is just bundles of paperwork they have been forced to carry around.

Inefficiency

This follows on nicely from the paperwork issue.  If there is one thing I find frustrating in an organisation it is inefficiency and not challenging things that clearly lead to these inefficiencies.  Inefficiency largely comes from those higher up the chain not coming up to an alternative answer to the “Why are we doing things like this?” question other than, “because we just are, you’re only a PC, stop asking so many questions and just do it!”.  Inefficiencies are everywhere in the police from the duplication / triplication and so on in data needed for various forms all relating to the same case right through to how much time is wasted by officers being called for court when they are not needed (normally getting paid double time as it is likely to be on a rest day) to the lack of organisation in big events such as central aid (where you often start your shift about 4 – 5 hours before you are actually needed and then, when it invariably runs beyond the end of your shift, yet more overtime is dished out).  I could really expand on this section but this is already turning in to a longer post than planned so I’ll leave this there for now.

Culture

I’m not sure I ever fitted in to the police culture.  You have to be a certain type of person to do this and for whatever reason, I just don’t think it was me.  I don’t think in my whole working career I have ever been surrounded by so much moaning, bitching, cynicism, negativity, back-stabbing, the list goes on and I won’t exclude myself from having any of these traits.  At times I am sure I did (especially the moaning!), the police does this to you.  I know that all of my friends and particularly my family noticed how much I changed whilst I was in the police and how much I have changed again now I have left, for the better I might add.  I am so much calmer now than ever before and actually I find stress so much easier to deal with than a lot of people as nothing will ever compare to the stress of dealing with some of those robbery cases with 4 juvenile suspects and 4 juvenile victims, all requiring appropriate adults, section 18 searches needed on all four addresses etc. – again, I could go on.  All I will say is if you are thinking of joining the police, do so with a very thick skin or be willing to grow one very quickly, especially if you join at a more mature age and are not used to being in a school playground type of environment.

Wasting Time

I joined the police, naively, to help decent people and to try to stop bad people getting away with making decent people’s lives a misery.  I honestly thought that people wouldn’t call the police unless it was something fairly serious (as I was just going from my own experiences and what any of the people around me would do) and I was disgusted at the amount of time we wasted at a certain type of person’s address discussing how the lady two doors down had walked past (on her way out the block) and shouted ’slag’ outside the premises again.  In the beginning when I used to attend these all too frequent types of calls, I would say, “OK, so, then what happened” waiting for the real juicy part of the crime but I almsot stopped asking in the end as the sad realisation dawned on me that this was likely to be all that had happened, again.  I will try not to stereotype here about the type of person who calls the police for such trivial matters on a fairly regular basis (once or twice a week normally) but more often than not (and this is based on fact and not bias or prejudice), the type of person who does this has never worked a day in their life and therefore never contributed a penny towards this service that they tell me they are ‘entitled to’.  Now, I don’t mind trying to help people - this is also in my nature – but when dealing with these calls and all the associated paperwork that comes with having attended, despite the fact no crime is likely to have been committed, means that no units are available to deal with something far more serious where a person genuinely needs your help and burglars are getting away because you can’t attend until you have finished reassuring your current ‘victim’ that you will speak to the ’suspect’ to warn her about calling her a slag again, it can be very frustrating. 

The stark contrast in people’s attitudes towards calling the police was never more apparent than when I worked in the burglary squad.  I would often deal with cases of artifice burglaries (for example, someone posing as a gas man to gain entry to your home and then stealing things whilst within) and the victims of these cases, mostly, would be very elderly ladies or gentleman (it broke my heart to see what these poor people were put through by these shameless criminals).  The frustrating thing is that most of the time, they would only report the crime because a relative suggested it and / or normally several hours, but more often, days had passed by the time it was reported leaving sadly, little chance of catching the suspects.  Without exception, nearly all of these elderly people would say when I visited them something along the lines of, “Oh, I’m so sorry dear, I really didn’t want to waste your time” or, “I didn’t think it was serious enough to call you”.  Artifice burglaries, in contrast to 90% of the tripe police officers deal with on a daily basis, are a very serious crime and it is so sad that a lot of the suspects are getting away because the calls aren’t being made as soon as the incident has occurred.   If only everyone had the same respect for not wanting to waste police time – we would be in a far better position to help people and catch suspects if that were the case.

For a fuller idea on how much our time is wasted as police officers, I recommend you read PC David Copperfield’s ‘Wasting Police Time’ which reflects fairly well the experiences I too have encountered. 

Non-Performance Culture and Little Control over Career Path

I like to work in an environment where people are recognised for their hard work – not the number of arrests they make or the number of cannabis warnings they hand out – but by the way that they conduct themselves at work and by the way that the victims of their cases feel about how they have been dealt with.  In the police, you would normally find in each team / unit you work in that some people will work very hard and do about 80% of the work and some people won’t work very hard at all and will do about 20% of the work.  The problem is there is very little incentive for you to work hard and working hard for the sake of helping good people is difficult to do for the reasons I mentioned above as so little of what you do is helping good people.  I comepletly understood why people became lazy as why not if someone else is going to work twice as hard as you to get the work done but I could never have become like that and general poor supervision in the police means that nothing is done about it.  The way that performance is measured in the police is all about figures and statistics.  It goes without saying that I could have dealt with the 30 burglaries and robberies allocated to me at any one time far quicker if I had put less work in to them and not taken the time to write letters to the victims keeping them constantly up to date with what was going on but I could not have slept soundly at night had I done that (not thta I sleep much anyway!) and to know that I would be measured on volume rather than quality was a difficult environment for me to work in.  To get through the crimes I needed to get through, investigating them as thoroughly as they deserved to be and treating the victims as well as I felt they absolutely must be meant that I was constantly working at an unstainable pace and making myself ill.  It seemed there were two choices, keep going like I was or stop putting the same amount of effort in to solving the crimes and giving victim and witness care.  I was simply not prepared to do either.

You join the police thinking about all the opportunities there are to work in diffierent areas but in reality, it is actually quite difficult to move around and manage your own career.  So many things you do on your step towards your ultimate goals require you to commit to your borough for another two years, particularly ours, as so many people wanted to leave!  There are great opportunities in the police, there is no doubt about that, but be prepared for a lot of back stabbing from fellow officers if you want to be involved in the bunfight for  these few opportunities.

‘Blanket Bollockings’ and Knee Jerk Reactions

As someone who generally does things by the book and doesn’t cut corners and writes very thorough reports, I particularly objected to the blanket bollockings dished out in the police on a regular basis.  I found that we were treated like children the majority of the time.  The way it would work is that one or two people (out of hundreds of officers) would abuse some process or another and then we would either all in our briefings get told off for this one or two people’s behaviours or we would all receive an e-mail highlighting our bad behaviour!  Coupled with this was knee jerk reactions such as this: when I was in the burglary and robbery squad dealing with fairly serious crimes, the internet was an essential tool for part of our investigations and in this technological day and age, I find it hard to imagine how we could possibly investigate a crime properly without this aid.  I had managed to get internet access after submitting a lengthy form and waiting some weeks for approval and finally, on getting this, one or two people had been reported to be browsing sites at work that could not have reasonably been viewed for police purposes.  What happens?  We all get told off, a snotty e-mail gets sent to everyone and we all get our internet access revoked.  I was then in a position where I had to ask the Sergeant if I could use his computer for any internet enquiries which was difficult as he often didn’t work the same shifts as me and it meant asking him to stop doing his work every time I needed to do this!  All this just adds to the inefficiencies in the police and I’m afraid Senior Management, if you treat your officers like children, they will act like them.  Trust them to act like adults and deal with the very few individuals who wish to abuse this and your officers will undoubtedly behave like adults.

There is so much more to say but so little time so that’s it for now.  I’m exhausted!

…or try to.

As cited on the ‘About this Blog’ section, at the end of Week 27 as a police officer and nearing the end of Street Duties, I received a call from the Borough Commander’s (The Big Cheese at WW) PA advising me that the Borough Commander wanted to speak to me urgently about my blog and I was urged to bring with me a federation representative.

Now, a) the Borough Commander doesn’t normally have time for any of the lowly PCs, never mind a new probationer and b) you are normally asked to bring a fed rep with you if you are ‘discussing’ something like a disciplinary matter.  It is fair to say, I was crapping myself!

Anyway, the meeting went better than I could have hoped for, no disciplinary measures were discussed and actually everyone seemed very fond of and impressed with my blog, they were just concerned about a few of the comments in it (I suspect things like my unsavoury views on the diversity training at Hendon).  I was advised that it would be in my best interest to stop this blog and being a brand spanking new probationer I felt it certainly wouldn’t hurt my career to follow these orders.

So, it stopped there and I regret now that I did not continue blogging offline as there are so many things that happened in the two and a bit years that followed that I would have loved to have been able to publish here with my sentiments at the time as it is difficult to look back on it all retrospectively but I didn’t, and apart from anything else, I am not sure I would have had the time to continue with it as I seemed to have less and less free time as my career progressed, particularly in to CID.

Here’s a brief summary then on what happened in the time that followed the blog ending.  I’ll refer in more detail to funny stories / horror stories that I want to share about my time as a PC PC on my PC (Politically Correct Police Constable on my Personal Computer) and about why I left the police in future entries.

I joined a response team at Tooting Police Station once Street Duties finished and remained there for about 6 months.  I then moved to a different response team based in Lavender Hill where I spent about another 6 months.  From here, and at my earliest opportunity, I left uniformed policing to join CID and spent 6 months in the Robbery and Burglary Squad at Wandsworth Police Station (here it was that I lost my mind!).  And finally, I moved to the Case Progression Unit at Wandsworth Police Station.  From here, after years of endless unsociable shifts, overtime that went on and on and a stark realisation that the only way to continue to do this job well was to compromise on every other part of my life, particularly time spent with friends and family, I decided to leave the police and return to my former career of software testing in IT.

Leaving the police was not an easy decision to make and one that took me at least a year to be sure about but one thing is for sure, whilst not a day goes by where I regret joining the police, as I have had some fascinating experiences that many people will never have the opportunity to go through, equally, not a day goes by where I regret leaving the police.

Whilst reading through my police blog again as I posted it here, I stumbled across a few interesting comments, one being how I swore I would never return to an office job as I would apparently find it far too boring.  Did I sell out?  Not really, I didn’t think at that point I would return to IT and back to a normal Monday to Friday 9 – 5 job but when you have certain things taken away from you, things you really care about like time with family and friends, health, hobbies and just a general sense of happiness and calm, only then do you realise how important those things are to you.  Don’t get me wrong, software testing doesn’t blow me away, I’m not sure I’d trust anyone who said it did, but it is calm, settling and pleasant and ultimately, it is just a job.  I am now able again to consider work as something I do to allow me to earn the money to do the things in life I really want to do and this is a luxury I just didn’t feel I had as a police officer, largely from a time, unsociable long hours and then health point of view.

In short, life is very much calmer now and I am back to being a person I like being, someone who can smile and have a laugh, someone that people generally like to be around.  I fear anyone who knew me in the police will have only seen one rather negative side of me where I felt frustrated and angry all the time with the bureaucracies, the paperwork, the public, the hours, the Senior Management and so on and so forth.

I’m pleased most of all to have me back and I am very happy to say goodbye to PC Wood 484 WW.

17 January 2005

Week Twenty Seven

Apologies once again for a slight delay. Yesterday, being Sunday, was my first day off for 6 days, so I did the only honourable thing and got drunk. This hindered my blog update somewhat.

Well, this will be a much more positive update as I have had a very pleasant week all round. I had Attendance One of my CTC which is the training that we do throughout our probation. I was down at Sunbury and despite the fact that it took me two and a half hours to get there each morning, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The main topics of the week were all around a crime that had occurred at the training college, well, The High Street, Brixley actually and what we had to do, was solve the crime! Eddie, our instructor for the week was flipping between being our instructor and being Jo Chi, who we believed had committed this crime.

The instructor was absolutely brilliant and I really liked his style of teaching. Although he is now a civilian trainer and formally retired from the police, he used to be an Inspector for about ten years but I loved the fact that he didn’t look down on us at all and was very much on our level and didn’t want any of this calling him Sir, or Staff or anything, just Eddie. The class too was great and a lot of old faces from Hendon were back and we just had such a giggle all week and most importantly, I actually feel like I got a lot from the week, particularly around the Interviewing Suspects area. I was slightly uncomfortable with interviews before this week’s training as I kind of had the feeling that I couldn’t really say much other than getting their account, I certainly didn’t think I could give my opinion but it turns out that you can, if nothing adds up at all and I guess, thinking back to training at Hendon and White Note land, it does actually say that but seeing it done and doing it for myself to see how to challenge well was incredibly useful to me.

Of course, the week culminated in the usual KEE style exam, which we have to pass and being the sad muppet that I am, I always look forward to exams. I like that nervous feeling before taking the exam and before getting results and the slightly panicky feeling about whether you have done enough. I got 93% which I was reasonably satisfied with.

On Saturday, I was back to work for a late shift and I was really hoping to get some good experience in as I am so worried about how little time I have out on the streets under supervision before we join team. Sadly, not an awful lot happened. Strangely, in our borough, Saturday night is reasonably quiet, Friday night is always far busier. We did, however, have a couple of good vehicle stops. One, where we had only stopped the vehicle to give them a warning about having their fog lights on but it turned out after all the checks that we do routinely when we stop someone that it wasn’t his car, it was his friend’s and he only had a provisional licence and was driving unsupervised without L plates. I hadn’t done a process book yet so that was a good experience.

I was desperate to get a Stop and Search in as well as I almost feel like it is becoming an issue now but there just wasn’t anything about at all and there is now way I am carrying one out if I don’t feel that I have grounds to just for the sake of figures or ticking boxes as I don’t feel that that is doing the job at all well but that was my last night shift so I fear I may actually finish this ten week Street Duties course without getting in a Stop and Search. I am not worried about the procedure as I have searched loads of prisoners, it’s just more gaining the experience at explaining it well so it doesn’t leave the searchee feeling completely invaded.

I had found out during the week that we were definitely all joining response teams rather than Sector or any other type of attachment which was great news and on Saturday we finally got to find out which teams and stations we were joining. I had wanted to stay at Tooting really, probably a lot due to the familiarity of knowing the station and roads around it fairly well (in relative terms anyway) so I was pleased to find out I would be staying at Tooting. I would say that Lavender Hill is probably the best ground of the three in terms of variation of incidents and that, sadly, Tooting is rife with domestic incidents and incidents involving mental health issues but I was actually thinking that in some ways, that will be very good for me in terms of becoming better at this job as I figure if you can get to the point where you deal with these two types of incidents well, you can probably deal with anything, so it will be good for me seeing as this is one of the few things that still terrifies me.

I don’t know anyone at all already on the team I am going to, and strangely, no one I have asked seems to know anyone from that team either but the good thing is that my colleague Rich from Hendon is also joining the same team and station with me and I am really pleased about this as he is a wicked bloke, very good at the job and we have worked together loads already and I think work together very well. Apart from the fact that he is far too competent to give me the opportunity of joining with someone pants so that I look good, I am really chuffed!

It was strange though as after we all found out what team we were going on, a few of us actually felt really sad. It’s hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t done the same but the 6 of us that are together on this course have been through so much together from being in the same class, room etc. through the 18 week training course at Hendon and now through Street Duties and for the first time since starting this job, we are all going to be split up and it’s very sad. It isn’t like other jobs as well where you can all meet up in the evening or weekend as the different shift patterns just won’t allow for that and we realised that we would never again all be able to go out and get p*ssed together. Obviously I will meet new people in the team I am going to and I am sure we will become very close but it is sad none the less and I will miss them heaps.

Anyway, as I say, I join team in two weeks now and I don’t feel ready at all. I feel like I have forgotten everything, particularly the things I haven’t gained a lot of experience of yet like RTA’s (Road Traffic Accidents) and Drink Drive and well, pretty much any type of civil dispute so I just hope my new team aren’t expecting too much from me!

Next week, I have a Bailed To Return to deal with and then a couple of attachments, one to the CSU (Community Safety Unit), who primarily deal with things like following up domestic incidents etc. and one as Gaoler again at Battersea. I do adore going to Battersea and seeing the lovely Custody Sergeants there so I am actually really looking forward to that and then it is the weekend again, hoorah!

Right, back to the Coronation Street Omnibus, how sweet life is, catch you all soon.

x x x

9 January 2005

Week Twenty Six

I always knew there would be times in this job where I would be wondering what the hell I ever left a well paid, stress free job for to do this whole police thing and I expected that. This week, that’s exactly how I felt, probably for the first time.

I don’t know if it is Street Duties; things being a little stressful at home; the fact that I hardly slept at all this week; or whatever but I just found the whole thing very tedious this week. I am just getting a bit fed up of making teas, being fined all the time for non-work related things and things happening that mean I can’t get the experience I desperately need on the streets. It is fair to say that I have been a bit of a stroppy cow this week which I am sure hasn’t gone unnoticed so I am not expecting my week 7 report to be quite as good as the week 3 one but there you go. Generally, I am very happy in this job and I do still love it, I am just having one of those weeks, we all have them and I am sure next week will be better.

In fact, next week couldn’t come at a better time. It is the first of my six one week training courses down at Sunbury. On the agenda is PNCB forms (these are the forms that you submit after arrest to update the Police National Computer with the latest information on that person), Witness Statements and Disclosure (this is any material that is not normally of evidential value in a case but is shown to the defence anyway, like the CAD message, for example). I am looking forward to a week away from things and I do like a bit of classroom work every now and then and of course there will be an exam at the end and I always enjoy the pressure of an exam.

I’m a bit gutted though as the week that I happen to be missing next week is another week of night shifts. We have hardly done any but they are by far the most enjoyable I think and where you learn the most. I am desperate to start proving to my Sergeant that I am not shying away from Stop and Search but I do find it far more difficult in the day to find grounds. At night it is much easier so I was looking forward to a week of nights. That’s when all the evil criminals come out to play. It’s crazy really that we are doing our CTC training course in Street Duties. We’ve already lost 5 days to Bank Holidays (not that I am complaining about that) and it seems a shame to lose another week of this valuable Street Duties time.

I looked at my rota and with training and Gaoler attachments etc., I actually only have 5 more days on the street before we join team (if we join team that is), which is terrifying as I so don’t feel ready. I know that teams won’t expect us to turn up and be all singing and all dancing but I don’t think anyone will appreciate sitting down for three hours with me and explaining Case Papers to me, as I feel like I should really understand that already, and I don’t.

I wish we knew what we were doing next as well. It would be nice to know if we are joining team, if so which one, and which station we are going to end up at so that we can spend the next two weeks getting to know our new team before turning up on day one to a room full of strangers. It would also be nice to know our shifts beyond the end of Jan and we won’t know that til we know which team we are joining. I am nervous about it all as for the first time in this whole police thing, there won’t necessarily be anyone at all that I know coming with me on to this next step. Oh, and of course, there is also the point that having now perfected my only London journey that I do in the car from my gaff to Tooting Police Station, I really don’t want to change the status quo and have to learn a whole new route with this little notice! Flip, I could end up having to try and find my way to Wandsworth, what a nightmare! We should find out next week some time hopefully anyway and I’ll be able to get practicing my new journey in my little Skoda.

It’s been another short three day week and I can honestly say I’ve dealt with absolutely nothing that I can ticky boxy for the Sergeant which stinks as I have been working really hard but this job is a bit of a figures thing. I had, in my short experience, a relatively complex Bailed to Return case (suspects sometimes get bailed to return for charge to the station at a later date so that more evidence can be gathered, CCTV footage watched etc.) of a theft employee that I had to investigate a little further and get more statements etc. for that was coming back on the 7th and as all day on the 6th, I had a domestic violence training day (where the main point was to introduce yet more paperwork, a 27 page book that has to be filled on attendance at any domestic incident – where a crime has been committed or not), I spent all day on the 5th sorting it all out. And that folks, was pretty much my week.

I don’t mean to moan and I know that it is just a temporary fed up-ness but it just all got a bit on top of me this week really. A good break away will do me the world of good I think.

Right, at the risk of saying anything else negative, as I don’t like to do that on here too much, I am going to leave now and I’ll chat to you all again next week chapsters.

x x x

2 January 2005

Week Twenty Five

There isn’t a huge amount to write about this week as my weekly work has but consisted of just a three day stint, one of which was shadowing in the front office and one of which was purely an admin day (to catch up on the incredibly evil PDP – Personal Development Plan – which is basically a huge log of all the work we have done and is oh so tedious to fill out) so apologies for my lack of content to include this week.

So, I am in week six of Street Duties now and it is a little worrying as I am now very close to the next step which with any luck will be on team. It’s strange because we have built up close relationships with the recruits and instructors on Street Duties and then in four weeks we will all be split up again. It is particularly sad with my fellow probationers as I feel like the six of us have been through so much together, one of them being a girl I shared a room with all through Hendon as well so our little family is being separated and it will be sad. I am, however, very excited about the next step, which as I say, will hopefully be joining team as I think the real work will start then and I get to meet a whole new load of people which is always interesting.

The other major worry of course is that I still feel completely useless! I don’t really know how to deal with anything at all and, in a way, in the last couple of weeks, I don’t really feel like I have moved on much. I think I could deal with a very basic shoplifter on my own but anything more complex and I will need a lot of support still. I think this will be taken in to account on our new teams though, at least I hope so. At the end of the day, I am only six weeks in to this surreal world of policing so it is only to be expected that my range of skills will be limited at this point.

I did feel that I achieved something quite good this week though. I felt I did my first sort of real bit of policing and changed the course of a case to what I think was a better solution. I had been handed over a case from a colleague of mine who was injured in The Incident I spoke of a couple of weeks ago that I had actually attended with him so was able to see the case through from the beginning to the end. Basically, this guy’s son had been getting visits from a former friend at their address and harassing the family. I had gone round last week to take a statement from the family regarding this case and on the advice of a Detective Sergeant from the CMU (Crime Management Unit), they wanted me to go round and arrest the suspect for harassment. I was uncomfortable about this as having spoken to both parties, nothing further had happened since the incident some 20 days before and, in fairness, both kids were as bad as each other by all accounts. I felt that arresting the suspect would lead to repercussions and actually far worsen the situation for all parties so I persuaded the CMU to let me issue a Harassment Warning instead which meant that the kid was going to be just fine and keep a clean record as long as he didn’t attend the victim’s address again. Breaching this would mean he was arrested. They agreed and I went round there and issued the warning and the family took it well. I felt that I left both parties feeling that the situation had been dealt with well so I was really pleased with myself as it was incredibly nerve-wracking.

The six of us Hendon recruits have now regularly been patrolling without instructors and I do really enjoy that as it forces you to think on your feet more. I am still embarrassed that when I am asked for directions or where a certain location is, I am generally quite clueless still, Geography being my weak point (sorry Mum) and have to either refer to my trusted A – Z or apologise for my lack of knowledge. It is difficult sometimes as people sort of expect police officers to know everything and sadly, knowing everything takes a lot of years to perfect!

The shifts have definitely calmed down from how they were a few weeks ago which has been a much needed thing to be honest as I was getting so shattered I could barely function. I have managed to accidentally lose half a stone over the last 6 weeks from working so many hours and not eating or drinking enough (and not drinking enough red wine or eating enough doner kebabs) which is not necessarily a bad thing but I don’t want to waste away so I’m pleased to have a bit more time to myself. From now on, in fact, I don’t think any of the stints are much more than 4 days in a row. Hoorah.

I have my first CTC attachment in two weeks so really I only have about another 15 days or so to get some good experience under the helpful watch of our instructors before we join team. During our two year probation period we have to attend Sunbury for six one week CTC attachments where you get more evil White Notes (oh, that brings back terrible memories of Hendon) and an exam at the end of it which we have to pass. It should be fine but the best place to learn this job is definitely out there on the streets and not in the classroom so it is a shame to lose the time.

So, I had another day in the Station Reception Office. The ladies that run the front desk are so lovely, it’s always nice to have a good chat with them. It was quite busy this time as well so I dealt with a few different things. It makes me so mad what some people are like though. This poor 83 year old lady came in in such a state after having been the victim of a robbery. How can people do that, I just don’t understand it at all. Things like that make me really want to do this job, and do it well, and in some ways, I am fortunate to be in a position to try to do something about things like that but it is frustrating when you know that nothing more can be done to catch the suspects sometimes too though.

We discussed the ridiculous situation of what the Met has decided to do with all the local CAD rooms as well. For those of you who are not in the police, the CAD operators are the peeps in control of managing all the incidents over the radios. They do an excellent, and I think very difficult, job but the fact that at the moment they are localised works so well as they know the officers, we know them and they have so much useful local knowledge that can prove invaluable. The expression, if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it, comes to mind here. So, what have the Met decided to do? Remove all the local CAD operators, most of which live locally to their work place as well and move them all to, I think about three, huge CAD rooms spread across the Met which will basically end up being like a huge centralised call centre. I just don’t understand the logic at all and a lot of the best CAD operators are leaving as they aren’t at all happy about the move. I wish I could understand the potential benefits of this change as at the moment I can see none whatsoever and can only see things going down hill but who am I to comment, hey, I am just a tiny cog in a huge machine but I think it is wrong. The lovely lady who mans the front desk agrees!

I have a few cases building up now and it is quite scary having them hanging over me. I have a couple of cases that have been Bailed to Return to police stations pending further investigations. Unfortunately we had been so busy, I had almost forgotten and suddenly had a massive panic yesterday as I realised I had done no further investigation and was in danger of getting a huge telling off from the Custody Sergeant. With a lot of support from one of our brilliant instructors, I think I am back on track now so panic sort of over for now.

I have a few days off now and I am so pleased. Today has been largely recovering from New Year’s Eve drinking. It was funny actually, on coming back from my night out, back at Charing Cross opposite Trafalgar Square I bumped in to about ten officers who I had been at Hendon with, the poor beans, working on New Year’s Eve. I was rather drunk though and went up and hugged them all which I think they were a bit taken aback by as I don’t think I was really supposed to that. I am not sure hugging in uniform is considered professional but hey, I was drunk, what can I say!

Anyway, I hope a great New Year’s Eve was had by all and that 2005 brings great things for you all. I’m off to rest my weary head and dream of catching robbers. Until next week…

26 December 2004

Week Twenty Four

There comes a time in every police officer’s career when you must get thoroughly fed up of all the little phrases of hilarity that come your way each time you meet your friends and family. Five minutes in the job and I think I have already reached it. I try to crack a smile as people say to me, “‘ello, ‘ello, what do we ‘ave ‘ere then?”, “Careful, don’t do that or she’ll arrest you” and, “Do you take your handcuffs home?”.  The list goes on, I tire even writing it. The thought of putting up with that for another 29 and a half years is not a nice one. I am sure the novelty will wear off. It is amazing how fascinated people seem to be in this job, nice amazing though.  It never quite had the same affect when I said I was a software tester.

As I said last week, I have just finished 4 days of 12 hour shifts from 1500 HRS to 0300 HRS finishing on Christmas day morning and for a change, I am absolutely shattered. What made it worse is that I am now certain I have caught a strain of Man Flu as I feel like boys feel when they have a common cold - pretty shocking. It’s easy to sort of stave off an illness when you are running around at work, it’s just when I stop that it catches up. Still, I am not back at work until Wednesday so I hope to be fully recovered by then.

It’s been another pretty interesting week, I think I will always find this job interesting really. We were sort of on Rowdy Patrol this week but there actually wasn’t that much rowdiness around. As usual, the calls coming from the CAD room, particularly the couple of days before Christmas, were mostly domestic incidents. It’s interesting how no units seem to be available when a domestic call comes out because they are just pretty much all round unpleasant to deal with but as soon as a fight kicks off, all units are available to run to it. Everyone seems to enjoy a good fight! I don’t really though as I am not the most handy person in the world with my fists.

It’s funny how the things I thought I would find the least pleasant and most challenging are in the most part quite different from the things that challenge me the most now. Domestics still terrify me and I haven’t even been inside the property at one yet, just listening from the street is scary enough. Dealing with drunk people giving me lots of abuse though was something I thought I would find really difficult but it doesn’t bother me at all. You know that people are abusive to you because of the uniform and not because of who you are otherwise you would get it in your life on the ‘outside’ as well and it is surprisingly easy to not be remotely bothered by people directing their anger at you, because it isn’t personal. I am a reasonably sensitive person and tend to take things to heart so I am glad I am able to distance myself a little from the people who basically just hate the police, which is largely most of the people that we end up dealing with.

I felt very helpless on Thursday of this week, it was my first taste of anything like this happening. Cath and I were busy dealing with another shoplifter when at about 2100 HRS, the rest of our Street Duties team, three instructors and two fellow pupils got involved in quite a nasty incident where four males were trying to escape from a robbery. One of the instructors caught one of the suspects but the other three or however many decamped in to a car and sped off. Unfortunately, the two other Street Duties instructors, instinctively tried to get in to the car before it sped off to drag the suspects out. Allegedly, the car wasn’t moving at the start but anyway, the car sped off with both instructors attached, one receiving a nasty leg injury and the other possibly dislocating his shoulder and pulling all of his arm ligaments. My point though, is that it was horrendous hearing all this going on on the radio and being able to do nothing to help. I felt completely useless and was so worried about my buddies. I have mentioned it before but you do form incredibly close bonds in this job and your team are a little extension of your family and all I could hear is that two officers were quite badly injured and their shoulder numbers. It was some time before we heard that they were OK, well, as well as you can be after an experience like that, but I was so worried about them.

I remember when I was at Hendon, some of the instructors saying to me that we will definitely have moments in our career where something happens that you just instinctively go with at the time and then after the fact you reflect and think, sh*t, that could have gone very differently, I was very lucky that time. I think that is how my two colleagues are feeling at the moment and it only hit them afterwards that it really could have turned out very nastily. They better not do that again as I was terrified they were seriously injured, naughty boys. We all value our careers but this job just ain’t worth dying for.

I am starting to get a few cases build up now where people have been bailed to return (i.e. I have to do some more investigation before they return to the station for it to be considered whether to charge them or not) and I am getting a little worried that I am about to find out there are hundreds of things I haven’t done that I should be doing! I guess I will learn the hard way if this is the case, I am trying to stay on top of it all but often you just get dragged off to incidents and other things have to wait.

What else this week, well I had to do a couple of strip searches this week which are no more pleasant for me than they are for the prisoner (despite them shouting at me, ‘You enjoying this you f&^%ing bitch’ and similar comments) but they are all good experiences that help me to deal with things better. I also had my first ‘No Comment’ interview which threw me a little as I was fully expecting the young lady to go full and frank as she had admitted the theft at the scene to me and signed my IRB to that effect but somehow, after taking advice from a very old and not so wise duty solicitor, thought it might be a better idea to go with the ‘No Comment’ strategy. No comment interviews are quite tedious really as you know the minute they speak that’s all they will say for the whole interview but you still have to keep asking all the valid questions all the way through.

I’m still having issues with Stop and Search, in fact, I still haven’t done one. I am trying very hard not to shy away from them and it’s not that I am afraid of carrying out the searches but I actually find it very difficult to ascertain whether I have enough grounds. Because of the Stephen Lawrence enquiry, at Hendon they drum it in to you again and again about making sure you have enough grounds and it has meant that all the new recruits coming out are terrified of doing searches just in case there aren’t enough grounds. I need to get over this though as it’s a huge source of catching people up to no good and I do understand the reasons why they have to be done.

For all the sacrifices I feel that I have made for this job and apart from enduring all the things that I find the least pleasant, of which I think there are quite a few – the far larger than I would like pay cut; the impact it has had on my personal life; the incredible tediousness of the entirely unnecessary paperwork duplication / triplication and quadruplication; the not often getting time to eat, pee or drink enough water; and the feeling so god damned tired all the time - I love the job! There has not been a single moment since I have been doing this job for real where I have doubted that I made the right decision to do it. It fascinates me and makes every single day different, challenging and interesting. I love the fact that nearly every single day I have to force myself to do something that scares me, physically or mentally and get to see that each time I push myself to do these things, it gets a little easier. I honestly can’t imagine myself ever doing anything else now and it is a nice feeling to feel that you have found the job that suits you, that you were made for, I think a lot of people never do really, so I consider myself pretty fortunate.

Anyway, so my birthday and Christmas have come and gone so quickly and unnoticeably. I found it so hard to get in to the Christmas spirit this year as I have been so so very busy but hopefully by next year things will have calmed down a wee bit and I will get round to decorating my tree and eating my advent calendar. Apologies again for not sending any cards this year folks. I will endeavour to make it up to you all but you can be assured by the lack of red wine I have drunk over the past five weeks, that I just haven’t had time to do anything really, my poor shelves are bear and I am running out of everything in my little pad!

Oh, there was a moment this week that I wish to reflect on here also. As I have said before, one of the reasons I was looking forward to working strange hours is that it meant I would get to watch more of the weekly day time TV programs that I love. Largely, I haven’t been able to do that too much but this week each day, my getting out of bed time has coincided perfectly with the start time of the Judge Judy triple bill on ITV2. There was a moment this week when I was sitting in bed, with a bacon sarnie, a nice cup of tea, all cosied up with my favourite Judge taking no crap on my TV and I thought, ‘Life doesn’t get any better than this’. It is the little things that please me and two hours with Judge Judith Sheindlin gets my vote any day of the week.

So next week, we are on for just three days, thank goodness and then have another much needed four days off. We are due to finish at 1800 HRS on New Year’s Eve and I am praying no one goes and gets themselves arrested by me anywhere near that time as I really don’t want to spend my New Year’s Eve in Wandsworth custody suite so please, people of Wandsworth, be good, or at least save any naughtiness for the Night Duty team! I want to get drunk, I need to get drunk, it has been too long (apart from my birthday where I still have a very big bruise on my right cheek and I ain’t talking face cheek – I still maintain though that I just lost my footing down the stairs, it was nothing to do with the shots of Sambouka I was forced to consume).

Happy Christmas one and all, I hope Santa brought you everything you wanted and I wish you all a very Happy New Year. May 2005 bring nice things for everyone.

Woody

Xxx

20 December 2004

Week Twenty Three

Again, apologies for a slight delay. I no longer work in normal working days or weeks so often lose concept of what day it is really.

So, I’m about four weeks in now and have a little bit of an idea now about what this job is going to be like. So, how’s it going? Well, on the whole, I am thoroughly enjoying the job. I am certain I have made the right decision to join and despite the very long hours, particularly through these ten weeks of Street Duties; the vast amount of completely unnecessary paperwork; and the abuse that you get for being Old Bill, it’s an absolutely fascinating job. I can’t imagine another one like it where you get to do so many different and exciting things.

I think one of the things I like the most is turning up to work and having no idea what is going to happen that day. That’s not to say that what happens is always a good thing, but the uncertainty of it all is very exciting. One of the things I like the least is the unnecessary paperwork. The duplication of work so frustrates me and being from an IT background, it is so easy to see how a system could be implemented where all the applications talk to each other so that you only have to enter things once. In the long run, it would save such a massive amount of time for everyone that it would be invaluable. But hey, who’s going to listen to me, unfortunately, the major decisions are made by politicians who are probably no more computer literate than police officers. If I get to be Commissioner, this is the first thing I will change!

I have once again had a difficult week off the pitch so have found the week very draining and exhausting but it has been quite interesting none the less.

My first day back in this stint, I was Gaoler at Battersea Police Station - my favourite custody suite of the Wandsworth Borough (for some reason, the custody sergeants always seem nicer there). I was supposed to be shadowing someone else but sadly, he had relationship difficulties and ended up going home after half an hour so I was on my own not having a clue what I was doing! Fortunately, it was very quiet and there were only two female prisoners in there that had stayed in our little 5 star hotel overnight. I spent quite a while looking after one of then, an Aussie lady who apparently had been a real handful the night before. I must say, I was quite impressed with myself when I managed to have the quick reflex of removing her boiling hot cup of coffee and cup of water from her hands as she fainted on me in the cigarette area. Ok, so I didn’t catch her and stop her hitting her head on the fire extinguisher, but at least she didn’t burn herself. I placed her in the recovery position, as I had been taught and once she came round again, all was well.  Egg head.

I ended up having to arrest someone again when I was Gaoler which was unexpected, another Department of Work and Pensions (former DSS) job for a false passport. Sadly, the lady I had had to arrest was a little bit stinky and she had with her a 6 month old baby who was also a little stinky.  Being a female in a largely male environment of course meant that the duty of looking after said stinky baby fell to me.  I am not heavily in to babies anyway and two hours later, after this rather unpleasant experience, my viewpoint had not changed.

We’ve started to all be sent out on our own now, well, with fellow Street Duties pupils, which is quite enjoyable as it forces you to make your own decisions and, in a way, I feel far more confident when I am not being judged by an instructor. Myself and Williams went out on Tuesday and dished out a couple of tickets and then ended up attending a collapse behind closed doors (so, possibly our first sudden death). When we arrived, however, the lady was fine and had had a little fall and sadly been stuck in the same position for a day and a half – poor thing. All good experience though.

I did a day in the Station Reception Office this week also with the lovely Patsy who is a civilian Station Reception Officer. She was fabulous and I learnt a bit about how to deal with front office issues (which tend to be entirely random and often quite strange).  Typically, the only time I was left on my own for about ten minutes, a complete loon bucket came in smiling at me with big freaky eyes and said,

“I don’t know why I am here, I just had visions of being here and all the signs were pointing to being here”

“Right, OK, Sir, well is there something I can help you with”

“I don’t know, I just want to be here, I feel happy here”

“OK, Sir, unless you can tell me something specific I can do for you, I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to leave the station”

He then promptly left, which was nice.  Must be my assertiveness.

We’re all still racking up fines, Bart and Tim probably being the front runners. Bart managed to fall asleep on duty this week, so that was a double or quits 40p fine. I seem to keep managing to do things and get away with them which is handy. Last week, I accidentally used the gent’s toilets downstairs in the locker room area and I am sure I would have been fined for this had everyone known. Fortunately, only faceless man who had dangly thing in hand by the urinals as I came out of the cubicles knows about this and we haven’t been formerly introduced. (I wondered what the urinals were doing there, but I honestly thought it was a unisex loo)

As I say, I am getting more confident with certain things. There are still a lot of things I haven’t encountered yet but Cath and I attended an address on our own and took a statement which apparently was quite good and I felt we dealt with the questions and the situation very well so that was cool.

I’m knackered as ever and have gone and caught Man Flu and feel shocking. We’re about to start what I think will be a very hard 4 day stint of 12 hour shifts, ending on Christmas Day morning at 0300 HRS. If we end up doing overtime on top of all this already pre-planned overtime, it is going to be ridiculously exhausting but at least then we have 4 days off so I hope I can get a wee bit of recovery time in.

Anyway, I’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. By the next time you all read this, you will have opened up your stockings and presents so I hope you all get everything you want. Stay out of trouble. x x x

12 December 2004

Week Twenty Two

It’s difficult to know where to start this week. I am absolutely exhausted at the moment and I do find it very difficult doing all the shifts I am doing and the overtime. It is having a huge effect on my personal and social life at the moment which is difficult but I think that is just the nature of Street Duties. The amount of hours we are doing means you really can’t do anything but work and sleep a bit but I am hoping when I join a team, things will calm down a lot.

Anyway, well I have had some quite good experiences again this week, I have directed traffic after my fellow newbies Bart and Tim stumbled across their first RTA, spent a lot of time tied up in silly incidents that have largely been a waste of police time and just generally bits and bobs really.

It’s strange, the more you get to know the patch and the people on it, you learn that certain people call the police all the time and largely for ridiculous reasons (and co-incidentally or not, are often the people who have never paid taxes their whole life, but that’s just an aside) and you just turn up and think, flipping heck, what a waste of our time – this is stopping me from being available for someone who really needs my help. The thing is, you still have a duty of care so you have to try and help but I can imagine it getting frustrating.  The problem is, gone are the days when police officers can turn up to a call, see it is a complete waste of our time and leave.  The ridiculousness of paperwork and arse covering in the police is such that you still have to write a report after attending an incident, where no crime at all has been committed, citing the reasons why you did not do anything such as arrest someone. I got tied up in a civil dispute over rent or non-rent in this complete crap hole (boy, have I seen some crap holes now already – you simply wouldn’t believe how some people live) where everyone appeared to be lying about what was going on so it was very difficult to find out the truth but one thing was clear, there was nothing by law that we could do, as no crime had been committed here and there was no reasonable chance of any kind of breach of the peace, so some considerable time later, after taking various details for our report about why we did not do anything, we left.  Actually, landlord / tenant type disputes can require a police officer’s notes to be used in any civil case that follows as part of the evidence but I am not sure whether, in the history of the world, these notes have ever actually been requested.

I think next week, I will be able to settle the bet I had with my colleague as he is going to go round and see if this man we tried to execute a warrant on is actually him or not, so I will be 20p richer next week no doubt.

I have continued to incur a number of fines over the past few days. Most of the crew’s fines are for a whole range of things but mine are always the same – being cheeky to instructors. I have actually started to think I have a disorder, very much like Tourettes Syndrome, that makes me say cheeky things all the time because I just don’t seem to be able to help myself. We do still have a laugh though which is good as we spend so much time together, we have to be having fun.

Tuesday, I participated in Operation Athena which I believe made it to the press. The operation was basically aimed at targeting suspects involved in Domestic Violence or hate crime, so around the Met, a number of addresses were targeting for the purpose of carrying out the arrests of these suspects. Ours was a bit of a disappointment really as we rocked round there at 0630 HRS and he wasn’t there and that was kind of it, Operation Athena over for us. I think the operation as a whole was very successful though.

I did my first Section 18 search of premises this week also. The Department of Work and Pensions (formerly the DSS) teamed up with us for an operation where they had 4 people coming in for appointments to pick up benefits (or so they thought) who, after investigation, had been found to have false passports. It’s a nice case because, unlike a normal case where the Crown Prosecution Service prosecute (after us doing all the work), the Department of Works and Pensions actually deal with the case so they cover the interviews, case papers etc., we just have to arrest, write our IRBs and conduct a section 18 search if applicable (for those of you don’t know, and I think this is right, although we didn’t cover this at Hendon, if someone is arrested for an arrestable offence, you can get authority from an Inspector to search any premises really relating to them for further evidence of the offence). It was quite sad as one of the ladies who was arrested for having a false passport was with her 6 month old child, so we had to part her from her son who eventually, after several hours of us all taking turns to look after him, was taken in to care by social services. The poor bean was adorable though – poor kid.

We had a good search of two premises, sadly, my only real responsibility was to take care of the exhibit bags for us to put anything we found in to and I managed to mess this up! We went to the first venue, where we found nothing and I took ALL the exhibit bags in and just left them in the kitchen, so when we arrived at the second venue, where we found loads of things, I suddenly remembered where I had left all the bags. Oops, I think I may have got fined for this as well and quite rightly so!

It turned out that most of the people arrested for having a false passport were wanted by immigration as well so basically they are in quite a lot of trouble. They will either get deported or spend a couple of years in prison over here.  I do feel for a lot of these people but at the same time, doing nothing about it means the country’s tax payers are paying for it and ultimately, that isn’t fair or right.

Anyway, all in all, it was a good experience. I am still lacking in Stop and Accounts and Stop and Search experience, so will have to get some of those in this week or the skipper will start to sus out the fact that I find the whole thing really quite difficult and at the end of the day, the quicker I get the experience the better. It isn’t long now before us newbies will be being sent out together on our own and left to deal with stuff. It will do us the world of good, but it is scary as we are all utterly clueless.

Next week is 6 days of earlies, probably my least favourite shift as I am rubbish at getting up at 0400 HRS. For two of those I will be off the streets as I will be Gaoler tomorrow (looking after all the prisoners, their property etc in custody) and Thursday I will be Station Reception Officer, which apparently is one of the dullest jobs in the world (this is basically just manning the front desk at the station). Both will be good experiences though.

We all had our first reports as well, we were dreading them a bit as apparently they are often quite bad but we all had a pleasant surprise as generally all of ours were very good so I think they are pretty pleased with us down at Tooting.

Two of the instructors have been a wee bit late in now and the unwritten rule is that they are supposed to buy donuts for everyone. They haven’t done this yet but I haven’t forgotten about their lateness so hopefully sometime this week I will get a big fat jam donut or two to munch on, yum yum.

Anyway, I am still enjoying it and have no doubts it was the right decision to make. It is a nice feeling to go to work having absolutely no idea what your day will involve, a refreshing change from my former world of IT.

OK, I better go and watch Arsenal lose to Chelsea, do excuse me, I will write again next week.