Commander Ali Dizaei IS a crook after all SHOCK!

The boys and girls from the OP HELIOS team might be down the pub tonight!

Suggested reading for those at a loose end for the next few years. I thank you.

Many of our colleagues from Metrocity will feel the need to rant over this one. I think we should let them do so in the comments section.

The title of my book seems strangely relevent today. The Daily Mail has it just right:

“He was simply a self-serving crook; clever conman, bully, playboy, womanising misogynist, serial litigant and liar, who hijacked the issue of race and used it for his own ends”

Gadget Note: If I had written those words even two days ago, PSD would have hunted me down and sacked me as a racist. Now watch ACPO run around and say they knew he was a crook all along. Maybe at last we can bin the ridiculous Diversity agenda which allowed him to survive for so long and get back to treating everyone as equal.

Through The Looking Glass

“Seek not the favour of the multitude, it is seldom got by honest and lawful means”

Immanuel Kant – German Philosopher 1724 – 1804

During a period of intense madness on Friday night, I actually read the email containing the minutes of last weeks Customer Satisfaction Performance Meeting. I did this because during that meeting, one of my colleagues had tried to contact the Support Group Inspector about some back-up for a last-minute raid on a house believed to contain three very young women from Eastern Europe, brought to the UK for the sex trade.

He was told that the SG Inspector was unavailable because he was “in a meeting” even when the reasons for wanting to speak to him were given. The Customer Satisfaction Performance Meeting is a three-line-whip for all Inspectors, even those on Rest Days.

Curious about what on earth could be discussed in any meeting which could be more important than rescuing a teenage sex slave from a Balkan gangster, I downloaded and read the minutes.

Some parts of Ruralshire are statistically safer than almost anywhere else in the UK. Your chances of being attacked in your home or on the street are about the same as your chances of winning the Euro Millions Lottery.

However;

Once again, when asked in a survey, the people who live there are among the most nervous and worried about being attacked in their homes or on the street. They do not think the police are doing their jobs properly by keeping them safe, even in the face of their own experience of never actually having been attacked, or even knowing anyone who has.

Our response?

The minutes  give a detailed explanation of how “High Visibility Uniform Patrols” will be taken away from the crime hot-spots identified by the Crime Analysts, and re-deployed to the areas where “Public Reassurance” is a priority.

Read that again to make sure you understand the gravity of that statement.

How did we allow ourselves to become a blatant instrument of political electioneering, participants in a popularity contest, whatever this is? Things are worse now than ever before. I know from a trusted source that one of the Chief Inspectors was nearly physically sick after that meeting. Sick with guilt, worry about his job if he spoke out, I don’t know.

This is all for the Superintendent’s cash bonus in May 2010, and it’s just plain wrong.

Gadget Note: The house was raided and persons arrested for cultivating cannabis and abstracting electricity. No women were found. The raid was organised and lead by Sergeants.

It’s A Car Tyre – I Can Manage – Go Away!

How many Ruralshire police officers does it take to change a tyre on a police car?

None. Because they have taken the jack and wheel brace out of the vehicles so we don’t hurt our backs and sue the Chief Constable.

These days we call a contractor via the new Force Public Confidence Facility (Control Room). He is supposed to cover the whole of Ruralshire, at vast cost to the tax payer. It takes hours and makes us look pathetic.

Meanwhile, they are quite happy to send us single crewed to a fight between three men, each with an iron bar, armed with nothing more than an aluminium stick and a tin of pepper. Can the simple act of changing a blasted tyre really be more dangerous to my health than three alcohol crazed maniacs covered in blood and screaming with rage?

I think not.

This has to be right up there with the 4 page Health & Safety Risk Assessment Form you have to complete before you are allowed to open the big metal doors into custody, as the shiniest bit of arse covering yet invented.

Rant over.

Note: In case you hadn’t noticed, Inspector Gadget is currently on nights!

The Truth Behind The £100 Phonecalls

If a police officer answers a phone call when they are off duty and starts to make decisions about a case or incident, they are not covered by the legal and insurance protection offered by the job unless they “book on” duty.

Certainly, in Ruralshire Constabulary, it is not possible to book on for less than 4 hours, because for some reason it is too complicated to calculate a smaller measure of time, especially when you might wait for the job to phone you back with the result of an action, and so forth. To keep booking on and off each time the phone rings is ridiculous, and more time is spent doing that than dealing with the incident at hand.

Also, if we have to actually deploy, unless you “book on” you are not strictly acting in the course of your legal duty (the assumption is there is you come across something). This means your power to search, enter and even defend yourself against an assault are all legally compromised. So we book on duty. And that means we get paid. We are one of the few jobs where we already work for free (the first 30 minutes of any spontaneous overtime is for the Queen) but that does not stretch to a four-hour shift.

So here is the thing; it was society which started all this civil and corporate liability nonsense in the first place, you can’t have it both ways – we need to “book on” to be legally covered to deal with anything except the most immediate incidents which we come across.

Sorry to pour logic over such a good story. Also, no one above Sergeant get’s O/T in the police.

GADGET NOTE: You won’t find medical staff, customs officers or prison staff working for free either. Sorry. (Since writing this, some of the aforementioned have written in to say they do!)

Officer Down – Wiltshire Police

A 22-year-old policeman from Wiltshire has been killed when his patrol car left the road and hit a tree.

Pc Daniel Cooper, who was described as highly regarded and popular, died at the scene of the accident near Bradford-on-Avon on Monday evening. The trained police driver was responding to a call to help other officers dealing with an incident.

“Paramedics were called but Pc Cooper sustained very serious injuries and sadly died,” a police spokesman said.

Chief Superintendent Steve Hedley said:

“This is a tragic loss of a highly regarded and very popular young officer who was just at the beginning of his career of service to the public. It highlights the daily risks that our police officers face as part of their role”