The Last Pop Song
February 21, 2008 by inspectorgadget
A few months ago we had an eventful weekend on F Division, Ruralshire Constabulary.
Like many police forces across England, we have a system whereby we act as the primary Response Team from the start of the Late Turn. Then we change over and provide the public order support for the whole Division until ’sparrows’.
In the van, Sergeant Dan and I were arguing about The Last Pop Song. He claims that it was probably Everything She Wants by Wham! I’m thinking Motorcycle Daydream by Bedroom Eyes.
Twenty minutes later, we were at Ruraltown General Hospital Accident faced with a blood soaked scene like a horror movie.
Two people had fought tooth and nail with six of us. We took two lumps of wood with nails hammered through, one knife and a broken bottle off them as they attempted, yet again, to kill each-other and us.
We were called by members of the public during one of their regular blood soaked, violent and chaotic attacks on, well, anyone who walks by at the wrong time really. This one took place in the middle of the Estate.
Remember we are not armed, so we have to sort this out with a 50g tin of spray and an aluminum stick. People like this can take any amount of CS or PAVA, they don’t seem to care. And they will use those weapons without a seconds hesitation.
The blood, spit and phlegm are literally all over our faces and arms. It’s probably infected. But then we are not worth our pay anyway.
Back in the van there is silence for a few minutes. Then we vote.
The Last Pop Song?
Bedroom Eyes - Motorcycle Daydream mp3
NOTE: Original photos removed to protect the guilty.
Its an all too often repetetive scene from most places in the country. Is it ever going to change?
Looks familiar. Looks very familiar indeed. Being second line, i leave the useless stick and the breath freshener in the office. If it goes wrong they just get in the way.
Actually, if I am getting ready to rumble the baddies are in HQ and they’ve made it to the first floor.
Our PSU used to have a proper steel baton right up until we learned it was v v good at inflicting spiral fractures. I think they miss them.
Oh and I’ve taken the plunge and started blogging (plug over)
And its at http://nightjack.wordpress.com/
It will not change, we are soldiers of someone else’s fortune. We help pick up the pieces of those who can’t get control of their own lives yet blight the lives of so many others and are claimed to be victims or at risk from themselves but causing risk to far too any others..
Hopefully this might make you feel better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_inspector_blog
We do need better tools to do the job with an ever increasing violent society and an inadequate justice system.
Things wont change until the media and government stop listening to the likes of Shami, Shami, Shami Chakbarati (SP???) and the front for criminals and terrorists rights liberty.
oh my…
The thing i hate about having to deal with people with infected blood in situations like this is the aftermath.
The blood tests, the trip to pathology lab, the follow up blood tests and the course of anti-virals drugs that are just in case and make you feel as sick as a dog for a week or more as they nuke your system but then its all not over as you have to wait for the results to find out if you have HIV, Hepatitus etc or what have you.
The HIV one is the worse as it can fail to show up for 6 months and you have to be retested again and you have to do anonymously so it doesn’t screw your chances of getting life insurance, a mortgage etc
You think Smith Brown Darling and co factor this into ther decision making when they steel our pay?
Did i forget to mention the HIV one means that the medical advice is not to have unprotected sex with your partner / wife / girlfriend until after the 2nd all clear 6-8 months later.
Try explaining that one and even if you do it really does kill the mood and increase the number of “headaches” and who can blame them.
“Hi Darling, sorry i have to glove up, might have HIV you see, wont know for sure until next year.” “You OK? You look a bit pale”
Now after you have imagined explaining that, try explaining it more than once.
Do you think that the police should be routinely armed?
If so, what with? Pistols? Tasers? Rubber bullets? Better gas sprays?
If not, do you think arming the police is inevitable anyway, given the rise in violent crime in Britain.
Interested to hear the opinions of those at the front line.
Yup,
as someone has already said, that could be any estate in the country.
It isn’t unusual. It is fairly common.
Sad state of affairs.
whichendbites
That link goes nowhere?
Hey, Somethings just never change no matter where you live. I have seen that scene so many times in our hospitals.Just be extra careful,especially now that HIV is so abundant in people you would never expect to have it. Be Safe And Keep Up The Fight.
Richard
Do you think that the police should be routinely armed?
If so, what with? Pistols? Tasers? Rubber bullets? Better gas sprays?
If not, do you think arming the police is inevitable anyway, given the rise in violent crime in Britain.
Interested to hear the opinions of those at the front line.
——————————————————————
As senior partner in a very busy London firm of solicitors I can only wholeheartedly hope that the British police force is routinely armed….(now… memo to self, should this happen, have advert ready for new staff for for massive extension to our complaints against police department).
O what a job we do. I’ve just picked up a job where a male has been punched by another male. The up shot of it is, the victim has been shagging the other bloke’s girlfriend.
I don’t condone violence but I scratched my head when the victim stated the following ‘ I only called you as I was not in a position to hit the c*** back as he caught me by surprise. If I had of been able to punch the c*** I would have put him in hospital’.
Now he is a victim I have to comply with the victim’s charter if not he can complain and I’ patentially’ can lose my job.
I wish our Police were more like those of Spain. They don’t take any crap and a swift slap around the face of a drunken yob soon shuts them up.
The yobs of our society will never respect the Police due to no come back. Our Government has turned our Police service into a bunch of wimps through red tape and beaurocracy and until that is addressed and fear brought back to criminals and yobs nothing will change.
Irritated of Ruislip.
Gene Hunt for Home Secretary!
Bloody hell. That is seriously grim. If only they’d put me in charge of the country we could get this nasty mess sorted: My solution to that particular problem would not be to wrestle the two into hospital at great personal risk and get them treated. It would be to chuck the two of them into a cell together along with a fine assortment of the weapons they arrived with. Chances are they’ll kill each other thereby ridding the world of two more violent eejits and saving you from getting smacked and spat at. Unfortunately most of my ideas for improving society and making the streets safer are in fact illegal. Perhaps I should move to Russia.
I like Vicola’s idea.
Wishful thinking aside IG and the other police commenters - What happens if you contract a non-treatable disease such as HIV with regards to income protection / long-term sickness leave etc?
I’m more than familiar with the unpleasentness that is the 8 month wait - a friend of mine got jabbed by a used needle during a scuffle with one of the druggies in our local area after trying to arrest him. He was so relieved when he found out all the tests came back both times with the “all clear” he was crying like a baby…
As IG says, remember you’re worth 1.9%…
notellin
‘You think Smith Brown Darling and co factor this into there decision making when they steel our pay?’
If they could muster the imagination to see themselves having a working day (or night*) that meant scenes like this were part of the job, you might be getting somewhere, but I don’t hold out much hope.
do they ever turn out with you to see what it’s like? Spending so much time in the gilded Gothic pile that is the House of Commons, can’t exactly be conducive to seeing world for real, they need to get out more.
(*They should know about this, we’ve been told how difficult it is for MP/minsters, all the late night sittings plays, havoc with family life)
Over the other side of the Irish sea its not any better. We all may armed with a Glock and if it gets really fun a few of the larger members of the H&K family, but when it comes to the idiots trying to stop each other you get into all sorts of fun if you draw on them. Be Thankfull you dont have to deal with the Police Ombudsman (yet)
That said nothing like the sound of a G3 being cocked to make the local scrots stop what they are doing and go find someone else to play with.
God help us when are English Chief Con finally gets his way and has us disarmed
Your opposition are so stoneage: sticks with nails hammered through?
Ours use firearms and stun guns.
Anyway, to the point: from over 30 years of experience (not in UK), I really do know that CS doesn’t work (most particularly when you need it to work).
At first, that frightened me; then I was taught the Tactic.
The Tactic is: they fight each other; we stand back until there is nearly no-one left standing, and then
anyone who
(a) resists: or
(b) looks like threatening me or mine:
gets blown away with a Remington shotgun.
I could go on for a long time about the success of the Tactic and the reluctance of you lot to accept it. Do we really have to wait until the Interior Ministry has its own troops?
Michael
P.S. Yes, my friend your application is even now being considered.
Trouble is..WE love it.
We are like Pavlovian dogs (or is that Pava dogs)..hear the call for a fight with knives, and we run towards it?
What is that all about?
The government is hopefully just lazy; their solution to most problems is to increase taxes and there doesn’t seem to be a way they easily raise and money out of this situation.
I say “hopefully” because I have a tinfoil-hat suspicion that the government knows that living in fear will keep the population too downtrodden to notice all the corruption that goes on amongst our elected officials (too much reading Private Eye there). What incentive do they have for actually making our streets and homes safer? None that I can see.
Amy Barnes
Trouble is..WE love it.
We are like Pavlovian dogs (or is that Pava dogs)..hear the call for a fight with knives, and we run towards it?
What is that all about?
‘cos your a violent nutter perhaps?
Arm the Police? Yes.
Tasers seem the best option…
It’s okay to look to the past when the British Bobby went around with just a truncheon… but this is now.
Give us all Taser. A non-lethal option, only one step removed from CS. The ‘rationale’ to use it shouldn’t be any more complicated than the decision to use any PPE.
From the incidents where I’ve seen it deployed, you don’t even have to pull the trigger. To see these sad sacks of shit cower and weep when simply ‘red dotted’ is a joy in itself.
And if they don’t cower and weep, shoot them. Non-lethal. No long-term effects.
Just remember those of us who are operational Inspectors……one of the benefits of being front-line and going to jobs like these to supervise is that you don’t have to investigate the complaint yourself.
And to: Messrs Sue Grabbit & Runne (post 13). You represent another intolerable side of our society. One where you benefit from the misery of others. You line your pockets by exploiting our blame culture. You don’t represent the interests of a decent law-abiding society……you pick on the scraps, examining everything in hindsight.
Cops make potentially life-changing decisions every day. Mostly in the heat of the moment. We are human but have a job to do. One of the reasons we have lost control in this country is that law firms and litigation are big business. You have helped make people become so risk averse that senior managers and the HO have our hands tied behind our backs.
Messrs Sue Grabbit & Runne
I know you are not a real law company - great name for one though - I just had to have a go at the legal eagles
I saw the field trials results for tasers in a previous role and there’s really no contest between spray and taser in terms of operational effectiveness.
Less than 1% continued to resist after being tasered. Last time i checked over 40% continue to resist after being sprayed…
Unfortunately your senior management would rather have a bunch of coppers get injured than risk the flurry of complaints that would accompany the initial routine deployment of tasers….
Tazers might be the only way to stop the crazies, but as the RCMP here in Canada have found out, Tasers can be lethal if a second or even third dose is applied.
Not that stopping violent intoxicated lunatics literally dead in their tracks is a problem. More a solution.
Scott at 0739 said… I wish our Police were more like those of Spain. They don’t take any crap and a swift slap around the face of a drunken yob soon shuts them up.
Last year our local police here in a small town near Malaga were called to a dispute between a householder and a buider doing some reform work, builder drew knife and made threats, householder retired to safe distance and called police.
Policia Local… ‘drop the knife’,
builder… ‘No’,
PL…’drop the knife or I fire’
builder…’¡Vete a joder!’
PL…fires warning shot into air as per standing orders..’drop the knife’
builder doesn’t.
PL… Bang, dead builder.
Result? Suspension? public enquiry? political and media outcry? No, just a couple of paragraphs in the local paper, shrugged shoulders and the comment that the silly sod should have done as the PL told him.
I just love this country.
The local scum asking how high before you’d finished saying Jump if that was the UK policy.
Ah well one can dream.
I know cos I was there. Lunchtime, our big town, I deployed in the mad rush to find it was “wino down” and he was being pinned to the pavement by a runaway girl with a bone handled carving knife.
The road is closed, the chopper hovers overhead, a colleague who knows runaway girl is trying to talk her back but she is a long way gone. There she is ringed by armoured cops and our cars. There is even a dog but this isn’t really the time or place for the dog. Runaway girl has the wino proned out with the knife against his neck.
Watching my armed colleague going in with the Taser and speaking to him afterwards, I am a believer. As he closed he had the red dots on and a Ch Insp in his ear saying take the shot when you get in range.
Taser hits and runaway girl starts twitching like a spider on a hotplate. Hand flexes open and knife clatters to the pavement. In go the PSU to pull wino clear and then its away in cuffs for runaway girl. She is physically none the worse for the experience and neither is wino.
Give me a Taser if you must. Its better than the breath freshener or the metal stick. Guns? I cant hit the side of the barn from inside the barn so probably not.
I had all sorts of links come up on my stats andone was a wikpedia link to your site with some complimentary information. Don’t know if it has been changed or been vetted, certainly more than comes up on the link I sent.
Sorry about that.
On another note, we’re getting hi-vis stab vests. Huzzah!
We’re apparently getting some discretion back in the new year and we’ll be allowed to deal with childish spats using common sense. The catch is that we will still detect these (detected no complaint or something) - so the SMT are happy.
There hasn’t been a true pop song since “There She Goes” by The La’s.
P’raps the Romans had the right idea with the gladiatorial games….we could round up all the Saturday night fighters and let them entertain the rest of the sink estaters when there was nothing else on Freeview.
A Forum in every major city funded by the national Lottery there’s a thought…..
For ‘Inspector Bloke’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7259235.stm
A tale to warm the very cockles of one’s heart!
To InspectorBloke (on February 22, 2008 at 2:39 pm) who considers Taser to be “non-lethal force, only one step removed from CS”:
Actually, you have the Continuum of Force* a bit wrong;
baton is one step up from CS.
Taser is one step down from firearm,
and is ironically known as “less-lethal force”.
Best wishes
Michael
* for those who are interested,
the Continuum of Force is (generally accepted to be) something like:
Presence
Verbal Direction
Use of Hand
Chemical Agent
Baton
Dog
Baton (or beanbag) round
Taser
Firearm
In common law jurisdictions, when using force, one is justified in using the next available level of force above that being offered by the offender (but CS isn’t consistently effective).
Sorry - no time to run through the “Continuum of Force” when some maniac is right in your face with a weapon as soon as you get out of the van.
Mass bundle (with spray if possible) is all.
I have always thought that the conflict resolution model was invented by people with no idea of what a violent situation is like…
I can see why you changed the photos, but I figured that your commentors were quick enough to know that you were providing general hints at what you were facing not the specific (which would no doubt give cause for the Dog with the Ginger Eyebrows to go another round with you).
I did find the photos shocking, but then again, I’m an MOP who lives in a sanitized world. Consequences and responsibility are choices, not enforceable. Perhaps we need more shocking photos, not news written for 5 year olds.
Thought the original photo’s were spot on but understand your reasons, but its a pity that MOP’s can’t see these sort of things more often………we’ve certainly lost the battle but the war rumbles on!
To Michael @ post 37.
Actually, in a amazing show of common sense, my Force has moved away from teaching the force continuum. They accept the point made by Insp Gadget that you can’t always follow a totally pre-determined action in response to the mayhem you come across. You can’t rely on it and if you have to go through it in the cold light of day in a court room, it can cause problems.
Obviously, we are all accountable for our actions and would need to justify the level of force used. But we can almost pick and choose our response from the list as long as it is reasonable.
As one of the Forces trialling the wider issue of Taser, I will more often than not request a unit equipped with Taser to be despatched to deal with anyone who has a weapon. Why waste time trying to spray and hit someone working your way through the continuum and risk further injuries to officers if you can contain them and wait for Taser ? We seem to be moving with the times for once.
The example given by Nightjack is spot on.
I am told our PPE training this year is moving to allow officers much more freedom in their response. The 2nd day’s input will consist of us having to (literally) punch and kick each other in an effort to encourage us to go on the offensive. Interesting developments.
Inspector Bloke @ Post 42
Interesting that you have moved away from using the Continuum of Force. What objective guidelines do officers now have? It would not be enough to merely say: I felt that it was the correct decision: to ensure an officer’s legal safety, there has to be something more than just gut instinct.
We use the Continuum because it provides a well publicised and objective tool when officers are being judged after having used force, by others who have that most perfect of tools: 20/20 hindsight.
Anyway, my main point was that you shouldn’t be using CS on anyone with a weapon: you use Taser or firearm.
We seem to be agreed on that.
And Inspector Gadget at Post 38
We don’t “run through” the Continuum of Force, it is second nature and, relating to the example in your post: let me say once again, if someone has a weapon, you don’t bother using CS because it isn’t effective enough…
…you use a Taser or firearm.
Best wishes
Michael
We still have guidelines and input as to all the risk factors we need to take into account when deciding our response. It is not about a gut instinct. We still need reasons why we took a course of action.
I find the objective guidelines provided by the continuum become very clinical when officers are being judged. Officers can easily trip up if they have not followed the continuum, even though the level and type of force they used was perfectly reasonable. We don’t live in an ideal world. No policies or guidelines can cover every circumstance we face. All too often, such policies are waved in our faces and used to beat us with when we are being judged.
I much prefer to justify what I did, rather than what I didn’t do.
I am going to form a political party on a single issue basis and that is that we can go back to footing their arses and cuffing their lugs to keep them in line and show who is boss. I think I will win by a landslide. Will you vote for me?
“A.N. Other - Tazers might be the only way to stop the crazies, but as the RCMP here in Canada have found out, Tasers can be lethal if a second or even third dose is applied. ”
So do be sure to give the little shits a minimum of four shots - five if they’re a bit on the heavy side. If a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing properly and you don’t want to be having to go back to finish the job.
reference to dci’s, there are two was of reaching this rank ether ethnic minority or join the free masson. I WAS A WHITE MINORITY BUT THAT DIDN’T COUNT