Summer is on the way in Ruralshire.
The remaining Poles will soon be leaving for good.
While our own underclass lie around the Estates on welfare benefits, smoking and texting themselves to death, complaining about the lack of work, our Eastern European cousins have made their money and are off home.
In the rural parts of our shire, the main summer activities are cricket, a few glasses of chilled Pimms and croquet (if you are the Chief Constable).
In the urban parts of the county, the main summer activities are getting badly sunburned, drinking huge amounts of cheap lager, vomiting and calling the police on each other.
I remember back to a summer a few years ago now, when Ruralshire Constabulary issued us all with cast-off Metro-city Police body armour (after being “named and shamed” by the Police Federation). The boxes arrived with crates of suncream and bottled water. Posters went up all over the Nick reminding us to drink plenty of water and keep cool in our new Kevlar vests.
Mine even had a Metro-city Police badge on the front, which had it’s compensations when beating suspects in alleyways. Only kidding. This isn’t Blandshire!
Someone then obviously decided that either summers were never as hot again, or our bodies are now used to the extra covering; we have never seen any Factor 40 or a drop of H2O from the fells again.
I suspect that the person who originally thought so kindly about our welfare has successfully used the example in their ‘promotion portfolio’ and moved on. Or it might be that senior officers now hate Response Teams because they are not Neighbourhood Officers, and they want us all to die.
The real reason is that no one goes out of the Nick into the sun these days because we are too busy filling out ‘Ward Profiles’, telephoning the public on a random basis to check that they “feel alright” (true story) and tapping away on their keyboards ‘detecting’ crimes like ‘Theft of Goldfish from Pond – main suspect – local Heron’ (true story).
By the way; apparently a real criminal was captured over on G Division this morning; I must go over and remind myself what one looks like. Back later.
Maybe the ‘allowance’ for sun factor and water was included with our boot allowance in our pay…..we just didnt notice but as usual you have to finance it yourself these days.
Give the HSE a call Gadget, i’d LOVE to see your C.Con’s face when they turn up on the doorstep and prevent any PC’s from going to work that day…
That heron was last seen making off with some fish out of my exH’s pond.
Good bird.
Cook up some false figures spin a few times and there you have have your answer.
In a triumph of police planning I got my incredibly expensive covert stabby at a time when I was working full time in an office plonked in the middle of big HQ. I never went outside for 2 years.
It was a diktat that we had to have them. You couldn’t make it up.
Now on my third force (only forty or so to go!).. managed to hold on to one covert and three overt stabbies. Don’t like to wear any of them as they’re not entirely suited to my body shape!
(Note to self. do they have car boot sales in Kabul??)
“I suspect that the person who originally thought so kindly about our welfare has successfully used the example in their ‘promotion portfolio’ and moved on. Or it might be that senior officers now hate Response Teams because they are not Neighbourhood Officers, and they want us all to die.”
Hahahahaha! LOL. First bit funny but also very shrewd observation and could apply in many a work sphere. Second bit just funny (hopefully).
with regard to stats, you should move to Oz, there is no ‘millitant’ approach to recording every stupid quarrel or non solvable crime where i work.
I.e man turns up at counter, tells me he took a bird home the other night, left his wallet on table prior to going to sleep (with here,) woke up to find girl and wallet missing. To add insult to injury, apparantly the girl was four foot high, and five foot wide German (he still managed to sleep with her though.) My advice, in a fairly round about way, was that the female was obviously a tourist, we had no realistic way of finding here, so just get over it and put it down to expereince. No further enquiry (or recording required,) its called common sense policing and not wasting my bloody time.
Have the departing Poles made any substantial improvement to the gene pool of your indigent poor ?
[...] How ever Inspector Gadget explains that doing what comes naturally (to a heron) is reportable offence ‘Theft of Goldfish from Pond – main suspect – local Heron’ [...]
Love to stay and chat , but I have to take a statement from the young lady down at the local park….
I might have to stop off for some icecream , that office is getting a tad warm
Before leaving my previous force I went down to stores to hand in all my kit – stabby, fluoro jackets, PSU kit (the whole caboodle from helmet down to boots), cuffs and ASP ec.
I was told by the storeman “We don’t keep that stuff anymore because of health and safety. All officers must be issued with brand new kit”.
When asked what he wanted me to do with all my ‘old’ stuff he told me to throw it in the skip out the back in the loading bay.
You couldn’t make it up.
I asked money from the petty cash for sun cream for my team as we were on an extended job outside in the sunshine.
I was told, ‘No, they have to provide their own as they might come out in a rash’
Yes I know, it is called sunburn, it’s red and rash like, but apparently the Health and Safety people had decreed that people should provide their own suncream suitable for their skin type to avoid allergies. So as a responsible skipper, I bought it myself and some rather attractive cotton wide brimmed hats as well. The boss bought the Ice Creams. It is what Inspectors are for!
As a serving copper in Australia, I agree with Billy Boy.
If you are sent to a tasking that is a LOB (the correct phrase, I believe), you can simply tell both parties to “grow up and get a life” and assuming that your supervisor is happy with the outcome, no one will later force you to go back to arrest some poor Downs Syndrome lad, with the mental age of a 4 year old for ‘Racially Vilifying’ some other poor girl with Downs Syndrome, which will make the papers and set off a flurry of letters to the editor from “Angry of Mayfair” about how the Police are useless except for sitting behind speed cameras (though, to be fair, we get a lot of those sorts of letters too).
And, I only gather the minimum amount of statistics compared with our UK bretheren.
For example, if I speak to someone on the side of the road for any reason (or for no reason) I do not have to fill out any paperwork. At all.
I can, if I feel like it, write down their name and address in my notebook. I can, if I feel like it, enter it onto a computer database to show that at such-and-such a time, at such-and-such place, so-and-so was walking down the street.
Or, I can, if I feel like it, simply do nothing, if there is nothing suspicious (like a jogger, getting up early and running to beat the heat) and there is no official record of it anywhere.
What I am not required to do, is fill out a form, with anything that says ‘race person self-identifies as’.
Plus, we don’t have a Home Office to set targets. I pinch people on what I think I can prove in Court, not what is counted.
There are no PCSOs in Australia and no plans to implement them. If we need more Police and we can’t recruit locally, we simply import them, fully trained and motivated from the UK! No policing on the cheap for us!
Oh.
And perhaps the best of all… No EU-centric Human Rights Act to slowly and inexorably fill your country with foreign criminals that you can’t get rid off! If we want to deport a criminal who is an illegal overstayer, or an unlawful non-citizen (how Orwellian!) then we can. And do. Often.
No wonder UK coppers are clamoring to leave England’s shores to come to God’s Own Country.
We cannot thank nuLabour and their policies enough! Your loss is our gain!
A real criminal?
I remember them.
They do exist. At the CTCC dogs section we have had a recent welcome number of real arrests or assists to remind us that we are here for a purpose. We know it, response know it, but the SMT seem to see only their big picture and this makes what should be relatively straightforward seem to be uncomfortably complicated. All we have is the little number of several dog bite forms to sort out and bingo, the SMT will have us all wearing muzzles soon.
‘Ward Profiles’ – made me wince, even though I’ve no idea what they are. On the ambulance down here in the south east we’ve just had a new patient report form introduced that’s as wide as a double duvet and so covered with tickable boxes it takes five minutes to fill in even if the call was a hoax. And if the patient doesn’t need to travel to hospital – a separate, Patient Non-Conveyance form. Yeuch!
Well I had a nice day at work…. cycling around the canal’s and parks, covering around 20 miles, meeting nice people and stopping to chat with them, whilst stopping and searching a couple of CRO’s. For the first time in god knows how long it felt like decent policing…paid…for cycling around…bliss!
I feel that as I have to walk around all day in the heat in a v. heavy stabbie it is my right and in fact duty to prevent myself from passing out by eating REALLY BIG ice creams with all manner of sickly toppings. Mmmmm……..
Interesting stories as ever!
Antipodean, I’m just going to be pedantic and point out that the EU has nothing to do with the Human Rights Act or the convention that it is based on.
“Mine even had a Metro-city Police badge on the front, which had it’s compensations when beating suspects in alleyways. Only kidding.”
I know it’s wrong to laugh but I couldn’t help myself.
Scotsmann88 are you sure about that?
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts1998/ukpga_19980042_en_1
(1) A court or tribunal determining a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention right must take into account any—
(a) judgment, decision, declaration or advisory opinion of the European Court of Human Rights.
The 1998 Act was introduced in Britain to bring us in line with the European Human Rights Convention which itself came from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948.
The European Court is fundamentally the legal arm of the EU