I nearly shocked myself SHOCK!

As I walked through the car park at Ruraltown nick last evening, I saw a full house of SMT so-called ‘pool cars’. It was almost as if they had parked them there as a joke. From left to right there was a Jaguar, a Mercedes and a BMW. All near top of the range, all new and all very shiny.

I was surprised because I had just finished a 12 hour shift, most of which was spent looking for a high risk, suicidal missing person during which I was constantly reminded about the lack of overtime budget and resources due to the ‘cuts’.

I was the Silver Commander for this incident. ‘Silver’ should be a qualified Chief Inspector but we don’t have one on F Division, again due to the cuts. Apparently there is a ban on expensive national training courses at the moment. This is because, the Chief told us the other day, we are only ‘broadly in line’ with the savings we need to make this year.

Clearly, these ‘savings’ do not extend to the considerable collection of luxury automotive engineering sitting in the SMT bays back at the nick.

We couldn’t get our shared helicopter (something to do with some light drizzle and a wisp of fog over some heliport two counties away) neither could I find a single available police dog in the whole Shire (training, I was informed, really? I thought, what, all of them?) and the only 4X4 we could find broke down on the way to the RVP.

Eventually, along with two-thirds of my own response team (which is not many trust me!) a handful of disgruntled Neighbourhood officers, clearly very bitter about having been taken away from their appointments (as calls to the police over trivial matters are now called) some keen but hapless PCSO’s from G Division with a complete Force Tactical Reserve Team fresh from the gym at Headquarters, we managed to form a staggered line and begin the search.

We were in thick woodland with deep bogs and streams crossing the small clearings to the west. To the East was the motorway and to the north a major river system. To the south, the badlands adjoining Metrocity, and the promise of a spare dog team (which never arrived).

As I stood at the RVP looking at my muddy old map with the police search advisor, I could see the dull orange glow from Metroland way off to the south. Behind us it was starting to become pitch black in the woods. Can I say that in the modern police service? But it was, pitch black that is. All the usual suspects came in to play. Lack of resilience in the airwaves batteries, Response on the phone begging for the vehicles back so they can start to attend the evening’s Facebook death-threats and a rude little man from the control room asking me something about an Op name for budget purposes.

I asked for emergency lighting and new power cells for the search lamps. His tone made me feel like a criminal.

A senior officer phoned me to ask, rather too abruptly for my liking, if I had started a ‘policy file’. Yes Sir, the officers who have been at the search site for eight hours are fine thanks. What the centre really want above anything else (including actually finding the poor man) is for the audit trail to be sound. Stop looking and start writing. That’s the ticket.

Suddenly a shout from one of the search team officers. His mucker from the control room has phoned him to say that the bloke has been found in a motorway service station 100 miles away with a pipe attached to the exhaust of his car. He is alive, but only just. Then we receive the formal broadcast MISPER found over the failing airwaves. At that precise moment, the helicopter arrives.

I now await my phone call, in about a month, where the Super will shout at me for ‘lack of performance’ on such and such date. When I get a word in, I will tell her that we were looking for a suicidal missing person all day. This will not wash with her. She is mad with ambition. And besides, she and the others have promised the elected police chief candidates that crime will fall on their watch, not that missing people will be found, or not found because they were never there, as in our case.

Is this your force? I bet it is.

Gadget Note: For the search enthusiasts: we were at the location because bizarrely, his shoe was found on the road leading through the area by a dog walker, who thought it was odd to find an office shoe in the countryside! On the face of it, good call!

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