Please read this story from a great Blog. When you drop by, please mention where you came from.

She is a young woman struggling but surviving with mental health problems. She writes about her dealings with her local police officers when she was suicidal, and her relationship with them now.

I learned a lot from the plain and simple honesty with which she writes, and a lesson about how people think when we are dealing with them.

You can teach an old dog new tricks (I’m not ‘old’ by the way).

Emergency Service Bloggers - Please link to her page. Thanks.

Gadget Diversity Note: No elderly Inspectors were hurt in the writing of this post.

In the last financial year, when Police Performance was our religion, we had a “Reward and Recognition” policy as part of our plan. This meant that we endlessly wrote letters to each others managers saying how good we were, the managers wrote back, on behalf of the Chief, saying ‘thanks’, and it all went into our Personnel Files.

Now that Citizen Focus is the new religion, it’s letters from the public that count. I received one the other day from Mrs Dorkins.

She wrote about how nicely she was told by Sgt Dan that there was nothing we could do about her burglary.

Down on The Swamp there was a three car pile up. A local criminal was ‘making off’ at speed from a patrol after a burglary when he smashed into two innocent drivers coming the other way. The police car arrived about three minutes later. This makes it our fault. The police driver has her ‘ticket’ withdrawn while we ‘investigate’ her actions.

The Control Room Inspector can see his pension and the last 25 years of his service going down the creek, so he calls the pursuit off, despite the fact that there are no serious injuries.

Result: A local burglar gets away, a police officer under investigation, a householder loses their property and two innocent drivers stare incredulously as we abandon the chase.

You don’t have to make it up.

Ravers are citizens too you know!

Besides, now that you can’t smoke in Pubs and Clubs, what’s a girl to do?

Come on angry residents; live a little, you never know…….. you might enjoy it!

After all, if the organiser had been prosecuted, he would have been sentenced to………. nothing!

Gadget Note: Clearly, if any drug offences take place at Raves, Inspector Gadget would be the first to order the immediate arrest of any person involved. Or not. Depending upon the Government’s classification of the particular drug. Or not. Confused? So is everybody.

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.

Shock, Horror, Scandal! A hapless Norfolk Inspector has been caught cynically trying to meet Crime Reduction targets by asking his troops to only crime things that are……well, crimes! What a cheeky fellow!

This is an “ethically recorded” crime damaged window in Norfolk.

Deputy Chief Constable Ian Learmonth of Norfolk Police said:

“We work to very high standards and will not tolerate any attempts to falsify crime figures”.

“The constabulary has one of the best-resourced teams of crime recording auditors in the country - a team of three people dedicated solely to monitoring the ethical recording of crime in the county”

“This demonstrates our commitment to accurate and ethical crime recording processes and it is these processes that lead to accurate data. Further more, we would never allow a Staff Officer to follow our former Chief to London and help him spend £15 grand on hotel rooms, ahem”

Yup. And monkeys might fly out of my butt. Actually, he didn’t say that last bit.

This is a storm damaged window in Ruralshire. Spot the difference?

I would now like to further add to the national scandal by declaring that I don’t want my Response Team to attend road accidents that aren’t, well….. road accidents. They must not go to shops where there is no evidence of shoplifting and they are banned from issuing speeding tickets to drivers who are not speeding.

On a happier note; if the media think this story is bad, wait until they read my book. Oh Lordy, Lordy!

We had one of the busiest Bank Holiday weekends I can remember. I personally worked at least one 14 hour day. I can’t tell you what happened because a lot of it was in the newspapers.

Back home the LOLcats finally managed to successfully ambush Kibble Chops on the upstairs landing. Battle cat took a right pounding but Big cat managed to “scratch and run”. Ugly.

It was also my beautiful niece’s birthday. Happy Birthday to the best footballer in her class!

Imagine my deep joy at the prospect of Tuesday’s “Performance Meeting”, where the fresh and rested sit in judgement over the tired and dirty.

The meeting was hysterical in a nervous kind of way. The Hate Crime Unit were ritually humiliated for the increase in Hate Crime (from 2 to 3 by the way) and the “Community Cohesion Unit” were congratulated for their success in encouraging more victims of Hate Crime to come forward (from 2 to 3 strangely enough).

Someone has to loose; they take turns.

Note: Definition of Hate Crime? Any crime which anyone thinks is a Hate Crime. Anyone spookily includes the Community Cohesion Unit, in whose interests an increase in reporting sits!

Next time you hear a politician claim that crime can be dealt with effectively by somehow reorganising the police, give a thought to Wayne from Ruraltown.

Last week, Wayne was on Bail for punching his elderly mother in the face. He went back to the house (breaching his Bail conditions) and pushed his elderly father down the stairs. Wayne was drunk at the time and had gone round to “persuade” his mother to drop charges against him.

He was quickly arrested by police from F Division and remanded in our custody by CID. Wayne went to Court the next day and was released on Bail again!

This time, they gave him a curfew as well as the usual “not to contact named witnesses”. Thing is, these offences were committed during the day. Never mind. Curfew it is.

Naturally, his behaviour reinforced several times by the Court (i.e. no consequences) Wayne became drunk, and went around to his parents address. We attended and he was arrested.

Police found him with a can of petrol and a lighter at the back of the house.

Three arrests, a home safety package (which worked - hence arrest number three) two Remand Applications, three taped interviews and two Court appearances.

Someone tell me where the police have failed here?

All the fellatious talk about “Safer Neighbourhoods” and “Citizen Focus” are for nought if someone fails to grip the wretched situation with Magistrates.

The book is out in August.

Clearly, it is very difficult to tell what kind of Police we will be in August 2008. Will we be Intelligence Lead? Will we still be Citizen Focused? Will we still care about Detected Crime Rates? Did we ever?

Here is a plan. I’ll take the piss out of all of it.

To anyone who thinks:

“Here is another shameless plan to fund Gadget’s enormous appetite for Doughnuts and coffee”

I would simply say this:

“Correct. Doughnuts are expensive and the bakery deserves to be paid like everyone else”

However; I will try and expose the most appalling sham of the last 10 years in the process (except for Education, the NHS, the Prisons, the Railways, the Water Companies and the two Wars). Actually, it’s probably NOT the most appalling sham in the last 10 years having looked again at that list, but it is the one I know most about!

One of the things I want from this book is for Gadget fans to be able to have something to carry around and dip into every now and again. I know it’s a pain to have to “log on” all the time to see what madness is going on in Ruralshire.

To the Chief Constable of Ruralshire Constabulary I would simply like to say this:

“Please don’t fire me”.

“Perverting The Course Of Justice” will sell a lot of copies. Debbie has a large family!

The Chief Constable of Ruralshire Constabulary has paid a secret visit to police officers on the front line in Ruraltown.

His visit to F Division lasted three hours. One Constable claims to have actually seen him over all the big hats of his entourage.

During the visit, the Chief issued a statement saying:

“I have now met all those aspiring for the upcoming Superintendent’s Promotion Board, and I would like to say how flattered I was by all the compliments they paid to me”

Asked by a local reporter if he had met the infamous Inspector Gadget, the Chief replied:

“Inspector who?”

He was then swept away in a high powered Volvo, flanked by a unit we have never actually seen before (despite the huge cost of maintaining it) called “The Motorbike Unit”.

People ask me why Ruralshire Constabulary no longer have a Drug Squad.

First, Drug Squads were for a time before just about every criminal was on drugs. Now you have to be a professor of Chemistry to understand the ever changing classifications and legal position of controlled drugs. Drug Squad officers were NOT professors of anything. Trust me on this.

Second, Drug Squads were for a time before junkies and their pushers were ‘victims’ themselves. They were also for a time when the Courts actually used to send people to prison, and for a time before illegal drugs were cheaper in prison than outside.

Third, the word “Squad” is banned (it reeks of the days when we actually used to go out and nick bad guys). Squads never used to offer prisoners twelve different types of Halal menu and four different types of herbal tea before interview (true story).

Finally, Terrorism is the ‘latest biggest thing’ despite killing far less people than Drugs. Something had to go to make way for the new religion.

The white silk scarf proves that Osama saw Elvis in Vegas.

It won’t surprise you to know that all the long haired, leather jacketed, roll-up out of the side of the mouth operatives have now left the Drug Squads and transferred to……………… the Counter Terrorist Teams. If they are as competent as they were last time around, there should be a fundamentalist terrorist waiting to kill everyone and go straight to heaven on every street corner in Ruraltown by 2012.

Note: Please don’t write in and tell me that illegal drugs are linked to terrorists. Nobody likes a smart-arse!