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Policeman's blog lifts lid on diversity madness
by PC David Copperfield Last updated at 14:52pm on 14th October 2006
What do you think the police actually do? If you watch a lot of telly, you probably think we spend all day roaring about in our souped-up cars, kicking down doors and shooting people.
That is, when we're not unravelling murder mysteries while swanning round in old Jags and listening to classical music.
I'm not sure I thought it was going to be quite that exciting or glamorous when I joined up, but I certainly had visions of nicking lots of criminals and keeping the streets safe.
It turns out, it isn't quite like that. The signs were there on my first day at training school. I joined the job in my late 20s, a graduate and a married man with a mortgage to pay and several years working in industry behind me.
Three days later, we were still talking about prejudice and discrimination; burglars had to wait while we set about changing the racist, homophobic and male-dominated world in which we lived.
We rookies wanted to get on with what we fondly imagined policing was all about: putting baddies in jail — whether they were straight, black, women, or gay white men was a matter of supreme indifference to us.
And since then, in all my service, no crime victim has ever mentioned 'diversity' or asked if they could have a police officer of a different sex or colour.
But amid all the diversity training, and rote learning of various statutes, and the occasional bit of marching, nobody seemed very interested in telling us how to investigate crimes.
Important stuff, you'd think, but we didn't hear a dickie bird about it. It couldn't be that the police weren't actually all that interested in catching criminals, could it?
Standing on the parade square in my smart new uniform after four months of training, I still had no idea what a crook might look like. Still, I was absolutely desperate to get out there and put what skills I had into practice.
Several years on, and now in my 30s, I'm still a bobby, an ordinary policeman in a nondescript town in England — let's call it Newtown. I'm much like the vast majority of my fellow officers: I don't want to fit innocent people up, I don't want to arrest huge numbers of black people just because of their skin colour and I'm not a violent Nazi.
I love my job, especially the bit where I get to chase after thieves and arrest them. After all, that's why I joined. The problem is, I hardly ever get to do that. I actually spend most of my life filing, stapling and writing: forms, reports, statements, emails, exhibits.
This is a diary of my working life over the past year or so. I've changed the names and dates to protect the guilty and my name isn't PC David Copperfield. But I am a real policeman, and everything you'll read here has happened to me.
My morning shift begins at 7am, and today I was on my own at the morning parade. I don't mean I had got the wrong room — I mean I was the only uniformed officer on duty that day, in a town of about 60,000 people.
True, there were other uniformed officers inside the police station but as for officers able to deploy to a call from a member of the public, there was only me. The 'thin blue line' had become one very insignificant dot.
Even at full strength, we're never going to be particularly terrifying to criminals: there should have been three others, not including the sergeant. But one was sick, one was on a course and the other was due at court later that day.
My first job was a criminal damage case where a local youth had remodelled someone else's garden fence. I arrested and cautioned him then I returned to the address to take witness statements.
One of them was from the old man to whom the fence belonged, who was close to tears. 'Him and his mates are always hanging around here, drinking lager and smoking,' he said.
'Their language is appalling and I don't want my wife to have to listen to it. When I asked them to go, they threatened me and he started smashing the fence up. I can't understand it.' 'Yes, it is a tough one, sir,' I said. 'Why aren't they at work or school or something?' he said.
Good question. Half a century ago, this sort of mindless, aggressive criminal damage rarely happened, and certainly not in broad daylight in front of witnesses. Can it possibly be that the perpetrators don't fear the forces of law and order any more?
Back at the nick, I waited for the youth's defence solicitor and wrote a report to the Crown Prosecution Service (the CPS, which decides on whether suspects will be charged). After an hour of consultation I was told to charge him with criminal damage. I took his fingerprints and DNA.
I had arrested my suspect just after 4pm and at 12.30 am the following morning, I completed all the paperwork. I celebrated by spending half an hour patrolling the town centre before booking off duty.
Would you rather your tax was spent paying for an entire shift dealing with one fence-wrecking moron, or would you prefer a little less time was wasted on paperwork and a bit more walking the streets?
I know that's not the sort of question the police normally ask people, but I thought you might like to think about it. I'd also like you to think about violence.
The word conjures up disturbing images for people not used to calling the police. For people who regularly call the police, though, the word 'violence' is just difficult to spell.
The trivial nature of most reports of violence has to be seen to be believed; a litany of failed relationships, petty neighbourly disputes and outbursts of anger, which, in the topsy-turvy world of police bureaucracy and the underclass, create trivial crimes to be detected.
They're not always trivial, of course. Sometimes 30 brawling youths are still going strong when we arrive, which is mildly unsettling.
It all kicked off in a big way like that at the weekend. We had a proper punch-up, with batons drawn, heads cracked and a few people left nursing bloody noses. Not nice. I don't like fighting — but what is worst of all, though, is fighting with girls.
My natural instinct, as an unreformed caveman, is to protect females. Ha, ha. Given a few Vodka Red Bulls and an errant boyfriend, the average Lycra-clad chav-woman will take on a full shift of officers, and possibly win.
After years as a police officer, I have long given up expecting people to act in a certain way — women to behave with decorum, parents to look after their children.
Take a call I had recently. 'A 12-year-old girl has been missing for a few days,' said my radio. 'Please attend the address.' I tried to get the details from her mum and mum's partner but this was a bit difficult over the noise of daytime television.
I wasn't getting anywhere so I set off. My first call was to the girl's school — and there she was. I returned to the house — some 800 yards from the school. 'She's at school, she's fine,' I said. 'That's no good,' said her mum, one eye on the TV. 'I want her back here.'
'How about nipping up there to see her yourself? I haven't got a car', she replied.
'Well, the school is only up the road. You could walk.'
'I'm registered disabled. Look,' she continued, as though speaking to an idiot. 'She could be out there being abused right now. I want her back here. It's your responsibility if she gets abused.'
She shut the door in my face. I collected the girl and brought her home. 'Could you please ensure she doesn't run off in the future?' I asked.
'No,' said her mum. 'I can't do nothing about it. I'm not stopping in all night.'
'But you're registered disabled,' I said. 'Where are you going?'
'Out.'
'So if she goes again will you call the police?'
'Yes, it's your responsibility.'
Next time you get burgled, you know where to find me: I'll be out looking for children whose parents can't be bothered to look for them themselves.
Despite working at the bottom of the policing pile, as I do, I have firm ideas about policing which are reflected in the work of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of Maricopa County, Arizona.
He charges his inmates for their meals, banned smoking and porn magazines in his jail and cut off all TV. He made them work on chain gangs in the heat and when they complained, said: 'It's 120 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers have to wear full battle gear. They didn't commit any crimes. If you don't like it here, don't come back!'
Our politicians say they look across the Atlantic for solutions to our problems with law and order.
What they're really looking for are Tony Blair's famous 'eye-catching initiatives': meaningless soundbites, which they can trot out to make themselves sound tough before forgetting them the next week (marching yobs to cashpoints, anyone?).
As for actually implementing some of the things which have led to the dramatic falls in crime experienced in many major U.S. cities, that's quite another matter.
The reality of U.S. law enforcement — long, hard prison sentences, locally accountable chiefs implementing zero tolerance policies — is too much for most Chief Constables. The result is that the best ideas are quietly ignored as being too 'confrontational'.
The name of the game in the UK is keeping your head beneath the parapet. So our police service has become a vast bureaucracy created with the sole aim of covering backs, avoiding complaints and blaming other people.
Notice I've made no mention of numbers, which people go on about. That's because although the NYPD is well-staffed I think the problem in the UK is how we deploy our police. Look at the facts. The UK population has risen over the past century, from 38 million in 1901 to around 60 million today.
In the same period, the number of police has risen from around 40,000 to close to 130,000 now (ie it has more than trebled). What about crime? Well, the number of indictable offences known to the police in 1900 was 2.4 for every 1,000 of the population. In 1997, the figure was 89.1. I'd put my house on the fact that it's gone up since then.
A cynic might interpret these figures as showing that the police are actually causing crime. Obviously, I wouldn't go that far. But I do wonder this: where are all these new police officers and what are they doing?
I had a sombre visit to make in the small hours, to see an 18-year-old girl who'd had an argument with her boyfriend and was frightened he was going to come back and attack her.
She lived in a grubby flat, behind a flimsy wooden door. Bedsheets, children's clothes and rubbish were strewn throughout. In the corner was a television, with DVD and CD players and a Nintendo Gamecube alongside.
The girl (like so many who spend their lives catering to the whims of the moment) had gone drinking in town, leaving her two kids with her boyfriend — not their father — and that had been at the bottom of the row.
The children were well-behaved but, dressed in dirty pyjamas. It was 3am and they were eating crisps and staring at me with dark-rimmed, saucer eyes. A feeling of depression came over me — it always does, whenever kids are involved.
There was nothing I could do because their mother had not been the victim of a real crime (the boyfriend hadn't actually beaten her up) so I started talking to her. 'This isn't great, is it?' I said. 'Your kids up at this time of night, me here. Have you thought of ditching him and finding someone to make a commitment to you, marry you?'
'I'm only 18, too young to marry.' I looked at the children; I wanted to point out the obvious, but refrained.
Eventually I left, feeling profoundly depressed: here was a young mother, bringing up two children in relative squalor, with no aspirations and no ability to see further than the next few hours.
Like so many, she had been soft-soaped by welfare agencies anxious to preserve her independence and her ability to make 'informed choices'.
The problem is that the choices people like this make are, almost invariably, the wrong ones, and the result is the systematic neglect of young children and the growth of our underclass.
Round these parts, love for one's children is articulated at high volume, to save turning off the television, and it's usually peppered with expletives.
It's a love that has quite defined limits though: insufficient to warrant meals at regular times and without chips, for example, but at the same time effusive enough to ensure the provision of great quantities of designer sportswear.
The simplest way of identifying members of the underclass is to watch the Trisha show on ITV in the mornings. Its ethos has so permeated their minds that their every conversation is littered with possible lines from the show.
My favourite exchange was this one. Female (arrested for assault): 'I think it was really a cry for help.'
Me: 'Really? I think you just have no idea how to behave.'
Back at the station, I caught up on some filing. I also took five minutes to flick through a back issue of CJS Now, 'The quarterly magazine for all those working within the Criminal Justice Sytem'. The best feature is Competition Corner. The judge is none other than the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith.
Perhaps the winner of a CJS competition will be the prosecutor who has secured the most jail time, or the police officer who has arrested the most villains? But no. The winner here has to come up with a suggestion 'to improve our service to victims and witnesses'.
I wrote off suggesting putting more offenders behind bars, but the winner was David French from the Criminal Justice Performance Directorate (whatever that rather Stalinist-sounding organisation is) who suggested: 'Encouraging judges and magistrates to recognise and explicitly thank witnesses in court'.
Yep, that should do it, David.
I realise, of course, that this business of putting crooks in jail is awfully inconvenient. I'm sure lots of you, like me, are kept awake at night worrying about prison overcrowding.
It's certainly been bothering Lord Chief Justice Phillips of Worth Matravers. Recently, his Lordship suggested that offenders should be sent to jail only 'as a last resort' and should be rehabilitated in the community instead.
Why not let them be rehabilitated chez Phillips? Lady Phillips could keep an eye on the family silver while Lord Phillips developed a better understanding of what persistent acquisitive criminals are really like.
Because I suspect that, living in his large, well-guarded house in a posh, crime free area, he has no idea. And I ask you this: when it comes to deciding on how criminals should be dealt with, is Lord Chief Justice Phillips of Worth Matravers a chap you trust?
Unlike him, I spend my life at the sharp end. And if it was left to me, one of the first things we'd do to sort out crime would be screamingly obvious. Get more coppers out on the beat, feeling collars.
Trouble is, that's not how a lot of my colleagues like to spend their time. They prefer sitting behind desks. As I arrived at work this morning and drove round hunting for a space in the station car park, I was struck by two questions. Do all these cars belong to people who work in our building? And what do they all do?
The answer, of course, is that they are very busy. In the civil service, waste is not only tolerated but actually officially encouraged. Police are civil servants in uniform and we take a massive amount every year from the public purse. Virtually everything that isn't spent on pensions gets spent on salaries, though rarely for 'proper' policemen.
I've been summoned to meetings where there has been standing room only, yet down the corridor only three front line officers have booked on duty. We have huge police stations in prime town centre locations with only four officers on duty after midnight.
Despite this huge expenditure, and the massive numbers of people employed by the police, we remain resolutely unaccountable. Of course, if crime goes down we take the credit, but if it goes up we blame society or say it's just in your imagination.
What would make a difference?
I would start by getting rid of 25 per cent of civilians and desk jockeys and using the money saved to bring in more frontline officers. I'd have them under the command of directly-elected Chief Constables, responsible to their local electorate. I'd also bring in mandatory five-year jail sentences for first-time burglars and remove the Human Rights Act from UK law.
I hate being in the town centre at chucking out time of a weekend. For some reason, people can't go out for a quiet drink, maybe have a curry and then get a cab back home.
Instead, they chuck gallons of fizzy lager and alcopops down their necks, vomit and urinate everywhere and then refuse to disperse without having a good fight first (and that's just the women).
My preferred solution would be to drive a water cannon up the High Street at 2.30am and wash all the gobby scumbags away. Sadly, we're not allowed to do that. If you're a criminal reading this and you want to commit a crime, my advice is, do it on a Saturday night. All the police are busy trying to stop people from fighting in town centres across the land.
The rest of the time, we're logging detection rates and helping the Government take your money, waste it and then tell you lies about crime figures. This is all down to an official scam, perpetrated on you, the public, by the police and our paymasters, involving 'Administrative Detections'.
Police forces across the length and breadth of Britain love them because they make us appear as though we're solving more crimes than ever. They were started because people worried about how the police were recording crime.
For example, one force might record a burglar breaking into five bedsits in a building as one crime, while another might record it as five crimes. This would lead to one force having (on paper, at least) a higher rate of burglary than the other.
To solve the problem, the government has introduced the National Crime Recording Standard. This is designed to ensure that if a member of the public reports a crime it will be recorded as such, no ifs or buts.
It works like this: there's a playground fight between Wayne and Dwayne. Neither boy is really hurt and neither wants to press charges. Simultaneously, a man is punched in the shopping centre and he does want to press charges.
Under the new scheme, each incident is now treated equally, which means that, if it's reported, it will be allocated a crime number. Whereas, in the old days, Wayne would have got a ticking-off, now — because it has been reported — we must create a crime number, and this means we have to solve, or 'detect' it.
If we don't, it's on our force crime records as an unsolved crime and the Chief Constable, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister don't want that, because spiralling crime rates are electoral poison.
So, what do we do?
We convince Wayne and Dwayne to make quick statements saying they won't give evidence in court. Then we can file the matter as solved. Hey presto! — that's one detected crime, for the record, filed away, in a drawer, for ever.
If we never find our shopping centre assaulter, well, that's not great, but at least our crime figures over the two incidents will show a 50 per cent detection rate.
I have to say, I'd prefer the traditional approach of a stern talking-to (time involved: ten minutes) than all that statement-taking and form-filling (time involved: hours and hours) for essentially the same result. However, the scam is much, much cleverer than that.
Eighty playground fights, detected, and 20 serious assaults, undetected, gives you an overall detection rate of 80 per cent. That looks an awful lot better than a detection rate of zero for your 20 serious assaults, doesn't it?
It's genius! We've artificially inflated our detection rate by artificially inflating our crime rate with 'crimes' we know we can 'detect'. But what it means is that the detection rates the Home Office brags about are, effectively, completely phoney.
But we live in a world of spin, don't we? We don't expect the Government to be telling the truth, surely?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some paperwork to do. I'll be back on Monday with some more stories to make your skin crawl — in the meantime, mind how you go.
Adapted from WASTING POLICE TIME: THE CRAZY WORLD OF THE WAR ON CRIME by PC David Copperfield, published by Monday Books at £7.99. © PC David Copperfield 2006. To order a copy (p&p free), log on to www.mondaybooks.com
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Now what do you think dear Pollers, what do you think indeed?
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Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of Maricopa County, Arizona.Hit em where it hurts
