Things Not To Do: Losing Your Warrant Card

According to PC Perky our friend Special K managed to lose her warrant card while having drinks in the pub with five senior officers. Now she has to go down NSY and ‘explain’ what happened to the powers that be. Whatever else happens – there will be forms.

Warrant cards are very important because a) they identify you as a sworn constable with powers of arrest and detention and, in my case, a member of an organisation with more people in uniform than the Swedish Army. This can be a very comforting thought when you’re confronting belligerent drunks at three o’clock in the morning – especially if they’re from Stockholm.

They also b) get you free travel on the tube, trains and buses. That’s why most officers working in Central London live in the suburbs and commute, bigger house, cheap commute and the only draw back is that you’re living in the suburbs. Not me I now have the best rent free digs in the history of policing – with free food thrown in.

EDIT: NSY stands for New Scotland Yard.

The TSG

Because sometimes more really is more!

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The TSG are the Territorial Support Group. These are the guys that tool around in Mercedes Sprinter vans with equipment lockers stuffed with everything from riot helmets to tasers. Every borough command has a couple of these buzzing around their operational area, especially at closing time, and there’s a reserve force held on standby just in case of unexpected events. I suspected that current events counted as unexpected.

Chapter 12: The Last Resort

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We may take the piss, and we do, but sometimes, when you’re facing off against a pub full belligerent drunks or a hen party that’s just gone very very wrong there’s nothing quite as comforting as a TSG van pulling up to the curb. Because they only turn up when things go pear shaped they have most complaints of any branch of the Metropolitan Police. This allows us ordinary coppers to don our halos and basically blame everything that goes wrong on them.

The Iain West Forensic Suite

Its official name is the Iain West Forensic Suite, and it represents the Home Office’s best attempt to make one of its mortuaries look as cool as the ones in American TV shows. In order to keep filthy policemen from contaminating any trace evidence on the body, there was a special viewing area with live autopsies piped in by closed-circuit television. This had the effect of reducing even the most grisly post-mortem to nothing more than a gruesome TV documentary.

Chapter 2: Ghost Hunting Dog

The forensic suite is attached to Westminster Mortuary and is named after the cheerfully flamboyant pathologist Iain West. A man who’d had his gloved fingers inside the vitals of such luminaries as Robert Maxwell and Jill Dando and it’s down to him that we have a computerised database of injury photographs – never access this on a full stomach by the way. I personally could do without ever going in there again – thank you very much.

The End of My Probation

The Metropolitan Police Service is still, despite what people think, a working-class organisation and as such rejects totally the notion of an officer class. That is why every newly minted constable, regardless of their educational background, has to spend a two-year probationary period as an ordinary plod on the streets. This is because nothing builds character like being abused, spat at and vomited on by members of the public.

Towards the end of your probation you start applying for positions in the various branches, directorates and operational command units that make up the force. Most probationers will continue on as full uniformed constables in one of the borough commands, and the Met hierarchy likes to stress that deciding to remain a uniformed constable doing vital work on the streets of London is a positive choice in and of itself. Somebody has to be abused, spat at and vomited on, and I for one applaud the brave men and women who are willing to step up and serve in that role.

Chapter 1: Material Witness

Metropolitan Police Ranks

PC or Police Constable: the brave men and women that are the back bone of the Police Service, out in all hours and weather to be selflessly spat at, abused and vomited on by members of the public. I for one salute them especially since I'm now no longer one of them.

DC or Detective Constable (DC): someone who has passed their detective exam and got a nice job in CID or a specialist unit. Try to get here as soon as possible in your career unless you've got your eye on ACPO (1).

Sergeant or Detective Sergeant (DS): Even more exams, even more paperwork, even more responsibility but on the other hand you get to boss people about. If you're friendly you can call a Detective Sergeant by their first name but I like to stick to sarge, guv or boss - just to be on the safe side.

Inspector or Detective Inspector (DI): this is where you get to be in charge of stuff, a shift, a specialist unit, one third of a murder squad. I've been told it's not as much fun as it sounds but I think I'll wait and see.

Chief Inspector or Detective Chief Inspector (DCI): Here you walk the razors edge between the light, ordinary plain speaking coppers, and the darkness, business speak obsessed control freaks. You will be a running a nick or a murder squad, people below you will be coming to you with their problems and will expect you to know what to do, your superiors will be coming to you with their problems and will expect you to sort them out!

Superintendent or Detective Superintendent (DSI): My boss is a DCI, in fact everybody I know's boss is a DCI. I don't know the precise purpose or function of this rank I just bloody well do what I'm told.

Chief Superintendent or Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS): Congratulations you are as high as you can go without selling your soul to ACPO(2). You are in charge of a entire Borough Command or a major specialised unit you definately have your own parking space that much is certain.

ACPO(3): stands for the Association of Chief Police Officers, a dark and sinister conspiracy that is part trade union, part coordinating committee for all the police forces and part NGO. You are inducted into ACPO when you reach the rank of Commander, beyond that are Deputy Assistant Commissioners, the Assistant Commissioners who stand at the left and right of the Commissioner himself, the Deputy Commissioner and finally the Commissioner himself.

(1) I'll explain later.
(2) Patience.
(3) See I said I'd explain later.

HOLMES 2

Every police station in the country has at least one HOLMES suite. This is the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, which allows computer-illiterate coppers to join the late twentieth century. Getting them to join the twenty-first century would be too much to ask for.

Everything related to a major investigation is kept on the system, allowing detectives to cross-reference data and avoid the kind of cock-up that made the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper such an exemplary operation. The replacement to the old system was due to be called SHERLOCK, but nobody could find the words to make the acronym work so they called it HOLMES 2.

You don’t get to use HOLMES for every day crime that’s what AWARE is for, as MERLIN is anything to do with kids, CRIS is for crime reports and ENCOW is for training programmes. The POLICE NATIONAL COMPUTER (PNC) is something else entirely. When you log in into HOLMES you have to use your warrant number which means the operators can track you make an unauthorised inquiry.

Case Progression Unit

Motto: We do paperwork so real coppers don't have to.

The theory behind the Case Progression Unit is very sound, police officers, so the established wisdom has it, are drowning in paperwork, suspects have to be logged in, the chain of evidence must never be broken and the politicians and PACE, the Police And Criminal Evidence Act, must be followed to the letter. The role of the Case Progression Unit is to do the paperwork for the hard pressed constable so he or she can get back out on the street to be abused, spat at and vomited on. Thus will there be a bobby on the beat and thus shall crime be defeated and the good Daily Mail reading citizens of our fair nation shall live in peace.

The Sweeney: For real this time.

Motto: ‘We’re the Sweeney son and we haven’t had any dinner.’

For those of who are foreign or educated at a private school ‘The Sweeney’ is your actual Cockney rhyming slang for Flying Squad (Sweeney Todd = Flying Squad) which is in turn cop speak for the armed robbery squad of the Specialist Crime Directorate (which does what it says on the tin). Founded in the 1920s they made use of those new fangled horseless carriages to charge around apprehending criminals wherever they may be. I’m not going to say they were corrupt in the 1970s but during court appearances you couldn’t tell the cops from the robbers. They’re still the geezers with the tasty motors, the good suits and the handmade shoes that every proper London copper wants to be.

The Sweeney

What every proper red blooded London copper wants to be when he grows up.

Beware Angry Little People

Got this from Special-K who says it happened before Christmas but it made Lesley laugh so much she fell off her chair in the PC's writing room. Apparently they got a report of a women being set on fire at a pub on Dean Street. So she and a PC from my nick called Purdey tool over and find this distressed, and slightly singed, lady in a fur coat outside.

She tells them that a guy inside keeps trying to set her fur coat on fire. Purdey, wanting to look good in front of Special-K, assures the lady that he'll take care of this and would she be so kind as to enter the pub with him and indicate the miscreant with the wayward cigarette lighter.

In they duly go and there's the suspect, dressed for the opera including a cape and no more than four foot high not counting his top hat. He is, in short, what my dad would call a midget and what I'd call, being a PC PC, one of the little people.

Now the thing about being a policeman is you're supposed to loom in an intimidating manner over suspect and witness alike. In fact 90% of the job can be achieved through the deployment of tactical looming. Fights can be broken up, confessions extracted and motorists chastised with little aggro and, more importantly, less effort. But there's such a thing as overkill.

Poor Purdey couldn't work out what to do, did he stay upright and shout down at the top of the guys head, did he sit down, or kneel down? In the end he adopted a crouched stance which set the whole pub to laughing. Lesley said he should have picked up the 'little person' and stood him on a table.

Now the little guy was, in addition to being an opera buff, an animal's right nut which was why he was setting the lady's fur coat on fire -- as a protest. Purdey did his best to explain that free speech stops short of attempted arson but the little person wasn't having it. He considered nicking the little bastard but figured that slapping the handcuffs on would make him look even more of a prat.

The moral of this story is, unless you're sure nobody is watching, only pick on people your own size.

Charing Cross Nick

There are two good things about Charing Cross nick.

1) It's got the biggest custody suite in London so on weekdays you never have to worry about cell availability.

2) The Canteen runs 24/7 which means you can have bacon sandwich with your EAB even at 3 AM.