Police Officer Mentality

I can't speak for all police officers. My experiences will be different to every other police officer in the world. My opinions will be different. However, I know hundreds of police officers, personally and professionally. My friends are all police officers. I know police officers' mentality. There are certain consistencies and aggravations that appear to be broadly shared. Now it may be that my experiences are biased toward the thinking of a London officer, but I suspect not.

Let me say this, police officers are generally good people. In fact, in my experience, a vast majority of officers are good people, trying to do good things. Newspapers and television appear to be painting police officers as the modern day Boogeyman, but they are an easy scape goat.

Police services do not generally defend themselves publicly in the media. Among police officers, when a story hits the headlines, they know that eventually it will be concluded that the police made errors, it was their fault. The public need somebody to blame and the police services seem to fill that role both effectively and happily. Unfortunately, this does somewhat dampen the morale and good will of officers who strive to help others, or hinder them respectively.

Within 'The Job' morale is not seen as an important issue. Senior Leaders are concentrating on efficiency and money saving, possibly rightly so. But to completely neglect the importance of officers' mental well being and morale is dangerous. You have to keep your workforce somewhat happy in any business or service. Any retail manager will tell you that a happy, content employee will sell more, attend more and have a positive influence on both the atmosphere and sales figures of a store than an employee who feels unhappy, exploited and cheated.

So what are all these officers whinging about?

Well, I'll outline a few gripes that seem to come up time and again in my daily work life.

Minimum Strength - An emergency response team will cover one borough, normally out of one police station and will answer calls made to the public from emergency (or i graded calls, with a 14 minute response time maximum) to non-emergency calls (s graded calls with a maximum 1 hour response and e graded, with a maximum 72 hour response, hence why they are sometimes dubbed 'eventually calls'). Borough to borough it varies how many police officers are needed on a response team but, somewhere down the line, it has been decided that each borough will have its own minimum strength for that borough's response team. For example, let's imagine where I work the minimum strength is 20 officers. That means the Met Police have decided that to have less than 20 officers on a response team at any one time is unsafe for both the public and those officers on duty. Teams may have 35 officers on but they may be at court, or abstracted at any time or on annual leave, but never should a team fall below 20 officers. Every officer in London knows how easily and how often the strength of their team falls 10-20% below the minimum strength, usually at a weekend when people are most needed. That not only puts us officers at risk, but if you need the police urgently, it may be a long time before there are officers free to get to you. "So tell the Senior Leadership Team!" I hear you scream "They have to do something about it!". Well, no. I've heard many officers bring this issue up to Senior Officers who have the power and influence to remedy this situation and the answer is always the same. It goes along the lines of not letting officers have annual leave when they really want it to be with their families in order to maintain minimum strengths. Morale sapping I'm sure you'll agree.

Equipment - Next time you see a police officer on the street, go  and ask them how long it took them to log onto a computer that day. I'll leave that there. There you go, you have homework. This doesn't take into account the almost impossibility of acquiring new uniform, getting hold of an ESD (roadside breath test), enforcer (the big red thing we use to smash your door in if you need us, or you're hding from us!) etc etc etc. Oh, and while you're talking to that officer about the computers, ask him about the state of the toilets at his station (make sure you have digested your lunch first). Officers work in squalid, cramped conditions in old decaying buildings. Morale sapping I'm sure you'll agree.

The Judiciary - As I have outlined before, I've been on a response team for nearly a decade. Safe to say we are still arresting the same people, for the same offences now as we were when I started. Literally, the same people. The same people are burgling people's houses now as when I arrested them for burglary 9 years ago. They've been arrested for it many times since as well. And convicted. Truth sentencing is too short and they are soon out doing it again and again and it's YOU who suffers. I've reported hundreds of burglaries in my time and most of the time I can tell who has done it just by the methods used and the items taken, not enough to secure a conviction obviously. The same people now are breaking into your cars overnight as were doing it 9/10 years ago when I joined, and theyve been arrested and presented to a court dozens of times.

Police Backbone - The police service (not police force, that would be intimidating) in the UK has no backbone. Let me use one example to prove my case. We do not chase mopeds. Someone on a moped could commit any offence in front of a police car and that police car will not be allowed to chase it. They can just ride off at a leisurely pace. Why? Because we wouldn't want them to fall off and hurt themselves would we? There has been a massive increase in moped enabled crime in London recently, and this is because criminals know that only a select few police cars (and i do mean few) can chase them. If you were to bring this to the attention of the SLT (Senior Leadership Team) they would say that they are working at increasing the amount of response drivers who are able to pursue mopeds. I can tell you from an officer who is out there everyday, that on my team the last person to get a driving course was well over 18 months ago and there is no sign of anyone getting one in the near future.

These are merely a few gripes that scratch the surface. Keep reading, stay with me and I'll give you a full overview of the general misery of police officers in the UK at the current time.

Anonymous Bobby

Ask a Police Officer

Hello World, I'm Anonymous Bobby.

I'm a serving, front line police officer in London, UK where I have worked for a little under a decade. I work in response policing, meaning that I am out on the streets in a patrol car responding to your 999 emergency calls.

I have plenty to tell you. I've Tasered people. I've performed CPR on people (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). I've chased hardened criminals through the streets of London. I've arrested people for most offences from attempted murder down to burglary. I've carefully led a boy who had been abused through the reporting process. I've hugged your loved ones as they cried. I've been in car chases. I've met death so often that he and I are like old friends. I've talked people off the edge of a bridge, I've watched others jump. I've stood toe to toe with maniacs with knives. I've seen you at your best, more often at your worst. This is a cruel and dark world and I want to share it with you.

Why am I anonymous? Because I want to be honest with you. There are some hard truths about policing, and human beings in general, that I want to speak about on this blog and I fear that those within the Metropolitan Police will be displeased about me doing so. The police in England are all about transparency, so an experienced frontline officer should be free to share his thoughts and experiences without censorship. A blog such as this is rare as everyday police officers are everyday people, with families and commitments. One wrong word against 'The Job' (this is how officers refer to their occupation) could be your last as a police officer. Officers are warned repeatedly against Facebook, Twitter and all social media. What is it we are scared of people finding out? The thing is, I don't care anymore. The UK would be a better place if the public could see the world through the eyes of the men and women who police their streets.

So come with me. I'll take you through my day to day life as a police officer. I'll reminisce on the last decade and recount the stories and people that have stuck with me. I'll address, frankly, the controversies that surround policing in the UK.

Some names and minor details may be altered in order to try and maintain both my own and others' anonymity but I will keep this blog as factually correct and honest as I can, despite how difficult to swallow some truths may be.

Welcome. Buckle up. It's a stormy world out there when you're on the frontline.

Anonymous Bobby