Winter Time….

Turns out I’m not going to be the new Commissioner of the Metropolis after all…

Writing the letter asking to leave the job was one of the hardest things I think I’ve ever done, I sat there at my desk thinking about everything that had happened to me in my service, the good times and the bad, I think there were more good than bad really. Being at the scene of so many memorable events, getting to do things that most people would never even think about. I included some short anecdotes in my resignation letter, I think it was one of the best things I’ve ever written… It was three pages long… I gave it to the Supt and walked out in tears, only one person in the office knew what I was doing and she quickly ushered me into my office for tea and the good biscuits, and we waited… The boss will be in any second I’m sure, and I have my defences ready, he won’t talk me out of it…

*knock knock*
“What, on Earth, is this Wint?”
“Erm, it’s a resignation letter Sir. See it says so at the top”
“Yes but why”
“There’s three pages of why right there Sir”
“I can’t accept it, no don’t interrupt me, I can’t accept a letter. There’s a form…”

Of course there is, there’s always a form… Said form has surprisingly little free space for me to put anything more than a few lines, so I printed the extra onto an MG11 and attached it to the back…

I guess he asked a good question, why? It’s one I’m still asking myself now and probably will for quite some time. Briefly, it broke me to see my troops sleeping on the floor of a police station, it broke my heart to tell someone special that I was having to cancel our trip out again because of work. And these are just the things that come off the top of my head.

I love my job, The Job, for some people it’s just a job, for others though it’s a way of life. The job defines them and there is nothing to them but the job, it’s all consuming at times. Guess which category I fall into?
How many times have I had to call or text to say I can’t come out, how many parties have I missed? I did it all with a smile though (mostly) because I was in love with policing. I get to drive fast cars, and do cool things and I get paid for it. How many people can say that? I used t wake up excited about going to work, if I’d slept at all which sometimes was rare…

But for all of us there comes a time when the job asks too much, when it makes you late for something that’s too important to ask forgiveness for. And also, I am physically wrecked, I need a role where the temptation to do loads and loads of overtime isn’t there, I don’t know how to switch off, I don’t know if my new job is the right thing. Policing is the only job I’ve ever had, it’s all I know how to do and I find myself doing it instinctively now. But I’ve done it to the detriment of my physical health, and my mental wellbeing so now it’s time to make the break into the big wide world outside the nick.

I have a new job that means I can use many of my existing skills, means I will still get to see some amazing things and be one of the people who are on the frontline of something. I will even still have a badge. Just means I will work from 9 to 5 Monday to Friday and spend occasional days away during the year travelling.

This was a very hard decision to make, I think it’s the right one though. I hope it’s the right one…

Turns out policing ends just how it started, by filling out a form.

The Blair Gibbs Project

The BBC seem to be giving one of my comedy heroes Blair Gibbs some media attention. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14780735

“Officers should wear uniforms on their way to and from work to increase police visibility and help reassure the public, a think tank has suggested. The right-leaning Policy Exchange said in London that would equate to having an extra 1,200 officers on the streets.”

Perhaps in an alternate reality this is a good idea.

Earlier in the week I tweeted that I was no longer using my warrant card to obtain free travel. After weeks of working double shifts, with no rest days or annual leave and having daily been faced with the sight of scores of officers sleeping in the corridors of police stations because they could not make it home and back again in time for their next shift, I ended up fed up when for the second time in as many days I had got on a bus to start the journey home and the bus driver was calling for my assistance with some minor ticketing issue. The bus sat there refusing to move until I’d “dealt with him” (the chap who had the wrong ticket, or no Oyster credit or whatever). I had worked a succession of extended shifts and had not been able to get much more than a few snatched hours of sleep, yet here I was being asked to deal with a minor ticketing issue. I really could not be bothered (and to be honest had no clue what the correct course of action would have been anyway) so I paid the driver £2.20 for the chap’s fare and sat back down.

Now this is not unique to me (I admit am a trouble magnet on public transport!) and I know several other officers who will not brief it on the buses. Your anonymity goes straight out the window. You no longer get to make the decision about what level of response Incidents require, no more quietly sitting and being a professional witness; you are ‘outed’ to the entire bus. You have neither PPE nor a radio and if it all goes wrong you are left relying on someone else, having called it in. Now this is not to say that we ignore crime when we are off duty, we do not. Sometimes however, the action we take is not overt.

But it is my decision; part of the dynamic risk assessment whether I show out or wait for response to get there. Going to and from work in uniform with no PPE and no radio is a huge officer safety issue. Obviously the Policy Exchange have no actual experience of policing, but officer safety is a very important thing. It goes without saying there will be officers who have informed their neighbours they are “dolphin polishers” or “plain clothes astronauts” and some of us do not want what we do for a living to be public knowledge; we do not want to draw that level of attention to our homes and our families, we do not want people coming to us at home trying to report crimes. Cutting about in uniform when you are not on duty is not the answer to getting more police officers on the streets; the simple answer is to stop getting rid of them.

We work in a job where for most of the people we meet it will be the worst day of their lives. They will either be a victim of crime themselves, some other ill fate will have befallen them, or we are there to take their liberty away. Needless to say the latter do not always have positive feelings towards us, and there are times when they would like to take a pop at us. We are thus faced with the situation where a lone officer is on their way to work, sans radio, without a stab vest and with no equipment. Some might see them as a vulnerable target. What about the violent thug with a penchant for revenge for the multitude of times we have turfed him out of his bed at 3am? We might as well hand them a personal business card with our home address and list of family members on it, or pop a Police light aside our front doors to alert all and sundry.

“Too many sworn officers are hidden away in back offices,” said Blair Gibbs, Policy Exchange’s head of crime and justice.”

Really Blair? What do you describe as a “back office” role? Is it everyone who is not in uniform? What about the people you do not see, the CID officers, the SIOs and the countless people who are warranted officers but are in key roles that cannot be filled by a contractor from G4S? (By the way, we do not have “sworn officers”, you are confusing us with America again, we have warranted officers.)

I feel that we are moving in very dangerous times where people with no actual experience of the very unique industry in which I work are making statements about how that said industry should be run. We are the police. We deal with crime; we are not here to turn a profit. How can someone with no operational policing experience and seemingly very little common sense be in a position to pass judgement? I am considering starting up a Think Tank to deal with Think Tank reform. I believe I am perfectly qualified because I have never worked in a Think Tank and I have very little idea what one is or what one does.

If you want to increase officer numbers on the streets, reduce sickness and the amount of officers wanting to move out of “front line” duties might I suggest, as a start, improving the quality of the issued uniform and equipment? Walking round for 8 hours in a pair of £28 boots and some polyester trousers is not easy. So Mr Blair, try a mile or ten in our shoes before you force us into an even less comfortable variant.

(this blog has been edited, to ensure it makes sense, by the fantastic @TooManyBlues)

Thank you!

It’s hard to return home, to go back to some level of normality. How does one decompress after experiencing things like the last week? I really have no idea, some on my team have voiced the same opinion, others are thinking the same but are keeping it the Q word (I still dare not say it…) I know this because I know them well, I’ve been living in such close quarters with them for days now, I couldn’t tell you how many days because I have to keep asking people what day it is! We’ve eaten together, driven round London together, we’ve all smelt shockingly bad at times, and we’ve done it all with a smile….

I have never been prouder to be a police officer!

I had my entire outlook on humanity destroyed on Saturday night in Tottenham, people I’d never met, never even spoken to were out there and they were trying to hurt me, they were trying to hurt my officers and our community. There were times when we were in nothing short for our lives, when gangs were throwing barrages of bricks at us, when there were overwhelmed numbers of people rushing at our line trying to push us back, many of whom had metal bars and sticks, swinging them wildly at us, and other members of the public.

A comment I made on Twitter seems to have received some media attention. At one point I broke my ASP, the top section was just no longer there after striking someone on the leg, metal fatigue, wear and tear, faulty product? Who knows. But I will say one thing, when that happened I was in genuine fear for my life, and for the life of my officers. To quote Common Law “If you have a genuine and honestly held belief that you or another are in imminent danger. You may use such force as is reasonable and necessary to avert danger, stop or prevent a breach of the peace or to save life”.

And I did, my genuine and honestly held belief was that these people would have done us serious damage, they would have overrun us, there were more of them than there were us and they were a lot more mobile, so yes the force I used was reasonable and I can assure you it was necessary and I am here alive now. If you want to criticise me for this then please don’t do it from the comfort of an armchair, send me a message here or on Twitter and I will happily talk to you about it and explain why.

Then seeing the wholesale looting and sacking of shops and homes across London over the next two days added further to my jaded outlook on life, how could people behave like this, how can they want to “kill a fed” just because of our job?

And then something happened to change that, something that has restored my faith in mankind. The Walthamstow Respite Centre, a group of people who wanted to do something for their community and to help those of us who were out on the streets. I can’t remember how I found out about it now, someone must have Tweeted at me, but I was in the area so I popped by (as most of you know by now I will go to pretty much any length for a cup of tea) and when I got there I was sat down and fussed over, provisioned with my first cup of tea of the day from a real cup. I chatted to someone called Kate, who I’d been chatting to since, and then I had to go. One of my team in the car didn’t quite understand what was going on, but did manage to insult the Borough Commander when she came inside and shouted “What moron has parked a blue BMW in front of my police car”, he looked quite sheepish when he came outside to move it. Even more so when he went to leave the Walthamstow Respite Centre and turned left down a one way street, only to be stopped by a PCSO on a bike “What the hell do you think yo… Evening Sir” it made us smile…

More info can be found here http://postordinandy.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/community-in-action/ or please follow them on Twitter @StMarysRespite

I’ve been back there every day since, I’ve passed the word to other officers, it’s gone out over GT and local talkgroups, I’ve seen notices all over the place. On Thursday I was at my lowest ebb, I’d been in court getting something. On my way into the Magistrates court I showed my warrant card to the three officers guarding the door and got a “good afternoon Sir”, then went inside, showed the security guard and went to walk round the metal detector, wasn’t allowed, had to take off my harness and put it along with my bag through the x ray machine, then walk through the metal detector which went off, then I was wanded which alarmed on the spare pair of cuffs in my back pocket, then I was given all my PPE back and allowed in. I am unsure why that needed to happen or what on earth the point of it was, but it annoyed me.
While I was in the court my team had to go off elsewhere so I was all alone in London, my phone was about to die and my wallet was in the car, I just wanted to sit down and do my paperwork! So I headed off to the Respite Centre, within seconds of getting there I was issued a cup that never seemed to be empty and some cake, and then some chilli, I can’t describe how amazing this made me feel, Kate and many of the other people there, it made me feel normal again.

I think this message from an officer who is on this borough explains it better than I ever can.

“FELT VERY ISOLATED AND THOUGHT THE WHOLE OF SOCIETY WAS AGAINST US . YOUR SUPPORT AND KINDNESS HAS  MEANT SO MUCH TO ME AND MY COLLEAGUES!”

And there are countless other examples of this happening, not just in London but all over the UK people are coming out and supporting the police, and one another and the message is being sent that this is not acceptable. To my eye it looks like the silent majority just got a voice, and boy are they using it…

I’ve got to go back out in a second, this entry has been an emotional one that’s taken hours to write. In the last week I have stood shoulder to shoulder with police officers from across the UK, I have met officers from as far afield as Fife, spent time talking to a PSU from Cumbria, been backed up by officers from Kent and Northampton while responding to a shout, I have felt an overwhelming level of support from ACPO ranks, the like of which I have never experienced before. To see Bernard Hogan-Howe out on the streets of Croydon, in full kit with his PPE on the news and listening to his message made me stand up a little straighter. The comments from Sir Hugh Orde and Tim Godwin have been fantastic, and other senior officers up and down the country have all been doing their bit.

On Tuesday we took the street back with an unprecedented police response there were 16000 of us out there, some of us had worked 22 hour shifts the night before, some of us longer but we were there. Members of the Special Constabulary were there, some of them had relieved permission from their employer to turn out, some of them had just walked out of work, they all answered the call. Retired police officers flocked back to us, and supported us in the station, volunteers were there doing anything they could, even if it was just making cups of tea. My phone was going wild with texts from friends in other forces updating me as to the location of their PSU’s, everyone was coming to London. But this isn’t just about those who came to London this is about those who backfilled roles in their local area to release the PSU officers to come to us, the specials hundreds of miles away who worked a 12 hour night shift and then went into their day job, got a few hours sleep only to do it all again. On some boroughs CID officers turned out in mismatched items of uniform and were out answering calls. On my way home I ran into a van being driven by a Detective Super who seemed to be having the time of his life driving round and doing, in his own words, “proper police work”…

We were on the streets, we were visible, we spoke to people and reassured them, officers from Cumbria were constantly being asked where Cumbria was, I believe they wanted to make a sign saying “It’s the Lake District”. Seeing vans with HEDDLU on out and about in Hackney was great, many of the locals had no idea what was going on. The acts of disorder that occurred in Manchester and Birmingham had us all chomping at the bit wanting to blat up there to assist colleagues in those force areas. I spoke to many officers from GMP who’d come down to help us and were concerned about their own area. I wish I could have done more for you chaps.

And then there is the unseen side of this, the partners and loved ones of us all. The ones who sit at home worrying about every knock on the door, staring at the phone willing it not to ring. Only seeing your partner for a hour a day, and most of that time they spend asleep, is one of the hardest things ever. But your support enables us all to carry on doing this job and we love every single one of you for it. We’re all very sorry that we’ve text you and said we’re fine when we’re actually in the carrier on the way to another pocket of disorder, or that we’ve not replied to your messages and calls because we were in a riot. But we all love you to bits, and we’re all going to spoil you when we get home in some way.

My views on those who have looted and caused disorder have been widely published elsewhere, the Toothbrush comment seemed to go down quite well with the team at Janes Police Review, so I won’t bore you with those. But I would remind you that so far we’ve made more than 1000 arrests, charged loads, seized more items than we’ve had evidence bags for. And our work is not yet done, we are just scratching the surface, there is hundreds more hours of CCTV for us to look at, more intelligence to follow up and more support from the public, without the help of the public a lot of the arrests to date could not have been made. We’re still coming, we won’t stop coming until this is over and justice is done.

To the Members of Parliment who have criticised us or mocked us, I say this: you disgust me, you sit safely in your palace protected by my colleagues your personal protections officers are my colleagues, we all face huge levels of danger on a daily basis and we are doing our best. Your unhelpful and frankly ill-informed criticisms and little snipes in the media sicken me, dishearten me and make my job a heck of a lot harder. If you feel compelled to pass comment on things then come out on to the streets with us, come and meet those of us who were on the front line, do not meet Chief Constables resplendent in tunics, do not wander around control rooms miles away from disorder. To you the whole world smells of paint, to me it smells of smoke and petrol!

So to all of you, police officers, special constables, police staff, volunteers, partners of police, members of the public, members of the press, every single person who has supported us, I offer you my thanks and want to remind you of this. If you need us, we will come.

I love this country, I love my job… And this is why we do it

 

PS: Over the week there have been a number of people who have told me I’m in the wrong job. I can confirm I will NOT be applying for the post of Commissioner of the Met, I can further confirm that I am NOT Batman. But I would be willing to be the next Doctor…

Tottenham, Enfield, Brixton. Polcing and Public (dis)order.

“Look out it’s the TSG”, this screamed by a youth clad head to toe in black, while wearing his face mask.
So I quickly check behind me, having been on the wrong end of a TSG baton charge before while deployed in plain clothes as a spotter I have no desire to feel the pain again. But there is nobody there but a couple more of my officers, oh it’s us, this young lad thinks we’re the TSG!

Working on a specialist unit means people do not normally mistake me for the TSG, normally I doubt they even realise I’m a police officer, which is handy when out on surveillance or meeting a CHIS (a “snout” if you’ve ever seen the Bill). On my unit there are officers from several police forces, and a couple of government departments that hold law enforcement powers. Earlier in the week I was out talking to a group of senior police, customs and SOCA officers about how to extend this kind of co-operation and now I am having bricks thrown at me.

There are so many things I would like to say, so many experiences that have happened over the last 48 hours, experiences of terror, experiences of massive humour and sadness.
Trying to restrain a shop owner who is attempting to run into a burning building to attempt to salvage his stock, and indeed his livelihood. Taking off my helmet so I can hear him better, he sobs as he explains to me about his life, and how he has built up his trade and now does not know what to do. I simply do not know what to say to him, when I survey the streets around us it reminds me of the looting that took place in Iraq in 2003, it’s genuinely heartbreaking. I do something I find myself doing alot over the next few hours, telling him I’m sorry and then giving him a manly hug with a pat on the back. Helmet back on and we’re off somewhere else.

I have never experienced looting of this scale, the wholesale sacking of shops is taking place, we know it is taking place and there is nothing we can do about it, a couple of the more hardcore members of my team want to “blat round and stop it”, we’re outnumbered, we’re encumbered by protective equipment and we’re drained. If we go blundering into this kind of situation we’ll do more harm than good. And that’s when it happens, my moment of terror “MAN DOWN”, two words I never want to hear, we run to form a cordon round the fallen officer, shields up in all directions, everyone alert and scanning for a threat. I can’t see anything but I can feel the impact of stones against my helmet, I can see some glass breaking around us, thankfully the downed officer isn’t baldy hurt and is able to regain his footing, we’re up and we’re mobile, one of my worst fears averted.

The traditional, stereotypical, image of a public order police officer is that of some knuckle dragging man mountain who’s main skill in life is being able to knock a door down in one hit. As I survey the people around me, none of them fit that. They’re all reasonably intelligent, in the van there have been long discussions on what the cause of this is. We can understand the anger of the community over the shooting of Mark Duggan by armed police, we know that they want answers. But we also know that at times the investigative process is painfully slow, waiting for forensics to come back can take a while, the laborious process of locating witness and then taking statements, tracking down CCTV and seizing copies of it, then reviewing it. All of these things are hard enough for us, let alone the IPCC, and I have very little idea of the size of their investigative teams, but I can’t imagine they are that large.

It is something the public do not seem to understand, investigations have to be carried out in a certain way, these ways take time, but they are done like this to maintain the integrity of evidence should a case ever need to be put before the courts. TV and film (which is the only interaction many people will ever have with the police) has put forward an unrealistic view of criminal investigations that they can be wrapped up in a few hours, with a few people and that forensic tests are instant and infallible. Sadly, in very few cases is this true…

We reached a new low at about 0400 when it was discovered a flask of tea had leaked over my kit bag, nobody was upset about my kit, or the fact my book was destroyed, they were however gutted that the tea had gone. Thankfully a few minutes later more was procured. We run on tea and junk food, I had managed to hide from them the fact there was a packed of Haribo Starmix in my bag, I managed to sneak it into my pocked with nobody noticing, they’ll be useful for that moment when we hit the wall again.

Walking down Tottenham High Road during Sunday day time in plain clothes with a colleague the damage is shocking to see, everything has been targeted, the community has been smashed and it looks like there has been a rampage by a herd of elephants, street furnature is squashed flat in places, shops have had their windows broken and then been looted, we deftly avoid what looks like a pool of blood and make our way further down. There are members of the media hunting in packs, looking to zoom in on anybody who has been separated from the herd, I see a man come out of his shop and sit with his head in his hands on the pavement, his crying is audible from 80 or so yards, within seconds he is surrounded by people with cameras, I can no longer hear him crying, all I can hear is the whir of camera motors as his heartbreaking moment is captured on dozens of memory cards, I want to move them away, I want to shield this poor man from these vultures, I can’t…

It’s funny when things like this happen the small things that make you laugh, after leaving Tottenham on Sunday we went into Central London, I needed to get something from the office and then attend a briefing on an ongoing operation where we have surveillance on a target. I knew that a friend had come up to That London on mutual aid so after I established where he would be I popped into the Met police feeding station to see him, and give him some police related swag. They all looked so clean and shiny! I grabbed a chair and sat down next to his table, within seconds I’d been accosted by a member of Met police staff, I wasn’t allowed to sit there, I was blocking a fire escape. I almost wanted to laugh, I’d spent the night having fireworks and petrolbombs thrown at me, there’d been no fire escape then. And more to the point everyone in the canteen, bar me, was in fireproof coveralls. I dare say if there had been a fire we’d have all been able to locate an exit. Of course I didn’t say any of this, I apologised meekly and moved out of the way. But she’d be welcome on any serial of mine, dishing out justice wait her ladle.

We’re back in the car now, listening to the radio (FM not job) and there are a number of callers who are ringing LBC to explain why the rioting happened, a youth worker is explaining how it is all because there are not enough community centres open in the area, and how the youth have nothing to do. Another caller has said it is all the fault of the police, but refuses to expand on this. I am pleased to note there are some very supportive messages from people towards the police though. And when I have had a chance to update my Twitter feed the messages of support I have received have been a great boost. Some of you I have met and worked with, some I know very well and have drunk with you, some of you are my best friends I just haven’t met you yet, some are total strangers but the support flooded in, the concern everytime an injured officer was reported was genuine, we all share something in common.

And this is what makes it all worthwhile, I get to travel all over the UK, I visit a lot of other forces and work in their force areas while on jobs, and we are all the same deep down, we’d do anything for one another, we look after one another and we care. If you ever push your orange button we will come, because we know you will for us.

Thanks really need to go out to officers from the Met, City of London Police, BTP, Surrey, Essex, Kent, TVP and Herts as well as all of those working behind the scenes to support us, those who were out on the front lines who weren’t police officers, the PCSOs who guarded cordons in areas that just hours before we wouldn’t have been able to get to, the EGT photographers, the Fire-fighters, the Paramedics, the staff in McDonalds who provisioned me with 36 cups of tea and an orange juice.

I don’t know what this evening (MONDAY) will hold, I hope that it is all over, I hope that we do not see anymore injured officers, no more wounded members of the public, no more lives destroyed by the idiocy of people who cannot control their own greed. Because that’s what happened in Enfield, Brixton and other areas last night, greed, they saw people looting the Tottenham Hale retail park and they wanted some of that, they robbed, assaulted and stole. My only message to them is this. We will find you, we will bring you to justice, when you are sat in your homes watching your brand new 42″ flat screen TV fear every single knock at your door, we are coming.

I know that whatever happens tonight there will be police officers, from whatever forces out there, standing and walking tall, ready to do the right thing… And I will be stood there with them.

Direct entry senior officers

My friend, we’ll call him Dave has 13 years of policing experience, he did a few years in uniform before deciding he wanted a proper job, so became a L plate Detective, after a few months he decided it was the job for him and has made a go of it.

During his time in investigation he has worked all kinds of level 2 and level 3 crime, qualified as a SOCO, and qualified as an SIO, he has led many inquiries into deaths, drugs, S18s and all the usual detective work. As well as being fully compliant with all relevant UK laws,  being a nationally accredited SIO, having operational experience of the role, and having done six months on secondment to a Met Murder Investigation Team he is a damned good manager who is liked and respected by his team, (he also likes cats and is single ladies!!!)

But we will come back to Dave. Another mate Paul has followed a slightly different career path. Paul loves surveillance, and spent his time in uniform, moved into investigations and during his 16 years in the job has conducted countless surveillance operations, mostly revolving around drugs and smuggling related crime. He has had some great results. Is nationally accredited as an advanced driver, level one surveillance (or Core Surveillance Skills as some are wont to call it), a CHIS handler and has been on the national CMOE course. He has also done a 12 month attachment to an international drugs unit and really made an impact on international drugs smuggling.

Well if you are still reading by this point you will wonder what my point is,  “Why is Winter banging on about these two coppers (who sound like great blokes)” Well, they are great blokes. And they are both coppers (after a fashion), however they are not and have never held the office of constable.

Dave is an officer in one of the Service Police, Special Investigation Branches and Paul is a Higher Officer (whatever that means) in Customs.

Both of them are fantastically qualified, have a raft of specialist skills and have many years of operational experience. Both of them have, at one time or another, been seconded to operations with Home Office police forces, and have worked jobs with them, have even trained them. All the laws they use are identical, the paperwork is even the same.

If either of them wanted to join the civil police (which they both do) they would have to join the back of the queue, then they would have to undergo full PC training, then bimble around on two years in probation, then they would have to apply to attend a course, then if loaded on to the course they would have to apply for a specialist role.

Is this right? I don’t think so, a short conversion course, some OST training (well only on CS, they are both qualified on arrests and cuffs) and they would both be able to execute the role of inspector or higher in their chosen specialist field. Instead they start from the bottom, experience massive skill fade because their specialist skills aren’t used and then they would need to retake the self same courses that they instructed on, and in some cases helped write.

And it’s not just Dave and Paul, there are countless other people out there who would make ideal candidates for direct entry to the police force there are officers from the Service Police forces, the UKBA, HMRC, SOCA, heck even the SFO. All of whom would have to take a huge pay cut and waste many years of their career wandering about in uniform, and then there is a chance they might not be able to get back into their chosen specialisation.

I am not talking about recruiting graduates to be Supernintendos, I am talking about taking people with real operational experience and putting them in post as warranted officers. If they are good enough to be seconded to the civil police, good enough to train the civil police, I don’t see why they can’t be fasttracked into the civil police. The job can only gain from it.

(Author’s note, Dave is leaving the Service Police in seven months and hopes to get a role within the NCA when it opens, Paul has recently had his application for the role of PC rejected and has been offered a job in the private sector. He still wishes to be a police officer.)