Ruralshire T Shirts - UPDATE

How simple a request is this to a courier company?

“Please would you deliver on Monday, NOT Friday”

Not simple enough it seems. The shirts arrived on Friday, there was no one to collect them so they went back to the depot.

Now they want me to travel half way across the County to pick them up. That’s NOT going to happen. I have asked them to re-deliver on Monday.

This is almost as frustrating as dealing with the police. I say “almost” because although incompetent, the lady on the other end of the phone was polite. This is different to the Ruralshire Control Centre, who are incompetent and rude at the same time.

What Ruralshire Constabulary Control Room can do, is answer each call within 14.5 seconds. It’s rude and it’s pointless but it’s very quick.

The GAP year students and Polish workers who are the only people who can afford to take the wages that call-handlers are paid do their best, but after the tons of abuse they take each day from the criminal underclass as they telephone to report each other for non-crimes, they develop a “compassion fatigue” which is not really good enough for a so-called “Emergency Service”.

Gadget Note: Ruralshire Constabulary Control Room (sorry - the Civilian Call Centre working for Ruralshire Constabulary) has a National target for answering telephone calls from the public (CHAD) which is arranged around how fast they answer the phone - NOT the quality of what then happens - with the predictable results!

Violent Crime Alert - Inspector Who?

Ruralshire Police Officers are being asked to start arresting “violent crime” offenders for the offence ABOVE that which they believe has been committed. This means that if we think we are faced with an Actual Bodily Harm offence, we arrest for Grievous Bodily Harm.

The Charge can always be dropped to ABH later. It’s the arrest statistic which matters.

Why have we been asked to do this?

Because 2008/09 will be a “baseline year” for violent crime statistics. If we can show an over large number of serious violent crimes in 2008/09, then we can be successful in reducing serious violent crimes in 2010/11 when we go back to arresting for the correct offence in the first place.

I call it TARDIS policing.

This particular strategy is designed to outwit the Government’s annoying new appetite to start looking at quality in detected crime, instead of simply quantity.

This is a slightly more alarming version of the old “Drunk & Disorderly vs. Section 5 Public Order Act nonsense which was/is so prevalent all over the UK. I don’t particularly want this Blog to be a “whistle blowing” project or to get too technical, so here is a summary:

Ruralshire Constabulary is about to start cooking the books again on Crime Statistics, and if we are “at it” you can bet your life that all the others are too!

Gadget Note: I do NOT blame the Ruralshire Constabulary Chief for this state of affairs. He probably doesn’t even know. After all, it’s not the kind of thing one talks about on the 9th hole, and besides, he has appointed bright, aspiring Superintendents to get their hands dirty on issues like this.

Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands.

I went to a job a while back where a child drowned during a swimming lesson.

You never want to deal with a job like that.

And I know the swimming teacher because she is from my part of the Ruralshire border. She is no longer teaching. The other children were very quiet. Their Balkan nannies rush them home in German cars. Even the Paramedics, usually 100% reliable with a smile in the worst situations, would not make eye contact.

Everyone involved is devastated to some extent for the rest of their lives.

CID send a Detective Inspector to decide whether it is suspicious, or a “Sus Death” as we call it. He deploys his experience and knowledge through a three pint filter (well, it is after 4.00 pm) and decides against any escalation.

The child’s mother arrives and there is a scene of hysteria by the ambulance. The DI watches in silence. “There’s nothing for me here Gadget” .

There’s nothing here for anyone, I thought.

A crowd of Emergency Service workers and other parents stand around the mother. Everybody cares and everybody understands.

A Particularly Cruel and Cleaver Trick.

Last week, on one of my rare visits to the top floor, I met new Neighbourhood Chief Inspector Janet Winchester. Or should I say, she met me*

She knew who I was because:

1. New senior staff are warned that I am a difficult sod who cares more about policing than paperwork, which is quite scary in the modern police.

2. I went down in a ball of flames in the local paper recently, which everyone has been talking about.

She spoke softly to me for about 15 minutes and I really didn’t hear anything she said after the first sentence. I nearly walked under a bus on the way to the bakery at lunch time and spent the rest of the shift feeling slightly hot around the face and ears.

Janet. A Sheep. Similar attitudes, similar hairstyles.

What did she say to me to have such an effect?

“Inspector Gadget, the Divisional Commander has asked me to start an F Division Blog, and he told me that you might be the person to help”

The following thoughts rushed through my head as I tried to sleep that night:

“Does the Commander know?”

“Is this a trick?”

“Are they out to get me?”

“Do I care?” (polite version)

“What do those new custard doughnuts in the bakery taste like?”

I always operate in the safe knowledge that the ‘powers that be’ cannot really ever damage me because:

1. I am not afraid of being a Response Inspector, so they can’t threaten to “send me back to Patrol”.

2. I am not currently looking for promotion, so they can’t ruin my future prospects.

3. I’m not corrupt, I do my job and besides; I know where the “bodies are buried”.

A particularly cruel and cleaver trick would be to make me the publisher of one of those hideous, sycophantic, pink & fluffy official police blogs. You couldn’t make it up, and I would have to. I now have to wait and see what happens.

* Beatles reference.

Gadget Note: all the photos are of genuine Ruralshire sheep taken by me. It took me hours to comb this one to make it look half decent for you lot!

Mobtown Shank

Is anyone else being robbed blind of copper pipes, electric cable and lead from the local Church roof?

In a moment of clear madness I thought it was a national trend, caused by the high price of metal on the world market, leading to high prices for scrap metal in local areas.

Apparently not. Apparently, according to the Ruralshire Chronicle it is the fault of the police. More specifically, my fault. My fault because I was the only Inspector available on Friday afternoon to provide a statement about this problem.

The Detective Inspectors had been in the pub since 2.00 pm and my uniform colleagues are too interested in promotion to go near the media. Faced with the possibility of a “local police declined to comment” situation, I was asked to do it by the attractive but unconvincing “media officer”.

Checking the roof. There are worse jobs.

In a second moment of madness, I informed the journalist that metal theft is a national trend, caused by the high price of metal on the world market, leading to high prices for scrap metal in local areas.

She smiled, nodded her head in apparent agreement and wrote it all down. She then asked me what the police were doing about it and I dutifully spun her all the items on a hurried list dictated to me by the DCI from his mobile next to the bunker by the 9th at the Royal Ruralshire.

I saw the results this morning in the shop as I bought some bacon. The Chronicle blames Inspector Gadget for not doing enough.

To be fair, with the few Response Officers I actually have on the ground we are lucky to be able to answer the emergency calls let alone personally guard every Church in F Division.

As for the journalist, I’ll send her a T Shirt and she can read the logo a thousand times.