Policing the UK.

Enlightened reader, welcome to my first ever blog. I have been driven to this, kicking and screaming, by the passion and anger I feel over our Criminal Justice System. Our police is in a terrible state – not only for the constables quietly suffering daily insults and abuse from their own management, but also for the public. I am a constable and I passionately want a career where I feel respected and properly utilised by my employer. I am also a member of the public and so deserve a properly functioning police service. Police senior management, in the furtherance of their own careers, are laughing at all of us. They are taking the mickey and getting away with it.

It’s convenient for them that constables have no right to strike, no protection by employment law, no personal life that the job can’t invade, no control over their working hours or workload, and are forbidden from speaking out without the certainty of being sacked.

My career includes both county forces and the Met, and I simply cannot any longer give support to such organisations. I have to communicate my experiences. My criticisms aren’t against the constables, who are almost entirely decent hard-working folk who make the job work. The constables accept almost unbelievable intrusion into their personal lives, but they keep making it work because they still think it’s a good job and an important one. Despite the recent erosion that has turned a career for life into a job, the rank-and-file still care about their professionalism.

We need a management who get out of the way and allow the PCs to do the job they love. Managers must also start communicating with the public. If we're not allowed to speak, and the only information comes in the form of management sound-bites and propaganda how can people know what we do and what can go wrong?

In the hope of bringing about a fruitful dialogue, I intend to share here some of my thoughts in the lead up to the completion of my manuscript. I hope you will find some of them interesting.