This seasons must have

West Mercia are the first force in England (North Wales already have black T-shirts and base ball caps to wear) to get rid of the unpractical and annoying white shirt and black tie uniform. They are replacing it with this black T-shirt uniform. Which I think looks much better and I'm looking forward to my force adopting a similar uniform. We still need to lose those stupid 'tit' helmets tho.

Hungarian Hip-Hoppers

Looks like our foreign colleagues are at it again!

How do they get so much time to mess about? Obviously got more officers on their response shifts than us.

Standing by to standby

I would just like to say it really admire senior officers sometimes, they are clearly all resourceful and dynamic decision makers!

I also admire the fact that every section of British society respects the law and knows the police are in charge!

This weekend this was evident in incident that happened on a site for the ‘travelling fraternity’. Some of whom decided they liked the look of a large coil of copper wiring and they could put it better use than network rail to whom it belonged. They then took it back to their council owned, council paid for and supposedly council run site. Unfortunately the British Rail Police took exception to this and decided that it would be a good idea for a small group of their officers to enter the site retrieve the item and arrest the culprits.

The travelling fraternity however thought how dare the police do such a thing! And proceeded to throw rocks and stones at the officers until they had to withdraw.

This was around 11.30hrs, at around 16.00hrs all available officers were told to report to the HQ of the division.

So there we were around 30 officers from division. an OSD van and 4 dog handlers. We awaited further orders, and we waited and we waited. We were joined by many more officers from across the force until there was around 60 of us. At around 19.30 (3 hours later) hours a senior officer entered the room and announced. ‘WE ARE GOING TO ENTER THE SITE USE LIFTING EQUIPMENT TO RETRIVE THE STOLEN ARTICLE. SO CAN ALL PSU OFFICERS GET INTO THEIR LEVEL 2 KIT. WE ARE GOING SEND A MESSAGE TO THESE PEOPLE WE ARE IN CHARGE!’

I asked what about the rest of us who weren’t PSU trained and was told to stand by. I was getting very bored by this stage I had even read the force’s own publication/propaganda/magazine I was that bored.

All of sudden it was all go, as a convoy of 4 police dog vans and 6 riot vans full of PSU kitted officers made their way to the RV point. I thought it looked very exciting as I looked out of the window in ore. A few minutes later, as the convoy was approaching the RV point a call came over the air ‘STOP THE CONVOY RETURN TO HQ’

Then the 55 PSU officers and the 4 police dogs returned to HQ, and were told to stand by. So we stood by and stood by and stood by until 21.30 hours when we were told to stand down. Because it was now too dark from a health and safety point of view and tomorrow (when the travellers had moved/hidden the articles) officers would try negotiations.

Well that really showed them who is in charge didn’t it!

STOP POLICE!

Well I don't mean to boast but my last set of shifts was great (please see my last post).

On my second night shift I was out with two others in plain clothes on an operation when a call comes in two males breaking into a car. We are only round the corner in a car we borrowed from CID so we get there and can't find the car in question. I get out and walk down a side street, there it is still with the two lads sat inside unbelievable!

As I approach the boy in the drivers seat looks straight at me, as I reach for the door handle he calmly pushes down the lock! CRAP! Then his mate is out and running, I give chase I manage to grab his hoody which comes off in my hands. Then time seemed to stop as he pauses, I look at him, he looks at me, I look at the hoody in my hands, then the foot chase begins again!! I manage to get on the air whilst running to give my location.

As I'm running he's looking back surprised I'm still hot on his heals and looking a little worried, for some reason I forgot I was in plain clothes and I didn't think to call out 'STOP POLICE' I called out 'WHEN I GET HOLD OF YOU I'M GONNA F**K YOU UP!' which is very out of character for me. I guess I've spending too much time with my footy fan colleagues which I followed with 'DON'T TRY TO OUTRUN ME I RUN MARATHONS!' I've never run more than the distance from my house to the train station before!

We run about 250 yards. Then coming towards us is a uniformed patrol, the driver pulls up in front of us and times the opening of her door perfectly, hitting him in the knees! The other PC runs around the patrol car and we both dive on the suspect!

Later I'm waiting to book the suspect into custody he says to me 'YOU'RE SAFE YOU ARE BRA, YOU WAS RIGHT BEHIND ME ALL THE WAY NOT LIKE THEM OTHER COPPERS.' I said ' WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP?' he replied 'I THOUGHT YOU WERE SOME HAVE AGO HERO GONNA FILL ME IN'

That's the second time in a week its been like in The Bill!

PS if you were wondering some of my colleagues caught the other one