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!