Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Musings of a 'discontented rozzer'
Added a couple of more blog links.
According to Terence Blacker (article pointed out by Lights, sirens....action!), other police bloggers and I are just a bunch of 'discontented rozzers' moaning about our jobs with nothing positive to say. That's if we're even police officers. And apparently we can't take criticism.
I've not actually been criticised as a blogger yet, so will take this criticism of bloggers unable to take criticism as a general criticism which includes this blog. Mr. Blacker has a point about us moaning about our jobs - there generally isn't much good about it, and the achievements and positives can be read about in the press releases on force official websites. Negative stuff is not published officially, and is what a lot of people like to read about anyway, so there's a market for whinging about the job in a public fashion!
As for not being a police officer - well if I'm not, I'm either have frightening intuition or I've submitted a lot of Freedom of Information requests. Make of my legitimacy what you will.
As for taking criticism - I thank Mr. Blacker, not only for providing us police bloggers with further publicity, but also for offering an alternative point of view from someone who actually writes for a living. I shall endeavour to, where appropriate, include positive elements of the job. If, however, positives of the job are a prerequisite for posting, then I feel this blog would be far smaller in content and have a far smaller readership amongst both police officers and members of the public alike, in the same way that newspapers that print only good news have a far lower circulation rate than those which do not. Indeed, is not Mr. Blacker's article of a particularly negative tone?
Now for a quick positive story:
A while back I locked up a lad for going equipped. From start to finish, including arrest; transport to custody; process; interview; CPS advice and charge, it took 6 hours - far quicker than I've ever seen similar arrests go through before. Better still, the CPS took just 5 minutes to come to a charge decision. I'd like to think it was my superb file-preparation skills, but the more likely reality is that, without going into detail, the case was so self-evident that they could not have arrived at any other conclusion.
A tip for serving police officers - when using CPS Direct (out of hours CPS advice), type as much of your paperwork up as you can, as opposed to handwriting it, then e-mail it over to them when prompted on the phone. I was advised to do this by a solicitor, who said that when we fax it through they have to copy-type everything anyway, so it shaves at least half an hour off the consultation time if we e-mail it ready-typed. What is normally a 1 hour + phone call to CPS lasted 35 minutes, so I was well chuffed.
(c) Bow Street Runner. None of the material contained in this post, or this blog as a whole, may be reproduced without the express and written permission of Bow Street Runner. All rights reserved.
Added a couple of more blog links.
According to Terence Blacker (article pointed out by Lights, sirens....action!), other police bloggers and I are just a bunch of 'discontented rozzers' moaning about our jobs with nothing positive to say. That's if we're even police officers. And apparently we can't take criticism.
I've not actually been criticised as a blogger yet, so will take this criticism of bloggers unable to take criticism as a general criticism which includes this blog. Mr. Blacker has a point about us moaning about our jobs - there generally isn't much good about it, and the achievements and positives can be read about in the press releases on force official websites. Negative stuff is not published officially, and is what a lot of people like to read about anyway, so there's a market for whinging about the job in a public fashion!
As for not being a police officer - well if I'm not, I'm either have frightening intuition or I've submitted a lot of Freedom of Information requests. Make of my legitimacy what you will.
As for taking criticism - I thank Mr. Blacker, not only for providing us police bloggers with further publicity, but also for offering an alternative point of view from someone who actually writes for a living. I shall endeavour to, where appropriate, include positive elements of the job. If, however, positives of the job are a prerequisite for posting, then I feel this blog would be far smaller in content and have a far smaller readership amongst both police officers and members of the public alike, in the same way that newspapers that print only good news have a far lower circulation rate than those which do not. Indeed, is not Mr. Blacker's article of a particularly negative tone?
Now for a quick positive story:
A while back I locked up a lad for going equipped. From start to finish, including arrest; transport to custody; process; interview; CPS advice and charge, it took 6 hours - far quicker than I've ever seen similar arrests go through before. Better still, the CPS took just 5 minutes to come to a charge decision. I'd like to think it was my superb file-preparation skills, but the more likely reality is that, without going into detail, the case was so self-evident that they could not have arrived at any other conclusion.
A tip for serving police officers - when using CPS Direct (out of hours CPS advice), type as much of your paperwork up as you can, as opposed to handwriting it, then e-mail it over to them when prompted on the phone. I was advised to do this by a solicitor, who said that when we fax it through they have to copy-type everything anyway, so it shaves at least half an hour off the consultation time if we e-mail it ready-typed. What is normally a 1 hour + phone call to CPS lasted 35 minutes, so I was well chuffed.
(c) Bow Street Runner. None of the material contained in this post, or this blog as a whole, may be reproduced without the express and written permission of Bow Street Runner. All rights reserved.
Comments:
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>an alternative point of view from someone who actually writes for a living
;) this could almost be a valid description of the "modern" policeman's working day
;) this could almost be a valid description of the "modern" policeman's working day
See - emails are good.
What would also be a good step would also be able to scan statements / photos etc and have to send them in the cps email as well so they get the whole package at once... !
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What would also be a good step would also be able to scan statements / photos etc and have to send them in the cps email as well so they get the whole package at once... !
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