Diary of a former Bow Street Runner

Prioritisation

I've noticed lately the people have started cottoning on to how we work, so are using loaded words and phrases when they phone us or make allegations, knowing full well that as individual officer discretion is well and truly dead, we are obliged to act and do things in a certain way.

Methods of guaranteeing faster callouts include phoning in domestics and 'inflating' the nature of the domestic, resulting in a loud verbal disagreement over finance between partners (perfectly normal and healthy too, I might add) forming the basis of a log headed "Violent domestic - woman heard screaming for mercy, lots of loud noise and blood spattering on windows intermittently. Caller states 45 young children live at the address". This will result in patrols being diverted away from going to the hospital to obtain a statement from someone who has just been viciously assaulted, so that the reporting neighbour can get a faster response, and thus a good night's sleep.

Another one is "caller states he has seen a firearm" - this will get everyone on the radio channel to prick their ears up and listen intently, making the general area if they can. These calls are prioritised as the highest possible so will almost guarantee an instant response. If you're thinking of doing this on a whim though, expect a major bollocking, an £80 fine for wasting police time and armed police swarming your area - so in a word, don't say there's a firearm unless there is one!

Finally, there's the age old "massive enormous riot with 2000 people throwing molotov cocktails at each other" - subtract 1998 people, the molotv cocktails and substitute riot with "shoving" and you get the actual job, which is only realised after the world and his wife have been diverted from whatever they were doing to attend.

Then, when it comes to investigations, include the words "hate", "racist", "homophobic" and whatever the latest fashionable anti-prejudice word is of the day, and you'll be guaranteed a decidated CID team, complementary staff of counsellors and the CPS at your beck and call. Since hate crimes are flavour of the month at the moment you'll also be potentially thanked by the lowly officer who takes your initial crime report and statement, as if it's straightforward enough they'll get a sanctioned detection, and thus a PI tick in the box, which benefits them as well! Few people who actually ARE victims of hate crime, in whatever form it may take, usually bother to report it, leaving the monopoly on this to people who include a hate element in the hope of expediting the investigative process and getting a heavier punishment imposed on the offender.

It's a great shame, though, that people are aware of these factors so use them to 'manipulate' the police, so that when these crimes actually do happen it actually comes as quite a surprise!
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