Diary of a former Bow Street Runner

You've got mail!

A contact in another force recently inquired as to whether or not their force had a policy on blogging. They replied, eventually, saying they did not, but replied with a 2 page letter citing, chapter and verse, several statues; case law; Code of Conduct and force policy on disclosure, confidentiality etc.

And this is the kicker, one of the final paragraphs:

"Thus, any officers found to be inapproriately discussing their work activities will be breaching the above legislation and policies and action will be taken accordingly."

I've interpreted that for what it is - a "don't even think about blogging" warning.

Just because the Force may not like the idea of officers discussing their work activities does not automatically make it 'inappropriate', for such a term is very subjective. Furthermore, 'inappropriate' does not, as they seem to impute here, mean it will necessarily be in breach of legislation either.

Perhaps I'll start blogging with stuff forces want to hear, along these lines:

"Today, thanks to my Force's revolutionary new Innovative Policing Strategy, I was strategically tasked to combat anti-social behaviour, an issue that is blighting the good citizens of the force area and is a top priority for the force to combat. Through effective deployment of a new experimental method of behaviour control and processing of offenders, I was able to overcome the obstacles faced by this challenge and take the low-hanging fruit which enabled enhanced service delivery, measured in performance management terms. Through engaging with multi-agency partnerships and Key Strategic Long Term Overviews, my role as a police officer was able to be discharged with professionalism, valour, courtesy and with a big healthy dollop of diversity for good measure. And it had nothing at all to do with chasing detections, honest."

Nah.
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