Police: Fake News, Fake Drama

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Hogdayafternoon on the 28^th April 2017 at 13:20 - A Police Blog
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"`Guerrilla` on Sky Atlantic is a serious contender for best TV drama of 2017" ...so says a headline on `Digital Spy`.
Really?

I've just sat through the first episode and have to say, as one who was a police officer living and working at the time and in the areas portrayed, I recognised very little, apart from a few Triumph Heralds and Ford Cortina's.

Actors portraying uniformed police officers were wearing helmets that would have been more suited to the London Fire Brigade, with chinstraps* worn horribly wrong (*nothing new there) and on demo duty they were issued with baseball bats - oh really? Where was that? Portraying officers indecently assaulting a lead female character during a search on the street, after first having punched her in the face for swearing at him, but then walking off? Such casual police violence I never did see. Maybe this happened to someone who heard it from someone who was told it happened to someone else.

I am aware of the phenomenon known as looking through rose-tinted glasses and I did encounter...

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Police: "It's a very expensive option" (but it's not about cost, surely?)

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Hogdayafternoon on the 14^th January 2016 at 12:17 - A Police Blog
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......and to put this into some sort of perspective, 600 officers represents about half the entire police establishment of the Dyfed-Powys police force.

Police: Ordeal by duty - Trial by Jury

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Hogdayafternoon on the 03^rd July 2015 at 16:38 - A Police Blog
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BBC online News:

Met Police officer Anthony Long cleared of Azelle Rodney murder

I think this calls for The Bard:

"But soft, what glint through yonder carboot breaks? It is the east, and firearm is in the sun. Arise, fair sidearm, and kill the envious perp, Who is already sick and pale with grief That I, Met Pol, art far more skilled than he."

(Hat tipped to my friend, David Kenneth Ellis, for the Shakespearean form)

Police: Killing Sprees at home and abroad

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Hogdayafternoon on the 02^nd July 2015 at 7:33 - A Police Blog
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The Met's ct exercise appeared to go well. They picked a lovely day for it. Always good to do, these exercises.

Outside London it's worth remembering previous experiences. Eg. Michael Ryan (Hungerford), killed 16 people and injured a further 15 at random in under an hour, including the first police officer on scene. With that rifle, if he could see you he could hit you. A neighbour just asked me about police response times to such incidents and if there were sufficient officers. I said a force has, on average, less than 5% trained for firearms duties. She replied, "but we never see any police patrols anyway".

I told her not to worry. Rule 1, reassure the patient. :-/

Police: Waterloo, June 1815

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Hogdayafternoon on the 17^th June 2015 at 7:52 - A Police Blog
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"The nearest run thing". Waterloo, June 1815

"....I should not do justice to my own feelings, or to Marshal Blucher and the Prussian Army, if I did not attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them...." (from Wellington's campaign dispatch).

"....You'll see the account of our desperate battle and victory over Boney!! It was the most desperate business I was ever in; I never took so much trouble over any battle; and never was so near being beat. Our loss is immense, particularly in that best of all instruments, British Infantry. I never saw the infantry behave so well. I am going immediately. Can we be reinforced in Cavalry or Infantry or both? We must have Lord Combermere as Lord Uxbridge has lost his leg...." (from Wellington's letter to his elder brother and father-in-law to his military secretary)

and then in 1824, Parliament passed The Vagrancy Act, making begging and the `exposing of wounds to gather alms or pity` a criminal offence, due to the huge numbers of maimed veterans from the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars.

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Police: A Biker's Tale - a `Police` biker's tale

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Hogdayafternoon on the 11^th June 2015 at 15:47 - A Police Blog
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Reproduced courtesy of an old pal:

Hampshire motorcycle traffic policeman Nick Barman was rushing to the scene of an accident when he was knocked off his bike at more than 100mph. He was thrown an incredible 300ft across two carriageways and was left crumpled in a heap, fighting for his life. Paramedics stopped working on the biker they were at the scene for and immediately attended to Barman, a traffic officer with nine years’ experience, in a desperate bid to save his life. Here, in his own words, he tells JAMES BAGGOTT the incredible story for the first time

As the paramedic walked up to me I was still conscious and I could see the look on his face. It was a wild stare, one of despair – his eyes were like saucers.  He was carrying a silver blanket and was about to cover me up. He thought I was dead. He couldn’t believe I had survived the accident, let alone was awake and able to talk to him.
I remember patches before that. I was on the early shift that day – February 4, 2013 – patrolling on my BMW...

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Police: First post on `policing` in ages

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Hogdayafternoon on the 11^th June 2015 at 9:55 - A Police Blog
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I haven't put fingers to keypad for a long time. I guess it was a mix of apathy and distractions in other forms of social media that took me away. I don't know if I'll take up regular posts over here again or not, but a friend of mine posted a link to this yesterday and I felt it worthy of re-posting here. It is by someone who is a `Borough commander` in the Met., which probably makes him a superintendent.

It's not often you see an officer of this rank blogging. I haven't checked him out but what he's written is so familiar that I suspect he is legit - one can usually always tell. I have been told that these days a person with the required credentials (not sure who exactly it is who has set these `credentials`) can join the Metropolitan Police at the rank of superintendent and start managing issues at that rank, without having to pass `GO` on the cruel streets. If that is so, then those that do will spare themselves the experiences that I had during my twenty year climb to the rank that could be described as a `deputy Borough...

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Police: Motorcycle Awareness -

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Hogdayafternoon on the 24^th February 2015 at 15:29 - A Police Blog
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Police: Buy Britisch Motorrad

Written by

Hogdayafternoon on the 23^rd January 2015 at 10:36 - A Police Blog
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I've often felt that I should get another Triumph. I owned one briefly in the late 60's, a Thunderbird, and I once looked after a friends Tiger Cub. Both were fun and left the traditional oil puddle, something of a trade mark for British bikes of that vintage.

These days I'm on a BMW R1200R but having made an interesting discovery I don't feel quite so guilty. I hadn't been aware until very recently that the Triumph company was actually started in the 1880s in Coventry, by Siegfried Bettmann, a German Jewish chap from Nuremberg. He started a high-quality bicycle company (the Triumph Cycle Co.), which, at the very beginning of the 20th century, started making motor-bicycles (after a very short time using proprietary engines but then one designed and built in-house).

Bettmann was joined by a fellow countryman, Mauritz Johann Schulte, sometime in the 1890s, and the two maintained an active, if sometimes rather acrimonious, business partnership until Schulte left the company in 1919. Interestingly Bettmann became so respected...

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Police: Be not afraid of the religions of others

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Hogdayafternoon on the 18^th January 2015 at 13:20 - A Police Blog
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In the great days of the British Empire, a new commanding officer was sent to an African jungle
outpost to relieve the retiring colonel.

After welcoming his replacement and showing the usual courtesies
(gin and tonic, cucumber sandwiches etc) that protocol decrees, the retiring colonel said,
"You must meet my Adjutant, Captain Smithers, he’s my right-hand man, he's really the strength of
this office. His talent is simply boundless."

Smithers was summoned and introduced to the new CO, who was surprised to meet a humpbacked,
one eyed, toothless, hairless, scabbed and pockmarked specimen of humanity, a particularly
unattractive man less than three feet tall. "Smithers, old man, tell your new CO about yourself."

"Well, sir, I graduated with honours from Sandhurst, joined the regiment and won the
Military Cross and Bar after three expeditions behind enemy lines.

I've represented Great Britain in equestrian events, and won a Silver Medal in the
middleweight division of the Olympics. I have researched the history
of....."

Here the colonel interrupted, "Yes, yes, never mind that Smithers. He can find all of that in your file.
Tell him about the day you told the witch doctor to fuck off."

Police: Fake News, Fake Drama

Police: "It's a very expensive option" (but it's not about cost, surely?)

Police: Ordeal by duty - Trial by Jury

Met Police officer Anthony Long cleared of Azelle Rodney murder

Police: Killing Sprees at home and abroad

Police: Waterloo, June 1815

Police: A Biker's Tale - a `Police` biker's tale

Police: First post on `policing` in ages

Police: Motorcycle Awareness -

Police: Buy Britisch Motorrad

Police: Be not afraid of the religions of others

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