I first started this blog a couple of years ago, made a few posts, and then as i’m sure many thousands of blogs have done, let it drift into inactivity. A couple of recent events (which i’ll touch on in a moment) have however rekindled my interest in putting my thoughts on modern policing in the UK into visible print. I shouldn’t expect to gain any particular amount of readers, and I would definately like to avoid any hype of the sort that Inspector Gadget or Coppersblog has attained – not that I could even if I hired several advertising companies and a publicist, police blogging seems to be a niche which has escaped the modern plague of quantity (of money) over quality – thankfully.
But if you do happen to stop by here, please let me know any thoughts you might have about my writing, the content of posts, or just anything in general that’s related. I’m going to re-post my previous blogs, probably interspersed with ‘new material’, and will be editing it to fit in with my view of things now. How such a few short years has changed my outlook on everything.
The first of the events that has inspired this new start is a recent career move. I have succumbed to the police service, despite all of my negativity about some key areas of it, and taken the leap. Instead of being a Special Constable, I am becoming a Police Constable. In a completely different part of the country, in a totally different policing environment, away from all of my friends and family. As I embark on this whole new life I feel it might be good to start logging down memorable moments from my time in the United Kingdom’s Special Constabulary, to which I owe a grand deal.
The latter event which has sparked this interest is the quite big news recently that Commander Ali Dizaei, soon to be formerly of the Metropolitan Police Service, has been found guilty of offences including Misconduct in a Public Office and Perverting the Course of Justice. I have through all of the historical incidents regarding Commander Dizaei been suspicious of someone who found such rank, money and prominence from being acquitted after very, very extensive investigations and circumstances, not to mention the issue with the Black Police Association supporting him and suggesting his accusers were purely race-motivated, right up until it turned out they weren’t, and it was quite bad press for them to continue doing so. No matter how stringent the entry processes, in an employer as large as the police service there will be bad eggs – that’s not a lightly made comment, if we note that there are over 140’000 police officers in the UK.
It’s both embarassing and unsettling to learn they can however climb to such a position of power, and abuse it so publicly with what seems a complete lack of concern for the consequences (until he was found guilty, that is, as I should think he had 20/20 hindsight in that moment). I wouldn’t ever go so far as to join the rubbery heel squad, a.k.a the Professional Standards Department, to investigate such individuals as that’s just not in my moral nature. But when people such as Dizaei do come to public light it angers i’m sure a large portion of all coppers, and indeed everyone in the extended police family. It makes me personally bubbling, and as I said earlier, embarassed, and worried. I believe, for better or worse, that putting my thoughts on policing and the wrongdoing out- and inside of it somewhere I and anyone else can read can help make me feel a little more secure about the situation.
That’s probably not all of my reasons for resuming the blog, but it’s a good start.
