Iain Watkinson

Cases like this remind you how dangerous policing is. Last night a car drove at me, failed to stop, drove at speed through a town centre. It was pursued by colleagues & eventually stopped & driver arrested who was more than x2 the drink drive limit 🤬 bbc.com/news/articles/cwy61g…

Last night I spent a shift with a @metpoliceuk ERPT team dealing with 999 calls. It is impossible to explain just how surreal an experience being out with these officers is, the officers are exposed to situations no one should see. Here are my notes from the opening two hours.

He had the best view in the house. Poor decision by this referee

I'm alarmed to learn around half of Met Police officers could be missing from its own DNA & fingerprint databases. This is unacceptable and must be quickly rectified, to help rebuild trust in the accountability and transparency of our police. Here's why👇🏾metro.co.uk/2024/12/13/15-00…

That line ‘Police Response Times will be Standardised and Measured’ has really got to me. So firstly not all Police Officers can drive, let alone drive using Lights and Sirens. Most people don’t know that. They assume quite rightly that it would be a requirement like it is in most countries, but it’s not here. Also unlike in most countries it’s not an offence to not move out of the way of an Emergency Vehicle responding to an emergency. The Highway Code tells you you’re obliged to give way, but it is not an offence for not doing so. Emergency calls have three gradings: Immediate - 15 Minute Response Significant - 1 Hour Response Extended - 24 Hour Response They’re called slightly different things across the country but the timings are already ‘Standardised’. 👀 What’s not standardised is the Human Factors in the nature of Policing. Just because I come on shift and on paper it says I have 30 Cops, that isn’t actually the case. Four are restricted due to injury or other welfare reasons. Six have been taken to AID another borough, most likely to Police a protest. Eight are covering hospital guards, crime scenes and constant watches. So you’re left with twelve Cops to cover a HUGE London Borough, all of the outstanding calls from the previous shifts, and the calls that come in as you start. Those twelve Cops already have crimes to progress, but instead they are sent out to deal with and record new ones. They’re burnt out and work incredibly hard. During the shift there’s a serious traffic collision so I lose another four Cops, four more make arrests, and another two are dealing with a serious domestic incident. Now I’ve got two Cops left and they’re running to as many ‘I’ graded calls as they can and the @ukhomeoffice has just told them they will be ‘measured’ on their response times. En route to one of the calls, they have a serious collision with a member of the public. They’re suspended from driving and are investigated. When asked why they were traveling at the speed they were, they mention ‘charter times’. The @policeconduct don’t care that there are charter times; public safety is more important, and for once they’re quite right. And surprisingly no one from the @ukhomeoffice is sat next to the Cops in their criminal interview defending them and telling @policeconduct how important ‘charter times’ are. So from a lowly Response Police Sergeant, to Response Cops, Sergeants and Inspectors everywhere, our Cops get to calls as quickly as it is safe to do so, and they arrive alive. Not in a time frame set by people who have never and will never do or understand our job. #ThinBlueLine 🚨

Here’s why not all information can be made public before a criminal trial.