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RAMBLINGS FROM LEX
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For a class, doesn't matter
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Welcome to another tale from George's Pocketbook. George is a frontline UK response officer dedicated to fighting crime, resolving family disputes in minutes that have taken years to break down and getting in the faces of the social underclass. All events are real and names and places have been changed to protect the innocent, not so innocent and plain stupid.
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For a class, doesn't matter
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Funds 🤑
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Back when George was a probationer himself, a lot of things were different. They had personal radios back then but there was only one channel to communicate on and the radios were pretty basic. There were three volume settings, louder, louder and deafening; and the only way th turn the thing off was to drop the battery out of the bottom. If you wer…
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There are so many reasons why people become police officers, probably as many reasons as there are officers. Beyond the reasons for joining though, there are the unexpected reasons for staying. For instance there is the heart-stopping moment of excitement when a call comes over the radio for units to assist with a call to 'suspects on premises'. Th…
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George was sitting alone at the team table in the canteen, catching up with two weeks worth of paperwork, when half of the Relief piled in for refs. They greeted him in the usual boisterous round of "welcome back" and "how was the holiday?" A couple of his colleagues noted that he hadn't been his usual chirpy self since he'd got back and wondered i…
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The New year is a strange time, for some people it is a celebration of hope while for others it can be a time of hope for better times to come. For a few though, the New year is a reminder of how bad things can be and a time of loneliness and misery. Through all this there are a very small number of people who can be found working the night away, d…
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A hunch is all it takes, there's no logical reason why a one particular vehicle attracts the attention of an alert copper while another doesn't. It may be something obvious like a minor moving traffic offence or just their manner of driving. Sometimes though you just 'know' something isn't right and pulling over a vehicle for a driving documents ch…
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At ninja skills training, sorry Defensive Skills or Officer Safety Training, they bang on about using tactical communications, officer approach and stance, the conflict resolution model, how your behaviour affects others, the reactionary gap, etc. All very valid and if you want to avoid getting the odd punch on the nose then it's worthwhile paying …
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George hates foot chases. Aside from the obvious that it knackers you out if it goes on for more than five minutes, you also have to contend with street furniture, mums with buggies, jeering youths and cars that absolutely and categorically will not stop to let you pass. The bad guys are normally half George's age, light on their feet and wearing N…
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The Radio Telephone or R/T Car tends to be the flagship on a Borough and the crew of the car are therefore looked upon to provide the lead in pretty much any day to day incidents that don’t need a supervisor. The driver of the R/T Car is also the most highly qualified driver on the Borough having attended and passed the four week Advanced Driving C…
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The snowy weather may have reduced most of the UK to a post apocalyptic state but the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow' doesn't even come close to reflecting the effects. Who could imagine it, snow ... on a workday? The schools were all closed, milk was turning sour in the farms because the tankers couldn't get through and anyone living more than five…
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In this crazy world where it is perceived that the bad guys get more rights than some victims,George is always at his happiest when he feels he's got 'one over' on a defence solicitor. Like most police officers who interview their own prisoners he views the defence brief as a necessary evil. Given that the UK Criminal Justice System is deemed as on…
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It was a cold sunny day in town; George and his probationer were in the middle of a routine vehicle stop-check when a report of a road rage incident, involving threats and a weapon of some description, came in from not far away from their position. A female driver had been threatened with what appeared to be a baseball bat, or large stick, by anoth…
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It was mid-December when George’s team celebrated Christmas together by gathering at a pub before going on to a restaurant. They chose one of the small rural towns on the edge of their constabulary where there was a pleasant little inn only two or three doors away from the local police station. The mood of the team was extremely buoyant, not only w…
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Once upon a time, long, long ago, police officers used to decorate their vehicles with tinsel and lights at Christmas in keeping with the festive spirit of the season. Sadly, for a variety of reasons, this is a practice that hasn’t been allowed by senior officers for a very long time. Back in the early days of George’s career there was an R/T Drive…
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George thought to himself “If I were ever to write this as a story, no one would believe me. They’d say I made it up”. The day had started so well, his team was in early and was all in plain clothes and the covert radios were all working, that in itself was a minor miracle. The unmarked cars had all been arranged and parked in the yard and the batt…
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It is true to say that most of us become a little complacent about the work we do and the things we deal with. As we become more familiar with them it’s easy to forget how difficult others may find tasks that we take for granted. George had just arrived back in the rear yard of the police station having collected a stray dog that had been roaming t…
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George remembers quite vividly his days of being tutored on shift. It was a great time for him, his first foray into real police work. As a very 'wet behind the ears' probationer, he experienced confrontation on an unprecendented scale, had a taste of man's inhumanity to man and witnessed the social degradation that goes hand in hand with some of t…
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The rear yard at George’s police station is not only the parking area for all the police vehicles but is also the entrance to the Custody Offices so the whole place is surrounded by a twenty foot high wall topped with razor wire and only accessible through an electric gate operated from the Control Room. Because of the security, George and his team…
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The weekend seems to start on Thursday evening, at least as far as the drinking public is concerned. From Thursday Night Duty through until Sunday Early Turn most uniform patrol officers can expect to be dealing with their fair share of drunken revellers and the problems that go with them. There is always the usual smattering of fights with the inj…
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It was dark, about 2am and the strobing blue lights were flickering off houses and hedgerows accompanied by the yelp of sirens as George’s Response Car barreled along the road, he was concentrating so intently on his driving that his eyes felt like they were out on stalks. Ahead of him was his colleague Jock in another Response Car but unlike Georg…
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It cannot be denied that there are some people that find police officers in their uniforms a powerfully appealing image to behold. It is also true that there are some officers who are so enamoured of how well they look in all their kit that they walk around like fashion models on a catwalk. In his role as tutor constable, George has become used to …
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"Unit to deal please, suspects on, 14 Richmond street". Suspects on. Those two words in a radio message, guaranteed to make all police officers ears twitch. The thrill of the chase, you can't beat it. George called up “Mike14, show me en-route, ETA three minutes". He flicked the blues on and floored the accelerator pedal. The Ford Focus diesel clat…
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It was a Sunday Early Turn and George was looking forward to taking things easy, after all nothing ever happens on a Sunday morning does it? Even better since there were more than enough drivers on duty that day he had been posted as the operator on the RT Car as a treat. The RT Car is the pursuit car on the Division and its name refers to the days…
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A call was despatched from the control room, the caller stating that her son, who was drunk, violent and refusing to leave, had assaulted her. Mike 2 the RT Car and Mike 21 the Response Car accepted the call. Mike 21 was crewed by George and his enthusiastic young probationer Sam and neither of them wanted to be beaten to the call by the Radio Tele…
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Welcome to this special edition of George’s Pocketbook, where our colleagues around the world take time to share their experiences of what being a Law Enforcement Officer means to them, where they work. The incidents portrayed are real but where necessary, names and places have been changed in order to protect the innocent, the not so innocent and …
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Years ago a lot of effort was put into teaching new police officers a variety of holds, grabs and takedowns. Some of these holds were so complex that a degree in human anatomy was required to implement them, as was a fair degree of luck when trying to apply them to your quarry. George still remembers those late nights in the gym at Training School,…
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