In this episode, we speak to Jay Darkmore, a former police officer and author, who has written The Secret Diary of a Police Officer and The Job's F***ed. She talks about her experience of working as a police officer, why the police are under-represented in the media, and why she believes there is a real mental health crisis in the force.
00:00:21.520And I fear that there is a real public crisis going to happen in the future.
00:00:26.240When you're going to pick up the phone to call 999 for support, and there's literally not going to be anyone available.
00:00:34.320So in order to backfill the people leaving, we are reducing the criteria of people coming in through the front door.
00:00:41.060If this was Microsoft or this was Starbucks, you have someone in the job who's maybe not the best qualified, you might just get a s*** cup of coffee.
00:00:48.660When it comes to the police and dealing with cases and investigating cases, it can potentially be life or death.
00:00:56.240This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College.
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00:21:34.740And it's also as well, I mean, just imagine you have a row with your missus, things get a bit
00:21:40.720heated, words are said. Well, you know, like I said, it happens to a lot of people at certain
00:21:46.260points in their marriage. Just imagine you get arrested by the police. All of a sudden,
00:21:50.680your neighbors see you in cuffs being let out of your house. You then get questioned, you then get
00:21:55.940checked into custody. You get put in a cell. You then get questioned by the police. I mean,
00:22:01.560that must be incredibly distressing. Yeah, I mean, it's happened to me. It happened to me. I was in a,
00:22:07.400I was in a domestic violent relationship. And this is really when all this kind of opened my eyes to
00:22:11.540everything that was happening. Allegation made against me. I was arrested. I was then taken to
00:22:18.960custody, spending, I mean, themselves are not nice. And the food's even worse. So you're spending 12
00:22:24.420hours in a cell, just completely ruminating, thinking, I'm going to lose my job. And for
00:22:30.480whatever reason, I'm going to get charged. Social service is now going to be involved with my child.
00:22:36.140Everyone's going to think I'm a domestic abuser and everything else. So, and then you actually get
00:22:41.880interviewed and you're thinking, I'm being interviewed by the police there over something which I've not
00:22:46.880done anything wrong. It's an allegation has been made. And this happened so many times when I was
00:22:53.900in the service, sitting opposite people, when I'm sitting there going, you're an arrest for a statistic.
00:22:59.480And I know that this is going to be no further action because obviously I've done enough of the
00:23:04.100cases to know. And I'm thinking, you should have never been here. There was one case what we dealt
00:23:10.060with where a male contacted the police to say that eight months ago, his ex-partner had pushed him
00:23:16.880into a wall, causing him a cut to his face. These two people lived about 300 miles apart. One lived
00:23:23.660down south, one lived at the top of the country. And I took a statement off the mail over the phone
00:23:30.860and I went on to manual leave after that. And I wrote all over the log, I wrote all over it,
00:23:35.560do not arrest, no necessity to arrest, case is eight months old, we've basically got no evidence
00:23:40.020other than what he's said, no pictures or nothing, no domestic history, justified it to the nines.
00:23:44.880I then came in a week later, the lady had been arrested. I think she spent, I don't know, 12 hours,
00:23:51.58018 hours in custody. And by the end of it, I think she had a mental breakdown. She got so stressful
00:23:57.600being arrested. Thankfully, she had a solicitor. So the solicitor banged the drum to say,
00:24:02.840this is completely unlawful, release her immediately. And then she was. And then funny
00:24:08.360enough, the mail then that was able to use that arrest, because he knew what the domestic violence
00:24:14.360policy was in our force, was able then to use that as ammunition in family court when it came
00:24:19.300to arguments over his daughter. And this is another thing which, when we have this one size approach
00:24:24.900of cracking a, you know, cracking a nut with a sledgehammer, is we are actually not only failing
00:24:32.200victims of serious abuse, because we don't have the resources to deal with the genuine cases,
00:24:36.940because we're trying to deal with everything, is we are then allowing perpetrators, coercive
00:24:42.900controlled domestic abusers, to use the system as a third party proxy of abuse.
00:24:49.900So there was a case, what I would have had sight of, where a lady left a relationship which was
00:24:57.020volatile. She never wanted to make a formal complaint against her abuser because of the
00:25:01.540element of fear and control and everything else. And because she left that relationship,
00:25:07.000the mail contacted the police to get her arrested so that she'd be placed on bail so that she couldn't
00:25:13.500go near the house or the children. So via this lock up and ask questions later mentality the police now
00:25:21.660have, as a derivative direction from the senior leadership team, we're actually harming women
00:25:27.340and girls and not protecting them properly. So an arrest, like you mentioned Francis, arrest,
00:25:35.660getting arrested is, it can be a serious traumatic incident for somebody. If you are in and out of
00:25:42.140custody all the time, it's just another day. I once locked up a lad and they said, oh I can't be
00:25:46.780arsed getting locked up, but okay. So sorry, as if you're going to get some milk from the shot,
00:25:51.340but you can't be arsed. But to your everyday person who's maybe never had any interaction with the
00:25:55.820police, it's, it's a serious impactful event. And not only that, the best case scenario is that you
00:26:03.660are arrested and then, you know, there's no further action at custody. You can just go home. But you
00:26:09.740still have a PNC record. You've still been arrested. It'll still show up that you've been arrested for
00:26:14.380domestic violence or whatever. So that can affect your job opportunities later on. But even if then
00:26:19.900you are bailed because the supervisor doesn't want to make that decision themselves, they'd rather pass it
00:26:24.380on to the Crown Park shooting service in order to make the decision later down the line.
00:26:29.980What's happened then is this person maybe can't go home for three months because they're on bail.
00:26:35.820Now, what if, what if it's a case of maybe they're a new family. Maybe they've got a young child who
00:26:41.420isn't sleeping properly. Maybe the mother has postnatal depression. Maybe the father is working two jobs to
00:26:47.900try and keep her roof over the head, seeing that, you know, the mum is now out of work. Maybe things just
00:26:52.140get to a boiling point and they have a serious, you know, a blowout and an argument. And a third
00:26:57.180party rings the police. A neighbour says, next door arguing. Please then turn up. Under this guise of
00:27:03.420lock up first, ask questions later because I've got my supervisor breathing down my neck.
00:27:07.820That male might then be alienated from his child for probably a minimum of three months because that
00:27:13.980case will then be passed to another department, which are then massively overworked. And then they have to
00:27:19.180build the file and send it to CPS. CPS then have 28 days to respond. And if there's anything wrong,
00:27:24.940it gets sent back. That's another 28 days, bail extensions and everything else.
00:27:29.900That can cause serious problems for that, for that family. And I've been told by somebody who works in
00:27:35.180the criminal justice department in some capacity that they know people who have actually ended their
00:27:40.860lives due to being on bail for too long. I think they told me five or six so far at the time of writing
00:27:46.860that. But the sinister part of that is, if you were on bail for assault, for example,
00:27:53.020and then for whatever reason you were no longer living, the police get the tick in the box as a
00:27:57.500detection. It goes down as a positive outcome. So even though it's never been proved, it's actually
00:28:03.500a good thing for the police if you die. That's a bit fucked up to me.
00:28:07.980I mean, that is awful. So there are people who have lost their lives because of being arrested.
00:28:15.500And that is seen as a positive outcome. I mean, it's completely heartbreaking. The stories that
00:28:21.420you tell in the book, there's so many. There was the story about the woman who was a victim of
00:28:26.780horrendous domestic violence. The police came, she had a marijuana joint, half smoked in an ashtray,
00:28:34.060and the police arrested her for it. Yeah. So they didn't arrest her. What they did was they,
00:28:39.500I believe they, so they're taking the statement off her. She'd been assaulted. I don't remember
00:28:44.780exactly what happened, but she'd been a victim of domestic abuse. She calls the police. Police
00:28:49.260turn up. They're like, okay, everything's fine. Meanwhile, she's got half a joint in an ashtray.
00:28:52.860The police go, fucking hell, we can get another stat here. They then stop taking the statement.
00:28:57.900They then say, you've got that there. Sign that to say that you're going to drug awareness course.
00:29:03.500Otherwise, you might get locked up for possession of cannabis. The lady then signs it, and needless
00:29:08.700to say, she doesn't want to make a statement anymore. So again, officers, because they're being forced
00:29:15.020and being pushed to get as many detections and many statistics as possible, they're now seeing people
00:29:21.580as a tick in the box. That was a case of domestic assault, which has high, high rates of homicide.
00:29:28.620When you look at the statistics, potentially, that's the first time that lady called the police
00:29:33.500for help. Potentially, that's the first time she'd been willing enough to actually open up and say,
00:29:38.460you know what? Yeah, I need your help. And the officers in that instance, rather than kind of maybe
00:29:43.820ignore it or just go, you can't have that. I'm taking that off. Yeah. And then, and that's done.
00:29:48.700Someone would rather go, oh great, we can get two for one here. And then they'd wonder why she then
00:29:54.540didn't want to pursue a complaint when she sees the police as not there to support her, but as punitive.
00:29:59.980And why, why are senior police officers under so much pressure to tick these boxes and fulfill these stats?
00:30:09.340Is it political pressure? I'm not entirely sure where the whole pressure comes from, but all I can assume
00:30:17.900it's the chief constable wants this to happen. So then everyone under the chief constable will go,
00:30:24.780okay, well, we need to keep the boss happy. So then we will enforce what they want and we will create
00:30:30.860initiatives, directive, et cetera, to then enforce that. And then of course that trickles down,
00:30:35.820the great phrase rolls downwards. That then impacts the officers on the ground, which ultimately impacts
00:30:41.980the public. No, that makes total sense. I guess I'm asking what, why the chief constable would, would,
00:30:47.180would have that agenda. Um, and it, coming back to where we started the conversation, you know, we've
00:30:53.260got to a point where, you know, the authorities are basically, it feels like to me at least, are basically
00:30:58.460gaslighting the public about what's happening. So they're saying, you know, violent crime is down and,
00:31:04.620you know, this is down and you go, it's just objectively not true. And I think if you are
00:31:10.140in politics, trying to push these, uh, numbers on onto the police, it's not actually going to help
00:31:17.180because ultimately the public are going to go, well, I don't feel safer. So what does it matter
00:31:20.940what the stats say? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Um, it's so gaslighting the public,
00:31:27.340I can imagine that, you know, it certainly feels that way. Certainly for me looking now as an outsider,
00:31:31.580it certainly feels that way. Um, but even when I was in the police, the, the senior leadership
00:31:35.580will gaslight their own staff. The things that are happening right in front of you, they will say
00:31:39.100are not happening. So they'll be told, we do not arrest at every domestic violence incident.
00:31:44.220Meanwhile, anecdotally, we can see that that is what's happening. The officers going to the
00:31:48.380incidents are being told to arrest. Um, we're being told that the force isn't statistic driven.
00:31:55.180Meanwhile, what will happen is, so for example, say if you have a case and there's one incident
00:31:59.820due to national crime recording standards, every snippet of any possible incident,
00:32:06.300which occurs in that one will then generate a new crime. So let me, let me play a picture of that.
00:32:12.460So Barry the bastard steals something from the shop. You got shoplifting, you got theft.
00:32:17.900On his way home, calls the neighbor. Okay. So then that's public order. Oh, it's not the first time
00:32:22.940was done either. So now it's harassment. Um, on his way back, he, I don't know, kicks someone's car,
00:32:29.980cause a bit of a dent. That's, you know, that's now, uh, criminal damage. And then he gets home
00:32:34.780and he tweets something nasty. Okay. So then you got malicious communications as well. So then you've got
00:32:39.900six crimes there. Barry the bastard might be actually the only prosecute for one of those,
00:32:44.860which are strong enough evidence. But due to the way stats are, uh, detected out of six crimes,
00:32:54.300even if one's detected, all six are classes detected. One's classed as, uh, charged as is,
00:33:01.820as in that's what we say. The other ones are just classed as a positive outcome. And, um, it was a,
00:33:06.540it was a colleague, an ex colleague of mine who basically told me this. And then of course it made
00:33:11.260sense. So that's why the crime so many different things, why you have to list them so much when you're
00:33:14.620taking it, taking the case further. But the police will deny that this is happening.
00:33:19.180And also what was also happening was when the new financial year was coming in,
00:33:24.300officers who had people on bail and victims who were waiting for an outcome to their case
00:33:30.380were being told, don't close those crimes yet. Wait a few weeks or a couple of months until,
00:33:36.300you know, the new financial year, because that will make our stats look better for less NFAs.
00:33:44.700So if I had 20 cases in my workload and I knew 10 of them were going nowhere, that's 10 victims
00:33:51.260sitting at home wondering what's happening. That's potentially 10 people on bail wondering
00:33:55.660when their bail's up. I'd be told, yeah, well, ignore them for now. You have to keep updating the
00:34:00.460logs every, every single time you come in. You then can't close those because it makes the force look
00:34:07.340worse if they're closed before this day, because that's when the clock resets. And you get told
00:34:13.660it's not a stats game. It's not this, it's not that, when I can clearly see that it is. So in regards to
00:34:20.140gaslighting the public, I can imagine that it's happening because the police gaslight their own staff.
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00:35:48.940And based on what you're saying, correct me if this is wrong, but your example about Barry the bastard,
00:35:53.820what it sounds like is the police are incentivized to arrest people irrespective of whether that particular crime is then charged and prosecuted.
00:36:04.140So the police are incentivized to arrest people even if they know that it's not going to go anywhere.
00:36:08.860Yeah, so because it depends on what that particular force might be pushing. So if it's just arrests, then they'll arrest anyone for pretty much fucking anything.
00:36:19.180They'll justify it later. An example of this was, like you said, you know, two people had an argument at home, one person was arrested.
00:36:26.940There wasn't really a crime there, no necessity. The inspector at the custody suite later on justified the arrest based on what they felt the victim would have felt at the time,
00:36:37.180even though they were nowhere near it. That then justifies the arrest. So if a police force is pushing to say, you know,
00:36:43.580oh, we want to say that our arrests have gone up by 25%, well, of course, then handcuffs are going to go on much easier.
00:36:49.900Regardless of the outcome, detections, like I said, like I said, it depends on where the focus is for the police force at that time.
00:37:02.280If it's on detections, you'll find more sensible arrests because the officers won't want to arrest people if they don't feel that there's the evidence for the prosecution later.
00:37:09.760If it's the other way around where we just focus on arrest, well, then handcuffs are going to go on much easier with less justification because we're not really measuring how, what happens later on down the line.
00:37:21.340So it depends where the focus is, if you get there.
00:37:24.600And one of the things that you talk about in the book, which was really interesting, is the impact of DEI on the police force.
00:37:30.520And obviously you make it very clear that there's been brilliant officers who are black, from a black Asian background.
00:37:35.840In fact, we've interviewed one of them on the show.
00:37:39.460But you also said that that poses a very real problem for all the police forces up and down the country.
00:37:45.360Yeah. So I've worked with some fantastic gay officers, black officers, you know, have no issues whatsoever.
00:37:51.280As long as, for me, as long as you can do the job and you do it properly, then by all means.
00:37:55.660My issue is when people aren't being hired because of an immutable characteristic and other people are being hired instead of them.
00:38:05.840Who might not necessarily be better qualified.
00:38:09.420Now, when it comes to, if this was Microsoft or this was Starbucks, you have someone in the job who's maybe not the best qualified.
00:38:19.220When it comes to the police and dealing with cases and investigating cases, it can potentially be life or death for some people.
00:38:26.000So, yeah, I have a real big problem with it.
00:38:28.560And like I said, the reason why I would say that the quality of officers may be perceived now as not being as good as it could be is because we're struggling so much to keep officers on the back end.
00:39:01.360And the stress I've seen colleagues be under because not only have they got 30, 40 crimes in their workload, which is 30, 40 victims potentially to manage as well as deal with the everyday thing of shift work, investigations, response, everything else.
00:39:18.920Not only do they have all that to manage, they've then got a university degree to manage as well.
00:39:22.360And it also puts additional stress on the team because Jack, who is on the university degree, might then have six weeks at university doing his policing degree, which means that the rest of the team then have to do Jack's work not.
00:39:38.060Also, just talking about the quality of the officers coming in, I've heard stories that we're now hiring officers who need emotional support snails.
00:39:46.800I've heard of officers who they have, they can't pass a fitness test.
00:39:51.680So the fitness test is 5.4 on a bleep test, which I think is awful anyway for a police officer.
00:39:58.240Billy the burglar is not going to run 10 metres, stop, and then run under the 10 metres.
00:40:04.800And in order to support people who fail that, what they've then done is they've then, so that's your initial one, they've then reduced the recurring yearly fitness test down to, I think, 3.8.
00:40:17.720I've been told of officers now who come in, they can't even hit 1.6, 1.7 on the bleep test, but they're still being allowed to come in.
00:40:26.360If I'm pressing my red button for assistance and I'm half a mile up a dirt track, I don't want someone who can't hit 1.6 on the bleep test.
00:40:35.560I want the person who can get there as quick as possible.
00:40:38.940And if you're grabbing hold of someone and you're struggling with someone, it's very physically taxing.
00:40:44.680So I think the bleep test needs to be eradicated.
00:40:49.160I think the fitness test needs to be made more job applicable.
00:40:52.240But just focusing back on what you mentioned initially about the DEI is we're actively stopping officers who would be a better suit for the job in favour of other demographics of people.
00:41:05.480Because they're trying to make the police more quote-unquote representative.
00:41:08.240Yeah, they're trying to make the police obviously be more representative of the general public, which I completely understand that that is necessary.
00:41:17.040But I don't think it's necessary at the quality of the officers which then are there to support said public.
00:41:23.300So there was an initiative in my old force where they wanted to get more females into firearms.
00:41:30.840But that means that if I'm a male who would be really, really well suited to firearms, I'm not going to be able to get that job because they're looking at just females.
00:41:43.060And what's the rationale for getting more female officers into firearms?
00:41:46.320I think it's just more representation in that role to be more representative of the general public.
00:41:55.040I get that, you know, if someone pops around to check your house after it's been burgled, it might actually be really nice to have a lady who's going to be a little bit more sensitive on average and all these other things.
00:42:05.700But in a firearms role, is that really, like, is that the area where you really want to push those?
00:42:15.320The Manchester terror attack that recently happened outside the synagogue, I could not give a shit whether that's male, female, or whoever holding that gun and stopping that terrorist.
00:42:25.740The main thing is the terrorist got stopped.
00:42:27.620I think what we're doing is we're focusing on the wrong thing of having, I don't know, what sex somebody is or what ethnicity somebody is in a certain specialist role rather than the capability of the people actually hiring into that role.
00:42:42.300No, as you well know, I totally agree with you about this.
00:42:45.320I guess the point I'm making is a little bit more specific than that, which is if we accept the argument that a police force ought to be as close to representative of the society that it's policing as possible without, you know, putting people in positions that are not qualified, even if we accept that, I do think there are some very particular niche roles where performance is really the only criterion.
00:43:10.700And I would imagine that armed police officers in this country, of whom they're not that many, whose job it is to respond to very high-risk events, that's an area where you really would put performance above everything else.
00:43:23.440And it just strikes me as very odd that there would be that push, you know what I mean?
00:43:27.160To me, that looks like a loss of perspective.
00:43:31.080But it depends on, I don't know, maybe the political ideology of the senior leadership team at the time who then want to look at, okay, well, we need to improve our diversity quota where we're potentially struggling.
00:43:45.240Well, firearms is predominantly male, so maybe let's open it up to females, and then let's get those officers in there at the cost of potentially not having the right person in that job.
00:43:56.320And like we said, I don't care what sex somebody is, if they take down a terrorist or attend a critical incident with a firearm, as long as they get the job done.
00:44:04.000Yeah, well, and you mentioned political ideology, or ideology in general, of the people in charge.
00:44:11.900We've heard a lot on our show about the College of Policing, particularly in relation to LGBTQ, the trans stuff.
00:44:24.720How much of the politicization is there going on within the police in terms of, you know, these fairly controversial ideas being considered sort of mainstream and, in fact, being taught to police officers as a must?
00:44:37.800So, from my experience, we would see officers encouraged to put their pronouns in their bio, for example.
00:45:18.140And they said, the College of Policing is more of a toothless tiger in the sense that they can request that certain things be pushed forward.
00:45:27.860But it's up to the chief constable of the force whether they actually want to implement it or not.
00:45:32.500So, the government then, the government directs what they want down to the College of Policing to be pushed into policing.
00:45:38.000It's down to the people who are in control of the police force as to whether that's implemented or not.
00:45:43.560So, whereas some police forces might maybe not necessarily take part in pride events, for example, other police forces might.
00:45:51.080And I think that's less College of Policing instruction and more down to the leadership team who want to maybe appear more inclusive or diverse to their population and to their officers.
00:46:03.800I think that's an interesting perspective, but I wonder whether in an environment in which everyone's encouraged to be, you know, inclusive and diverse and whatever, if you're a chief constable who maybe has aspirations of some kind of promotion or, you know, a job elsewhere or something, whether you really do feel that it's entirely your decision whether you take these College of Policing guidelines and implement them.
00:46:29.800Or maybe it's just easier to go along with this stuff, as it has been in every other profession, really.
00:46:35.940If you're working in corporate Britain, it's so much easier to just go, oh, fine, whatever, you know, we'll do this, we'll do that, we'll do a diversity seminar, we'll do some kind of sensitivity training.
00:46:47.660I wonder if those chief constables really are as independent as you're saying, I guess.
00:46:53.140Well, I mean, the chief constable is held to account by the police chief and crime commissioner, and they are a politically elected party.
00:47:02.020So we've got a police force, which is meant to be independent of politics, police without fear or favour, with almost the PCC instructing, potentially instructing, I'll never climb that high, I'm not entirely sure, potentially instructing the chief constables as to, okay, well, we want more of a push on this.
00:47:23.360We want this to go down, down the chain of command with just with you saying about the diversity and everything else.
00:47:35.120I had an experience of it, which I found quite interesting.
00:47:39.880So just going back to what I was talking about, domestic violence, I went on specific training courses and how to, you know, be quite accredited at that.
00:47:49.320Half of it was to do with domestic violence.
00:47:51.620The other half was completely about intersectionality.
00:47:54.660It was completely to do with, ask people the pronouns when you speak to them.
00:47:58.840It was completely to do with, you don't know what, what kind of demo, you don't know what kind of issues somebody may face if they're in a heterosexual relationship or a gay relationship or a lesbian relationship.
00:48:11.640You don't know the cultural differences.
00:48:13.640So such a specialist course, which we went on, was actually only half about what we've signed up for.
00:48:22.160And the other half was all to do with intersectionality, cultural differences, pronouns, everything else.
00:48:28.320And I just found it very bizarre that why are we being taught this for as long as we were, when the main focus should be on what we wanted to do in the first place.
00:48:40.860And what were some of the cultural sensitivity ones?
00:48:43.100Because that sounds like that could be super useful or super not useful.
00:48:47.040It was wild, but I'm trying to remember.
00:48:48.980It was a lot to do with, say, like countries where the male is generally the one in charge of the household.
00:48:57.900So say, such as African countries, some of your Muslim countries, there was that sort of thing.
00:49:33.520The cultural sensitivity part can maybe look at maybe a little bit later when it comes to, okay, well, why are they not making a statement?
00:49:40.480Or do we have to look at potentially this could be more severe, so there's honor-based.
00:49:44.800But as a response officer, you would generally deal with the incident there and then.
00:49:49.680And you would have more specialist units which would look into that more expertly.
00:49:54.440You would potentially say, I believe this could be honor-based or this is a patriarchal household where it's not equal.
00:50:07.020But to have half a day specialist on that, I just thought it was quite excessive.
00:50:12.580And when it comes to, like you said, about the political inference from government, about DEI and everything else, I think they are quite closely connected.
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00:51:35.180And one of the things, Jay, that you talk about a lot is the fact that the police is expected to do things which they shouldn't actually be doing.
00:51:45.720And one of the examples you use is the mental health call-out.
00:51:49.100Somebody's having a type of episode or a breakdown.
00:51:52.580The police are going to get there far quicker normally than an ambulance.
00:51:55.320So it's your job, even though that's not really what you signed up for.
00:51:59.640Police officers deal with so much, so many mental health calls.
00:52:05.520Like, I would say, say if I went to 10 incidents in a day, at least half would be mental health related.
00:52:28.560So then the ambulance won't go unless the police go first.
00:52:31.660By the time the police have got there and they're dealing with that person, that ambulance crew has probably been taken off to somewhere else.
00:52:36.740So then the police then have to talk to them.
00:52:40.020They have to try and convince them to go to the hospital for a mental health assessment.
00:52:42.900And you can be there hours, either waiting for an ambulance, waiting for a member of their family to come and potentially take them to the hospital or to sit with them.
00:52:49.840Because you can't section somebody inside their own home.
00:52:55.600So I could attend your house, Francis, and you could say, as soon as you leave, I'm going to kill myself.
00:53:03.020The police are in a bit of a rock and hard place then because they can't leave.
00:53:06.160Because if you leave, you're going to hurt yourself.
00:53:07.680But if you say, I'm not going to hospital, the police then either have to wait until the ambulance comes or wait until the ambulance comes.
00:53:50.080But it's a massive use of police time, which is not being used on crime.
00:53:55.900So that was one of the big things I kind of discovered when I started in the police.
00:54:00.780Just how many mental health calls you go to.
00:54:03.700And I believe some forces had, they had this, it was a right care, right care, right resource, right care, right person initiative.
00:54:12.260And that was, there was meant to be a paramedic or a mental health worker in the control room who any mental health calls come in,
00:54:19.040they would go to them and they would direct medical professionals to them.
00:54:22.260And from what I've been told and from what I saw, it did not reduce the amount of calls that went out because the NHS is strapped for ambulances.
00:54:33.020They don't have as many ambulances as there was police cars.
00:54:36.280Also, it's a lot cheaper to get a couple of cops to drive to get there quicker.
00:55:12.560So, like I said, you're stuck with that person until you can, they will either go to hospital or have someone to sit with them or you can get an ambulance to them.
00:55:21.040And look, and you've got to respond to what you respond to, but you've all shot under pressure to get arrests.
00:55:26.380So let's say you've taken an entire day supporting someone who wants to kill themselves.
00:55:31.720Then are you seen as being behind on your arrest quota?
00:55:35.180So what might then happen is if they say get to the end of the month and you need four arrests that month and you've only got two, the justification for an arrest to happen might be a lot less.
00:55:50.240In the sense, if you'll go to an incident and at one point you might have gone, I'm not locking up here.
00:55:56.560Well, I'm down on my arrest statistic and my boss is going to get, I'm going to be put on an action plan, which means I'm potentially going to lose my job.
00:56:03.340If, if I don't fill this action plan, if I'm not fulfilling the quotas.
00:56:08.120So then the justification is more reduced.
00:56:11.340And mate, the amount of officers I use have come over to me or speak to me who, they just look like, they just look like the world had ended because they knew what they were doing was wrong and they didn't want to do it.
00:56:23.160And then the mental health implications that come with that, with the extra stress and everything else.
00:56:30.540The system is, is breaking cops and it's, it's an absolute, I believe a national crisis what's happening.
00:56:38.980And it's just, it's a way to just completely demoralise your workforce, make them feel that they don't matter.
00:56:47.460And the concerns go ignored, their autonomy is stripped away.
00:56:52.600And the workload as well, and I'm sorry, I know I'm going off topic here.
00:56:57.760The workload as well, which, which officers have, how come one officer realistically, whilst dealing with response, whilst going to mental health calls, whilst needing to stop cars and pick up these quotas and everything else, fill these quotas,
00:57:11.580then realistically give a good quality service to their 30 victims, which they have in their workload, as well as the additional pressures, what come from Crown Prosecution Service Action Plans, investigation plans you have to update, new templates, which bosses bring in to, to fulfill this statistic, obstacle statistic somewhere.
00:57:32.640How can one officer realistically do that?
00:57:58.800I went into work one day, had a panic attack.
00:58:00.860I then came into work and my supervisor sat me down and then spent the next 20 minutes telling me why I was in the wrong for going off stressed.
00:58:21.680And it's also as well because, and you capture it really well in your book, police work by its nature is deeply traumatic.
00:58:31.140You talk about going to, you don't know what you're going to see.
00:58:35.900I remember you told one story about a guy who hung himself and your colleague was literally trying to support him as the man was in his death throats.
00:58:44.740That is going to have a very real profound effect on your mental health.
00:58:48.460So that was a good friend of mine who went to that.
00:58:52.980And this officer would be one of the first, you know, a kind of old school officer who'd be one of the first ones to go, oh, you just get on with it.
01:00:30.560And they're then being told, okay, well, we can get you a couple of weeks of therapy through the job.
01:00:35.440Might take a few weeks to get it, but you will have that.
01:00:38.660And then if you're still on that fix, go speak to your own GP.
01:00:41.560Like, it can take 12 months to get a GP appointment.
01:00:47.420Sorry, not a GP appointment, but get an NHS referral to counselling.
01:00:52.880Meanwhile, all that's happening is you're probably still on frontline.
01:00:56.360So that accumulated trauma is still building.
01:01:00.240And officers, when they say that they're stressed and burnt out and then being vindicated for being stressed and burnt out because they're then falling behind on the work.
01:01:08.380And even if you have a physical medical condition, I know someone who couldn't go frontline anymore because they had post-traumatic stress disorder and they had a heart condition.
01:01:21.440They were threatened with the job if they didn't get back on frontline because they said, I can't go frontline because I'm currently going through therapy.
01:01:29.100I've been signed up by occupational health.
01:01:34.480They were threatened with the job until the point they actually left.
01:01:37.720So the police might say that mental health support's there because they put on a mental health day or they have an NCALP package, which is this online training package you do, about mental health and about stress.
01:01:49.720So they can tick those boxes and say, yeah, we support our staff, but the actual real practical elements of it are quite lacking.
01:01:56.700I had a sergeant who was very, very good, who I did go to with an issue, say, am I going to hang him?
01:02:05.420Went to him and said, think about the hanging a lot I went to, you know, he was quite an awful one.
01:02:11.980And to be fair to him, he put his radio down and he went, right, back office.
01:02:16.040And we just sat in just like this for 10, 20 minutes.
01:04:14.060Some people might be more reactive, but then there's also the flip side of empathy burnout.
01:04:19.280So you deal with that many incidents, you deal with that many, no one ever rings the police when they're having a good day.
01:04:24.560So police officers, every day, are hearing the worst things, what have ever happened to somebody, day in, day out.
01:04:33.180To the person who have called the police, that's the first time they may have actually spoken about it.
01:04:37.760To that officer, it might be the 10th thing they've heard that day.
01:04:41.820And that burnout, that overexposure to trauma and nasty things and vicarious trauma, then can have an effect on the officer of empathy burnout or compassion fatigue,
01:04:53.320where it's a case of they don't have any more empathy to give.
01:04:58.580It's a case of they can't get as invested as they would potentially like to, because, like I said, it's the 10th thing they've heard that day.
01:05:06.800And that's an issue, and that's caused by officers being overworked.
01:05:10.540It's caused by officers being burnt out, caused by officers having the days off cancelled.
01:05:14.820The time when they're supposed to be at home, resting, recuperating, looking after the mental health, spending time with the family, living a little bit outside of work,
01:05:23.180they then get cancelled, so officers are then back in.
01:05:26.900Yeah, and you were there for 10 years.
01:05:30.440Because, you know, the things you're describing are obviously very difficult, but I imagine, you know,
01:05:34.600a lot of this would have been going on in the 80s and the 70s and so on.
01:05:37.680But in the 10 years that you were in the service, how did things evolve over that period of time?
01:05:46.020So when I first started on response, it was a really good job.
01:06:40.800So you were also, so you were given, so you had that camaraderie on the block because everyone had been on the same block for quite a long time.
01:07:01.600And as long as you could justify it, your supervisor would have you back all day.
01:07:05.400Even if it wasn't necessarily a decision they agreed with, if you could justify that decision making with good rationale, they were more than happy to support you.
01:07:12.960Supervision was much more stable, whereas now somebody, an inspector spoke to me and said, on their shift alone, they're the 15th inspector in the past six months.
01:07:27.620And they've had 12, 13 different sergeants coming in and out.
01:07:34.020Whereas when I started, it was, OK, you had three sergeants.
01:07:36.900Those three sergeants were basically there for quite a number of years.
01:07:40.540So you had a really good working relationship.
01:07:42.960On training days, you would go and do, rather than do some video on this obscure piece of law, which you're never going to use, you would go out and you would go for food or you would go do some training at the gym.
01:09:04.940And the last question, as you know, we always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
01:09:12.360So I thought about this and, okay, when it comes to a lot of the reasons why people offend, a lot of the time it's related to adverse childhood experiences, trauma, etc.
01:09:29.200I'm sure you know about this, teaching and everything else.
01:09:32.200People go on to offend because of issues that have happened maybe then become drug addicts or alcoholics.
01:09:37.380They're trying to black out this trauma.
01:09:38.900I've seen a lot of research when it comes to the effects, what it can have on people in relation to anxiety, depression and deep-rooted trauma with psychedelics, with magic mushrooms.
01:09:55.100So if you imagine that therapy is like slowly peeling back the layers of people to eventually slowly get to this thing, which generally happened in childhood.
01:10:04.260Psychedelics, in particular magic mushrooms, is like a spearhead, something that goes straight into that part.
01:10:11.100I've had a lot of shit happen to me when I was younger and a lot of shit happen when I was in the job as well.
01:10:15.060I have done magic mushrooms since leaving the job.
01:10:20.100I've never went on medication, but I've had different forms of therapy as well.
01:10:23.360I found that the biggest impact to my life in relation to dealing with that sort of trauma was through this natural drug, which is obviously illegal.
01:10:36.160I would like to see a day where more research continues and rather than people being traumatized, not knowing what to do, getting into situations where they find themselves in criminality and going through the system.
01:10:50.500If we can deal with the inner child, the traumatized person, the traumatized version of that person, with a very powerful thing such as psychedelics in a controlled way, I think that would reduce a lot of issues down this line because we're dealing with it more this line.
01:11:08.440Because I've known, I know a few people on depression, medication, et cetera.
01:11:15.220I know what happens as the dosage goes up.
01:11:17.320I feel that maybe we need to change the way we deal with trauma and look at something, like I said, which is illegal.
01:11:27.860Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Jay's going to answer your questions.
01:11:33.160It's one of the reasons Britain's seen as a soft touch because we do not regularly arm our police, something that happens in many other countries.
01:11:47.320Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick.