TRIGGERnometry - Why Policing Is Broken - Jay Darkmoore

00:00:00.720 You can't believe a police statistic because they can be fudged so easily.

00:00:05.900 You get told it's not a stats game, it's not this, it's not that, when I can clearly see that it is.

00:00:11.560 Officers are leaving at a rate never seen before.

00:00:14.600 It's projected by the Police Federation that up to 10,000 officers a year will be leaving soon.

00:00:19.860 Officers are breaking.

00:00:21.520 And I fear that there is a real public crisis going to happen in the future.

00:00:26.240 When you're going to pick up the phone to call 999 for support, and there's literally not going to be anyone available.

00:00:34.320 So in order to backfill the people leaving, we are reducing the criteria of people coming in through the front door.

00:00:41.060 If 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.

00:00:48.660 When it comes to the police and dealing with cases and investigating cases, it can potentially be life or death.

00:00:56.240 This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College.

00:01:00.120 Right after this episode, go check out their incredible online courses, which are absolutely free at hillsdale.edu slash trigger.

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00:01:39.800 Jay Darkmore, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:41.560 It's amazing to be here.

00:01:42.460 Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:43.580 Oh, it's great to have you on.

00:01:44.520 And the subtitle of your book is The Secret Diary of a Police Officer. 0.60

00:01:48.220 And the title is The Job's F***ed, which I think kind of says quite a lot.

00:01:53.060 And, you know, it's interesting, isn't it?

00:01:55.460 Because there's these two narratives in our country at the moment.

00:01:59.280 One is people feel increasingly unsafe.

00:02:02.020 Phone thefts feel like everyone I know has had their phone nick.

00:02:05.040 I was actually in London in Mayfair a couple of days ago, and I literally watched a tourist

00:02:11.620 have his bag snatched by a guy on one of those electric bikes.

00:02:14.760 That's one thing.

00:02:16.340 And then there's also people who are telling you the crime's never been lower.

00:02:19.440 Everything's great.

00:02:20.440 Everything's wonderful.

00:02:22.520 What's your take?

00:02:23.740 You can't believe a police statistic because they can be fudged so easily.

00:02:28.400 So what happens is the senior leadership team, they will have an agenda, so to speak.

00:02:36.240 And what they will do is they will look at a certain, I don't know, take domestic violence,

00:02:41.940 for example, in particular when it comes to violence against women and girls. 1.00

00:02:46.080 That's the biggest load of, pardon my phrase, that's the biggest load of shit you can possibly 0.99

00:02:52.340 quantify because of the way that it's dealt with. 0.99

00:02:54.980 Now, I get a lot of crap when I do speak about the police, when I speak about the great work, 0.92

00:03:02.960 what they do, because we only see the bad work, what happens. 0.97

00:03:06.520 We see that crime's not being solved.

00:03:07.980 We see that, like you said, people right in front of you, crime's happening there and

00:03:11.800 there.

00:03:12.560 We hear a burglary is not going detected.

00:03:15.000 There's a whole thing about grooming gangs not being investigated.

00:03:17.780 All that stuff hits the media because people want to slate the police because they're easy

00:03:23.660 targets.

00:03:24.100 And of course, the actions, what the police do or don't do, directly affects people's

00:03:29.100 lives.

00:03:30.000 So I can completely understand where that vitriol towards the police officers come from.

00:03:35.640 But because I've been on the other side of it and I'm in regular contact with other

00:03:39.400 officers, I get to see all the really hard work what officers do, which never makes the

00:03:46.360 headlines.

00:03:46.720 And unfortunately, because of what's happening right now, in particular, like I mentioned

00:03:51.860 before about senior leadership teams and essentially having their own career prospects and known

00:03:56.260 agendas at the forefront of their mind, not public safety, not what's best for the public,

00:04:01.000 but what looks best for them on paper.

00:04:02.540 We're seeing so many officers now not able to catch the criminals who are stealing people's

00:04:09.680 phones, not able to investigate the burglars, not able to investigate the things what people

00:04:12.860 want them to investigate, simply because officers are breaking.

00:04:16.240 And I fear that there is a real public crisis going to happen in the future when you're going

00:04:24.160 to pick up the phone to call 999 for support and there's literally not going to be anyone

00:04:28.680 available because so many police officers have left.

00:04:32.040 There is a real mental health crisis in the police.

00:04:34.740 There's a real disparity between, like we said, what people want to be investigated and what

00:04:39.780 is actually investigated and how that looks when it's presented as a statistic.

00:04:45.180 There's a huge problem with our public service in relation to the police and it's only getting

00:04:49.940 worse.

00:04:51.120 And the unfortunate thing is police officers on the ground, they either can't speak out

00:04:56.340 because they bring the force into disrepute, so they can't speak out publicly about what's

00:05:01.660 happening on their end.

00:05:03.240 And then what happens is when they fill in these morale and pay surveys, they just get

00:05:09.520 ignored.

00:05:11.080 So they've got every avenue inside their job, which they're supposed to have to say, we're

00:05:15.320 unhappy because of this.

00:05:16.520 We're being told to investigate this.

00:05:18.080 I feel that my morality is being stripped away because I'm being made to do something

00:05:22.440 I don't agree with for the sake of helping somebody further up their career ladder.

00:05:28.180 Meanwhile, we're just getting from the public because we're being told we're not good enough.

00:05:31.840 Our pay has been stripped back real terms by about 21% since 2010, I believe it is.

00:05:36.980 Then there's everything in the media to again further kick officers.

00:05:40.240 Then the politicians and the government are taking everything away from them.

00:05:44.620 Mental health welfare is not there.

00:05:46.920 Post-traumatic stress disorder, I believe the police federation said that about 35% of

00:05:51.540 frontline officers would qualify for PTSD, if not complex PTSD.

00:05:58.500 Officers are screaming that we're drowning, that we're really, really struggling. 0.99

00:06:02.000 And the people who were there to protect them, don't give a shit. 0.99

00:06:07.160 Well, you know, as just a member of the public in this particular instance, when I'm talking 0.98

00:06:14.440 about the way people feel about crime, I don't think, I've never met anyone who thinks police

00:06:19.160 officers are to blame for this, actually.

00:06:23.660 And certainly, you know, of course, there's going to be people who are not doing their job

00:06:27.620 like in any job.

00:06:28.440 But broadly speaking, I have a tremendous amount of admiration and respect and gratitude to

00:06:32.600 the police, because those are the people you're going to call when things are going on that

00:06:36.840 you don't want going on.

00:06:38.420 But I also think it's certainly from an experience perspective for a lot of people, it's become

00:06:43.400 undeniable that our day-to-day quality of life when it comes to safety, particularly in

00:06:50.940 the big cities, is just not going in the right direction.

00:06:54.140 And I don't think we can deny that either, right?

00:06:56.220 So you're hinting at that's a lot to do with senior leadership.

00:06:59.340 It's to do with the way it's being funded, of course, as well.

00:07:02.660 What are the key reasons why you've got this problem, where you've got very decent, well-intentioned

00:07:08.260 police officers doing their job to the best of their ability, and yet all of these other

00:07:13.160 problems are getting worse?

00:07:14.300 It's really nice to hear what you said there, in that, you know, you respect the police and

00:07:18.920 a lot of people who you interact with also understand the hard work that officers, what

00:07:24.300 they have to do, and the incredibly, impossibly difficult job what officers have to do.

00:07:29.340 Because it's easy for, if all of a sudden the police, to look on the internet and look 1.00

00:07:33.680 at the media and go, well, everyone just thinks we're a piece of shit. 1.00

00:07:36.420 Is that really, really, people feel that way? 1.00

00:07:38.120 Because let's just say this, and one of the things as well on that is, we have this conversation

00:07:42.480 with Francis all the time.

00:07:43.600 Whenever there's been, do you remember that Chris Cabber shooting?

00:07:46.700 Yes.

00:07:46.880 This is a guy who tried to ram police officers in a stolen vehicle, I think, whilst under

00:07:51.920 suspicion of committing a firearms offense, and the police shot him as he was trying to

00:07:56.520 ram them. 0.96

00:07:57.160 And there was these dickheads in the media going, oh, I can't believe, and we're like, 0.98

00:08:00.160 no, no, no, no, that's exactly what's supposed to happen. 0.95

00:08:02.140 The same with the Manchester airport thing.

00:08:04.280 Like, when I saw that tiny clip, I was like, there's no way this is the entirety of what's

00:08:08.060 happened here.

00:08:08.720 An armed police officer's not going to be kicking someone in the head for no reason.

00:08:11.640 Yeah.

00:08:12.140 Like, all of this other stuff.

00:08:13.620 So I think, actually, there's quite a lot of people like us who go, fair enough, like,

00:08:17.380 and what a terrible, difficult, terribly difficult job it is.

00:08:20.340 So if police officers are watching this, they should know the majority of the public have

00:08:24.420 your back, totally.

00:08:25.400 And that's, like I said, that's amazing to hear.

00:08:27.440 And it's quite, it's quite refreshing as well, because all you have to do is look on

00:08:30.480 Instagram or TikTok or Reels, and you just see, um, all the Tyrone's police officer.

00:08:35.080 And you see, it's a clicked footage of an officer who has had a phone shoved in the

00:08:40.340 face, being asked to recite every single law, every single piece of legislation possible.

00:08:44.240 And then equally, you've been told that, you know, good enough and everything else.

00:08:47.160 And people go, well, what about this?

00:08:48.780 What about that?

00:08:49.360 And it's like, listen, I work in a local station.

00:08:52.900 I'm on my fifth shift.

00:08:54.380 I've had my last two rest days cancelled.

00:08:57.220 I'm just trying to stay afloat.

00:08:59.840 But so what was the second part to that?

00:09:01.800 So what I guess I was getting at is, if we accept what we're, the three of us I'm sure

00:09:07.460 agree on, which is the overwhelming majority of police officers doing their very best in

00:09:11.740 difficult circumstances, they're good people, well-intentioned, they've got into the job

00:09:15.120 for the right reasons.

00:09:16.460 How is it then possible, and you've alluded to some areas, but perhaps you can go deeper,

00:09:20.940 that in terms of actual public safety, I put it to you, we're not moving in the right

00:09:27.760 direction.

00:09:28.100 Right.

00:09:28.760 So how are these two things happening at once?

00:09:30.800 I think definitely the emphasis on the wrong kind of crimes has been, you know, it's been

00:09:35.220 pushed forward.

00:09:36.640 So police forces are measured on their performance via stats, tick boxes, how many arrests they

00:09:42.580 can get, how many detections they can get.

00:09:45.160 In my opinion, I feel like police forces, rather than deal with the complex issue of knife

00:09:50.640 crime, dealing with the more resource-heavy incidents such as your burglaries, the things

00:09:56.840 what people generally talk about, is they're going for a lot of the low-hanging fruit, such

00:10:00.000 as somebody's posted this online, that's offended somebody.

00:10:04.460 The thing of a hate crime is that the victim doesn't have to perceive it to be a hate crime.

00:10:09.940 As long as somebody in the evidential chain believes it's a hate crime, it then is classified

00:10:14.040 as a hate crime.

00:10:15.040 Police want to stamp out hate, you know, it looks good, we're tackling hate crime.

00:10:18.740 And of course, if you knock on somebody's door and you arrest them for a hate crime, or

00:10:23.980 sometimes what happens is the police will even arrest somebody, they'll go, okay, you've

00:10:27.680 been suspected of something, sign that, it means you don't need to go to court, but it

00:10:31.520 basically means that you're accepting culpability for what you've done.

00:10:34.800 You might go on an awareness course, or it's called restorative justice, you might have to

00:10:38.760 write a letter of apology or something.

00:10:39.960 But the officer going to that incident doesn't want to do that, because they would rather

00:10:47.760 be dealing with other more serious things.

00:10:50.820 The senior leaders are going, yeah, but if we get this tick in the box, it makes us a

00:10:54.940 lot better, it means that, you know, we're getting more detections.

00:10:58.420 So in my opinion, they're going for the low-hanging fruit.

00:11:00.960 Now, why have we gotten into this position where people perceive that the police force is

00:11:06.480 failing? And that comes down to the directors from the officers at the top, pushing the

00:11:12.500 orders down. But when we talk about the officers on the ground, it comes down to, I

00:11:18.120 believe, officer retention. Officers are extremely unhappy in their work they're doing, because

00:11:24.080 of reasons what we've already said. Therefore, officers are leaving at a rate never seen

00:11:28.980 before. It's projected by the Police Federation that up to 10,000 officers a year will be

00:11:33.680 leaving soon. Out of a total of?

00:11:37.040 I think there's 140,000 officers in the UK. Someone will probably fact check me on that.

00:11:42.960 But 10,000 of any workforce leaving in mass drones is seriously alarming. And this goes

00:11:48.780 back to what I said before about you're going to one day pick up the phone. There's literally

00:11:51.420 going to be no one there. So in order to backfill the people leaving, we are reducing the criteria

00:11:57.680 of people coming in through the front door, which means that we are hiring the people who

00:12:02.580 we wouldn't have otherwise hired in order to backfill that. I had a senior leader, quite

00:12:10.000 a senior rank, actually message me to address this. And they said, it's cheaper to get someone

00:12:18.260 new in rather than to pay for experience because of the overall cost of having an officer. But

00:12:25.000 that reduces the mass in service to the public, reduces the quality of the officer to the public.

00:12:31.420 And the people that are coming in, because they're inexperienced, because it may be their

00:12:37.420 dream job, they don't want to upset their senior leadership team. So if their senior leadership

00:12:42.420 team goes, go and arrest that guy for posting something on X or you've had this domestic incident,

00:12:48.420 this person needs to come in regardless of what you're seeing in front of you, regardless of whether

00:12:52.740 it's proportionate and everything else, is they're going to say, yeah, because they don't

00:12:56.960 want to upset the leadership team. They're not, they don't have the experience to know what is

00:13:02.160 necessary. They don't have the experience to know what is justified, what is necessary.

00:13:06.980 They get 16 weeks in a classroom, which is death by PowerPoint. Then once they are released

00:13:11.940 onto the front line, they then get 10 weeks with somebody else. They then get 10 weeks in company

00:13:17.740 with somebody who probably doesn't have much more experience than them. I believe 35% of front line

00:13:24.280 officers have less than five years service. I think under 50% have less than 10. And over that over 50%

00:13:32.860 mark, officers have either moved to back office roles, have become more specialized, have moved off

00:13:40.120 front line, have started going up the promotion ladder. So the majority of police officers out there now

00:13:45.840 are quite inexperienced and they're being conditioned to, if you don't follow this order, if you don't

00:13:53.640 arrest at this incident, if you don't do as you're told, you're going to be reprimanded for it. And I've

00:13:59.560 been told that there's officers now who are actually color graded, green, amber and red, based on how many

00:14:07.540 lockups they get, how many stop searches they get, how many traffic tickets or how many intelligence

00:14:14.380 reports they get. So if you've got a brand new officer who's already sinking in their workload and

00:14:18.580 then they're being told they've not been trained properly because the officer who's training them

00:14:22.320 doesn't have much more experience than them. You've then got senior leadership team contacting them

00:14:26.220 and saying, you're low on your arrest this month. You need to arrest this person or you're going to be in the

00:14:30.360 shit. Naturally, they're going to go for the more easier arrests than the more resource heavy ones, 0.99

00:14:37.160 even though that the public want those more resource heavy things to be investigated. That's

00:14:42.440 not what gets easy tick boxes. And that's not what makes the police force look the best.

00:14:47.420 And it's so interesting that you say that, because in your book, you talk about going to domestic

00:14:51.880 violence incidents. And there are some times where it's been reported as a domestic violence, but it

00:14:56.620 actually isn't, you know, it's just, you know, as well happens with a lot of relationships, things get heated,

00:15:03.280 things, you know, people are shouting and screaming, but there's no domestic violence. Yet, the police officers

00:15:08.880 are told that they have to arrest someone. And then all these kind of arrests happen and then people lose

00:15:15.240 faith in the police.

00:15:16.200 Yeah. So a lot of the time what's happening is while the officers are actually on their way to that incident,

00:15:22.140 they have their senior officer radio with them going, they've said this on the call or we're low on

00:15:28.620 arrests, domestic arrests this month. You better make sure someone's coming away in handcuffs. So even

00:15:34.440 before the officers got into this situation, has spoken to the parties, and often these officers are

00:15:39.580 single crewed as well, which is a massive issue when it comes to safety and not the safety, but being able

00:15:44.620 to investigate it effectively, because generally at the domestic incident, there's two people, you know,

00:15:49.440 there's a victim and offender. So officers are going, they're being pressured and told what to do.

00:15:55.840 I had an officer speak to me and say, they went to an incident which involved two 16-year-old

00:16:02.260 brothers. One of them was quite heavily autistic or had some form of learning difficulty.

00:16:08.120 They were then instructed to get the children, get one of the children who was considered the

00:16:14.920 aggressor to sign a pocket notebook entry to say that they're very sorry for hitting a brother or

00:16:19.860 something like that. Now, I just, I don't agree that that should be happening. Siblings fight.

00:16:27.700 Okay. Of course, things can get out of hand and it can, it can move on to what is considered criminal.

00:16:32.840 But that means now that that child, when they go for a job in the future, if they do a check in the

00:16:38.220 local police system, if it's say an enhanced DBS check, they'll show up that they've had a, not a

00:16:43.520 conviction, but the police have been involved for some kind of domestic violence incident.

00:16:47.900 Now, of course, that's going to have ramifications further on down the line. And my point is with

00:16:52.100 that is this isn't the officer's, this isn't what the officer wants to do. This is what somebody who's

00:16:58.200 not there is instructing them to do. So what does this do to the officers? It reduces their morale

00:17:03.940 because they feel that what they're doing isn't right. It reduces their autonomy because they feel

00:17:09.960 that they don't have a choice in what they're doing. It completely strips away all the training

00:17:14.900 what the officers get because it just follows a diagram. If this is disclosed, this is the action

00:17:19.940 you take. Where's the nuance gone? Where's your national decision making? Where's the safeguarding?

00:17:26.000 Where's your risk assessment? Where's the alternative outcome outside of an arrest? Like you mentioned,

00:17:31.140 purely because it's got that domestic violence label on it, people are being arrested and then they're

00:17:36.420 being taken in custody. And then the custody sergeants are under massive amounts of pressure

00:17:40.640 as well. The custody sergeants are basically being told, if you refuse a domestic arrest,

00:17:46.160 you're going to be in the sh** as well. So there's all sorts of breaches when it comes to necessity, 0.86

00:17:52.040 when it comes to the law, what the officers have to follow. And I'm all for taking positive action

00:17:58.100 at a domestic incident. I've been a victim of domestic violence myself. I know plenty of people that have

00:18:02.140 been victims of domestic violence. I've dealt with serious, severe cases of domestic violence.

00:18:07.800 The problem is, if you want to look at the thing of violence against women, for example,

00:18:14.860 that is obviously a very serious problem which needs to be solved. But what they're doing is

00:18:19.860 they're trying to crack a walnut with a sledgehammer. They've taken an all-acompassing approach to

00:18:24.960 any kind of domestic incident. They've only got this one thing, which is arrest. And even though it's

00:18:31.500 positive action, positive action can mean a myriad of things. It can mean separate the parties. It

00:18:35.760 can mean, you know, is there any other potential outcome we can do to support this family who are

00:18:40.940 clearly in crisis? But they're only going for the one option because that's the one what the bosses want.

00:18:46.060 They want those arrest stats because it makes the force look better. Then when someone's arrested,

00:18:50.840 a lot of the time, even if there wasn't really that necessity there, the senior officers are going,

00:18:58.440 well, interview them anyway, because if they incriminate themselves on interview, that then

00:19:02.980 justifies the arrest retroactively, which is completely wrong. That shouldn't happen.

00:19:09.040 So I can see why certainly public confidence is going down in the police because we're taking

00:19:14.120 the autonomy away from the police officers that have been trained to enact their powers in the correct

00:19:21.200 way. And the police force are now being seen as unreasonable, punitive, and in a sense, quite

00:19:29.800 mindless, if you get me, because they're not being told to think for themselves. If anything, if you are,

00:19:35.520 if you do think for yourselves, you're punished as a result. And that is unfortunately what is then,

00:19:42.120 I believe, leading to this mass exodus in the police because officers joined to do a particular job

00:19:47.360 and to do it for the right reasons. And they're not allowed to do that by the very people who are

00:19:52.420 meant to be there to protect and support them.

00:19:55.820 Something we've learned doing this show is that people's thoughts about a given issue often depend

00:20:00.780 on where they get their news. That's why we use Ground News to see how the same story is reported

00:20:06.340 across the political spectrum.

00:20:07.840 For example, take the story about Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signing an executive order creating

00:20:13.700 so-called ice-free zones. Follow along at ground.news slash trigonometry. Using Ground News straight

00:20:21.280 away, we can quickly see that the story is being covered by sources across the board, but with more

00:20:26.720 coverage from outlets on the right. Scrolling down the page, Ground News allows us to easily compare

00:20:32.540 the headlines. We can see the Chicago Sun-Times, which is on the left, focused on the city's decision

00:20:38.800 to declare municipal buildings ice-free. Meanwhile, The Hill, a centrist newspaper, simply stated that

00:20:45.940 Chicago's mayor signs ice-free zone executive order. But the New York Post on the right went with

00:20:53.120 White House blasts sick Chicago mayor for aiding illegal immigrant killers. Same news story, 0.91

00:20:59.520 completely different takes. Ground News compiles these divergent perspectives in one place.

00:21:04.740 Another feature we use heavily at Trigonometry is the Blind Spot Feed, which highlights where

00:21:10.260 coverage is lopsided, lets you compare bias across the political spectrum, and shows what's being

00:21:15.780 emphasized or ignored. If you care about getting to the truth by seeing things from all angles,

00:21:21.280 Ground News is essential. Go to ground.news slash trigonometry and get 40% off their unlimited

00:21:28.200 vantage plan. That's the plan we use. That link again is ground.news slash trigonometry.

00:21:34.740 And it's also as well, I mean, just imagine you have a row with your missus, things get a bit

00:21:40.720 heated, words are said. Well, you know, like I said, it happens to a lot of people at certain

00:21:46.260 points in their marriage. Just imagine you get arrested by the police. All of a sudden,

00:21:50.680 your neighbors see you in cuffs being let out of your house. You then get questioned, you then get

00:21:55.940 checked into custody. You get put in a cell. You then get questioned by the police. I mean,

00:22:01.560 that must be incredibly distressing. Yeah, I mean, it's happened to me. It happened to me. I was in a,

00:22:07.400 I was in a domestic violent relationship. And this is really when all this kind of opened my eyes to

00:22:11.540 everything that was happening. Allegation made against me. I was arrested. I was then taken to

00:22:18.960 custody, spending, I mean, themselves are not nice. And the food's even worse. So you're spending 12

00:22:24.420 hours in a cell, just completely ruminating, thinking, I'm going to lose my job. And for

00:22:30.480 whatever reason, I'm going to get charged. Social service is now going to be involved with my child.

00:22:36.140 Everyone's going to think I'm a domestic abuser and everything else. So, and then you actually get

00:22:41.880 interviewed and you're thinking, I'm being interviewed by the police there over something which I've not

00:22:46.880 done anything wrong. It's an allegation has been made. And this happened so many times when I was

00:22:53.900 in the service, sitting opposite people, when I'm sitting there going, you're an arrest for a statistic.

00:22:59.480 And I know that this is going to be no further action because obviously I've done enough of the

00:23:04.100 cases to know. And I'm thinking, you should have never been here. There was one case what we dealt

00:23:10.060 with where a male contacted the police to say that eight months ago, his ex-partner had pushed him

00:23:16.880 into a wall, causing him a cut to his face. These two people lived about 300 miles apart. One lived

00:23:23.660 down south, one lived at the top of the country. And I took a statement off the mail over the phone

00:23:30.860 and I went on to manual leave after that. And I wrote all over the log, I wrote all over it,

00:23:35.560 do not arrest, no necessity to arrest, case is eight months old, we've basically got no evidence

00:23:40.020 other than what he's said, no pictures or nothing, no domestic history, justified it to the nines.

00:23:44.880 I then came in a week later, the lady had been arrested. I think she spent, I don't know, 12 hours,

00:23:51.580 18 hours in custody. And by the end of it, I think she had a mental breakdown. She got so stressful

00:23:57.600 being arrested. Thankfully, she had a solicitor. So the solicitor banged the drum to say,

00:24:02.840 this is completely unlawful, release her immediately. And then she was. And then funny

00:24:08.360 enough, the mail then that was able to use that arrest, because he knew what the domestic violence 0.93

00:24:14.360 policy was in our force, was able then to use that as ammunition in family court when it came

00:24:19.300 to arguments over his daughter. And this is another thing which, when we have this one size approach

00:24:24.900 of cracking a, you know, cracking a nut with a sledgehammer, is we are actually not only failing

00:24:32.200 victims of serious abuse, because we don't have the resources to deal with the genuine cases,

00:24:36.940 because we're trying to deal with everything, is we are then allowing perpetrators, coercive

00:24:42.900 controlled domestic abusers, to use the system as a third party proxy of abuse.

00:24:49.900 So there was a case, what I would have had sight of, where a lady left a relationship which was

00:24:57.020 volatile. She never wanted to make a formal complaint against her abuser because of the

00:25:01.540 element of fear and control and everything else. And because she left that relationship,

00:25:07.000 the mail contacted the police to get her arrested so that she'd be placed on bail so that she couldn't

00:25:13.500 go near the house or the children. So via this lock up and ask questions later mentality the police now

00:25:21.660 have, as a derivative direction from the senior leadership team, we're actually harming women 0.93

00:25:27.340 and girls and not protecting them properly. So an arrest, like you mentioned Francis, arrest,

00:25:35.660 getting arrested is, it can be a serious traumatic incident for somebody. If you are in and out of

00:25:42.140 custody all the time, it's just another day. I once locked up a lad and they said, oh I can't be

00:25:46.780 arsed getting locked up, but okay. So sorry, as if you're going to get some milk from the shot,

00:25:51.340 but you can't be arsed. But to your everyday person who's maybe never had any interaction with the

00:25:55.820 police, it's, it's a serious impactful event. And not only that, the best case scenario is that you

00:26:03.660 are arrested and then, you know, there's no further action at custody. You can just go home. But you

00:26:09.740 still have a PNC record. You've still been arrested. It'll still show up that you've been arrested for

00:26:14.380 domestic violence or whatever. So that can affect your job opportunities later on. But even if then

00:26:19.900 you are bailed because the supervisor doesn't want to make that decision themselves, they'd rather pass it

00:26:24.380 on to the Crown Park shooting service in order to make the decision later down the line.

00:26:29.980 What's happened then is this person maybe can't go home for three months because they're on bail.

00:26:35.820 Now, what if, what if it's a case of maybe they're a new family. Maybe they've got a young child who

00:26:41.420 isn't sleeping properly. Maybe the mother has postnatal depression. Maybe the father is working two jobs to

00:26:47.900 try and keep her roof over the head, seeing that, you know, the mum is now out of work. Maybe things just

00:26:52.140 get to a boiling point and they have a serious, you know, a blowout and an argument. And a third

00:26:57.180 party rings the police. A neighbour says, next door arguing. Please then turn up. Under this guise of

00:27:03.420 lock up first, ask questions later because I've got my supervisor breathing down my neck.

00:27:07.820 That male might then be alienated from his child for probably a minimum of three months because that

00:27:13.980 case will then be passed to another department, which are then massively overworked. And then they have to

00:27:19.180 build the file and send it to CPS. CPS then have 28 days to respond. And if there's anything wrong,

00:27:24.940 it gets sent back. That's another 28 days, bail extensions and everything else.

00:27:29.900 That can cause serious problems for that, for that family. And I've been told by somebody who works in

00:27:35.180 the criminal justice department in some capacity that they know people who have actually ended their

00:27:40.860 lives due to being on bail for too long. I think they told me five or six so far at the time of writing

00:27:46.860 that. But the sinister part of that is, if you were on bail for assault, for example,

00:27:53.020 and then for whatever reason you were no longer living, the police get the tick in the box as a

00:27:57.500 detection. It goes down as a positive outcome. So even though it's never been proved, it's actually

00:28:03.500 a good thing for the police if you die. That's a bit fucked up to me. 0.99

00:28:07.980 I mean, that is awful. So there are people who have lost their lives because of being arrested. 0.99

00:28:15.500 And that is seen as a positive outcome. I mean, it's completely heartbreaking. The stories that

00:28:21.420 you tell in the book, there's so many. There was the story about the woman who was a victim of

00:28:26.780 horrendous domestic violence. The police came, she had a marijuana joint, half smoked in an ashtray,

00:28:34.060 and the police arrested her for it. Yeah. So they didn't arrest her. What they did was they,

00:28:39.500 I believe they, so they're taking the statement off her. She'd been assaulted. I don't remember

00:28:44.780 exactly what happened, but she'd been a victim of domestic abuse. She calls the police. Police 0.59

00:28:49.260 turn up. They're like, okay, everything's fine. Meanwhile, she's got half a joint in an ashtray.

00:28:52.860 The police go, fucking hell, we can get another stat here. They then stop taking the statement. 0.99

00:28:57.900 They then say, you've got that there. Sign that to say that you're going to drug awareness course.

00:29:03.500 Otherwise, you might get locked up for possession of cannabis. The lady then signs it, and needless 0.98

00:29:08.700 to say, she doesn't want to make a statement anymore. So again, officers, because they're being forced

00:29:15.020 and being pushed to get as many detections and many statistics as possible, they're now seeing people

00:29:21.580 as a tick in the box. That was a case of domestic assault, which has high, high rates of homicide.

00:29:28.620 When you look at the statistics, potentially, that's the first time that lady called the police 0.85

00:29:33.500 for help. Potentially, that's the first time she'd been willing enough to actually open up and say,

00:29:38.460 you know what? Yeah, I need your help. And the officers in that instance, rather than kind of maybe

00:29:43.820 ignore it or just go, you can't have that. I'm taking that off. Yeah. And then, and that's done.

00:29:48.700 Someone would rather go, oh great, we can get two for one here. And then they'd wonder why she then 1.00

00:29:54.540 didn't want to pursue a complaint when she sees the police as not there to support her, but as punitive.

00:29:59.980 And why, why are senior police officers under so much pressure to tick these boxes and fulfill these stats?

00:30:09.340 Is it political pressure? I'm not entirely sure where the whole pressure comes from, but all I can assume

00:30:17.900 it's the chief constable wants this to happen. So then everyone under the chief constable will go,

00:30:24.780 okay, well, we need to keep the boss happy. So then we will enforce what they want and we will create

00:30:30.860 initiatives, directive, et cetera, to then enforce that. And then of course that trickles down,

00:30:35.820 the great phrase rolls downwards. That then impacts the officers on the ground, which ultimately impacts

00:30:41.980 the public. No, that makes total sense. I guess I'm asking what, why the chief constable would, would,

00:30:47.180 would have that agenda. Um, and it, coming back to where we started the conversation, you know, we've

00:30:53.260 got to a point where, you know, the authorities are basically, it feels like to me at least, are basically

00:30:58.460 gaslighting the public about what's happening. So they're saying, you know, violent crime is down and,

00:31:04.620 you know, this is down and you go, it's just objectively not true. And I think if you are

00:31:10.140 in politics, trying to push these, uh, numbers on onto the police, it's not actually going to help

00:31:17.180 because ultimately the public are going to go, well, I don't feel safer. So what does it matter

00:31:20.940 what the stats say? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Um, it's so gaslighting the public,

00:31:27.340 I can imagine that, you know, it certainly feels that way. Certainly for me looking now as an outsider,

00:31:31.580 it certainly feels that way. Um, but even when I was in the police, the, the senior leadership

00:31:35.580 will gaslight their own staff. The things that are happening right in front of you, they will say

00:31:39.100 are not happening. So they'll be told, we do not arrest at every domestic violence incident.

00:31:44.220 Meanwhile, anecdotally, we can see that that is what's happening. The officers going to the

00:31:48.380 incidents are being told to arrest. Um, we're being told that the force isn't statistic driven.

00:31:55.180 Meanwhile, what will happen is, so for example, say if you have a case and there's one incident

00:31:59.820 due to national crime recording standards, every snippet of any possible incident,

00:32:06.300 which occurs in that one will then generate a new crime. So let me, let me play a picture of that.

00:32:12.460 So Barry the bastard steals something from the shop. You got shoplifting, you got theft. 1.00

00:32:17.900 On his way home, calls the neighbor. Okay. So then that's public order. Oh, it's not the first time

00:32:22.940 was done either. So now it's harassment. Um, on his way back, he, I don't know, kicks someone's car,

00:32:29.980 cause a bit of a dent. That's, you know, that's now, uh, criminal damage. And then he gets home

00:32:34.780 and he tweets something nasty. Okay. So then you got malicious communications as well. So then you've got

00:32:39.900 six crimes there. Barry the bastard might be actually the only prosecute for one of those, 0.94

00:32:44.860 which are strong enough evidence. But due to the way stats are, uh, detected out of six crimes, 0.87

00:32:54.300 even if one's detected, all six are classes detected. One's classed as, uh, charged as is,

00:33:01.820 as in that's what we say. The other ones are just classed as a positive outcome. And, um, it was a,

00:33:06.540 it was a colleague, an ex colleague of mine who basically told me this. And then of course it made

00:33:11.260 sense. So that's why the crime so many different things, why you have to list them so much when you're

00:33:14.620 taking it, taking the case further. But the police will deny that this is happening.

00:33:19.180 And also what was also happening was when the new financial year was coming in,

00:33:24.300 officers who had people on bail and victims who were waiting for an outcome to their case

00:33:30.380 were being told, don't close those crimes yet. Wait a few weeks or a couple of months until,

00:33:36.300 you know, the new financial year, because that will make our stats look better for less NFAs.

00:33:44.700 So if I had 20 cases in my workload and I knew 10 of them were going nowhere, that's 10 victims

00:33:51.260 sitting at home wondering what's happening. That's potentially 10 people on bail wondering

00:33:55.660 when their bail's up. I'd be told, yeah, well, ignore them for now. You have to keep updating the

00:34:00.460 logs every, every single time you come in. You then can't close those because it makes the force look

00:34:07.340 worse if they're closed before this day, because that's when the clock resets. And you get told

00:34:13.660 it'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

00:34:20.140 gaslighting the public, I can imagine that it's happening because the police gaslight their own staff.

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00:35:48.940 And based on what you're saying, correct me if this is wrong, but your example about Barry the bastard,

00:35:53.820 what it sounds like is the police are incentivized to arrest people irrespective of whether that particular crime is then charged and prosecuted. 0.70

00:36:02.140 Oh yeah, 100%.

00:36:04.140 So the police are incentivized to arrest people even if they know that it's not going to go anywhere.

00:36:08.860 Yeah, 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. 0.87

00:36:19.180 They'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.

00:36:26.940 There 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,

00:36:37.180 even though they were nowhere near it. That then justifies the arrest. So if a police force is pushing to say, you know,

00:36:43.580 oh, we want to say that our arrests have gone up by 25%, well, of course, then handcuffs are going to go on much easier.

00:36:49.900 Regardless of the outcome, detections, like I said, like I said, it depends on where the focus is for the police force at that time.

00:37:02.280 If 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.

00:37:09.760 If 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.

00:37:21.340 So it depends where the focus is, if you get there.

00:37:24.600 And one of the things that you talk about in the book, which was really interesting, is the impact of DEI on the police force.

00:37:30.520 And obviously you make it very clear that there's been brilliant officers who are black, from a black Asian background.

00:37:35.840 In fact, we've interviewed one of them on the show.

00:37:39.460 But you also said that that poses a very real problem for all the police forces up and down the country.

00:37:45.360 Yeah. So I've worked with some fantastic gay officers, black officers, you know, have no issues whatsoever.

00:37:51.280 As long as, for me, as long as you can do the job and you do it properly, then by all means.

00:37:55.660 My issue is when people aren't being hired because of an immutable characteristic and other people are being hired instead of them.

00:38:05.840 Who might not necessarily be better qualified.

00:38:09.420 Now, 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.

00:38:17.180 You might just get a cup of coffee.

00:38:19.220 When it comes to the police and dealing with cases and investigating cases, it can potentially be life or death for some people.

00:38:26.000 So, yeah, I have a real big problem with it.

00:38:28.560 And 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.

00:38:40.180 So we're just trying to backfill.

00:38:41.200 Also, what I think needs to go is a university degree.

00:38:45.680 You do not need a university degree to be a police officer because not only is it not required.

00:38:52.180 I never did the policing degree.

00:38:53.520 I did 10 years and I would like to say I was quite good at my job as well as other officers I worked with never did the university degree.

00:39:00.780 Very, very good.

00:39:01.360 And 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.

00:39:18.920 Not only do they have all that to manage, they've then got a university degree to manage as well.

00:39:22.360 And 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.

00:39:38.060 Also, 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.

00:39:46.800 I've heard of officers who they have, they can't pass a fitness test.

00:39:51.680 So the fitness test is 5.4 on a bleep test, which I think is awful anyway for a police officer.

00:39:58.240 Billy the burglar is not going to run 10 metres, stop, and then run under the 10 metres.

00:40:04.800 And 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.

00:40:16.820 So it's even slower.

00:40:17.720 I'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.

00:40:26.360 If 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.

00:40:35.560 I want the person who can get there as quick as possible.

00:40:38.940 And if you're grabbing hold of someone and you're struggling with someone, it's very physically taxing.

00:40:44.100 It's difficult.

00:40:44.680 So I think the bleep test needs to be eradicated.

00:40:49.160 I think the fitness test needs to be made more job applicable.

00:40:52.240 But 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.

00:41:05.480 Because they're trying to make the police more quote-unquote representative.

00:41:08.240 Yeah, they're trying to make the police obviously be more representative of the general public, which I completely understand that that is necessary.

00:41:17.040 But I don't think it's necessary at the quality of the officers which then are there to support said public.

00:41:23.300 So there was an initiative in my old force where they wanted to get more females into firearms. 1.00

00:41:29.680 Okay, that's fine.

00:41:30.840 But 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. 0.61

00:41:43.060 And what's the rationale for getting more female officers into firearms? 1.00

00:41:46.320 I think it's just more representation in that role to be more representative of the general public.

00:41:52.840 Do you really need firearms officers?

00:41:55.040 I 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.

00:42:05.700 But in a firearms role, is that really, like, is that the area where you really want to push those?

00:42:12.300 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:42:13.500 Am I being...

00:42:14.180 No, I understand what you're saying. 0.99

00:42:15.320 The 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. 0.99

00:42:25.740 The main thing is the terrorist got stopped. 0.98

00:42:27.620 I 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.

00:42:42.300 No, as you well know, I totally agree with you about this.

00:42:45.320 I 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.

00:43:10.700 And 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.

00:43:23.440 And it just strikes me as very odd that there would be that push, you know what I mean?

00:43:27.160 To me, that looks like a loss of perspective.

00:43:29.840 Yeah, I completely agree.

00:43:31.080 But 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.

00:43:45.240 Well, 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. 1.00

00:43:56.320 And 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.

00:44:04.000 Yeah, well, and you mentioned political ideology, or ideology in general, of the people in charge.

00:44:11.900 We've heard a lot on our show about the College of Policing, particularly in relation to LGBTQ, the trans stuff.

00:44:18.800 You forgot the IA+.

00:44:20.180 Oh, that was not a mistake.

00:44:23.220 You know, all of that stuff.

00:44:24.720 How 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?

00:44:37.800 So, from my experience, we would see officers encouraged to put their pronouns in their bio, for example.

00:44:48.460 It's a bio email.

00:44:49.820 It's meant to sound on Instagram, my part is.

00:44:51.460 But it was never particularly enforced in that if you didn't want to do it, there was never anyone breathing down your neck.

00:44:58.900 They would hold days for neurodiversity.

00:45:01.640 They would hold days for intersectionality issues, et cetera.

00:45:09.420 But I have, so there's two folds to this.

00:45:12.740 So, I remember I'd spoke to somebody from the College of Policing because I wanted to understand that.

00:45:17.180 Is this coming from that?

00:45:18.140 And 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.

00:45:26.300 They can write the guidelines.

00:45:27.860 But it's up to the chief constable of the force whether they actually want to implement it or not.

00:45:32.500 So, the government then, the government directs what they want down to the College of Policing to be pushed into policing.

00:45:38.000 It's down to the people who are in control of the police force as to whether that's implemented or not.

00:45:43.560 So, whereas some police forces might maybe not necessarily take part in pride events, for example, other police forces might.

00:45:51.080 And 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.

00:46:03.800 I 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.

00:46:29.800 Or maybe it's just easier to go along with this stuff, as it has been in every other profession, really.

00:46:35.940 If 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.

00:46:47.660 I wonder if those chief constables really are as independent as you're saying, I guess.

00:46:53.140 Well, I mean, the chief constable is held to account by the police chief and crime commissioner, and they are a politically elected party.

00:47:02.020 So 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.

00:47:23.360 We want this to go down, down the chain of command with just with you saying about the diversity and everything else.

00:47:35.120 I had an experience of it, which I found quite interesting.

00:47:39.880 So 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.

00:47:49.320 Half of it was to do with domestic violence.

00:47:51.620 The other half was completely about intersectionality.

00:47:54.660 It was completely to do with, ask people the pronouns when you speak to them.

00:47:58.840 It 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.

00:48:11.640 You don't know the cultural differences.

00:48:13.640 So such a specialist course, which we went on, was actually only half about what we've signed up for.

00:48:22.160 And the other half was all to do with intersectionality, cultural differences, pronouns, everything else.

00:48:28.320 And 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.

00:48:40.860 And what were some of the cultural sensitivity ones?

00:48:43.100 Because that sounds like that could be super useful or super not useful.

00:48:47.040 It was wild, but I'm trying to remember.

00:48:48.980 It was a lot to do with, say, like countries where the male is generally the one in charge of the household.

00:48:57.900 So say, such as African countries, some of your Muslim countries, there was that sort of thing.

00:49:04.820 And it was...

00:49:05.340 And then what does, what's that, having that information, how is that supposed to shape your behavior as a police officer?

00:49:10.840 I'm not entirely sure.

00:49:12.260 I'm not entirely sure when it comes in relation to that cause.

00:49:14.740 Because I imagine if you go into a domestic violence incident, whether the male is normally in charge is kind of somewhat irrelevant.

00:49:22.820 Yeah.

00:49:23.220 You would look at what is in front of you.

00:49:25.160 Right.

00:49:25.720 You would assess the situation and speak to the parties independently.

00:49:29.160 Yeah.

00:49:30.800 And assess what's going on.

00:49:33.340 Yeah.

00:49:33.520 The 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?

00:49:40.480 Or do we have to look at potentially this could be more severe, so there's honor-based.

00:49:44.800 But as a response officer, you would generally deal with the incident there and then.

00:49:49.680 And you would have more specialist units which would look into that more expertly.

00:49:54.440 You would potentially say, I believe this could be honor-based or this is a patriarchal household where it's not equal.

00:50:03.740 And then speak to the correct units.

00:50:07.020 But to have half a day specialist on that, I just thought it was quite excessive.

00:50:12.580 And 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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00:51:35.180 And 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.

00:51:45.720 And one of the examples you use is the mental health call-out.

00:51:49.100 Somebody's having a type of episode or a breakdown.

00:51:52.580 The police are going to get there far quicker normally than an ambulance.

00:51:55.320 So it's your job, even though that's not really what you signed up for.

00:51:59.640 Police officers deal with so much, so many mental health calls.

00:52:05.520 Like, I would say, say if I went to 10 incidents in a day, at least half would be mental health related.

00:52:12.580 What do you mean?

00:52:13.300 Let's explore that.

00:52:14.360 What do you mean by mental health related?

00:52:15.680 Generally, it's people who are there feeling suicidal.

00:52:19.600 So the police will go because the ambulance might say, oh, they've said they've got a knife.

00:52:25.060 They're going to stab themselves.

00:52:26.540 Well, then they have a weapon.

00:52:28.560 So then the ambulance won't go unless the police go first.

00:52:31.660 By 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.

00:52:36.740 So then the police then have to talk to them.

00:52:40.020 They have to try and convince them to go to the hospital for a mental health assessment.

00:52:42.900 And 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.

00:52:49.840 Because you can't section somebody inside their own home.

00:52:53.440 It's something in law. 0.98

00:52:55.600 So I could attend your house, Francis, and you could say, as soon as you leave, I'm going to kill myself.

00:53:03.020 The police are in a bit of a rock and hard place then because they can't leave. 0.99

00:53:06.160 Because if you leave, you're going to hurt yourself.

00:53:07.680 But 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.

00:53:17.700 And that can be hours.

00:53:19.720 Yeah.

00:53:20.960 And when people are on a bridge, obviously the police need to speak.

00:53:26.400 They're the ones who go and speak to them.

00:53:27.660 They close the road and everything else to try and convince them to come on the other side.

00:53:30.700 There's people who say that they've taken an overdose.

00:53:35.260 Police will get there first.

00:53:37.200 If somebody is saying they're going to hurt themselves and they're out in the woods, the police go there.

00:53:41.240 You know, the police are going to try and find those people.

00:53:44.080 Mental health is a massive, I don't want to say drain.

00:53:49.080 It's not a drain.

00:53:50.080 But it's a massive use of police time, which is not being used on crime.

00:53:55.900 So that was one of the big things I kind of discovered when I started in the police.

00:54:00.780 Just how many mental health calls you go to.

00:54:03.700 And I believe some forces had, they had this, it was a right care, right care, right resource, right care, right person initiative.

00:54:12.260 And 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,

00:54:19.040 they would go to them and they would direct medical professionals to them.

00:54:22.260 And 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.

00:54:33.020 They don't have as many ambulances as there was police cars.

00:54:36.280 Also, it's a lot cheaper to get a couple of cops to drive to get there quicker.

00:54:40.520 It's quicker.

00:54:42.620 It's faster.

00:54:44.360 It's cheaper.

00:54:45.140 And then it's a case of, well, now that the police are there, the ambulance says, well, we've got this over here to deal with.

00:54:51.700 And of course, when it comes to urgency, that person's still breathing, they're still talking.

00:54:55.960 So they're not, it's not a case of the bleeding out and they need that urgent care immediately.

00:55:00.660 And the police are there.

00:55:01.960 But the police aren't mental health trained.

00:55:05.180 The first aid trained, they're not, you might get a bit of an input when it comes to mental health in your initial training.

00:55:09.860 But you're not mental health trained.

00:55:12.560 So, 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.

00:55:21.040 And look, and you've got to respond to what you respond to, but you've all shot under pressure to get arrests.

00:55:26.380 So let's say you've taken an entire day supporting someone who wants to kill themselves.

00:55:31.720 Then are you seen as being behind on your arrest quota?

00:55:35.180 So 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.

00:55:50.240 In the sense, if you'll go to an incident and at one point you might have gone, I'm not locking up here.

00:55:54.580 You know, I don't need to.

00:55:56.560 Well, 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.

00:56:03.340 If, if I don't fill this action plan, if I'm not fulfilling the quotas.

00:56:08.120 So then the justification is more reduced.

00:56:11.340 And 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.

00:56:23.160 And then the mental health implications that come with that, with the extra stress and everything else.

00:56:30.540 The system is, is breaking cops and it's, it's an absolute, I believe a national crisis what's happening.

00:56:38.980 And it's just, it's a way to just completely demoralise your workforce, make them feel that they don't matter.

00:56:47.460 And the concerns go ignored, their autonomy is stripped away.

00:56:52.600 And the workload as well, and I'm sorry, I know I'm going off topic here.

00:56:57.760 The 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,

00:57:11.580 then 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.

00:57:32.640 How can one officer realistically do that?

00:57:34.620 Plus then you work in shifts.

00:57:36.320 So your mental health's not the best because you've just come off a string of nights.

00:57:40.020 You're not eating properly.

00:57:41.580 You're not seeing your family.

00:57:42.720 You're missing Christmases, birthdays.

00:57:45.440 To me, it's no wonder why cops break and why cops go off. 0.99

00:57:48.860 And then often what happens is officers then get in shit for going off. 0.99

00:57:53.660 This is what happened to me. 0.99

00:57:54.640 So I went off for a couple of weeks with severe stress.

00:57:57.720 I basically had a panic attack.

00:57:58.800 I went into work one day, had a panic attack.

00:58:00.860 I 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.

00:58:09.240 You mentioned gaslighting.

00:58:11.260 Pulling up all these different charts and graphs saying this is the best it's ever been.

00:58:15.080 It's your fault.

00:58:15.840 Why are you stressed?

00:58:17.000 You know, we're putting all these different places, all these different things.

00:58:20.960 And it's like, all right.

00:58:21.680 And it's also as well because, and you capture it really well in your book, police work by its nature is deeply traumatic.

00:58:31.140 You talk about going to, you don't know what you're going to see.

00:58:35.900 I 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.

00:58:43.440 I don't care who you are.

00:58:44.740 That is going to have a very real profound effect on your mental health.

00:58:48.460 So that was a good friend of mine who went to that.

00:58:52.980 And 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.

00:59:00.420 You know, you crack on.

00:59:02.260 But the brain remembers that trauma.

00:59:04.620 There's a great book called The Body Keeps Score.

00:59:06.500 And it talks about this a lot.

00:59:08.480 The brain remembers the trauma.

00:59:10.040 The body remembers the trauma.

00:59:11.380 Even if you don't acknowledge it or deal with it, that trauma's still there.

00:59:16.000 And eventually this officer was single crewed, no chance of any backup, single crewed, went to this incident.

00:59:22.700 And the guy was literally still alive, hanging by his neck.

00:59:26.120 And he had to hold on to his legs.

00:59:28.940 He was shouting for help on the radio.

00:59:30.960 No one could come and support him because they were all single crewed.

00:59:33.440 They were all dealing with incidents.

00:59:34.900 And this guy literally died in this man's arms.

00:59:36.700 So the officer then, a few, you know, a few weeks later, he was, you know, he's fine.

00:59:43.360 He's fine.

00:59:43.740 I'm okay.

00:59:44.740 And then he was found in a fetal position, crying his eyes out on the floor.

00:59:48.880 And he was then taken off frontline and put into like a more desk-based role.

00:59:54.880 This officer had, well, 20 years experience.

00:59:57.880 Had dealt with all sorts.

00:59:59.780 And it was just, I mean, that to anybody.

01:00:01.980 So whether you're 10 years in, five years of that, that would break so many people.

01:00:10.640 And just the support isn't there for officers when that happens because of cuts and budget cuts and everything else.

01:00:18.360 The first thing to go is, okay, well, we'll take the official welfare.

01:00:22.200 So what's happening is officers are going to their supervisor and going, I'm really struggling here.

01:00:28.200 I've been to X, Y, and Z.

01:00:29.380 It's really playing in my mind.

01:00:30.560 And they're then being told, okay, well, we can get you a couple of weeks of therapy through the job.

01:00:35.440 Might take a few weeks to get it, but you will have that.

01:00:38.660 And then if you're still on that fix, go speak to your own GP.

01:00:41.560 Like, it can take 12 months to get a GP appointment.

01:00:47.420 Sorry, not a GP appointment, but get an NHS referral to counselling.

01:00:52.880 Meanwhile, all that's happening is you're probably still on frontline.

01:00:56.360 So that accumulated trauma is still building.

01:01:00.240 And 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.

01:01:08.380 And 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.

01:01:21.440 They 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.

01:01:29.100 I've been signed up by occupational health.

01:01:30.920 Oh, yeah, and I've got a bad heart.

01:01:32.580 I can't do it.

01:01:34.480 They were threatened with the job until the point they actually left.

01:01:37.720 So 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.

01:01:49.720 So they can tick those boxes and say, yeah, we support our staff, but the actual real practical elements of it are quite lacking.

01:01:56.700 I had a sergeant who was very, very good, who I did go to with an issue, say, am I going to hang him?

01:02:05.420 Went to him and said, think about the hanging a lot I went to, you know, he was quite an awful one.

01:02:11.980 And to be fair to him, he put his radio down and he went, right, back office.

01:02:16.040 And we just sat in just like this for 10, 20 minutes.

01:02:18.380 And that was all I needed.

01:02:20.460 Just that person who was relatable, who were respected to sit there and go, it's okay.

01:02:24.540 You know, all right.

01:02:25.740 Don't go on your radio, you know, for the next 20 minutes, we're just going to have a chat.

01:02:29.240 And then support was put in place afterwards.

01:02:32.400 A lot of officers aren't getting that.

01:02:33.660 And I think because a lot of officers are rather, I think a lot of officers might be worried about opening up.

01:02:43.260 Officers might be scared of being punished if they do open up or they don't feel confident enough to open up.

01:02:48.620 But they might not even recognize that the signs are there, that PTSD is there.

01:02:52.000 So I was told by an officer recently that they were single crewed.

01:02:57.620 And they went to an incident of a male had severely harmed himself.

01:03:03.840 And there was a member of the public there.

01:03:05.320 This officer was on their own.

01:03:06.860 Member of the public there trying to stem the bleeding.

01:03:09.800 And they said that just training kicked in.

01:03:12.420 I managed to stem the bleeding.

01:03:13.640 About 10 minutes went by before anyone could come and get to me.

01:03:17.580 Now, 10 minutes doesn't sound like a long time.

01:03:19.980 If you're trying to stop some bleeding to death, 10 minutes is an eternity.

01:03:22.960 And then it was, I was off four or five hours late, went home, took my uniform off.

01:03:29.520 And I was back in the next day, back on the front line.

01:03:33.200 No kind of, is everything okay?

01:03:35.260 How was that incident last night?

01:03:37.720 That would break so many people.

01:03:40.540 And we just expect officers to be robots and not to affect them.

01:03:44.140 Because then when it does affect them, those officers are almost actively punished for being human.

01:03:48.420 And it's also as well, you go, there's the impact on the officers, but there's the impact on the public.

01:03:54.700 If someone who's got complex PTSD, or they've had a profoundly stressful, traumatic incident,

01:04:01.360 like what happened to a friend of yours, how are they going to be able to be effective in their jobs?

01:04:07.060 They just can't.

01:04:07.820 How are you going to be able to make effective decisions under pressure if you're struggling to cope?

01:04:13.280 Well, it's not only that.

01:04:14.060 Some people might be more reactive, but then there's also the flip side of empathy burnout.

01:04:19.280 So you deal with that many incidents, you deal with that many, no one ever rings the police when they're having a good day.

01:04:24.560 So police officers, every day, are hearing the worst things, what have ever happened to somebody, day in, day out.

01:04:33.180 To the person who have called the police, that's the first time they may have actually spoken about it.

01:04:37.760 To that officer, it might be the 10th thing they've heard that day.

01:04:41.820 And 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,

01:04:53.320 where it's a case of they don't have any more empathy to give.

01:04:57.400 It's not a case they don't care.

01:04:58.580 It'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.

01:05:06.800 And that's an issue, and that's caused by officers being overworked.

01:05:10.540 It's caused by officers being burnt out, caused by officers having the days off cancelled.

01:05:14.820 The 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,

01:05:23.180 they then get cancelled, so officers are then back in.

01:05:26.900 Yeah, and you were there for 10 years.

01:05:30.440 Because, you know, the things you're describing are obviously very difficult, but I imagine, you know,

01:05:34.600 a lot of this would have been going on in the 80s and the 70s and so on.

01:05:37.680 But in the 10 years that you were in the service, how did things evolve over that period of time?

01:05:46.020 So when I first started on response, it was a really good job.

01:05:51.620 I loved it, really, really did.

01:05:53.900 This whole stat-hungry focus thing came in, I'd say, about three, four years ago, when it really started.

01:06:01.120 It was always kind of there, but you weren't necessarily graded on arrests.

01:06:06.500 Even though I had quite high arrests, but it was never a case of I was made to do something.

01:06:11.700 It was a case of I thought, well, this person needs to come in.

01:06:15.540 Experience on the shift was much better.

01:06:17.640 I walked in, I was, on my first day, the person closest to me, I think, had two years in.

01:06:23.360 The person next to them, it just went up.

01:06:25.300 It was five, seven, 11, 15, 20, 25 years.

01:06:29.100 Now most officers have less, like I said before, like less than five years experience.

01:06:32.620 And maybe there's one officer who's been on for 22 years because he can't afford to stop doing nights.

01:06:37.600 I'm a genuine person here on earth.

01:06:40.800 So 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.

01:06:47.700 So everyone knew each other.

01:06:49.200 You were given the ability to make your own decisions.

01:06:52.360 And I think that was a huge part of it for me because I could go there and I could go, is this the right thing to do?

01:06:58.820 If it is, I'll do it.

01:07:00.160 If it's not, I'm not going to do it.

01:07:01.600 And as long as you could justify it, your supervisor would have you back all day.

01:07:05.400 Even 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.

01:07:12.960 Supervision 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.

01:07:27.620 And they've had 12, 13 different sergeants coming in and out.

01:07:32.840 So that's a massive issue.

01:07:34.020 Whereas when I started, it was, OK, you had three sergeants.

01:07:36.900 Those three sergeants were basically there for quite a number of years.

01:07:40.540 So you had a really good working relationship.

01:07:42.960 On 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.

01:07:58.860 And that was really good.

01:08:00.020 But then that got stopped.

01:08:02.080 And you had a lot more staff on the shift.

01:08:05.260 People could talk a lot more openly about, for instance, what bothered them.

01:08:08.040 It was a really, really good unit to work on.

01:08:12.380 And then this over time, as people left and new supervision came in and new superior leadership came in, it just showed this slow erosion.

01:08:20.480 And then that focus started coming in when maybe the chief constable changed.

01:08:25.400 It just started to slowly break and break and break.

01:08:28.120 And that's when we saw the amount of issues which I've been speaking about today.

01:08:32.200 Before Jay answers a final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack.

01:08:39.380 The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this.

01:08:42.960 Tide Moderator says, do you think there's a deliberate attempt to nudge normal people out of policing and replace them with ideologues?

01:08:49.260 Do low salaries have anything to do with the number and quality of people wanting to go into policing?

01:08:53.840 Do you have any thoughts on the policing of protests, allegations of two-tier policing and all this other stuff?

01:09:00.640 I think two-tier policing is definitely a thing.

01:09:03.080 Really?

01:09:03.580 Yeah, yeah, 100%.

01:09:04.940 And the last question, as you know, we always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?

01:09:12.360 So 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.

01:09:29.200 I'm sure you know about this, teaching and everything else.

01:09:32.200 People go on to offend because of issues that have happened maybe then become drug addicts or alcoholics.

01:09:37.380 They're trying to black out this trauma.

01:09:38.900 I'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.

01:09:55.100 So 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.

01:10:04.260 Psychedelics, in particular magic mushrooms, is like a spearhead, something that goes straight into that part. 0.93

01:10:11.100 I'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. 0.94

01:10:15.060 I have done magic mushrooms since leaving the job. 0.98

01:10:18.000 And I found I've had therapy.

01:10:20.100 I've never went on medication, but I've had different forms of therapy as well.

01:10:23.360 I 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.

01:10:36.160 I 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.

01:10:50.500 If 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.

01:11:08.440 Because I've known, I know a few people on depression, medication, et cetera.

01:11:15.220 I know what happens as the dosage goes up.

01:11:17.320 I feel that maybe we need to change the way we deal with trauma and look at something, like I said, which is illegal.

01:11:26.780 Thanks for coming on.

01:11:27.860 Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Jay's going to answer your questions.

01:11:33.160 It'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.

01:11:47.320 Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything, like packing a spare stick.

01:12:11.020 I like to be prepared.

01:12:12.080 That's why I remember 988, Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline.

01:12:16.580 It's good to know, just in case.

01:12:18.720 Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder, anytime.

01:12:24.160 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government of Canada.

01:12:27.440 In the

01:12:43.560 United States Hadotted by the U.S.

01:12:45.580 The Department of Human Services

TRIGGERnometry - October 22, 2025

Why Policing Is Broken - Jay Darkmoore

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