This article is garbage and has either been written by someone who isn't a Police Officer or who is not representative of any copper I know. There's some really clear red flags that need examining. A Thread. Sorry it's a long one. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/27/police-officer-stop-and-search-power

Firstly the language is a bit weird. "Senior drug supply heads", is not a phrase I have ever heard anyone utter. They don't use any of the usual Police phrases and slang. They say "THE estate" where I work. Like there is only one? I don't know any SNTs that only have one estate.

The person says no one stores BWV if they make a mistake they just keep their head down for 30 days and let the footage expire. Again this smacks of someone with no experience of the complaints process. They have 7 years to lodge and not having footage is an immediate negative.

It also doesn't ring true with every supervisor I have ever worked for saying if you make a mistake in good faith and admit it you will almost always be ok. It is incedibly difficult to get rid of shoddy officers. But this person doesn't seem to know that.

I have never heard an officer say "migrants should be sent back where they come from" in fact I've never heard anyone use the word "Migrants" this has almost certainly been changed from "illegal immigrants should be sent back" which though some may disagree, isnt an extreme view.

"Everyone is encouraged to learn their own martial arts" is possibly the crasiest sentance I have ever seen written about Policing in the UK. Shockingly few have ever done any formal training, let alone there being an encouragement beyond boxing if you go TSG.

"We've not seen any direction since George Floyd died" is just a straight up lie. There have been numerous articles on the intranet, videos from the comissioner, blog posts. There were, eventually, directions on kneeling or not kneeling.

There was a really poignant letter from AC Basu the most senior BAME officer in the force that was front page on the intranet talking about the death and the questions that it raised and the challenges ahead. The fact the author has ignored this is telling of their honesty.

"Lots of officers...would take a knee, and do speak out internally for the right to protest." This is just rubbish. I work with 50 officers, even the most woke of whom wouldn't dream of taking a knee after what happened in central. No one wants to protest, they want a quiet life.

The most telling phrase is "the dawn butler horror show". There is no one in the job who thinks those officers did anything wrong. The idea that it is "difficult to justify" a polite traffic stop on a car with tints suggests this person doesn't do any vehicle stops regularly.

In fact the most obvious point in the whole article is they don't once mention the use of stop and search around violence and weapons. They don't talk about seizing weapons, or nicking people with weapons. It is so bizarre to leave this out.

So taken altogether what are we looking at? I do think this was written by a Copper and I think it was then jazzed up by a journalist. I think I can also hazard a pretty good guess at the sort of person who wrote it in the style of that Criminal Minds show....

It's likely an NPT officer on a pretty quiet ward on a borough that doesn't have a huge issue with serious youth violence. They are likely based south of the river. So my guess would be Merton/Bexley/Bromley/Sutton or Kingston.

They don't spend any time talking about being assaulted, arresting anyone for serious violence or recovering weapons, so i can't believe their ward is very busy or that they have spent any real time on team. Probably someone who got passed over for an IRV course and went to NPT.

They complain about not running jobs on serious drug dealers so they aren't doing anything particularly exciting on their ground, again suggesting to me they work somewhere that's dead and they probably have never moved BCU. They aren't on the HPD scheme.

They have 11 years in because they said a dozen and everyone rounds up and they were obviously around for Op Blunt from the stuff about being sent North to do indiscriminate s&s. That means they likely weren't a special or PCSO first. They are male and they are white.

They will stand out in the job because they use the phrase People Of Colour which is an americansim that is pretty uncommon in the Met. They are a Guardian reader naive enough to not believe their account would be hacked into an anti rant. So my guess, early 30s, uni educated.

There's enough bitterness about supervision to suggest they either failed their skippers or were in for it when it got cancelled. Having the ego to write a piece like that, i would think they were sitting it this year. They have never had a serious complaint.

So to wrap up, this person is an idiot who doesn't know what real policing is about and knows they can give ammo to The Guardian to stoke their ego because they won't be the one taking flak on griefy stops in tough neighbourhoods. In other words an utter prick.

Just a further point. The Guardian *believes* it is a bastion of free speech and integrity, however laughable that may be. I genuinely don't think they have just written this story off the top of their heads. I think PC Disgruntled wrote it and they edited it to what they wanted.

Swapping sentances around, changing a word here and there. The PC probably wrote a 10 page essay thinking they would run the whole thing. Shock when they reconstitute it to this! It would explain the glaring omissions around violence and weapons. The Guardian does not do balance.