it’s time to read another cop memoir

bold to open with this picture I think

page 1 chapter 1

as a 12 year old he blows himself up, and observes apparently quite calmly that these days he would have gotten a 20 year prison sentence for it

literally a pipe bomb

okay so dark triad shit

I...

he applies to join the police at 19 and they turn him down for not being mature enough and suggest he join the specials, which he does

‘these days you have to do a lot of training to be a special constable but in those days they just gave you a briefing once a week and told you to get on with it’

first day. so far I actually sort of like this guy

he’s working as a lifeguard and bored out of his mind while he waits to apply full time

:)

he’s just very happy to be doing the job he wants to do, and he has a bad case of impostor syndrome. he finally gets his training done and his sergeant hands him the keys to a cop car and he’s like, you’re letting me drive this. me, an idiot

Carrot Ironfoundersson

in what is now my benchmark for a rural policing story, he is chasing a suspected drunk driver who takes off down a farm track only for both cars to immediately get stuck in the mud, so he just gets out and walks over to knock on the window

sometimes you just need TWO MEN

The posting cop

He says death smells like differential oil to him because a crash bad enough to break the axle so it leaks out is almost always a fatal one

It’s interesting, because he’s out in the middle of nowhere he ends up doing a bit of everything. So he’s a firearms officer but he’ll be the only cop for miles and miles so he gets to do all sorts

I’d make a Hot Fuzz joke but he actually beats me to it

he does three years on the public order unit, which he describes as half lifting elderly protestors out of the way of road construction and half ‘angry man team’

he likes protestors a lot, not for any political reason but because they get him a lot of overtime

all of the shouty stuff he does is individual dangerous people because ‘Exeter is too posh to riot’

he realises that the police can generate crime

he is watching a drunk woman drop her chips in the street and praying she doesn’t say something racist because then he’d have to arrest her

an entire chapter about how much he loves his wife and how much he appreciates his father in law

:(

His daughter has a difficult birth and it’s rough for him in part because the commonalities with the police in the way doctors lie mean he knows exactly how bad it is

They’re like, ‘we’re doing everything we can’ and he’s, ‘ah. I see’

She comes through okay though

He fails almost every course he goes on the first time and gets it the second. The lesson he derives from this is to not be shy about failure

just an almost comically nice man

the fellas

‘I never thought of myself as brave [doing firearms work] because statistically I knew how safe it was’
well shit. alright

He does a bit of close protection for Obama and he and his friends are just totally baffled by the Secret Service

NICE DEVON COP: ere what’s it like workin for the president then
SECRET SERVICE PSYCHO: IT’S AN HONOR SIR
NICE DEVON COP: ...righto

his lessons for what makes a good police officer

1) never be shy about asking questions
2) ask your juniors for help because they remember the new procedure better and they’ll appreciate the trust
3) if you get a bona fide name and address you can usually recover a situation

4) if something seems wrong it usually is
5) confidence is just pretending to be confident enough times
6) practice walking through a crowd looking like you know what you’re doing
7) if you get the odd knock it’s not going to kill you

a portion of a sample statement

tell me about it