Why Policing Is Broken - Jay Darkmoore

25:40Social service is now going to be involved with my child. Everyone's going to think I'm a domestic abuser. and everything else so and then you actually get interviewed and you're thinking i'm being interviewed by the police here over something which i've not done anything wrong it's an allegation has been made and this happened so many times when i was in the service sitting opposite people when i'm sitting there going you're an arrest for a statistic and i know that this is going to be no further action because obviously i've done enough of the cases to know and I'm thinking you should have never been here.

26:15There was one case what we dealt with where a male contacted the police to say that eight months ago his ex-partner had pushed him into a wall causing him a cut to his face. These two people lived about 300 miles apart. One lived down south, one lived at the top of the country. And I took a statement off the mail over the phone and I went on to manual leave after that And I wrote all over the log, I wrote all over it, do not arrest, no necessity to arrest, case is eight months old, we've basically got no evidence other than what he's said, no pictures or nothing, no domestic history, justified it to the nines.

26:52I then came in a week later, the lady had been arrested. I think she spent, I don't know, 12 hours, 18 hours in custody. And by the end of it, I think she had a mental breakdown. She got so stressful being arrested. Thankfully, she had a solicitor. So the solicitor banged the drum to say, this is completely unlawful, release her immediately. And then she was. And then, funny enough, the male then was able to use that arrest because he knew what the domestic violence policy was in our force, was able then to use that as ammunition in family court when it came to arguments over his daughter. And this is another thing which, when we have this one-size approach of cracking a nut with a sledgehammer, is we are actually not only failing victims of serious abuse because we don't have the resources to deal with the genuine cases because we're trying to deal with everything, is we are then allowing perpetrators, coercive controlled domestic abusers, to use the system as a third-party proxy of abuse.

27:57So there was a case where I was outside of where a lady left a relationship which was volatile. She never wanted to make a formal complaint against her abuser because of the element of fear and control and everything else. And because she left that relationship, the male contacted the police to get her arrested so that she'd be placed on bail, so that she couldn't go near the house or the children. So via this lock up and ask questions later mentality the police now have, as a derivative direction from the senior leadership team, we're actually harming women and girls and not protecting them properly so and an arrest like you mentioned francis arrest getting arrested is it can be a serious traumatic incident for somebody if you are in and out of custody all the time it's just another day i once locked up a lad and he said oh can't be asked getting locked up but okay so sorry as if you're going to get some milk from the shot but it can't be asked but to your everyday person who's maybe never had any interaction with the police it's it's a serious impactful event and not only that the best case scenario is that you are arrested and then you know there's no further action at custody you can just go home but you still have a pnt record you've still been arrested it'll still show up that you've been arrested for domestic violence or whatever so that can affect your job opportunities later on But even if then you are bailed because the supervisor doesn't want to make that decision themselves, they'd rather pass it on to the Crown Pock shooting service in order to make the decision later down the line.

29:37What's happened then is this person maybe can't go home for three months because they're on bail. Now, what if it's a case of maybe they're a new family? Maybe they've got a young child who isn't sleeping properly. Maybe the mother has postnatal depression. Maybe the father is working two jobs to try and keep her roof over the head, seeing that, you know, the mum is now out of work. Maybe things just get to a boiling point and they have a serious, you know, a blowout and an argument. And a third party rings the police. A neighbour says, next door we're arguing. Police then turn up. Under this guise of lock up first, ask questions later, because I've got my supervisor breathing down my neck, that male might then be alienated from his child for probably a minimum of three months because that case will then be passed to another department, which are then massively overworked, and then they have to build the file and send it to CPS.

30:29CPS then have 28 days to respond, and if there's anything wrong, it gets sent back. That's another 28 days, bail extensions and everything else. That can cause serious problems for that family, and I've been told by somebody who works in the criminal justice department in some capacity that they know people who have actually ended their lives due to being on bail for too long. I think they told me five or six so far at the time of writing that. But the sinister part of that is, if you were on bail for assault, for example, and then for whatever reason you were no longer living, the police get the tick in the box as a detection.

31:06It goes down as a positive outcome. So even though it's never been proved, it's actually a good thing for the police if you die. That's a bit fucked up to me. I mean, that is awful. So there are people who have lost their lives because of being arrested. And that is seen as a positive outcome. I mean, it's completely heartbreaking. The stories that you tell in the book, there's so many. There was the story about, you know, the woman who was a victim of horrendous domestic violence. The police came. She had a marijuana joint, half smoked in an ashtray. And the police arrested her for it. Yeah, so they didn't arrest her.

31:45what they did was they i believe they so they're taking the taking the statement off her she'd been assaulted i don't remember exactly what happened but she'd been a victim of domestic abuse she calls the police police turn up they're like okay everything's fine meanwhile she's got half a joint and ashtray the police go fucking hell and get another stat here they then stop taking the statement they then say you've got that there um sign that to say that you're going to drug awareness course otherwise you might get lots up for possession of cannabis the lady then signs it and needless to say she doesn't want to make a statement anymore so again officers because they're being forced and being pushed to get as many detections and many statistics as possible they're now seeing people as a tick in the box that was a case of domestic assault which has high high rates of homicide when you look at the statistics potentially that's the first time that lady called the police for help.

32:42Potentially that's the first time she'd been willing enough to actually open up and say, you know what, yeah, I need your help. And the officers in that instance, rather than kind of maybe ignore it or just go, you can't have that, I'm taking that off you, and that's done, would rather go, oh great, we can get two for one here. And then they'd wonder why she then didn't want to pursue a complaint when she sees the police is not there to support but it's punitive.

33:08Francis Foster:And why are senior police officers under so much pressure to tick these boxes and fulfil these stats? Is it political pressure? I'm not entirely sure where the whole pressure comes from. All I can assume is the chief constable wants this to happen. So then everyone under the chief constable will go, okay, well, we need to keep the boss happy. so then we will enforce what they want and we will create initiatives, directive, et cetera, to then enforce that. And then, of course, that trickles down, the great phrase, rolls downwards. That then impacts the officers on the ground, which ultimately impacts the public.

33:51Francis Foster:Now, that makes total sense. I guess I'm asking why the chief constable would have that agenda. And coming back to where we started the conversation, we've got to a point where the authorities are basically it feels like to me at least, are basically gaslighting the public about what's happening. So they're saying, you know, violent crime is down and, you know, this is down. And you go, it's just objectively not true. And I think if you are in politics trying to push these numbers onto the police, it's not actually going to help because ultimately the public are going to go, well, I don't feel safer, so what does it matter what the stats say?

34:29Francis Foster:Do you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. it's so gaslighting the public I can imagine that you know it certainly feels that way certainly for me looking now as an outsider it certainly feels that way but even when I was in the police the senior leadership would gaslight their own staff the things that are happening right in front of you they will say are not happening like what? so they'll be told we do not arrest at every domestic violence incident meanwhile anecdotally we can see that that is what's happening the officers going to the incidents are being told to arrest we're being told that the force isn't statistic driven.

35:03Meanwhile, what will happen is, so for example, say if you have a case and there's one incident due to national crime recording standards, every snippet of any possible incident which occurs in that one will then generate a new crime. So let me play a picture of that. So Barry the bastard steals something from the shop. You got shoplifting, you got theft. On his way home, calls his neighbour a cunt. Okay, so then that's public order. Oh, it's not the first time it's done either, so now it's harassment. On his way back, he, I don't know, kicks someone's car, caused a bit of a dent. That's, you know, that's now criminal damage.

35:41And then he gets home and he tweets something nasty. So then you've got malicious communications as well. So then you've got six crimes there. Barry the Bastard might be actually the only prosecutor for one of those, which has strong enough evidence. but due to the way stats are detected out of six crimes even if one's detected all six are classes detected one's classes uh charged as is as in that's what we say the other ones are just classed as a positive outcome and um it was a it was a colleague an ex-colleague of mine who basically told me this and then of course it made sense so that's why the crime so many different things why you have to list them so much when you're taking it taking the case further but the police will deny that this is happening and also what was also happening was when the new financial year was coming in officers who had people on bail and victims who were waiting for an outcome to their case were being told don't close those crimes yet wait a few weeks or a couple of months until the new financial year because that will make our stats look better for less NFAs.

36:52So if I had 20 cases in my workload and I knew 10 of them were going nowhere, that's 10 victims sitting at home wondering what's happening. That's potentially 10 people on bail wondering when their bail's up. I'd be told, yeah, well, ignore them for now. You have to keep updating the logs every single time you come in. you then can't close those because it makes the force look worse if they're closed before this date because that's when the clock resets and 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 so in regards to gaslighting the public i can imagine that it's happening because the police gaslight their own staff there's something powerful about tracing our civilization back to its roots.

37:38Hillsdale's free online course, Western Heritage from the Book of Genesis to John Locke, does exactly that. Visit hillsdale.edu slash trigger

37:48Francis Foster:to get instant access to the whole thing. Over 11 lessons and 11 hours of lectures, you'll explore how Western civilization emerged from two ancient pillars, Jerusalem and Athens. You'll delve into the Hebrews, the Golden Age of Greece, the Roman Republic, early Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. You'll see how each era contributed to the ideas of liberty, faith, and reason that ultimately culminated in the American founding. The course comes with free readings and quizzes, so you're not just watching videos, you're learning deeply. If you've ever wanted to understand how our civilization developed from Genesis all the way to Locke, this is the perfect starting point.

38:32Get instant access to the entire course at hillsdale.edu slash trigger. That's hillsdale.edu slash trigger. I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Cocktails up here feel just right. Is Cambria amazing? All right. Bring a date, your team, or even your mom. Book direct at choicehotels.com.

39:10Francis Foster:See you on the roof. And based on what you're saying, correct me if this is wrong, but your example about Barry the Bastard, What it sounds like is the police are incentivized to arrest people irrespective of whether that particular crime is then charged and prosecuted. Oh, yeah, 100%. So the police are incentivized to arrest people even if they know that it's not going to go anywhere. Yeah, 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. 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 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 even though they were nowhere near it that then justifies the arrest so if a police force is pushing to say you know 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 regardless of the outcome detections sometimes like i said it depends on where the focus is for the police force at that time 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 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 what happens later on down the line.

40:46So it depends where the focus is if you get met. 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. And obviously you make it very clear that there's been brilliant officers who are from a black Asian background. In fact, we've interviewed one of them on the show. But you also said that that poses a very real problem for all the police forces up and down the country. Yeah, so I've worked with some fantastic gay officers, black officers, you know, have no issues whatsoever. For me, as long as you can do the job and you do it properly, then by all means.

41:20My issue is when people aren't being hired because of an immutable characteristic and other people are being hired instead of them who might not necessarily be better qualified. 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 you might just get a cup of coffee when it comes to the police and dealing with cases and investigating cases it can potentially be life or death for some people so yeah i have a real big problem with it and 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 so we're just trying to backfill also what i think needs to go is a university degree you do not need a university degree to be a police officer because not only does it not only is it not required i never did the policing degree i did 10 years and i would like to say i was quite good at my job um as well as other officers i worked with never did the university degree very very good the stress what i've seen colleagues beyond that 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 um investigations response everything else not only do they have all that to manage they've then got a university degree to manage as well 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.

43:03Also 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. I've heard of officers who they have they can't pass a fitness test they so the fitness test is 5.4 on a bleep test which I think is awful anyway for a police officer Billy the burglar is not going to run 10 metres, stop, and then run under the 10 metres. 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. So it's even slower.

43:43I'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. 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. I want the person who can get there as quick as possible. And if you're grabbing hold of someone and you're struggling with someone, it's very physically taxing. It's difficult. So I think the bleep test needs to be eradicated. I think the fitness test needs to be made more job applicable. 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.

44:30Francis Foster:Because they're trying to make the police more quote-unquote representative. Yeah, they're trying to make the police obviously be more representative of the general public which I completely understand that that is necessary but I don't think it's necessary at the quality of the officers which then are there to support said public. So there was an initiative in my old force where they wanted to get more females into firearms. Okay, that's fine. 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.

45:08Francis Foster:And what's the rationale for getting more female officers into firearms? I think it's just more representation in that role to be more representative of the general public. Do you really need firearms officers? 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. But in a firearms role, is that really, like, is that the area where you really want to push those? Do you see what I'm saying? Am I being... No, I understand what you're saying.

45:41The 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. The main thing is the terrorist got stopped. 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.

46:07Francis Foster:No, as you well know, I totally agree with you about this. 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 criteria. 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.

46:48Francis Foster:And it just strikes me as very odd that there would be that push. You know what I mean? To me, that looks like a loss of perspective. Yeah, I completely agree. 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. to where we're potentially struggling. Well, firearms is predominantly male, so maybe let's open up 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. And like we said, I don't care what sex somebody is.

47:24If they take down a terrorist or attend a critical incident with a firearm, as long as they get the job done. Yeah.

47:31Francis Foster:Well, and you mentioned political ideology or ideology in general of the people in charge. We've heard a lot on our show about the College of Policing, particularly in relation to LGBTQ, the trans stuff. You forgot the IA+. That was not a mistake. You know, all of that stuff. 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? So from my experience, we would see officers encouraged to put their pronouns in their bio, for example. It's a bio email.

48:14It's meant to be Sam and Instagram, my apologies. It was never particularly enforced in that if you didn't want to do it, there was never anyone breathing down your neck. they would hold days for neurodiversity they would hold days for um uh intersectionality issues etc but i have so there's twofold to this so i remember i'd spoke to somebody from the college of policing because i wanted to understand that is this coming from them and they said the college of policing is more of a toothless tiger in the sense of they can request that certain things be pushed forward they can write the guidelines but it's up to the chief constable of the force whether they actually want to implement it or not so the government then the government directs what they want down to the college of policing to be pushed into policing it's down to the people who are in control of the police force as to whether that's implemented or not so whereas some police forces might maybe not necessarily take part in pride events for example other police forces might.

49:15And 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.

49:28Francis Foster:I think that's an interesting perspective, but I wonder whether in an environment in which everyone's encouraged to be inclusive and diverse and whatever, if you're a chief constable who maybe has aspirations of some kind of promotion or 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, or maybe it's just easier to go along with this stuff. as it has been in every other profession, really. If you're working in corporate Britain, it's so much easier to just go, fine, whatever, we'll do this, we'll do that, we'll do a diversity seminar, we'll do some kind of sensitivity training.

50:12Francis Foster:I wonder if those chief constables really are as independent as you're saying, I guess. Well, I mean, the chief constable is held to account by the police chief and crown commissioner and they are a politically elected party. so we've got a police force which is meant to be independent of politics police without fear or favor with almost the pcc instructing potentially instructing i'll never climb that high i'm not entirely sure um potentially instructing the chief constables as to okay well we want more of a push on this we want this to to go down uh down the chain of command with just with you saying about the diversity and everything else, I had an experience of it, which I found quite interesting.

51:05So just going back to what I was talking about, domestic violence, I went on specific training courses and how to be quite accredited at that. Half of it was to do with domestic violence. The other half was completely about intersectionality. It was completely to do with, ask people the pronouns when you speak to them. It was completely to do with 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. You don't know the cultural differences. So such a specialist course, which we went on, was actually only half about what we've signed up for.

51:47And the other half was all to do with intersectionality, cultural differences, pronouns, everything else. 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.

52:05Francis Foster:And what were some of the cultural sensitivity ones? Because that sounds like that could be super useful or super not useful. It was wild, but I'm trying to remember. It was a lot to do with, say, like countries where the male is generally the one in charge of the household. So say such as African countries, some of your Muslim countries. There was that sort of thing. And it was... And then what does... Having that information, how is that supposed to shape your behaviour as a police officer? I'm not entirely sure. I'm not entirely sure when it comes in relation to that cause. Because I imagine if you go into a domestic violence incident, whether the male is normally in charge is kind of somewhat irrelevant.

52:47Yeah, you would look at what is in front of you.

52:50Francis Foster:Right. You would assess the situation and speak to the parties independently and assess what's going on. 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? Or do we have to look at potentially this could be more severe, so there's honour based. But as a response officer, you would generally deal with the incident there and then, and you would have more specialist units which would look into that more expertly. You would potentially say, I believe this could be honour-based or this is a patriarchal household where it's not equal, and then speak to the correct units.

53:31But to have a half-a-day specialist on that, I just thought it was quite excessive. 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. it.

53:47Francis Foster:Here's the truth. Most of us have no idea where our money actually goes. It's not because we're reckless. It's because modern life spreads our finances across 10 different places. That's why I've started using Monarch. It's a beautifully simple personal finance tool that lets you link all your accounts, savings, investments, mortgages, everything into one clear visual dashboard. Once I set it up, it was like turning the lights on. I could see what was earning, what was sitting idle, and where I could save more. And because my wife and I share the same view, we're finally working towards our goals together instead of guessing in the dark.

54:23Francis Foster:No spreadsheets, no manual updates, just clarity. It's why Forbes named Monarch the best app for couples and why so many people are switching from messy spreadsheets to something that actually works. Feel organized and confident in your finances with Monarch. An all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface. on your laptop or your phone. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use code TRIGGER at monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50 % off your first year at monarch.com with code TRIGGER.

55:01And 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. And one of the examples you use is the mental health call out somebody's having a type of episode or a breakdown the police are going to get there far quicker normally than an ambulance so it's your job even though that's not really what you signed up for police officers deal with um so much so many mental health calls like i would say say if i went to 10 instance in a day at least half would be mental health related what do you mean let's let's explore that what would you mean by mental health generally it's people who are they're feeling suicidal.

55:44So the police will go because the ambulance might say, oh, they said they've got a knife, they're going to stab themselves. Well, then they have a weapon. So then the ambulance won't go unless the police go first. 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. So then the police then have to talk to them. They have to try and convince them to go to the hospital for a mental health assessment. 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 to sit with them because you can't section somebody inside their own home.

56:18It's something in law. So I could attend your house, Francis, and you could say, as soon as you leave, I'm going to kill myself. The police are in a bit of a rock and hard place then because they can't leave because if you leave, you're going to hurt yourself. 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 and that can be hours yeah so and when people are on a bridge obviously the police need to speak, they're the ones who go and speak to them, they close the road and everything else to try and convince them to come on the other side there's people who say that they've taken an overdose police will get there first if somebody has said they're going to hurt themselves and they're out in the woods, the police go there you know the police are going to try and find those people mental health is a massive I don't want to say drain, it's not a drain, but it's a massive use of police time which is not being used on crime.

57:21So that was one of the big things I kind of discovered when I started in the police, of just how many mental health calls you go to. And I believe some forces had this, it was a right care, right care, right resource, right care, right person initiative. And that was, he was meant to be a paramedic or a mental health worker in the control room who any mental health calls come in, they would go to them and they would direct medical professionals to them. 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. They don't have as many ambulances as police cars.

58:01Also, it's a lot cheaper to get a couple of cops to drive to get there quicker. It's quicker, it's faster, it's cheaper. 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. And of course, when it comes to urgency, that person's still breathing, they're still talking, so they're not, it's not a case of the bleeding out, and they need that urgent care immediately. And the police are there, but the police aren't mental health trained, 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.

58:35but you're not mental health trained. 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. And look, you've got to respond to what you respond to, but you've all shot under pressure to get arrests. So let's say you've taken an entire day supporting someone who wants to kill themselves. Then are you seen as being behind on your arrest quota? 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.

59:15In the sense, if you go to an incident and at one point you might have gone, I'm not locking up here, I don't need to. 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 if I don't fulfill this action plan, if I'm not fulfilling the quotas. so then the justification is more reduced and mate the amount of officers I yourself 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 and then the mental health implications that come with that with the extra stress and everything else the system is breaking cops and it's an absolute, I believe, a national crisis what's happening.

1:00:06And it's a way to just completely demoralise your workforce, make them feel that they don't matter, and the concerns go ignored, their autonomy is stripped away, and the workload as well, and I'm sorry, I know I'm going off topic here, the workload as well, 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 to fill these quotas 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 crime prosecution service action plans investigation plans you have to update new templates which bosses bring in to to fulfill this statistic obscure statistics somewhere how can one officer realistically do that plus then you work in shifts so your mental health's not the best because you've just come off a string of nights you're not eating properly you're not seeing your family you're missing christmas's birthdays to me it's no wonder why cops break and why cops go off and then often what happens is officers didn't get in shit for going off this is what happened to me so i went off for a couple of weeks with severe stress i basically had a panic attack i went to work one day the panic attack 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 you mentioned gaslighting pulling up all these different charts and graphs saying this is the best it's ever been it's your fault why you're You know, we're putting all these different places, all these different things.

1:01:45And it's like, all right. And it's also as well, because, and you capture it really well in your book, police work, by its nature, is deeply traumatic. You talk about going to, you don't know what you're going to see. 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 throes. I don't care who you are. That is going to have a very real profound effect on your mental health. So that was a good friend of mine who went to that. 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, you know, you crack on.

1:02:27But the brain remembers that trauma. There's a great book called The Body Keeps Score, and it talks about this a lot. The brain remembers the trauma, the body remembers the trauma. Even if you don't acknowledge it or deal with it, that trauma's still there and eventually this officer was single crewed no chance of any backup single crewed went to this incident and the guy was literally still alive hanging by his neck and he had to hold on to his legs he was shouting for help on the radio no one could come and support him because they were all single crewed they were all dealing with incidents and this guy literally died in this man's arms so the officer then a few weeks later he was fine, he's fine I'm okay.

1:03:09And then he was found in a fetal position, crying his eyes out on the floor. And he was then taken off frontline and put into like a more desk-based role. This officer had, well, 20 years experience, had dealt with all sorts. And it was just, I mean, that to anybody. So whether you're 10 years in, five years of that, that would break so many people. and just the support isn't there for officers when that happens because because of cuts and budget cuts and everything else the first thing to go is okay well we'll take the officer welfare so what's happening is officers are going to their supervisor and going I'm really struggling here I've been to x y and z it's really playing in my mind they're then being so okay well we can get you a couple of weeks of therapy through the job might take a few weeks to get it but you will have that and then if you're still not fixed go speak to your own gp like it can take 12 months to get a gp appointment and sorry not a gp appointment but get a an nhs referral to counselling meanwhile all that's happening is you're probably still on front line so that accumulated trauma is still building 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.

1:04:33And even if you have a physical medical condition, I know someone who had a, they couldn't go front line anymore because they had post-traumatic stress disorder and they had a heart condition. They were threatened with the job if they didn't get back on front line because they said, I can't go front line because I'm currently going through therapy. I'm in sign-up by Occupational Health. Oh yeah, and I've got a bad heart. I can't do it. they were threatened with the job until the point they actually left. So the police might say that mental health support's there because they put on a mental health day or they have an NCALT package, which is this online training package you do, about mental health and about stress.

1:05:14So they can tick those boxes and say, yeah, we support our staff, but the actual real practical elements of it are quite lacking. I had a sergeant who was very, very good, who I did go to with an issue, saying we're going to hang him, went to him and said, think about the hanging a lot I went to. He was quite an awful one. And to be fair to him, he put his radio down and he went, right, back office. And we just sat in just like this for 10, 20 minutes. And that was all I needed. Just that person who was relatable, who were respected to sit there and go, it's okay, you know, all right. Don't go on your radio, you know, for the next 20 minutes we're just going to have a chat.

1:05:54and then support was put in place afterwards. A lot of officers aren't getting that. And I think because a lot of officers are rather... I think a lot of officers might be worried about opening up. Officers might be scared of being punished if they do open up or they don't feel confident enough to open up. They might not even recognise that the signs are there, that PTSD is there. So I was told by an officer recently that they were single crewed. they went to an incident of a male had severely harmed himself um and there was a member of the public there this officer was on their own member of the public there trying to stem the bleeding and they said that just training kicked in i managed to stem the bleeding about 10 minutes went by before anyone could come and get to me now 10 minutes doesn't sound like a long time if you're trying to stop some bleeding to death 10 minutes is an eternity and then and then it was I was off four or five hours late, went home, took my uniform off, and I was back in the next day, back on the front line.

1:06:58No kind of, is everything okay? How was that incident last night? That would break so many people. And we just expect officers to be robots and not to affect them. Because then when it does affect them, those officers are almost actively punished for being human. And it's also as well, you go, there's the impact on the officers, but there's the impact on the public. if someone who's got complex PTSD or they've had a profoundly stressful traumatic incident like what happened to a friend of yours how are they going to be able to be effective in their jobs? They just can't. How are you going to be able to make effective decisions under pressure if you're struggling to cope?

1:07:38Well it's not only that. Some people might be more reactive but then there's also the flip side of empathy burnout. 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. so police officers every day are hearing the worst things what have ever happened to somebody day in day out to the person who have called the police that's the first time they may have actually spoken about it to that officer it might be the 10th thing they've heard that day 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 where it's a case of they don't have any more empathy to give.

1:08:22It's not a case they don't care. 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 heard that day. And that's an issue, and that's caused by officers being overworked. It's caused by officers being burnt out, caused by officers having their days off cancelled. The time when they're supposed to be at home, resting, recuperating, looking after their mental health, spending time with their family, living a little bit outside of work, they then get cancelled. So officers are then back in.

1:08:51Francis Foster:Yeah, and you were there for 10 years. Because, you know, the things you're describing are obviously very difficult, but I imagine, you know, a lot of this would have been going on in the 80s and the 70s and so on. But in 10 years that you were in the service, how did things evolve over that period of time? So when I first started on response, it was a really good job. I loved it. Really, really did. This whole stat-hungry focus thing came in, I'd say, about three, four years ago. When it really started, it was always kind of there, but you weren't necessarily graded on arrests. Even though I had quite high arrests, but it was never a case of I was made to do something.

1:09:36It was a case of I thought, well, this person needs to come in. experience on the shift was much better I walked in, I was on my first day, the person closest to me I think had two years in the person next to them, it just went up 5, 7, 11, 15, 20 25 years now most officers have less, like I said before less than five years experience and maybe there's one officer who's been on for 22 years because he can't afford to stop doing nights I'm a genuine person here now 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, so everyone knew each other.

1:10:14You were given the ability to make your own decisions, 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? If it is, I'll do it. If it's not, I'm not going to do it. And as long as you could justify it, your supervisor would have you back all day. 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. 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.

1:10:52And they've had 12, 13 different sergeants coming in and out. So that's a massive issue. Whereas when I started, it was, OK, you had three sergeants. Those three sergeants were basically there for quite a number of years. So you had a really good working relationship. 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. And that was really good, but then that got stopped. And you had a lot more staff on the shift. People could talk a lot more openly about, for instance, what bothered them.

1:11:33It was a really, really good unit to work on. 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 and then that focus started coming in when maybe the chief constable changed it just started to slowly break and break and break and that's when we saw the amount of issues which I've been speaking about today. Before Jay answers a final question at the end of the interview make sure to head over to our sub stack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this.

1:12:07Francis Foster:Tide Moderator says, do you think there's a deliberate attempt to nudge normal people out of policing and replace them with ideologues? Do low salaries have anything to do with the number and quality of people wanting to go into policing? Do you have any thoughts on the policing of protests, allegations of two-tier policing and all this other stuff? I think two-tier policing is definitely a thing. Really? Yeah, yeah, 100%. and uh the last question as you know we always ask is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be uh so i thought about this and

1:12:44okay 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 i'm sure you know about this teaching and everything else people going to offend because of issues what have happened maybe then become drug addicts or alcoholics to try to block out this trauma 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 so if you imagine 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 psychedelics in particular magic mushrooms like a spearhead something that goes straight into that part i've had a lot of me when i was younger and a lot from when i was in the job as well i have done magic mushrooms since leaving the job and i found i've had therapy i've i've never went to medication but i've had different forms of therapy as well 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.

1:14:01I 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. 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. Because I've known, I know a few people on depression, medication, etc. I know what happens as the dosage goes up.

1:14:44I feel that maybe we need to change the way we deal with trauma and look at something, like I said, which is illegal.

1:14:51Francis Foster:Thanks for coming on. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Jay's going to answer your questions. Here'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.

1:15:24We'll see you next time.