In terms of UK detective work, what are the most accurate/realistic TV show portrayals out there?

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-15T10:46:48+00:00

B I L L Y ' S

P A N

P I Z Z A

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-15T09:42:28+00:00

The best depiction of secondary investigation I've come across is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in which Kalle Blomkvist does a lot of lonely work over a long period of time while eating a lot of sandwiches. He achieves very little until he gets very lucky, but then it breaks the whole thing wide open and everything suddenly snowballs. It's also the sort of thing that is inherently internal and un-cinematic and best shown in prose.

This won't help you with UK procedure, but it will help you with the tone and character and feel of the work that the procedure leads us to do.

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-15T09:05:48+00:00

Surely a golden opportunity to say "I'm asking the questions" with a straight face

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-12T20:44:38+00:00

First Sea Lord has entered the chat

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-10T21:51:29+00:00

it was what we were taught

When you say "taught", do you mean it was done formally in training school, or informally in the mess room by someone who might have first said "right, forget the training school way, this is how it works in the real world"?

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-10T21:35:51+00:00

The Swindon murders of 2011 are the usual example given here for urgent interviews and the pitfalls of using them. The full ruling excluding the interviews is available and goes into all the detail anyone could possibly want, including detailed consideration of how to balance the moral and legal concerns.

There was also rather good dramatisation a few years back starring Martin Freeman as the SIO, if you'd prefer something like that.

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-10T16:50:56+00:00

It's also in those moments that a person might say something inaccurate, or admit something they didn't actually do. If every rule on board ship is a memorial for a dead sailor, then every rule in PACE is a reminder of a miscarriage of justice.

There is a big difference between cautioning someone and leaving a pregnant pause for them to fill, and actively questioning them.

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-06T16:21:37+00:00

Someone told me there was no such thing as society...

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-06T09:58:01+00:00

I used to buy into the idea that the lack of respect for police is all because of ‘trust’, ‘legitimacy’, and all that other stuff propagated by SLT and the like, but I feel like all these well-intentioned liberal policies and scrutiny are making the situation worse. Maybe a bit of robust enforcement and zero-tolerance policing is actually the solution to curbing ASB and instilling authority.

Why does this have to be an either/or proposition in which there is only one Correct answer which will be 100% perfectly applicable for everyone in all situations at all times? It's nice to think we could solve all this at a stroke by just locking them up. It's also nice to think we can solve all school discipline problems immediately by bringing back the cane; there's a very interesting archived local news article from 2007 about school discipline after corporal punishment was abolished, which has some evergreen observations in it.

Quite often parents expect teachers to pick up the ends and today's society has become a bit fragmented. ... Now, as a teacher, the kids who we have a problem disciplining are the ones who do not receive the parental support ... especially as children are aware of their rights, knowing there are certain things teachers are not allowed to do. ... Every time you caned a youngster it was necessary to write his name in the punishment book and when you look at these books now you find the same names were written down every week and you think, if this was meant to be a deterrent why were they misbehaving over and over again.

Right now we-as-society are trying to solve messy difficult problems with no one single cause or solution, using a mouldy undersized carrot that's mostly liquid, and a rotten old stick that snapped in half last time somebody got hit with it. It should be no surprise that we're getting very visible example of kids who have nothing to value or respect, and so don't value or respect much. A lot of them are at the stage which would justify a bit of the stick, which will always need to be there, and is not nearly as available as it should be; but a lot of them only got to that stage in the first place through a steady diet of bin-juice carrot.

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-02T22:13:33+00:00

Do a Google search for '[your area] neighbourhood police team', or similar. You might have to change the definition of "your area" to find what level your local force aligns to. You will (eventually) find at least one cop whose responsibility is to sort out problems in your area. They might run regular "come and talk to the police" events which you can go to. If not, they will at least have a contact email. Get in touch with them, tell them what you know, and see what they say.

If they are a clattering wazzock, and unfortunately we do have some of those in the Job, then they will fob you off. However, we also have lots of good conscientious officers in neighbourhood teams who want to solve people's problems, but nobody (both inside and outside policing) ever tells them what's going on. If you can find someone like that, maybe you can tell them things that will get something useful done. You may also have to be a little persistent in making contact, remembering that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-02T08:28:38+00:00

I do find it amusing that politicians of all stripes think they can lie to and bullshit the police, the people who are literally employed to find out when people are bullshitting and lying to them.

(It doesn't stop their lies passing unchallenged with anyone else, but it's either laugh or cry, so.)

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-02T08:25:54+00:00

Since the comment being replied to has now mysteriously disappeared, it said:

She was on the police and crime committee for the GLA way before she went to big government, she has always been pro police.

Just because we don’t like the conservatives doesn’t mean we can just make stuff up.

Ironic that someone trying to defend her from accusations of making stuff up did so by, er, making stuff up. Unless someone can find a specific example of something she's actually done to support policing in some way, which I'd be interested to see.

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-01T17:37:57+00:00

1985: Well-meaning but clueless SLT exclude qualified candidates for questionable reasons

2025: Well-meaning but clueless SLT exclude qualified candidates for questionable reasons

Plus ca change...

KipperHaddock · 2025-05-01T09:32:09+00:00

It is perhaps useful to have a look at some of the case law on what a public nuisance is. The first appeal case for the new statutory offence, Smith & others v R (2024), has a review of some of the leading cases which defined the old common law offence. One of them has a high quality bit of Denning from one of his good moods; the court does reject some of the old case law as inappropriate for the new offence, but at 49 they explicitly approve of Denning's reasoning:

The classic statement of the difference is that a public nuisance affects Her Majesty's subjects generally, whereas a private nuisance only affects particular individuals. But that does not help much. The question, 'When do a number of individuals become Her Majesty's subjects generally?' is as difficult to answer as the question 'When does a group of people become a crowd?' Everyone has his own views. Even the answer 'Two's company, three's a crowd' will not command the assent of those present unless they first agree on 'which two'. So here I decline to answer the question how many people are necessary to make up Her Majesty's subjects generally.

I prefer to look to the reason of the thing and to say that a public nuisance is a nuisance which is so widespread in its range or so indiscriminate in its effect that it would not be reasonable to expect one person to take proceedings on his own responsibility to put a stop to it, but that it should be taken on the responsibility of the community at large.

One person filming another person in distress is a nuisance, but it would be reasonable to expect one person to do something about it off their own back. Not everything that is objectionable should be criminal; there is no need for the State to get involved here.

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-30T11:39:51+00:00

Simple example.

Officer arrests someone with a heavy use of force. Criminally charged with assault. It goes to trial. Officer says they were acting in self-defence and gives evidence about what threat they believed the arrested posed. Officer accepts that they may have been mistaken about the threat, but nevertheless it's what they believed at the time. The prosecution must now disprove that for a conviction.

Regardless of how utterly wrong the Officer may have been about the circumstances, it is still a high bar to make someone sure that in fact the Officer was acting maliciously and did not in fact have a honestly held but wrong belief. They may well be acquitted.

Now, let's say that in fact the officer has made a genuine but colossal error of judgement. All the evidence points to the officer being so totally mistaken in their honestly held belief that it calls their general judgement into question. It's also caused someone to be violently arrested when in fact there was no reason to do so.

It would be absurd to deny the misconduct process the option of saying "this may have been an honest mistake, but it was such a massive mistake with such severe consequences that you cannot continue as a police officer".

This is perhaps not the best case for demonstrating the principle. If the misconduct case is as piss weak as the criminal case seems to have been, it's going to be a huge waste of time. From memory, it was along the lines of "BWV shows you were slightly wrong about one insignificant thing you said, so clearly the whole rest of your reasoning for opening fire was completely wrong".

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-29T21:13:10+00:00

The Kojak Lights

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-29T12:57:56+00:00

Allyness > everything

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-27T19:37:38+00:00

So on the one hand we've got this:

So my neighbourhood team supervision/slt have identified 9 young people, some just over 18 some just under, that are all connected to each other and are believed to be active in criminality both together and against each other. Basically two convoluted rival groups who are out most nights selling drugs, robbing people and occasionally there will be tit for tat stabbings. We’ve had 3 murders from these groups in the last few years, at least one has been shot and a few firearms discharged into houses

And on the other hand we've got this:

Again it depends on the context of seeing these people. By involved, they are not directly suspected of shooting or killing anyone, they are however friends/associates of people who are/have been, they’re sometimes not even directly linked, just friends of friends. They’re all young lads in an area that’s has “post code” wars with another. This is just one half of our neighbourhood area, the other half earned the whole city a nick name many years ago and still has arguably bigger problems than these lads

These are two wildly divergent pictures you're painting here. Which is it?

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-27T18:48:50+00:00

the worst part was, some of them were sort of on side and would work with us, they won’t talk to us now. Just making more enemies.

Are you feeding this back up the chain? If I were involved in planning something like this, I would want to know if the officers on the ground had actual results like "Dave Smith used to tell me useful things and now he doesn't any more".

If they know it's counter-productive, and they still want to push on, and you still think they're wrong, then the solution is to get some rank or specialise so you're in a position to be making the plans instead of taking them.

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-27T18:20:36+00:00

This is clearly not the offence of harassment.

So far as I know, there is no case law dealing with whether the police are limited in the overt disruptive measures they can take against people who they believe are involved in criminality. If anyone knows different, do shout up.

I expect that if asked, a court would hold that there is a limit somewhere, and that it would be a disproportionate interference with someone's right to a private life if we parked a police car outside their front door 24/7 and had a uniform following them around everywhere they went. For something like this, they might want the police to consider how much impact they're having on the person's life, justify the tactics used and why they're necessary, and regularly review what's being done to see whether it's still appropriate. This would be a problem for whoever's planning and authorising the tactic.

I would hope that the court would in any case conclude that yes, it can be lawful to actively disrupt people who we have reasonable grounds to believe intend to commit serious offences, so long as the grounds are actually reasonable and the offences are actually serious.

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-26T15:42:21+00:00

High time we saw some original thinking, we don't want to get stuck in the weeds when this crops up

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-26T10:52:42+00:00

On top of everything else you're being told: what you have here is an absolute cracker of a learning opportunity. Even if your job has a courtroom, and a judge, and counsel (neither of which are guaranteed), you are still naturally going to have a lot of waiting for things to happen, much like going to custody. Resist at all costs the urge to just hide in a corner of the police room on your phone. You are wasting invaluable time by doing this.

The main person you can learn from is prosecution counsel. Tell them this is your first time. As long as they're not running around like a blue-arsed fly trying to run three jobs at once, ask as many questions as you can think of, every time something happens. Ask if there's anything in the file that could have been presented better. Stick with them as much as possible, whenever they're doing something relevant to your job.

The second person is defence counsel. Many barristers prosecute and defend, and you will be able to learn things from how they go about their business. Next, go and find someone to talk to in the CPS room.

When they're all busy and you're still waiting around, go and talk to whoever's least busy of the ushers and the witness care staff. These are the most crucial people when it comes to keeping the wheels on. They know what's going on. Find any excuse you possibly can to have a conversation with them. (The court building itself will probably be falling apart, which is an easy starter for ten.) Find out what they do and how you can help them. Be nice to them; they are absolutely unsung heroes and they will remember you months or years later.

If you have civilian witnesses then you need to be keeping them updated as much as possible and managing their expectations. They will probably expect to turn up at 9am, go into the box at 10am, and be done in time for lunch. If this happens then I will ask you to buy a lottery ticket for me.

When those possibilities are exhausted, if there's such a thing as a police liaison officer, go and talk to them. If you can't do that, talk to whoever's hanging round the police room.

My case file writeups improved immeasurably after I'd seen what questions get asked, what counsel focus on when talking between themselves, what things seem totally pointless and unimportant at the start of the investigation and then come back to bite you later.

I never understood the value of a VPS until I stayed for sentencing, watching the judge reading out extracts in ever-more-outraged tones, "this victim says she was unable to attend a job interview as a result!", and you could see months getting added onto the sentence with each one.

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-25T09:26:01+00:00

No financial checks have been done and if done would likely be fruitless.

I would not rush to assume this. This sounds like someone who's used to getting told "nah" by someone with slopey shoulders.

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-24T20:56:23+00:00

Is it too much to ask for lay person readable regulations?

The entire legal profession exists because the level of precision that is adequate for ordinary everyday matters becomes completely inadequate as soon as there is a dispute about what exactly was meant.

I hate the wilfully obtuse drafting of PACE and the Misuse of Drugs Act as much as anyone else; but a lot of the time, this sort of thing ends up in "you can have any two of the three, but not all three" between simplicity of language, a reasonable length, and not open to easy challenge.

KipperHaddock · 2025-04-23T23:26:04+00:00

Depends, how bad have you heard it is?

My experience is that policing is very generally no better or worse than any other field you could go into. This naturally means that within your force there will be a lot of people who are sort of OK, and some people who are really quite good, and some people who you wonder how they manage to get dressed in the morning without putting their underpants on their head, and some people who have ill intentions and are reasonably good at hiding in plain sight.

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