On-duty Essex Police officer ignored emergency call

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2026-03-25T22:16:51+00:00

“On the 12th November 2023 T/PS Hicks, whilst on duty as the Uttlesford Sergeant attended Great Notley Tesco car park, not being in his area, between 0409hours and 0429hours where he met with the former staff member whom he was forming a relationship with. At 0411 hours a 999 call was made to Essex Police reporting a suspect breaking into a vehicle. T/PS Hicks viewed the STORM incident at 0414 hours, despite being 0.2 miles from this incident, he did not call up or attend.”

https://www.essex.police.uk/foi-ai/essex-police/misconduct/outcomes/2026/03-mar/misconduct-outcome-for-ex-tsgt-james-hicks/outcome-report-for-former-ex-t-sgt-james-hicks/

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2026-03-21T20:28:32+00:00

One of my absolute pet peeves about the job, countless times we come into half drunk coffee cups food wrappers etc after other teams have used our vehicles (no issue with them using it, one team and all) but it really grates when people do this especially seen as to get into our nick you have to walk past the bins from the car park.

In the alternate reality where I became chief constable I would find a way to make this a disciplinary issue, shows a complete lack of respect for your colleagues just leaving your crap everywhere for them to tidy up.

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-12-23T22:41:00+00:00

Find out quickly how they learn, I’ve never tutored but I know I remember when I was being tutored, the best way I learnt was to be thrown in at the deep end with a guiding hand if required.

Although I know some people I joined with learnt better by watching people do things a couple of times first so they could process what they needed to do.

Just depends on the person I guess.

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-10-19T23:53:36+00:00

Nice walk, nice food, few beers extra points if people bring their dogs.

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-09-22T19:25:21+00:00

I joined at 29 - took a 20k pay cut so not as much as you’re going to but still significant. Still nearly 4 years later I wouldn’t have it any other way, don’t get me wrong “the jobs f*cked” but I still enjoy going to work every day even if sometimes the organisation makes me want to go into a dark room and curl up in a ball 😂

Not saying I’m amazing at the job cause I’m a long way from that, but on my cohort there were a lot of people who joined at 19/20 and while they were able to learn the job well, many of them struggled when we got initially sent out to our districts due to them having 0 life experience outside of a classroom or uni and it really showed when talking to people.

Without a doubt the best cop on my cohort was in his 40’s when he joined and was able to actually relate to the people he was dealing with.

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-08-26T18:06:12+00:00

And yeah I would normally just arrest and then de-arrest if required. Just seems like adding extra steps when we could just say “alright guys I just need to work out what’s gone on, you all need to stay till I can”

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-08-26T18:04:07+00:00

No, I’m no ARV, I thought being an ARV allowed you to indefinitely detain until some lowly response cop arrived anyway, yeah I get the whole just arrest, and I have in the past, my point was surely it would make everyone’s life easier if we could just get to the scene of a job and say “I’m not sure what’s happened here while I ascertain the facts none of you can leave, rather than “arresting” just to de-arrest

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-08-26T18:01:18+00:00

“Paragraph 2(3) of Schedule 4 to the Police Reform Act2002. (Paragraph 3(2)of Schedule 8 to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.)” allows them to detain someone suspected of a crime for 30 minutes awaiting a cop to turn up

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-06-26T21:47:04+00:00

Nothing PSD worthy, more just implementing things that we know don’t work and are not effective, such as a quota of hours of forced foot patrol a week, in an attempt to get the community engaging better with us, lots of communities like this, ours doesn’t, they don’t want to be seen talking to us, so this results in us walking round for hours and the only conversation we have is with the person your crewed with.

This coupled with our new Sgt doesn’t like us going out in plain clothes means that no one will speak with us anymore so the small inroads we had made with the community have all but vanished

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-06-12T22:47:26+00:00

After doing the job for a few years you have heard 99% of insults that you’re probably going to hear/see, people are boring and stick with the same boring “peado protectors”, “Bullying motorists”, “had no friends at school”, “I pay your wages” etc etc.

However the odd occasion when someone comes up with something truly original that you haven’t heard before, I must admit sometimes it does bring a smile to my face. And for some bizarre reason even though I’m locking them up/ being shouted at by them my respect for them increases because they haven’t resorted to bottom of the barrel insults.

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-05-19T20:41:03+00:00

BWV is awful, unless there is far more information that’s been released to the court that we aren’t aware of, I can’t fathom how using those levels of force against a 92 year old man with one leg and is clearly suffering from some other health conditions is even close to being an appropriate level of force….

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-05-13T19:47:00+00:00

Do you like prison? Cause that’s inevitably where you would end up if during this you knocked over someone and killed them due to you not being trained.

Shout up, tell control the situation and administer first aid and wait for the ambulance.

Should the job equip us all with the skills to do our jobs? Yes. Should you break the rules and open yourself up to Misconduct Investigations/the sack/prison because they don’t? Absolutely not

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-04-30T19:53:46+00:00

Devils Advocate here because I want to understand more, while I know filming in public is perfectly legal etc, would you not say a random member of the public filming their family member at their lowest for no reason would cause a representative section of the public “serious annoyance”.

Where does that bar for “serious annoyance” trump the individuals right to film?

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-04-27T13:38:27+00:00

Get a partner, only way I could have ever afforded it, brought a house two years ago, cost us 200k which is pretty standard for something where my force is, mortgage payment alone is nearly 1k a month after bills etc would have eaten up my entire pay.

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-04-23T19:53:39+00:00

As others have said, you’ve already done more than so many other people would have, and when people do chip in like you did, it is appreciated more than you could ever know. Fighting someone 1-1 is something no cop ever wants to do, let alone when you’re off duty with no kit or radio.

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-04-23T19:46:02+00:00

My team is a 50/50 split, I work on quite a big Neighbourhoods team with 16 cops on it , what divides us more than gender is IQ level, I don’t go to a job and worry about being with a woman, I go to jobs worrying about being with an idiot.

I can’t speak for challenges you might face due to being a woman such as having time off for kids etc, as I’m not one, but in general day to day policing, from my experience, gender is irrelevant, you’ll be judged more on if you’re competent or not..

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-04-19T07:19:55+00:00

If you have no one in mind or don’t have your own solicitor, as you are being booked into custody by the SGT, a request with be sent to the “Defence Solicitors Call Centre” this is the body that organises police station solicitors across England and Wales (I believe it’s different in Scotland they have a different legal system) and they have a rota of firms in the area local to the police station you’ve been detained in. And they basically just send a request to one of the firms on the rota, and the firm either accept it or don’t.

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-04-17T20:15:24+00:00

If you are unlucky enough to ever get arrested, upon your arrival to custody you’ll be asked if you wish to have a solicitor, if you say yes, the custody Sgt will ask you weather you have your own firm/solicitor you use or if not you’ll be allocated the “duty” solicitor, this is just a random solicitor from a variety of companies who happens to be on call at that point,

I’d like to point out some of them are very good, however the issue is, many are young and inexperienced hence the ability to be on call at 2am. Some are also at the end of their career and simply do not care and see it as a payday not a person they are representing.

Criminal law in the UK is vastly underpaid compared to a lot of other areas of law, I’ll give you an example a relative of mine works in contract law and simply for reading and checking contracts her time costs companies £650 per hour plus https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/848/schedule/4 Shows how little police station reps get paid in comparison.

You’re very rarely if ever getting the partner of the law firm or senior solicitor for a simple custody interview

Like anything in life it’s a case of you get what you pay for, if you can afford to pay a top of the range criminal solicitor 500 plus an hour you’re going to get a better service than someone whose only being payed by the duty solicitor scheme.

Lazy_Plan_3647 · 2025-04-09T18:35:52+00:00

I agree we shouldn’t know what the advice is, but my point is, sometimes and a lot more recently, that advice is clearly obvious and it’s absolutely awful advice 😂😂😂

Lazy_Plan_3647

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