Meat is murder…

Bacon! The official meat of the interweb and increasingly popular with thieves. What gives?

Working as a cop, I’m never too far away from associations with meat due to our (probably affectionate) nickname as ‘the pigs’.

As someone who eats more than their fair share of mixed grills, I’m quite comfortable with this.

On the investigation team too, our links with meat seem to be even stronger as we deal with many shoplifters and as a result, seem to end up investigating many reports of thefts involving meat and cheese.

Meat and cheese you say? Who would want to steal that?

Well, at the moment meat and dairy products seem to be very popular with thieves who have developed a sophisticated, Ocean’s 11-style, system for stealing packs of bacon.

It involves cutting holes in shop roofs using miniature lasers, abseiling out of helicopters and then escaping to Brazil with their bounty in a custom-built submarine before jetting off to a moon base where they all remove their latex face masks and sit around stroking cats.

Rather, they simply walk into a shop, do a quick ‘check for CCTV glance’ (this usually involves staring straight into the camera) and then stuffing blocks of cheese down their tracksuit tops before running out the door.

I would say that anecdotally, we seem to be seeing a rise in the popularity of meat and cheese with thieves looking for a quick profit which they can put towards a wrap or two of heroin.

Looking at the health of most of the shoplifters that end up in our cells, they don’t appear to be subsiding on Philly cheesesteaks suggesting that the produce is actually ending up in the bellies of people who decided to take up an offer of a cheap block of cheese having been offered it in a pub.

Judging from the cost of my own weekly shop, I’m well aware that food isn’t cheap so there’s an added incentive to cut corners and save a penny or two when opportunity presents itself.

It’s worth baring in mind though that rather than being refrigerated to Food Standards Agency guidelines, the produce on offer has more likely than not been pressed against a warm, unwashed armpit or crotch for the past three or four hours.

Still fancy eating it?

I’ve searched the FSA website and can’t find any recommendations that meat or dairy products be stored at body temperature or bathed in sweat/other ‘juices’ and so I’m going to conclude that doing so probably isn’t in the best interests of someone’s health.

If you’re offered some bacon on the bus, some beef in a bar or some cheddar in the coffee shop, firstly you really don’t want to accept it.

The pence you’ll save won’t be enough to justify the forty eight hour vomiting spree you risk, nor the offence of handling stolen goods that you may open yourself to.

Secondly, it’s always a good idea to give us a call straight away and let us know that there’s a dodgy pedlar about.

Catching someone with the goods on their person is good evidence and it doesn’t take long to trace the source of the meat either, especially when it’s got ‘Tesco’ stamped all over it.

All thing going to plan, we’ll be able to arrest the culprit and take him or her to the nearest station where they’ll be searched, documented and thoroughly grilled in interview!

You should have known by now you were on my list…

Want to increase the chances of your stolen property finding its way back to you if recovered? Get it registered on the Nation Mobile Property Register for free!

The other day I was sat in the Investigation Team office with a serious look on my face as I was busy with some very serious police work. I would have continued with said serious work were it not for two response officers wondering in with a PlayStation 3 under their arms.

What was happening? Why weren’t they out fighting crimes?

Well, I think several on my team were hopeful there was about to be an impromptu FIFA tournament – teams were picked and the location of the nearest TV was discussed.

Luckily for me this was not to be the case (my FIFA skills extend no further than repeatedly pressing the ‘hoof the ball into the stands’ button), rather the console they thought might be stolen and they wanted someone to check it to confirm it as being ‘hot’ property.

Breaking my concentration from a particularly engaging prosecution file, I volunteered to help out as I am one of the many officers with access to the National Mobile Property Register (NMPR).

The National what you ask?

Well, as I’ve referenced previously, the NMPR is a big old archive of property that we bobbies can browse when we recover items to see if they’ve been nicked.

By using the totally free Immobilise website, you can build up a ‘vault’ of all your valuables with their serial numbers and even photographs which is then added to the NMPR. We then use this incredibly useful system to help reunite stolen goods with their rightful owners.

Having logged on, we took down the console’s serial number and I tapped it into the NMPR to see what results we got.

Internet cogs turned, the computer made a few grinding noises and half a second later we got a bright red notification linked to the serial number confirming that the PlayStation was indeed stolen property.

This wasn’t all we got though, we also got crime details relating to the original theft meaning we were able to contact the police force that had dealt and arrange for the item to be returned to its rightful owner.

To work as it did in this example, property needs to be registered in the first place so without hesitation I’d encourage you to go and do the following:

1. Make a note of the serial numbers on all your various gadgets and gizmos
2. Take photos of jewellery and other keepsakes that might lack serial numbers
3. Get yourself over to www.immobilse.com and register everything on the National Mobile Property Register for free

So there we have it, three simple steps that you can take here and now to drastically increase the chances of getting your wares back if they fall into the wrong hands.

There was no FIFA tournament for either us or the criminals as arrangements were made to get the console returned to its rightful owner, all because that owner had taken the very sensible step of registering it in advance.

As ugly as I seem…

What sort of injuries might the police classify under the term ‘serious violence’? You may be surprised but the above scratch would likely be recorded as grievous bodily harm. (Image from AlishaV)

One of my main aims behind writing this here blog is to help explain the law and police customs on behalf of those who may hear stories about the justice system in the news and think ‘that can never be right’.

Today there’s one such story in the papers concerning how community resolutions have apparently been used inappropriately to deal with reports of ‘serious violence’.

The implication of the headline is that offenders responsible for some of the most serious crimes we deal with are being let off with a slap on the wrist and victims are losing out as a result.

From the face of it, ‘that can never be right’ would be a very sensible reaction.

Serious violence demands a little more than an apology, surely suspects should be put before the wig-wearers at Crown Court and sent for a lengthy prison sentence?

It’s at this point it’s important to consider exactly how ‘serious violence’ is being defined so we can understand what offences within the category often actually look like.

Offences that have been considered ‘serious’ in reference to this story include causing actual bodily harm (ABH) and wounding or inflicting grievous bodily harm without intent.

When it comes to the police decision as to which level of assault we’re going to record (or ‘crime’ in police speak), suffering pain is the benchmark for ‘actual bodily harm’.

This means were you to playfully punch a colleague on the arm and your colleague felt some pain, even in passing, we’d be obliged to record an offence of ABH were your colleague to make a complaint to ourselves.

Why? According to our ‘criming’ standards (by which I mean the exciting Home Office Counting Rules), feeling pain makes the difference between a common assault and ABH.

Now consider the benchmark for recording an offence of wounding. This is a category in which the severity of injury can vary hugely.

We define a ‘wound’ as a breaking of the continuity of the whole skin.

This could be a huge Holby City extra style gash running the length of someone’s body and this sort of wound is likely the sort you’d imagine as ‘grievous’.

Equally so though, it could be no bigger than a paper cut.

Because it’s the breaking of the skin that qualifies a wounding as such, many of the injuries that we record as woundings – I’d go as far to say the majority – are relatively minor, sometimes so small that they can’t even be photographed.

With the definition of ‘wound’ so encompassing, statistics for what is recorded as ‘serious violence’ can be somewhat skewed.

The 10,160 incidents of serious violence certainly doesn’t mean 10,160 people with stab wounds, broken bones and worse.

When it comes to agreeing community resolutions in relation to these sort of offence categories, it’s essential to keep in mind that we are victim led and that without the consent and agreement of the victims themselves, community resolutions aren’t even an option.

When we attend incidents, we have to consider the circumstances and will ask the person reporting what course of action they would see as appropriate. We do our best to explain the options and come up with a course of action that the victim is happy with.

Take a hypothetical example of two friends who after a few too many sherbets fall out and one ends up pushing the other against a door latch causing a very, very small cut to the forearm.

A complaint is made and as we’ve got a break in the skin, we have no choice but to record a crime of inflicting grievous bodily harm without intent. A serious crime has been registered, time for court!

Speaking to the now-sober victim though, he doesn’t want his friend to go to court. He’d rather an apology be made and they look at putting the matter behind them.

As we’ve checked his friend out and found he hasn’t been in trouble for violence in the past, we pull out the local resolution form and resolve the matter there and then.

It’s a proportionate, appropriate and very sensible way to sort out what at first appears a very serious offence but in reality is actually not quite as it seems.

So looking beyond the raw figures and into the detail of how wider a definition ‘serious violence’ can be, the story isn’t quite as shocking as it first appears.

Local resolutions are all about common sense, by properly understanding how we define the different levels of assault hopefully you can be reassured that our own understanding of common sense has not been lost.

P.S. If you’d like to know more about the different levels of assault, have a look at my blog on the subject from last September.

For more on community resolutions and restorative justice, have a look at the Restorative Justice Council website and also see what our ACPO lead, ACC Garry Shewan, had to say on the story here.

Hungry for more info on local resolutions? See our own website for a little more on how they’re used and why they’re useful.

There’s so much you have to know…

What am I going on about when I talk about getting some ‘CPS advice’?

As I mentioned on me Twitter feed earlier today, this shift I had to give the Crown Prosecution Service a call to get some advice in relation to a prisoner I’d been dealing with.

This is something we have to do fairly frequently on the Investigation Team, what does ‘going to CPS’ involve though and why do we have to do it? For that matter, who are the CPS anyway?

First things first, the Crown Prosecution Service is the department responsible for prosecuting the criminal cases that we police officers present to them as a result of our investigations.

They give advice on the cases that we’re putting together, make sure cases are in a suitable condition to be put to the courts and it’s the CPS lawyers who present said cases to the court itself.

As a condition of their employment, all Crown Prosecution Service employees have to wear crowns whenever on duty as a sign of their legal authority.*

The CPS has been operating ever since 1986, prior to this date police forces would prosecute their own cases.

When it comes to ‘going to CPS’, whether we have to do so or not depends on the type of cases that we’re working on.

For simpler jobs, such as a minor assault or low value criminal damage, we police can make the decision about whether there’s enough evidence to take a matter to court and so don’t need to consult with CPS beforehand.

More serious offences, or anything involving a domestic or hate crime element, usually require us to ask CPS to have a look at the circumstances of the report and the available evidence as only CPS can authorise us to charge someone with said offence.

So, we police are allowed to decide to charge people with low level offences whilst CPS have to check serious crime cases before they’re able to go to court, what does the process itself involve?

Like with many other areas, each force will have different procedures but in the West Midlands, we have a program called Electronic File Build (Battlefield 4, eat your heart out!) which links in with our own custody computers.

When we need advice, or in any case if we’re charging someone to go to court, we can upload much of our evidence electronically to the File Build program and then zap it straight across to CPS.

This means CPS get an outline of the case along with copies of statements, exhibits and the like within minutes of us sending them and then can reply to us in the same fashion.

Prior to using this electronic system, we used to fax paper documents (children of the 1990s, see here) or if the fax machine wasn’t working, even read out whole statements over the phone which you can appreciate took a lot of our time so the electronic system is much more efficient.

Once the documents are sent, we’ll then pick up the phone and speak to a CPS lawyer at one of their call centres who may ask a few questions about the case and then will give us a decision.

If you hear in the news that police have ‘submitted a file to CPS’, this is usually what is meant, although the exact mechanism varies and for complicated cases officers will meet with CPS representatives in person to discuss the evidence.

Having CPS oversight is useful as particularly in serious cases, the law can be very complicated hence why it is necessary for a legal professional to review the case to ensure that we have the best chance of getting a conviction in court.

So there’s the process of how and why we have to get CPS advice in as simpler terms as I think I can manage.

If you fancy some bedtime reading, you can take a look at the Director’s Guidance on Charging but if not, simply take away that CPS are the legal experts who work with us to help ensure the cases we investigate arrive at the best possible result.

* Okay, this bit may not be true although what the CPS lawyers wear whilst working in their call centres is a matter for themselves!

Behind That Locked Door…

Everyone knows that by exploiting a weak point in the Death Star’s design, the Rebel Alliance blew it up. Did you know that your household locks may have a similar weakness that criminals could exploit? (Image from mharrsch)

For reasons known only to Darth Vader, when the engineers were designing the Death Star they built in a vent that should someone happen to shoot down, the entire space station would instantly be rendered inoperable by virtue of it being scattered across the galaxy.

This wasn’t a good idea but then weak points, deliberate or otherwise, rarely are which raises the question of why they exist in the first place.

Even though the whole Death Star thing happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, weak points are still things that crop up from time to time and at the moment in the world of home security, are causing a few issues in relation to a type of lock commonly used on uPVC doors.

The ‘Euro cylinder’ is a type of lock that’s often found on plastic doors and like the Death Star, unfortunately has a weak point that criminals with tools a lot less sophisticated than proton torpedoes have been able to exploit.

The method, known as lock snapping, involves using a tool to apply force to the lock cylinder which then responds by snapping at its weakest point. It takes minutes to do and and allows the bad guy to simply open the door and step inside.

In Yorkshire the lock snapping method has been a factor in a quarter of their burglaries and unfortunately, criminals in other areas are getting wise to this simply way of gaining access to people’s homes.

What can you do to secure your own Death Star then?

First of all you need to identify whether your locks are the type that are vulnerable to being snapped.

It’s hard to tell just from looking at them which is Euro cylinder type although this photo shows what they generally look like. Better, ask a locksmith for advice as to which locks you have.

If you have Secured by Design standard doors (fitted after 2010) then you should be okay, older locks though may need to be checked.

Having identified any Euro cylinder style locks, you then want to consider upgrading the barrels to break secure models. You need not replace the entire door, just the mechanism which should be a fairly quick job for a professional.

Combined with following the other sensible crime prevention tips I have offered on this blog over the years (here, there, here, here, here and there too), as well as our Safer Homes advice, you should considerably lower the chances that you’ll return home to discover a break in.

The weak point in the Death Star is generally considered a good thing, depending on whose side you’re on. The same can’t be said about your locks though so go check them before a criminal does it for you!

Cautioners…

Caution is advised when venomous snakes are around, how do the police decide if a caution is appropriate when it comes to crime though? (Image from TampAGS)

As you may have seen in the news, today the government has announced that it’s going to be reviewing how us officers make decisions as to when it’s appropriate to issue cautions to offenders.

Whilst the figures suggest that overall use of police cautions has fallen by over 40% during the past five years, concerns have been raised that cautions have sometimes been issued to repeat offenders and for offences that appear serious enough to have been put before the courts.

Understanding what cautions are, how decisions are reached to issue them and why they are useful is important in understanding the role they play in the criminal justice system.

Starting off, a caution isn’t a conviction and so as you may have read on my CRB blog last year, doesn’t need to be disclosed when applying for job unless specifically asked about.

A caution is closer to an official warning from the police, having admitted guilt a person being issued a caution signs a caution form in custody and the matter is finalised there and then. We deem the associated crime ‘detected’ or solved and the case is closed.

Cautions can be ‘simple’ or ‘conditional’, the latter meaning that they are subject to appropriate conditions, say paying compensation, and there are similar options that we can use for under eighteens too.

Following considerations about what is in the public interest, we make decisions when deciding about how to dispose of a case by looking at all circumstances.

An offender’s previous offending history is obviously an important part in looking at whether they might be eligible for a caution.

If someone has come to the attention of the police for the first time, a caution may be the way forward as it offers that person a chance to get back on track, to make amends, to ensure that they don’t repeat the same mistake.

Working in the other way though, someone whose criminal record shows they’ve done the same sort of thing over and again will need some stronger intervention and so may well find themselves shipped off to court.

In the West Midlands, we use ‘gravity scores’ by which each offence category is given a score according to how serious it is, mitigating and aggravating circumstances are then considered which alter the score accordingly.

The final score, between one and four, indicates whether a caution would be appropriate or not.

This helps ensure that decisions about issuing cautions are consistent across the force.

As for why cautions are a useful option, I’d disagree that there’s a motivation for issuing them on the basis that police “don’t have to prepare so much paperwork” as the Magistrates’ Association has suggested.

Rather, public interest is I think the larger consideration with it simply not being the best option in terms of cost, time or use of resources to send someone who has admitted guilt to a low level offence to court when a more proportionate option is available.

Of course to the victim no offence is ‘low level’ and their views are important in deciding what is the right course of action.

Charging someone rather than issuing a caution does indeed require some extra work, a relatively short ‘first hearing’ file, but this is done electronically and shouldn’t take much longer than an hour or two to put together.

As the Ministry of Justice has announced, the review is wider ranging than simply examining whether cautions are being issued appropriately and seeks to establish also whether they are issued consistently across forces and how the acceptance of a caution impacts upon individuals.

Due to be published in May, the findings are likely to be very interesting, particularly in terms of showing to what extent the way that cautions are viewed and employed varies around the country.

I sent a message through the Internet but it rejected…

Via West Midlands Police Press Releases -

Officers to be able to make legally binding online arrests using Twitter

April 1st 2013

WEST MIDLANDS POLICE have welcomed today an announcement made by the Home Secretary, Theresa May, introducing new legislation that will enable officers to make legal arrests over social networking website Twitter.

From September 2013, police officers in England & Wales will be able to make legally binding detentions with their officially sanctioned Twitter accounts thanks to changes in the law introduced by the Government’s Digital Policing Bill.

Over two hundred million people use Twitter, a microblogging website on which users publish short 140 character updates, with hundreds of officers from police forces around the country having taken to the site to help promote their work.

Under the new legislation, officers will still be required to caution suspects as they would in any other arrest and will be required to use the hashtag ‘#twitterarrest’ to ensure that the detainee understands that they’ve been arrested.

Following the online arrest, the detained person will then be required to present themselves to the custody suite at a station of the arresting officer’s choosing.

DS Kimo, who maintains a Twitter account on behalf of the force, said of the new online powers ‘Being able to arrest suspects by tweet alone will save a considerable amount of police time, I think it’s a really positive move and one that brings the police into the digital age’.

Alongside the ability to make arrests online, the Digital Policing Bill also includes proposals to allow officers to issue cautions via Blackberry Messenger and to take payment for traffic fines in the form of funds held by players of FarmVille.

An example of an online Twitter arrest from a trial held in Walsall earlier this year.

Where you’ll find me now…

Eight suspects connected with last year’s Walsall EDL protests were arrested this morning, can you help us identify others though?

Police – “Knock knock”
Suspect – “Who’s there?”
Police – “It’s the 5-0, we’ve come to arrest you in connection with the protests in Walsall last September”
Suspect – “I’ll get my coat…”

I wasn’t there but this is likely the sort of conversation that took place at eight addresses this morning with suspects as officers investigating the disorder at last year’s English Defence League (EDL) demonstration in Walsall swooped by for an early morning ‘chat’.

On Saturday 29th September 2012, Walsall Town Centre hosted a demonstration by the EDL and an accompanying counter demonstration, drawing over a thousand participants and necessitating an accompanying police operation with officers available to ensure that the day passed safely.

Whilst the majority of those there on the day caused no issues, there unfortunately was a small group of people who thought that they might ‘start some drama’ attempting to break through police cordons and throwing debris around.

Thirty people were arrested on the day, twenty seven of them ended up being charged with a variety of offences including one found in possession of an offensive weapon and finding himself handed a twenty five week prison sentence.

Since the protest, officers have been busily studying the CCTV footage and identifying further offenders to be arrested in connection with the disorder.

Eight were arrested this morning, officers have released mugshots of another ten people they’re looking to trace and are encouraging anyone with knowledge that may lead to their identification to come forward.

If you know who any of the featured suspects are, please give us a call on 101 or approach Crimestoppers with your tip so that we can pay them an early morning visit too.

I don’t think I ever seen so many headlights…

Seen the helicopter up overhead and five police cars dashing off in the same direction? A sign of a huge incident perhaps? Not necessarily, how we allocate resources to jobs depends on a variety of factors as you’ll see below.

Fairly frequently I receive the following tweet from a curious member of the public – ‘There are six police cars blocking off such and such street and I’ve just seen the helicopter drop a police dog down somebody’s chimney, do you know what’s happening?’.

Often I’m off duty when I get these messages so am in no better position than anyone else to say, sometimes if I am in and have heard what’s occurring on the radio I may be able to give a general idea, although the best place to look for information is usually our official departmental social media feeds.

As it is, the sight of police car after police car zooming by usually gives the impression that something big is going down nearby, ‘big’ as in headlines of the news at six and front page material.

Curiously though it isn’t necessarily true that the more the officers, the more serious the incident they’re on their way to. How we allocate resources to jobs depends a range of factors extending beyond simply that Godzilla is kicking down bits of Streetly.

Some jobs require as many officers to attend as possible in the first instance as without ‘flooding the area’ as we call it, we determine it’s likely that we won’t get the outcome we’re looking for.

Young missing children would be a good example of this – the usual response when we get a report of a toddler having wondered off in the Saddlers Centre is to ask anyone available to make the location straight away and help with the search.

The longer we leave it, the further an inquisitive young explorer can crawl and so with each passing minute, our search area grows.

The same logic applies to other incidents too – a robbery for example will (literally) attract every man and his dog as we want to maximise our chance of catching suspects.

Sometimes you may see large number of vehicles at an incident because we have some information that we might need a large number of officers for safety or perhaps to stop someone slipping out the back door.

Prior to arrest attempts, for example, we’ll check what we know about the person we’re after and if there are suggestions that he or she has been violent in the past or has a tendency not to stick around, we’ll then ensure we have enough pairs of boots to prevent issues.

Deciding who goes to what is largely the job of the control room who will allocate cars to incidents as soon as they’re sent across from the 999 operators.

Jobs involving violence or some other disturbance will usually attract pairs of officers, as some of those responding may well be patrolling single crewed then you may see the cars stacking up outside a neighbouring house giving the impression that something huge is happening whereas in reality, it’s simply down to the fact that officers have brought a car each.

When it comes to deploying the helicopter, probably our most visible bit of kit, its presence doesn’t necessarily mean there’s been a Holby City-style disaster, rather that officers on the ground have determined that asking for a flyover would likely help them spot something not visible at street level.

Metal thieves laying low on rooftops, criminals running off down footpaths or vulnerable people wondering through large open areas are all the sort of situations that may well involve us calling up the chopper.

As for who comes out to jobs, sometimes who might find that the type of unit arriving isn’t quite what you might expect.

I’ve heard recently firearms officers arriving at car accidents and police vans checking out trouble causing drunks in the town centre – this isn’t because they were specifically asked for, rather because the officers will have overheard jobs on the radio and volunteered to attend in the first instance because they may have been close by and are willing to help out until a more appropriate unit arrives.

So in short, the number of officers arriving at an incident doesn’t necessarily indicate that something major has happened and nor does the type of vehicle or officer that we send.

It’s all down to what’s happening on the day – it could be Godzilla on a rampage, equally so though it could be that another officer or two is needed to help with some traffic control.

The jobs where there has been a major incident with us calling in officers from far and wide – the bomb scares, large fires and serious road accidents as examples – usually attract a tweet or two from @WMPolice or one of the local feeds so if you’re ever curious to know what’s happening, check them out as they’re your best source of information.

Mr. Writer, why don’t you tell it like it really is?

It goes without saying that Bergerac was one of the best police shows, does watching police dramas as a real cop spoil them though? (Image from Jersey Tourism)

Midweek at 11:00 and assuming I’m not at work, it’s not unlikely that you’ll find me tuned into Yesterday to watch the exploits of TV detective Bergerac as he dashes around Jersey trying to sort out one of the island’s three crimes – smuggling, art theft or a kidnap.

Police dramas have always been popular and whilst they’re not all quite as good as Bergerac, millions of people tune in each week to see jumper wearing officers solving grim murders through using forensics techniques that have apparently been borrowed from Star Wars.

I know I’ll not be the only officer amongst these viewers who enjoys a bit of Morse, The Bill or Silent Witness but gets frustrated (and frustrates anyone else within earshot) with the little procedural inaccuracies that seem to crop up across the dramas.

Yes, cries of “They can’t do that!” and “Ooooh, that would never happen in real life!” can probably be heard from the living rooms of officers up and down the country every time they tune in to any drama in which the Old Bill make an appearance.

What are the most common errors then?

Allow me to present (pens at the ready, TV execs) some of the things that I often notice that cause me to leap up from my arm chair in a shower of biscuits and fury:

• Inappropriate interviewing – Suspect Farmer Bishop of murdering Mrs. Brown with his combine harvester? Arrest him and interview him on tape at the station, don’t illegally question him in his barn as he milks some cows.
• Crowded interview rooms – On the off chance the suspect has been brought to the station, it’s very rare that there’d be more than two officers asking the questions. Seven angry officers storming around the inexplicably large interview room, coming and going at random just wouldn’t happen.
• Prisoners wearing their finest jewellery – TV detectives bust some upmarket cocktail party and arrest the heiress, at the station she’s sat in interview still wearing her hair up and her finest diamond necklace. Said diamonds and hair bands should really be in a sealed property bag – we search and remove loose items from everyone who comes into custody.
• Randomly assigned ranks – Sometimes it appears that ranks are assigned at random and when this happens, you end up with some very odd occurrences. A superintendent taking a statement? Really?
• Lack of paperwork – We’ve done a lot to cut down on the bureaucracy but even so, we do need to get out our pens every now and again to fill in a form or two. When was the last time you saw Bergerac filling in a search book?
• No respect for crime scenes – Murder scenes usually look pretty good in detective shows with fluttering police tape and uniformed officers standing around with their radios buzzing. The point of a crime scene is to secure forensic evidence – Morse ducking under the tape, picking up the murder weapon and then searching the body is probably one of the least useful things he could do.
• One man shows – Fine, a show called Morse has to be about Morse but the impression is sometimes given that Morse is one a one man crime fighting machine. In reality complicated investigations, especially murders, are resourced by teams of officers working together rather than by one awesome inspector driving a Jaguar Mark 2 on a jolly around the countryside.

So there we have it, the bugbears that usually have me throwing custard creams at the television but by no means an extensive list – please feel free to leave any others you’ve noticed in the comments section and we can work towards a definitive list that we can send to ITV.

“You’re not supposed to do that, Frost! It’s a breach of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act!”…