top of page
Search

Police detectives to be trained to ask supplementary questions




'Far too many police dramas depict detectives going to interview a suspect, asking one specific question, leaving to repeat the activity with several other suspects before returning to the first suspect and asking a supplementary question that must have been obvious the first time around,' said police trainer Brian Filch. 'They must have got the idea from somewhere and we know scriptwriters shadow real police officers for background knowledge, so we suspect this is happening in real life. If it is then the carbon footprint alone must be huge,' he added.


Police on Brian's training courses are also going to be encouraged to not gather all the potential suspects together in a room, or on a beach veranda, and untangle the facts of the case without issuing a caution or allowing legal representation. 'Apart from the legal nightmare of not reading them their rights, the passing around of physical evidence is likely to create massive loopholes in the eventual court case,' he said. 'It's not professional and shouldn't happen,' he added before dismissing journalists.


'One other thing,' he was heard to say as the journalists reached the door.



First published 17 June 2022


If you enjoyed this archive item, why not buy thousands of archive stories found in our eBooks, paperbacks and hardbacks?














Journalists plead “Can we stop writing about Adolescence now?”



A number of journalists have banded together to ask their editors if they can stop writing articles about hard-hitting TV drama Adolescence.


“Look, it was really good, no question,” said spokesman Dave Hack. “Powerful story, amazing acting (especially the kid), highlighting an important issue, so clever to film each episode all in one take, etc etc. Hats off to them.


“But frankly we’re running out of things to say about it. We’ve done scaremongering about ‘Do you know what your son’s viewing online?’, we’ve had thinkpieces about how to raise boys, we’ve had glossaries of what the various emojis mean, we’ve given endless free publicity to tossers like Andrew Tate… We’ve even concocted a pointless row about whether the producers were cowardly to make the killer white, when the suspect in the Southport murders (which the show wasn’t in any way based on) isn’t.”


“And I’ve written every possible version of ‘Male violence is every man’s fault, because it just is’” added Lucretia Harpy of the Guardian. ”And normally there’s nothing I like better, but there are limits.”


Their editors replied that unfortunately they need to continue producing more Adolescence-related material, at least until another show with similar impact is broadcast. 


“And I don’t just mean the next Breaking Bad or The Wire - it needs to be a campaigning show aiming to right a societal wrong, which we can enthusiastically get behind despite showing no previous interest in the problem and in many cases actively contributing to it.”



Embarrassing admission about Met Police crime figures



The Met. Police have corrected and reissued their crime figures for the last ten years, after an unfortunate series of errors in data collection and processing.


The affected figures relate to the detection rate for murders. These figures have now been revised down from percentages in the high nineties to the low forties. The incorrect figures erroneously included crimes solved by officers on loan to other police forces.


This large correction is due to the inclusion of murders solved by a number of different detectives on secondment. The issue relates mainly to staff on loan to the police force in the fictional British overseas territory of Saint Marie.


A spokesman said, ‘The figures were distorted by the very high number of murders on the island of Saint Marie – at least one a week – and by the very impressive clear up rate of one hundred per cent. Our colleagues on loan to the Saint Marie police service have a fantastic record, and we are looking to learn lessons from them going forward.


‘Of course, you don’t have to go abroad to find great detection rates. There is an English police force with a record that is just as good. It’s in Midsomer.’



bottom of page