Wasting Police Time: The Crazy World of the War on Crime

Its fun, its well written, its amusing, its eyeopening but its very repetitive to the point I stopped about 60% through.It also has a tendency to punch its jokes downwards at the so called "underclass" which i am not a fan of, especially when its done so constantly. lets mock the unfortunates, the uneducated (not just academically) that Britain mostly pretends does not exist, unless to make jokes at, like this book. Yet it makes no suggestions on how to treat the issue, up to what I read anyway.Saying that I do understand the writers frustration with the situation he finds himself in constantly with them.He has some awesome ideas about law enforcement, which I would like to see implemented.So a bit of a mixed bag here but worth a look!

I don't have a problem criticising this policeman because he clearly doesn't have the time to find out who I am. For a while it seems to be quite a humorous account oof today's ineffective policing, caused by over-enthusisatic political correctness, detailed interviewing and triplicate record-keeping, whilst the top bosses live in their crime-free residences. But when you read dozens of different versions of this same description, crooks not hanged for their petty crime because PC Plod is too busy and isn't allowed to carry guns - then it gets pretty boring. I've given up half-way through.

Wasting Police Time is an eye-opener as to how the government impedes serious police work by means of bureaucracy, political correctness, 'fluffy science thinking' and the ticking of boxes to meet a variety of absurd political targets. We see how the upper echelons of the police force have embraced this woolly philosophy and are now so out of touch with real policing that they might as well have been trained as boilermakers.The author has received critical reviews for highlighting the fact that most of the crime he handles was committed by what he calls 'the underclass', but I believe that this criticism is unfounded, since the facts speak for themselves. His descriptions of the homes of some of the 'customers' are priceless - broken fridges litter the front yards, while the - usually wasted - occupants laze in front of expensive satellite TV's, shriek profanities at their children, and waste police time over abusive text messages they've received their friends or relatives. All this while real burglars steal with impunity.I think it is unfortunate that the author did not experience a wider variety of police work, so the reader could see what good work the police do under sometimes very difficult conditions. Also, the narrative did drag on a bit in the middle of the book, and the author could not conceal his obvious bitterness at the Job. Nevertheless, I recommend this book, and the follow-up, Wasting More Police Time, in which 100 different police officers from all over the UK corroborate the assertions of the author.

As numerous reviewers have pointed out below the author "exposes" the true nature of modern policing in Britain today (The one problem with that is most of us will not have any real memory of what policing was like before our author was "snowed under with paperwork" as most of his readership will have been in primary school at best in the 80s and toddlers in the 70s so this "golden age" will be nothing more than a fantasy concocted in the modern readers mind)The author writes in the style of a blog (I believe that this is how the book started) narrating the daily grind of his job (Which to a large extent is very mundane) Far from as some reviewers have critically said the author is not someone uninterested in his job or serving the public but rather a police officer frustrated with the fact that instead of giving all his work time to catching criminals he is bogged down with endless forms, paperwork, community building, and political re-education (He mentions on numerous occasions how there is an assumption that because he is a white male in the Police that must therefore mean he is a dangerous racist who needs to be educated out of his racist ways (Is this not a form of discrimination itself?))The author may be critical of Britain's underclass but I suspect that is simply because he is called out to solve their lives problems far too often (Take for example the time when he is standing on duty outside a suspected sex offenders home protecting it from the enraged mob, he wonders what exactly these communities are themselves doing to protect their own children from a life of ignorance and grinding poverty (A point I found especially refreshing as these days its everyone else's fault our country and communities are going down the drain, the government, illegal immigrants, the EU, al-Qaeda well everyone but those who sit on their backsides and collect benefits all day, and yes the vast majority of those are British born and bred.))The author far from being someone who hates his job comes across as someone who loves the job and wishes he had more time to actually do it rather than fill in statistics for bureaucrats figures. The author is not a bigot far from it, he enjoys finding out about the diverse people in his community and engages with them (Having a meal with one of them) and I suspect the vast majority of Police officers are just that, open minded ordinary people who joined the police because of a love of the job and desire the serve the public.The one big problem however, is that the book can become very very repetitive. How many times can you read "Spent a morning filling in papers, an hour on the streets then went home and had a bottle of wine with the wife"? Even speaking to police officers that I know they have pointed out that the author can at times come across as a "moaner"Either way, if you want an insight into today's policing then this is a very good start.