“TJF.” It’s a saying as old as policing time. For the uninitiated, it stands for “The Job’s F**ked”. It’s an observation about the state of policing. And PCs have been making it since 1829. At times, it can be tempting to agree with them – and with the chorus of voices from outside policing wanting to tell us that “All Coppers Are Bastards.” After all, the evidence isn’t hard to find.  But they’re wrong. Both the TJF people and the ACAB people. Before I explain why though, it’s important to recognise that policing is currently in a desperately difficult place – undoubtedly the most challe ..read more

My latest book, The Fallen, begins with a crisis negotiation on Westminster Bridge. With that in mind, I thought you might be interested to hear about a real-life case I dealt with in north London more than a decade ago. The story that follows is taken from the pages of my first book, Blue: A Memoir…. *** It’s another grainy, grey north London afternoon. I’m catching up with the team in the borough control room when local officers come through on the radio, requesting the assistance of hostage negotiators. They’ve got a man high up in a tower block, threatening to jump. It’s been more than six ..read more

Before I was a writer, I was a police officer. And, for many of the twenty-five years that I served in the Met, I worked as a Hostage Negotiator – or, to give the role its full and proper title, a Hostage & Crisis Negotiator. The fact is that full-blown Hollywood hostage scenarios – the bank robbery gone wrong or the desperate fugitive holed up in a block of flats – are a comparative rarity. Most of the calls that a police negotiator takes are to people in crisis: beautiful, broken souls who have reached the end of themselves and are in desperate need of a helping hand. Before I could be d ..read more

Before I was a writer, I was a police officer. And it’s the real life stories from my twenty-five-plus years in the Met that continue to inform and inspire so much much of what I put down on the page. My first novel was called The Siege – and, with that in mind, I thought I’d tell you the story of the first real siege I ever dealt with.  It was in late 1992 and I was still in my first month as a police officer. After an initial fortnight at Training School, my classmates and I were sent out for a two-week attachment in the real world – in my case, at the long-since-closed Gerald Road poli ..read more

Stories matter. The ones we hear and the ones we tell. For the past six or seven years, I’ve been telling stories about policing. About the everyday heroism of the overwhelming majority of women and men who do the Job: about their compassion and courage; their selflessness and sacrifice; their humility and humanity; about extraordinary duties performed beyond the view of most ordinary people. About the damage done by politicians and the generational consequences of austerity. About the overwhelming need to properly understand the actual causes of a wide range of societal problems if we’re ever ..read more

Yesterday, the Police Foundation published their Strategic Review of Policing in England & Wales. Three years in the making, the report examines policing past, present and future and makes a lengthy series of recommendations about where we need to go from here. The reaction to the launch on social media was predictably mixed – and I wanted to take a few moments of your time to offer a brief series of my own initial reflections on what I’ve read. The first thing to say is that I think much of the content of the report is bang on. The world is changing beyond all recognition – demographicall ..read more

Yesterday, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police lost her job. After 40 years of public service, she reached the end of the road. And there were plenty of people lining up in the immediate aftermath of the announcement to say that it was not before time. There can be no avoiding the fact that the Met is in a desperately difficult place at the moment – as difficult as any that I can recall in the last twenty years. And, in fairness, critics of the organisation and its leadership have not been short of evidence in support of their concerns: Crime is rising – particularly violent crime.&nb ..read more

I hardly know where to begin, so I will begin by saying her name.  Sarah.  Her name was Sarah. I’ve struggled for days to put my thoughts into some semblance of order – to make any kind of sense of what I’m thinking and feeling. I’m still struggling now.  What follows is my best (and no doubt inadequate) attempt to describe where I’ve got to – informed, I hope, by continuing to listen to the voices and wisdom of others: of women; of victims; of survivors; of ordinary people who are deeply and understandably horrified by what they have heard and seen. It is difficult to imagine a ..read more

It’s been a hell of a year for police officers in this country. Twelve months ago, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, policing stood accused of institutional racism. And it wasn’t the first time that had happened. Three months ago, in the aftermath of the murder of Sarah Everard, policing stood accused of institutional misogyny. Yesterday, following the publication of an independent inquiry report into the murder of Daniel Morgan, policing stood accused of institutional corruption. Yesterday, police officers up and down the country had their heads in their hands. Because, while al ..read more

These are the most challenging times for policing in this country since the end of the Second World War. I said as much at the start of 2020. And then the virus came. And then George Floyd was killed. And then the streets filled with protestors. And then the second wave of the virus hit. And then Sarah Everard was killed. And then the streets filled with protestors. And then the Government proposed new (and singularly ill-judged) legislation for the policing of protests. And then the streets filled with protestors. At each point along the way, police officers have been caught in the middle of ..read more