Worth contrasting this with the officers including Superintendents, with pronouns in their email signatures and links to a website on removing all gendered language and other more extreme tenets of gender ideology. This is absolutely political. Most grunts would give up the TBL patches without a complaint IF we did the same with everything else. Email signatures are the worst there are people with 20 causes piled on top of one another.
Good article Don. In this one case we are at odds though. I completely agree that ‘Pride’ is political, with a political agenda to pursue and for me open displays of support for ANY political cause, be it Pride, Palestine, BLM or what have you are right out. Period. Keep it for your private life. Likewise uniform officers (and military personnel to be honest) should not take part in the ‘parade’ in uniform. I have done that on duty on many occasions and had the misfortune to be in town when more recent ones take place. I am not ‘phobic’ but I do feel awkward and uneasy about some of the participants style of dress … or lack of it and the chants one hears.
Instruction Manual told us the only badge allowed was the poppy in Remembrance season. My view is that should remain.
The Met Uniform now looks scruffy anyway. In the past it did look smart when worn properly, but nobody ever did! However look at today’s officers; they rarely look smart. Relaxing the dress standards won’t make them look or work better.
My experience of this patch was that it was worn by a certain type of officer and played into the narrative that they all felt they were at war with everyone, be it CID, SLT, CPS … or the public they were supposed to police. Some of them were excellent coppers, but many weren’t. Likewise the utilitarian attitude towards uniform. A deliberate disregard for wearing it properly and any form of head gear, polishing boots etc. usually stems from what might be described as a paramilitary approach to the job. Such officers will reject the notion of policing by consent as antiquated and no longer in existence whilst actually possessing only the haziest notion of what it means. They generally subscribe also to what I call the “Richard Sharpe” school of uniform. In the novels about the eponymous rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars, the Duke of Wellington is stated to ‘not care what a man’s uniform looked like, so long as his weapon was clean and he knew his drill’ or something in that vein. Well, my view is that police are not serving in an army at war a long way from the supply depot, so they should be smart and take a pride in their appearance.
I know I qualify as a dinosaur in these matters, and I am not apologising. A scruffy looking officer in my experience (25 years in uniform) is rarely a hard working capable one.
This then moves into their management/leadership. The Sergeant and Inspector obviously permit their staff to look like this; very often they see their job as ‘backing’ them come Hell-Or-High-Water. That is dangerous, and we have had many discussions over this issue previously. Very often they, too, see the team as being harassed and unfairly put upon. They don’t enforce many standards and we see the results in the press and in the everyday performance of the police service. The Inspectorate put out a report not too long ago saying police need to start to enforce standards of dress and appearance to regain public trust. I agree.
So, in summary, my view is all badges should go. Pride emblems should not be displayed nor any other political messaging. Thin blue line badges should be kept for private enjoyment as they are not uniform.
I agree, once upon a time, the TBL patch was worn by a certain type of copper. Those days are long gone. It's worn by PCSOs, neighbourhood officers and just about anyone else.
My point stands, though, if the troops are pissed off what are their bosses doing about it? During my service the answer to that, too often, was nothing.
I agree. I’ve always maintained that you should wear what is issued particularly when you are to be seen in public. A uniform is meant to be, well, uniform. In that it is the same across everyone. I’ve never had any desire to wear group inclusive hints on accessories. Black lanyard with no slogans when out in uniform. I have to admit that I had a plain black thinsulate woolly hat for standing at accidents up on the hills of Yorkshire, but I didn’t wear it in the town centre. Less of everything, more uniformity please.
Ah Paul, we have had this chat so many times. I disagree with what you say, but entirely respect your sentiments mate.
As I said, we aren’t in battle miles from supply. The uniform is there to mark out an officer. Experience showed me EVERYBODY wears hi-vis. Watch on CCTV on Friday night in say Leicester Sq and a hat REALLY stands out - a safety issue for me.
BJ Harrington also showed leadership & support for his rank & file; he has a TBL Black Jack on his body armour. The Met’s loss is definitely Essex’ gain
Your article is spot on! Sad to see that the UK police are facing the same kowtowing to the hypersensitive politics of a unrespresentative, miniscule portion of the population, as we see here in the USA. Such attempts at virtue signaling by the polticians and the political sycophants has risen to an art form here. And we are paying the price of our own stupidity by giving them any concern! They have also claimed here that the historical "okay" signal made with thumb and forefinger is actually a white supremacy signal (nevermind the fact that if the vast majority of people have never thought this then it can't really be a signal). It is funny when the pictures inevitably surface showing these politically hypersensitive shriekers using the exact same signal!
Seems to me the Met forgers that some in its rank are LGBT+ people who also wear thin blue line patch. So the Met is perfectly happy to offend them, their family and friends. It's offended most of its staff, their friends and families, retired officers their friends and families, and friends and families of officers who died in line of duty.
It's also made itself look stupid in front of other Chief such as Essex who boasts on twitter that he wears thin blue line patch. He isn't alone.
This is the Preventive Principle at its worst. I'll ban something in case it might happen, regardless of the consequences. Its how the EU operates, which explains its huge bureaucracy and love of new laws.
Anyway, the Met has managed to humiliate itself, again, for no good reason, and driven a huge chasm between it and its most important people. Again.
This topic is a good example of weak leadership by ACPO (now the Chief Officers Council). At an early stage they should have agreed as a body that the TBL badge should be allowed or not. I think it should but my opinion is irrelevant.
I have some sympathy with the desire to have high standards of appearance, but managing an Operations (firearms and traffic( the need for officer safety and the practicality of creases when lying in a puddle on containment or checking a tipper lorry meant compromises.
Sir Mark seems to be in the spotlight politically, I wouldn’t have his job for any money but he does seems to make knee jerk decisions which come back to haunt......
I’d argue that it is a political symbol, because few things are truly apolitical.
However, the UK TBL is what it is, a symbol of mourning & remembrance for fallen UK police officers, regardless of (my italics) what you think of them.
This is a stunning kick in the teeth for the ground floor from an out of touch management team.
I would love to see the Commander who made this ridiculous decision come out and justify it to an audience who can freely answer back, but I won’t hold my breath.
I hope this thought piece is brought to the attention of the members of the NPCC as they badly need a reality check and you touch all the points that they need to consider. It obviously doesn't occur to the higher echelons of Police management that the TBL patch has been adopted by the other UK Emergency Services - so we now have a Thin Red Line and Thin Green Line too...... are those Services also mired in apeing US politics. This decision has made me look carefully at the Met Commissioner and it is evident from various pictures of him that he is a man with a weak face and no real leadership character. What he appears to see as leadership is little more than a display of politicized bullying in his own organization. By this one act of politicized crassness, Sir Mark Rowley has demonstrated he is unfit for his office - an individual who is unwilling to acknowledge the sacrifices made by ordinary men and women in the line of duty protecting the public is beneath contempt.
Well researched and written as ever. Love reading your articles as you seem to consider all sides before putting pen to paper.
I really struggle with management thinking sometimes and see it going back as far as the riots at Brixton and particularly Tottenham and Broadwater Farm.
I have always believed we have restricted the promotion process by only having a one sort of leader being promoted. There should have been an opportunity for those in charge to provide the community representatives to deal with local senior officers who had been working with each other or if the troubles continued to grow that those local seniors officers had the opportunity to say to the community once a certain level of unrest/crime/violence was reached they would hand over control of the situation to senior officers who would deal with the situation in a more robust way deploying their officers with use of force and a no compromise response. This would have put some onus on the community leaders to actually try and control their side of things.
What happened put the senior officers in charge there on the back foot, so as not to totally ruin local relations which would have to be picked after the conflict. Decisions were made which threw the officers at the Farm under the bus as it were, training and tactics were ignored and we took a beating, letting the worst suspects get away and we have never recovered from that.
We now have managers rather than leaders, perhaps Nick Adderley is an exception to that but he is definitely a leader officers will follow. Sadly the Commissioner has read the room wrong again and failed to back his officers. If he had said what you and Nick have said that would have been an end to the matter.
We should strive to get back to without fear or favour and be apolitical.
Hats. Fine if they're baseball caps or something comfortable. If everyone above insp wears flatcaps so should cons and sgts, specialist unions don't wear stupid pointy lumps plastic on their heads.
Worth contrasting this with the officers including Superintendents, with pronouns in their email signatures and links to a website on removing all gendered language and other more extreme tenets of gender ideology. This is absolutely political. Most grunts would give up the TBL patches without a complaint IF we did the same with everything else. Email signatures are the worst there are people with 20 causes piled on top of one another.
Good article Don. In this one case we are at odds though. I completely agree that ‘Pride’ is political, with a political agenda to pursue and for me open displays of support for ANY political cause, be it Pride, Palestine, BLM or what have you are right out. Period. Keep it for your private life. Likewise uniform officers (and military personnel to be honest) should not take part in the ‘parade’ in uniform. I have done that on duty on many occasions and had the misfortune to be in town when more recent ones take place. I am not ‘phobic’ but I do feel awkward and uneasy about some of the participants style of dress … or lack of it and the chants one hears.
Instruction Manual told us the only badge allowed was the poppy in Remembrance season. My view is that should remain.
The Met Uniform now looks scruffy anyway. In the past it did look smart when worn properly, but nobody ever did! However look at today’s officers; they rarely look smart. Relaxing the dress standards won’t make them look or work better.
My experience of this patch was that it was worn by a certain type of officer and played into the narrative that they all felt they were at war with everyone, be it CID, SLT, CPS … or the public they were supposed to police. Some of them were excellent coppers, but many weren’t. Likewise the utilitarian attitude towards uniform. A deliberate disregard for wearing it properly and any form of head gear, polishing boots etc. usually stems from what might be described as a paramilitary approach to the job. Such officers will reject the notion of policing by consent as antiquated and no longer in existence whilst actually possessing only the haziest notion of what it means. They generally subscribe also to what I call the “Richard Sharpe” school of uniform. In the novels about the eponymous rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars, the Duke of Wellington is stated to ‘not care what a man’s uniform looked like, so long as his weapon was clean and he knew his drill’ or something in that vein. Well, my view is that police are not serving in an army at war a long way from the supply depot, so they should be smart and take a pride in their appearance.
I know I qualify as a dinosaur in these matters, and I am not apologising. A scruffy looking officer in my experience (25 years in uniform) is rarely a hard working capable one.
This then moves into their management/leadership. The Sergeant and Inspector obviously permit their staff to look like this; very often they see their job as ‘backing’ them come Hell-Or-High-Water. That is dangerous, and we have had many discussions over this issue previously. Very often they, too, see the team as being harassed and unfairly put upon. They don’t enforce many standards and we see the results in the press and in the everyday performance of the police service. The Inspectorate put out a report not too long ago saying police need to start to enforce standards of dress and appearance to regain public trust. I agree.
So, in summary, my view is all badges should go. Pride emblems should not be displayed nor any other political messaging. Thin blue line badges should be kept for private enjoyment as they are not uniform.
I agree, once upon a time, the TBL patch was worn by a certain type of copper. Those days are long gone. It's worn by PCSOs, neighbourhood officers and just about anyone else.
My point stands, though, if the troops are pissed off what are their bosses doing about it? During my service the answer to that, too often, was nothing.
I agree. I’ve always maintained that you should wear what is issued particularly when you are to be seen in public. A uniform is meant to be, well, uniform. In that it is the same across everyone. I’ve never had any desire to wear group inclusive hints on accessories. Black lanyard with no slogans when out in uniform. I have to admit that I had a plain black thinsulate woolly hat for standing at accidents up on the hills of Yorkshire, but I didn’t wear it in the town centre. Less of everything, more uniformity please.
Uniform smartness.. I don't care.. its 2023 not 1923. Wear what's practical, comfortable and effective. Sod Tues, collars and creases.
Anyway, creases ARE a thing of the past. The Police will end up looking like railway permanent way workers if we aren’t careful!!!😂
Ah Paul, we have had this chat so many times. I disagree with what you say, but entirely respect your sentiments mate.
As I said, we aren’t in battle miles from supply. The uniform is there to mark out an officer. Experience showed me EVERYBODY wears hi-vis. Watch on CCTV on Friday night in say Leicester Sq and a hat REALLY stands out - a safety issue for me.
BJ Harrington also showed leadership & support for his rank & file; he has a TBL Black Jack on his body armour. The Met’s loss is definitely Essex’ gain
Not if you ever worked directly to him Joe! Great bloke but appalling micromanager!
Your article is spot on! Sad to see that the UK police are facing the same kowtowing to the hypersensitive politics of a unrespresentative, miniscule portion of the population, as we see here in the USA. Such attempts at virtue signaling by the polticians and the political sycophants has risen to an art form here. And we are paying the price of our own stupidity by giving them any concern! They have also claimed here that the historical "okay" signal made with thumb and forefinger is actually a white supremacy signal (nevermind the fact that if the vast majority of people have never thought this then it can't really be a signal). It is funny when the pictures inevitably surface showing these politically hypersensitive shriekers using the exact same signal!
Seems to me the Met forgers that some in its rank are LGBT+ people who also wear thin blue line patch. So the Met is perfectly happy to offend them, their family and friends. It's offended most of its staff, their friends and families, retired officers their friends and families, and friends and families of officers who died in line of duty.
It's also made itself look stupid in front of other Chief such as Essex who boasts on twitter that he wears thin blue line patch. He isn't alone.
This is the Preventive Principle at its worst. I'll ban something in case it might happen, regardless of the consequences. Its how the EU operates, which explains its huge bureaucracy and love of new laws.
Anyway, the Met has managed to humiliate itself, again, for no good reason, and driven a huge chasm between it and its most important people. Again.
Now wear do I buy another thin blue line patch?
This topic is a good example of weak leadership by ACPO (now the Chief Officers Council). At an early stage they should have agreed as a body that the TBL badge should be allowed or not. I think it should but my opinion is irrelevant.
I have some sympathy with the desire to have high standards of appearance, but managing an Operations (firearms and traffic( the need for officer safety and the practicality of creases when lying in a puddle on containment or checking a tipper lorry meant compromises.
Sir Mark seems to be in the spotlight politically, I wouldn’t have his job for any money but he does seems to make knee jerk decisions which come back to haunt......
I’d argue that it is a political symbol, because few things are truly apolitical.
However, the UK TBL is what it is, a symbol of mourning & remembrance for fallen UK police officers, regardless of (my italics) what you think of them.
Another ‘Nail on the Head’ commentary by Dominic.
This is a stunning kick in the teeth for the ground floor from an out of touch management team.
I would love to see the Commander who made this ridiculous decision come out and justify it to an audience who can freely answer back, but I won’t hold my breath.
I hope this thought piece is brought to the attention of the members of the NPCC as they badly need a reality check and you touch all the points that they need to consider. It obviously doesn't occur to the higher echelons of Police management that the TBL patch has been adopted by the other UK Emergency Services - so we now have a Thin Red Line and Thin Green Line too...... are those Services also mired in apeing US politics. This decision has made me look carefully at the Met Commissioner and it is evident from various pictures of him that he is a man with a weak face and no real leadership character. What he appears to see as leadership is little more than a display of politicized bullying in his own organization. By this one act of politicized crassness, Sir Mark Rowley has demonstrated he is unfit for his office - an individual who is unwilling to acknowledge the sacrifices made by ordinary men and women in the line of duty protecting the public is beneath contempt.
Well researched and written as ever. Love reading your articles as you seem to consider all sides before putting pen to paper.
I really struggle with management thinking sometimes and see it going back as far as the riots at Brixton and particularly Tottenham and Broadwater Farm.
I have always believed we have restricted the promotion process by only having a one sort of leader being promoted. There should have been an opportunity for those in charge to provide the community representatives to deal with local senior officers who had been working with each other or if the troubles continued to grow that those local seniors officers had the opportunity to say to the community once a certain level of unrest/crime/violence was reached they would hand over control of the situation to senior officers who would deal with the situation in a more robust way deploying their officers with use of force and a no compromise response. This would have put some onus on the community leaders to actually try and control their side of things.
What happened put the senior officers in charge there on the back foot, so as not to totally ruin local relations which would have to be picked after the conflict. Decisions were made which threw the officers at the Farm under the bus as it were, training and tactics were ignored and we took a beating, letting the worst suspects get away and we have never recovered from that.
We now have managers rather than leaders, perhaps Nick Adderley is an exception to that but he is definitely a leader officers will follow. Sadly the Commissioner has read the room wrong again and failed to back his officers. If he had said what you and Nick have said that would have been an end to the matter.
We should strive to get back to without fear or favour and be apolitical.
Hats. Fine if they're baseball caps or something comfortable. If everyone above insp wears flatcaps so should cons and sgts, specialist unions don't wear stupid pointy lumps plastic on their heads.
Hiviz. No problem.