Journal articles

15th August 2024

The State of the Met

Another day, another set of grim headlines about the Metropolitan Police - this time as the consequence of a new report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies, informing us that the Met is failing in almost every area of its work. Already in what effectively amounts to special measures

20th September 2023

TJF

“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 polic

4th July 2023

The 17th Floor

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

1st June 2023

Hostage Negotiator Selection

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 rob

3rd May 2023

My First Siege

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 stor

10th January 2023

The Stories We Tell

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

9th March 2022

Police Foundation Report: An Initial Response

On March 8th, 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 s

11th February 2022

An Impossible Job

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 th

4th October 2021

Her Name was Sarah

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

16th June 2021

Institutional Humanity & Heroism

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,

30th March 2021

A Blueprint for Policing (2021)

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

22nd March 2021

#KillTheBill

A night of rioting in Bristol. Yet another set of grim and deeply depressing headlines.  Police officers with serious injuries. Police vehicles overturned and in flames. Police buildings under sustained attack. Extreme violence and endless vitriol directed yet again at the brave women and men

14th March 2021

Crossroads

Policing is at a crossroads. The headlines this morning were truly grim. The pictures were even worse: photographs of women being pinned to the ground by police officers, at a vigil held in memory of a murdered woman. Clapham Common is a short walk from where I live. I went there yesterday

18th January 2021

Gross Misconduct

To err is human, but to foul things up completely requires a politician. Or rather, it requires a particular kind of politician: ideologues flawed by incompetence and floored by dishonesty. Yesterday (Jan 17th), I read a powerful article written by Danny Shaw - who was, until very recently, the B

14th October 2020

Questions, Questions

These are unprecedented times. No peacetime Government in the last hundred years has faced a greater set of challenges than those now facing the Government of Boris Johnson. That being said, I do have some questions about the response to Coronavirus in this country. I have never been a supp

26th September 2020

#OfficerDown

I originally wrote much of what follows last summer - in the desperate days that followed the killing of PC Andrew Harper. Little more than a year on, the agony of history is repeating itself. Officer Down. Most give what they can; some give all they have. Sergeant Matiu Ratana - known to all

23rd July 2020

Perspectives

[Author’s Note: This blog is a little longer than those I usually write, but the subject matter seemed too important to make it any shorter.] Last Thursday evening in north London, the police were called to reports of a fight in the street. On arriving at the scene, officers identified a man who ma

13th July 2020

The Point of Failure

Policing is taking an absolute hammering at the moment - with the relentless criticism of a job that most couldn’t or wouldn’t do coming from almost every quarter. And, while it’s tempting to suggest that it was ever thus, there can be no doubt that it’s got demonstrably worse in the last few weeks.

11th June 2020

A.C.A.B.

I’m married to Bear. She’s wonderful. At the start of this week, we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary: eighteen years spent in the company of my best friend; eighteen years spent listening and learning and having the rough edges rubbed off me. Back in 2002, in the weeks leading up to our wed

3rd June 2020

The Killing of George Floyd

I’m struggling for words - struggling to write anything coherent. The best I seem to be able to manage is this collection of thoughts about the killing of George Floyd… The greatest duty - the greatest privilege - that any police officer could ever have is to save the life of another human being.

11th May 2020

A Copper's Lot

Yesterday Yesterday, the Prime Minister gave a pre-recorded speech in which he attempted to explain the government’s latest strategy for responding to the pandemic. Stay Alert, we were told. But a soundbite does not a strategy make and, mostly, he seems only to have confused people (including senio

9th May 2020

Black & Blue

These days, I find it incredibly difficult to watch video footage of confrontation involving police officers. Too many memories I suppose. Yesterday though, I caught sight of the clip that was circulating on social media - of a black father being tasered by police officers in front of his young son

24th April 2020

Extraordinary People. Extraordinary Job. Extraordinary Times.

I want to tell you a short story about a group of extraordinary people, doing extraordinary things, during these extraordinary times. You might not have heard of them before. If you were to meet any of the police officers (from the Met, City of London Police & BTP), firefighters and NHS staff w

12th April 2020

Horror & Hope

On Friday it was 980. Nine hundred & eighty souls. On Saturday, it was 917. Nine hundred & seventeen souls. Those are the numbers of people who have died from coronavirus in just two days. Just in this country. Actually, those are the numbers of people who died in hospital. The totals don’

16th March 2020

Feeling Afraid

People are feeling afraid.   Afraid of getting sick. Afraid of dying. Afraid of losing loved ones. Afraid of being left alone. Afraid of losing their jobs. Afraid of losing their minds. Afraid of not being able to pay the rent. Afraid of not having enough. Afraid of the unknown.   People

3rd March 2020

Fifty Things

Who doesn’t love a good list? And since today is my 50th birthday, I thought I’d come up with 50 things I’ve learned along the way. From the sublime to the ridiculous. Love is everything Marrying my best friend was one of my better life decisions Being a dad is a privilege  Every contact

24th February 2020

Crossing the Line

Today was one of those unexpected days. I found myself on stage at the Cambridge Theatre - home of Matilda The Musical - talking to an audience of a thousand people about my new book. There were a number of writers there - including Sarfraz Manzoor, Rachel Clarke, Matthew Syed and Jess Phillips - a

8th December 2019

Choices. Or the Lack of Them.

I have already cast my vote.  I will be away from home on Election Day, so I sent it in by post.  And I really struggled with where to where to put my ‘X’. The truth is that I didn’t want to support any of them; that I feel completely betrayed by all of them. Voting matters though and so I gave my

28th November 2019

Why We Joined

A tweet from the journalist Kay Burley caught my eye this morning. It was about nurses.  More specifically, it was about concerns raised by the Royal College of Nursing that a majority of their members believe that they cannot provide the standard of care they want for their patients. An RCN spokes

8th November 2019

A Litany of Failure

When it comes to policing, the government of the last ten years has been wrong about pretty much everything.  From the moment in 2010 that David Cameron moved into Downing Street and Theresa May took up residence in the Home Office, it was evident that police reform was high on their agendas. In fa

19th August 2019

Officer Down

As the world moves on, it leaves behind a broken-hearted bride, married just four weeks ago. Officer down. Most give what they can; some give all they have. PC Andrew Harper was one of those who gave everything, killed in the line of duty on the night of Thursday 15th August 2019.  I never had th

13th July 2019

The Stop & Search Debate

Another day. Another grim set of headlines about boys being murdered on our streets. And, inevitably, the Stop & Search debate comes back round again. Depressingly, the prevailing tone has become more and more binary - a back-and-forth argument between those who regard Stop & Search as th

26th June 2019

The Missing 20,000

I find myself caught somewhere between incredibly angry and wearily lost for words.  A week or two ago, Sajid Javid - the current Home Secretary - pledged that, if he became prime minister, he would put 20,000 more police officers on the streets. Speaking on the radio a few days ago, Boris Johnson

11th June 2019

On Leadership

And so to the queue of people telling us that they want to be the next Prime Minister. Faced by an electorate baffled and bewildered and downright angry about the state of political leadership in this country. Here's my list of ten things I want from the people who want me to follow them - a list a

29th March 2019

This Government

Politics is absolutely not my thing.  People are my thing. I love them.  And the fact that I love them means I cannot stay silent about the catastrophic harm being done to this country by this government. Look at the state of policing In September 2018, the National Audit Office (NAO) published

6th March 2019

Naming Names

Earlier this week, using a set of very carefully chosen words, Theresa May appeared to suggest that there was no connection between falling police numbers and rising violent crime. She was wrong.  Of course the rise in violence is not only about police numbers (there are a hugely complex combinati