Using police funds to make officers more PC is criminal
This week we learned that police officers are to be schooled in politically correct banter. No, not with the public, but with each other. The scheme, which is being introduced in Leicestershire, aims to help coppers understand the fine (presumably blue…) line between funny and harmful communication.
It sounds like a joke, but given that a detective superintendent with the Metropolitan Police is currently under investigation for telling colleagues that their behaviour needed to be “whiter than white”, the force’s wobbly-lipped snowflakes are clearly making their hurt feelings known.
Another stated aim of banter studies is to help limit the number of staff who feel “excluded, unhappy and unproductive” in the workplace.
Maybe that’s why 96per cent of robberies and 97per cent of burglaries are going unsolved? They’ve all locked themselves in the loo for a quiet weep.
I have the utmost respect for front-line police, who do a difficult job under trying circumstances and tight resources. Siphoning precious funds to focus on “tackling banter” down the local nick is, frankly, a nonsense.
No Offence, Channel 4’s fabulously scurrilous police procedural, has just returned to our screens and I can’t help wondering what brassy, ballsy DI Viv Deering (played pitch-perfect by Joanna Scanlan) would make of pulling bobbies off the Mancunian beat for chit-chat training.
That’s not to say racism, sexism or any other sort of discrimination should be allowed to flourish overtly in the ranks or covertly in the locker room.
But the pendulum appears to be swinging too far the other way; if you’re still in any doubt, police watchdogs are also looking into a complaint about the use of the term “pale, male and stale”.
If intemperate use of everyday clichés is the most pressing issue facing our law enforcers, I think DI Deering needs to bang a few heads together.
Most woeful of all, banter isn’t something that can be taught, not even to the chief super. You’ve either got it or you haven’t, mate.