Drunks are getting drunker – and thin blue line is getting younger
Street dealers, drunks intent on sharing their flu germs and glamourless grannies staggering home, glittery stilettos in one hand and kebab in the other.
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of the Night Coppers (Channel 4, Tuesday, 9pm), as the Sussex constabulary attempt to make the streets of Brighton a safer place.
We’re now in the second series so viewers pretty much know what to expect as the boys and girls in blue encounter some truly delightful citizens while on patrol on a Saturday night.
There’s a female thug carrying a taser; reports of a gang of lads fighting with glass bottles; and a ‘lost’ teenage girl who dials 999 but enjoys sending everyone on a wild goose chase while she’s watching with her mates on the beach.
The CCTV operators must have a laugh a minute, watching the antics of city-goers on a weekend.
There’s footage of one lad, who falls drunkenly through the door of a Travelodge then is too wasted to get back up. With his trousers slipping gracefully over his bottom, he crawls around on his hands and knees, desperately trying to get upright; then when he does, he walks straight into a glass door.
When the clubs shut at 2am, the real party people are hitting the beach – some harder than others. Somehow the full moon parties in Thailand seem so much more fun than sleeping in a pool of your own pebbly sick.
“You can’t be a parent to everybody,” observes one officer wryly as he helps one reveller to his feet, “but I’d rather deal with them being a bit drunk on the floor than when something really bad has happened.”
The aim of the show is clearly to present the human face of policing. Okay, so some of those faces look about 12, but they’re people, just like us, right?
Well they are, and sometimes it’s a genuinely horrible job that you really wouldn’t fancy. But the cynical part of me wonders whether it’s just another piece of ‘copaganda’, designed to paint the police in a better light after what happened to Sarah Everard.
Since serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens was sentenced for Sarah’s kidnap, rape and murder, dozens of prosecutions have been brought against corrupt officers.
A small percentage of the force, you may well argue, but it’s left the thin blue line’s PR machine working overtime.
We are, however, treated to a glimpse of the insults police have to endure every weekend – two women slugging it out over a fella, dropping C-bombs left, right and centre, think nothing of bringing up the Everard case.
In a grotesque parody of the
Haribo advert, one demands to call the police. “We are the police!” the fresh-faced constable tells her as he tries desperately to avoid being spat on and bitten by her.
The climax of this particular episode sees reports of a shirtless man swinging a baseball bat around at his neighbours.
When the police arrive, he informs them that there’s “**** all he’s willing to be arrested for” – who knew you had a choice? – and insisting he “didn’t threaten no-one”.
Quite how the officers manage to resist correcting his double negative is a tribute to their grammar-related patience. They’d have been well within their rights to take him down with a well-aimed copy of Eats Shoots and Leaves.
Anyhow, cue a lot of shouting, swearing and hyperventilating until the gentleman in question barricades himself in his house and threatens to throw himself out of a window.
He’d be lucky to fit through it, you think, as the neighbours grab the popcorn and watch events unfold.
It seems there’s a predictable way to deal with an unpredictable customer like this. A negotiator is called and cops in riot gear prepare to storm the house.
At this point, keenly aware of the cost of a new front door, the chap in question senses it’s time to pop on a clean shirt and come out and agree to be arrested for something.
One of the officers involved reveals he was a bit nervous about slapping the cuffs on and making the arrest – at which point you realise that policemen really are getting younger. This one looks about 17; he calls
With his trousers slipping gracefully over his bottom, he crawls around on his hands and knees
suspects ‘mate’ and talks a lot about respect.
On the surface, this could just be a new way of doing things. Then you spot the decidedly more grizzled specimens behind him with the ‘big red key’ and the riot shields and realise there’s a reason that some things don’t change much – people.