Product Description

The book the government lied about and wanted to ban - the explosive truth about modern British policing, by a serving policeman writing deep undercover for fear of the sack.

WASTING POLICE TIME explains why there's never a policeman around when you need one, why the 'war on crime' is a sham and how senior officers and the government conspire to fake the crime stats and fool the public. PC David Copperfield is an ordinary bobby with an extraordinary talent for writing - he's hilariously scarcastic and biting about his bosses, the criminals he deals with and the judges and politicians who allow our streets to collapse into chaos as they themselves live in fortified houses and are driven around by armed police.

'Graphic, entertaining and sobering' - The Observer
'One of the three political books of the moment' - Nick Cohen, The Observer
'A huge hit... will make you laugh out loud' - The Daily Mail
'Very revealing' - The Daily Telegraph
'Hilarious... should be compulsory reading for our political masters' - The Mail on Sunday
'Passionate, important, interesting and genuinekly revealing... riveting' - The Sunday Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6099 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From the Publisher
If you like the sound of WASTING POLICE TIME, check out 'IT'S YOUR TIME YOU'RE WASTING, a teacher's tales of classroom hell' by FRANK CHALK (published September 06 by Monday Books).

From the Author
WHAT do you think the police actually do? If you watch a lot of telly (as most of my ‘clients’ do), you probably think we spend all day roaring about in our souped-up cars, kicking down doors and shooting people. Or perhaps we’re all devilishly clever detectives unravelling murder mysteries while listening to classical music and swanning round in old Jags? I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s not actually quite that glamorous. Don’t get me wrong, I do like my job - especially the occasional moments where I get to chase after thieves and arrest them. I love nicking proper crims - after all, that’s why I joined. The problem is, I hardly ever get to do that. Instead, I spend most of my life filling in forms and responding to initiatives, and it really gets on my nerves. Before you ask, I am a real copper, at the sharp end, and this is a diary of my working life over the last year or so. Some of it (actually, most of it) isn’t all that dramatic (though I hope it will amuse you, all the same). That’s kind of the point: being a policeman in modern England is not like appearing in an episode of The Sweeney, Inspector Morse or even The Bill, sadly. No, it’s like standing banging your head against a wall, carrying a couple of hundredweight of paperwork on your shoulders, while the house around you burns to the ground. I hope this book will give you an idea of the depths of sheer incompetence our police are plumbing, and the downright scandalous ways in which your money is wasted while the crime books are cooked in ways that would make Nick Leeson proud. PC DAVID COPPERFIELD.

Excerpted from Wasting Police Time: The Crazy World of the War on Crime by David Copperfield. Copyright © 2006. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Today was a good day. It always is when I’m conducting house-to-house enquiries in the area of a crime.
There’d been a domestic burglary and, after nosing around and chatting with the victims, I knocked on next door. It opened to a reveal a man who goggled at me as though I were an alien. It’s funny, but the unannounced presence of a uniformed copper on your doorstep seems to do this to some people.
‘Hello there, sir,’ I said, all cheery-like. ‘There was a burglary next door and I wondered if you knew about it.’
‘I wasn’t here.’
‘When weren’t you here?’
‘When the burglary was.’
‘When was the burglary?’
‘I don’t know, but I wasn’t here, so I don’t know when the burglary was.’
‘Fair enough. What if I tell you when the burglary was, and you tell me where you were at that time?’
‘But I didn’t do it.’
‘I’m not saying you did, I’m just asking if you may have heard anything or seen anything suspicious.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But how do you know if I haven’t told you when it happened?’
‘We’re always having problems with kids round here.’
I took a deep breath, looked around and bludgeoned him to death. I went inside, wrapped his body in Clingfilm and stored it in the bath. I’ll be returning every day to collect a piece of it, which I will place in the property store at the Police Station, knowing that, once booked in, it will never be noticed again.
The other problem I’m often faced with is that we all look the same in uniform.
I went back to Mrs Smith’s today; now there’s an armchair in the front garden, too.
‘Hello, Mrs Smith. I gather you’ve been having some nasty telephone calls?’
‘Have you found the people who smashed my Tracey’s window in yet?’
‘No.’
‘It’s been over a week now.’
‘Well, the wheels of justice do grind exceedin’ slow Mrs Smith.’
‘Eh?’
‘These things take time.’
‘Time?’
‘Hmm. Anyway, that’s not one of my cases, I’m afraid, I’m here about…’
‘It was you that went round there.’
‘Mrs Smith, it really wasn’t, it must have been a colleague of mine.’
‘No, it was you.’
‘Look, I don’t know anything about your daughter, or her window. I don’t know who she is, where she lives or what she looks like. I don’t know about her window being smashed, which window was smashed or who did it. The first I knew about it was when you told me just now.’
‘You definitely came round her house last week.’
‘I was in Scotland last week.’
‘Well, it must have been your friend, he had black hair.’
‘Don’t tell me Mrs Smith. Did he arrive in a white car with ‘Police’ written on the side?’
‘Errr…anyway, I’ve been getting these phone calls.’
On the way back to the nick, I happened across a lad called Wayne.
Wayne was parked up in his K-registered Rover 214, playing gangsta rap very loudly.
I have lately acquainted myself with this music. It’s a genre imported from America where it is, I’m told, created by rich black people for consumption by middle class white youngsters. Most gangsta rap seems to revolve around killing policemen, being in jail and having penetrative sex with ‘hose’. I’m therefore unfamiliar with most of the concepts, and the method of its delivery (shouting defiantly over an insistent drum beat) serves only to make it more indecipherable. Quite what idle youths in our council estates have in common with the homies of south central LA (apart from their idleness) is a mystery to me – I’ve been there, and to other ghettoes, and they’re quite, quite different from our little town - but it is becoming increasingly common for me to have to conduct stop-searches to the tune of ‘Die, motherfucker, die.’
As well as being offensive to policemen, it irritates non-gangsta listeners. Wayne’s Rover was parked outside the corner shop, and not everyone was enjoying the racket he was producing, especially those people living nearby who were trying to get their toddlers and young children to sleep.
Pulling up alongside him, I suggested that the ladies in the area might not appreciate hearing the controversial views of the artist on subjects such as domestic violence, drive-bys and ‘bitches’.
I might as well have been talking in Chinese.
"Eh?" said Wayne. "Whayouonabout?"
"I’m not sure everyone wants to hear that music, certainly not that loudly," I explained.
"Yerwah?" he said, eyes glazed with the effort of trying to understand.
"Turn that bloody racket off," I said. "Now."
Grumbling, he turned it down.
"Off!"
He turned it off. "Why you always be hasslin’ de yoot like dis?" he said, though he isn’t Jamaican and, in fact, grew up in a rural English village a few miles out of town. "Man, it’s like a fuckin’ police state."
"More than you know, Wayne," I replied. I have long-since given up lecturing the young about the errors of their ways but that never seems to stop them lecturing me about the hardships of living in the ‘ghetto’, where life is made so hard for them because of the constant interruptions of ‘the man’.
"But be that as it may, if you swear again I’m going to have to lock you up."
I drove away. I knew he’d turn it on again as soon as I was out of sight, so I did a u-turn 250 yards away.
Sure enough, when I returned, Wayne had the racket up to full blast again.
I warned him under Section 5 of the Public Order Act and sent him on his way.
Sho nuff whupped him upside the ass.

Customer Reviews

True! Spot On! 100% behind this book!
This book is fantastic and more importantly so very very true.
I can see all the reports of "crimes" and incidents I have attended over my years.
Every paragraph I read I found myself smiling, nodding and saying "Yep, that's right!", "Done it!", "Been there!"
This should be compulsive reading for all politicans and may be then they would realise what actually happens in the big wide world.
All to much nowadays the Police is run by numbers. People don't seem to matter any more, just as long as the "scores on the doors" (As I like to call them) are good and improving each month.
A must for police officers and non-police alike.
Police will agree all the way and those non-police will hopefully have some sympathy for us as we (The Police) have for them.

Inner London coppers view
I've been working in central London for a few years having moved from an outer force, I've read 'wasting police time' a couple of times now, each time making me laugh like an idiot and sink into my chair feeling nearly as depressed of many people I deal with. Despite what that cretin Tony McNulty said - this book, and the blog for that matter, are as far from fiction as one could hope.

Or dread, depending on your point of view.

As response officers, the guys and girls on my team have to deal with anything and everything that comes over the radio or what happens in front of us, we have no remit and the results are exactly as DC has written. Domestics, drunks, suicides, cries for help, petty shoplifting and minor drug dealing are the bread and butter of what we deal with, no matter where in the country you work. And as for the issue of racism in the force... I personally have never seen it in any of my colleagues and yet we see it every day directly from members of the public - black, white, Chinese, Asian, Arab, eastern European. Everyone.

This book is about as close to the despair that every one of us feel every time we go to work and I urge you to read it, along with 'Diaries of an On-Call girl' which is also excellent.

A book that needs to be read!!
This is an important book about modern Britain. That's really not not overstating it. Not at all. It's just sheer brilliant.

It's a humourous and incisive critique of wht's gone wrong with policing today. But the scary fact is that it could probably be applied to any of our public services today. And it should be read by every senior police officer and politician.

The most frustrating thing after reading this book is that an ordinary frontline copper has come up with simple solutions to solving problems...but that in the end none of those in charge will take heed.

What ultimately shines through though is the passion and dedication David Copperfield has for his job despite all that front line beat officers have to face. We need somebody like him in charge...although I doubt he'd want to take up the offer.