The Policeman Not Qualified To Ride A Bike
Of course, all we citizenry like to have policemen walking our streets. Much better than them racing around in Panda cars where they can’t see anything, can’t hear anything and can’t do anything. But it is perhaps possible for this to be taken to extremes. Like the copper who spends almost his entire shift walking between the two places he’s supposed to be patrolling rather than around the two areas he’s supposed to be patrolling:
A Police Community Support Officer has told a stunned village council that he spends up to six hours of his eight hour shift walking to different areas on his beat as he is not qualified to ride a bike.
The officer told parish councillors that he couldn’t ride to their village because he hadn’t passed his “police cycling proficiency test.”
The minuted meeting prompted one of the councillors to put in a complaint to North Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner claiming the situation was “beyond parody.”
Police said that before officers were able to ride a bike on duty they had to go through health and safety procedures, which the officer had not completed at the time.
So instead he spent up to six hours of his eight hour shift walking the seven miles from his base in Clifton Moor, York to and from the two villages that formed his beat.
Perhaps we’re not beyond parody here but we’re very definitely approaching the parody horizon.
And of course we shouldn’t blame this PCSO: it’s not his fault that the regulations on which policemen are allowed to ride a bike were written by complete dickheads. We should though be complaining that those regulations were written by dickheads: and even more so we should fire the complete incompetent who assigned a non-bike riding PCSO to a beat that clearly required the ability to ride a bike.
Sadly, the one group of incompetents in our society who never do get fired are those that piss away our tax money. Perhaps that ought to change….
Posted: 8th, October 2014 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
