From Sin City to copper’s paradise

The First Post’s fed-up PC was unmasked on TV last night. robert chesshyre was watching

David Copperfield, the disillusioned police officer who poured out his thoughts to readers of The First Post in his anonymous Sin City column, has been unmasked.

He proved to be PC Stuart Davidson, a smiley, articulate (naturally), bald young man, who quit the Staffordshire Constabulary - and his widely-read column - to take his sleuthing talents to Edmonton, Canada.

He was the star of last night's Panorama, Wasting Police Time, devoted to familiar police gripes - too much paperwork and not enough front line time for nabbing baddies. "Most of what we do - at least 80 per cent - is, I suspect, a waste of time," he said.

He started his blog because no one reported anything about being an 'ordinary' PC. Other, still serving and anonymous, officers supported Davidson's claims, moaning to Panorama about spending two-thirds of

Davison started his blog because no one reported anything about being an ‘ordinary’ PC

their day form-filling. Davidson told how, despite the police station car park being full, he was often the sole copper available to answer a call.

The constables' chief complaint was that they constantly had to meet government targets best done by nicking kids for fighting at the expense of catching burglars.

I wrote a book about 'ordinary' policing in the days before targets (I advocated them as a way of measuring what cops do - or don't do), and I spent hours in canteens listening to grumbles that could have come straight out of the Panorama programme. Plus ca change. There is something about policing - endless anti-social hours in each others' company - that breeds discontent.

By contrast with England, Edmonton was shown as a copper's paradise - the quick nick of a couple of vagrants and off out again. Yet a few weeks ago I met a Greater Manchester PC who had emigrated to Australia. He returned within a few weeks, missing the buzz. Will we see PC Davidson back again?