I won’t bore you all with my every theory about Line Of Duty – every copper’s weekly busman’s holiday until series five ended last weekend. Is any copper always right? Absolutely not. Do many believe they are? I’m afraid so.
However, I do know all you Line Of Duty watchers are all up on the lingo, so I will crack on using it – think of it as preparation for the next series. Coppers and police forces love a good abbreviation, and if they can come up with an acronym they are in their element. Testimony to that, Line Of Duty will now be referred to as LOD from hereon in.
LOD took a chance with this series. For starters in how they utilised the abbreviations and acronyms us cops so love. Better still they used them correctly and in context – I haven’t seen that to the same degree in another police series and was impressed. However, though it enhanced my enjoyment of the series, I would like to know what most members of the public made of it, as it’s almost another language. The use of terms by the OCG (Organised Crime Group) that could only have come from police inside knowledge gave us cops watching insight most wouldn’t have as to who was accessing what, and what that ultimately meant they were involved in.
To really dissect any police-related series, you have to go back to basics and understand how us police officers think, function, and differentiate. We spend a lot of our time identifying who has your back, who is most likely to be tying their shoelaces at a pub fight, or who will have the bus timetable handy so they can ensure they know the exact minute to push you beneath one.
Joking aside, it’s a very real issue and ‘picking your team’ isn’t usually something you have much involvement in – and certainly no say. You learn quickly that most of us are there for the right reasons and won’t be swayed from that path. But it takes a strong person and officer to stand alone if there is a threat to that integrity, particularly if the threat comes from an entire team who have quite enjoyed a lower level foray into the ‘dark side’.
That is not a sinister description and more about strength in numbers, about surviving on a shift. About proving your worth, proving you are part of a team. About dealing with the inevitable ribbing, clashes of personality, ‘button pressing’ and how you deal with it. Being the one who has their belongings intact, little to no crime property, an arrest warrant in your paperwork for an easy pick-up, and so on.
That pack mentality is why any ‘copper gone rogue’ can ingratiate themselves so well into an OCG (Organised Crime Group), think like an OCG member and, in extreme cases, become their own OCG.
When you join the police you are always told three things can or will end your career. These things are the three Ps: paperwork, property and policemen/women, the last referring to complicated relationships at work. With that in mind I think a fourth ‘p’ is worth adding – pillow talk.
All I have given you here is basic police abbreviations and a saying the drill sergeant at training school dishes out. Yet apply them to LOD overall, and you realise that’s all that was needed to equip the OCG outside the force (and the OCG within the force) to orchestrate such a monumental downfall of officers for OCG everywhere who dream of a tame copper in their midst.
I said we would have to go back to basics in a police officer’s career, psyche and training to begin to understand LOD and whether it is ‘just’ a TV programme, or whether it is really a worrying and distasteful but ultimately feasible reality in our police force today. I can provide the insight but the decision there has to be yours.