One of the few places in the city that you’re guaranteed to see police actually doing something akin to patrolling is on the Railway station, good old fashioned British transport Police are usually highly visible and in their custodian helmets often look far more like genuine police officers than their high street counterparts who for the last ten years have been busily engaged in hanging ever more and more militaristic looking gear from their black webbing belts and donning ever more ‘tactical’ American looking SWAT inspired black clothing so as to now resemble something more akin to gendarmes than approachable Bobbies (which is just one of the many reasons I suspect that a greater level of suspicion & divide exists between the mainstream public and the police now.) If you want to see some law enforcement personal who actually look something like the sort of Police we had been used to seeing in this country then apart from the BT Police it’ll probably be the Community Support Officers who look the least threatening and who seemingly are more engaged in old fashioned boots on the beat community policing efforts nowadays. So negative have reviews been to the current military image of the police in many forces that one banned their officers from wearing the jet black shirts which had been previously favoured by the ARUs and instead they continued to wear the more traditional white shirts for a time.
Anyway, its an odd comfort seeing BT Police stood guard, they also seem far more approachable for such daft tourist/commuter enquires as where the nearest cash machine to the station might be or even the current time and directions. Although yesterday I found their sheer numbers more perturbing than a comfort, something seemed to be up and we had Transport cops patrolling the station environs and standing guard in pairs at all the entrances with grim faces and arms folded.
This image of stern unblinking taciturn professionalism was rather ruined somewhat by one female police officer sporting a faded orangey/red Mohawk haircut with her uniform… maybe I’m old fashioned but c’mon, surely having a Mohawk haircut is slightly going outside the norms of uniform regulations and being taken seriously? Also if you’re the sort of person who enjoys having a brightly coloured Mohican or variants of punky hair-dos then what the heck are you doing in the police force anyway? I seriously doubt she was bringing it down from within…
Given the choice; in any sort of dire emergency I’d much rather be making a bee line to the lowly Community Support Officer bod than any cop I spot with a f**king crazy coloured ‘funky’ hair cut!
Jesus people, show some bloody professionalism in appearance. I mean what are you? A Manic Pixie Dream Cop or something? If there’s one place where a ‘kooky’ outlook and an idiosyncratic approach to hair styling is not needed its in the police force surely?
Bloody bad enough when pictures of that Hipster copper with the waxed beard started turning up.
For interest here are the offical regulation concerning hair for one force in the UK, most Police Forces have their own but all seem pretty similar and that includes those for the BT Police:
‘4.4.1 Hair.
It should be clean, neat and tidy. It should be worn so that it is cut or secured above the collar and ears and presents a professional image. Hair motifs, colour, patterns and extreme styles are not appropriate and should not prevent the wearing of headgear.’
So again I wonder how she managed to get away with a brightly dyed mohawk? Sorry to be a party-pooper.
Tsk indeed frankly.
