The Force is almost with you (The Force)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	The Force
Date:	01/11/09 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Solid insight

Disadvantages: Only three shows

If you want quality documentaries then Channel Four is usually the place, 'The Force' yet another in a long line of interesting mid-week hours on the alternative channel to help your evening meal go down after you have had your main course of soaps.

Segmented in three parts it looks at the workings of Hampshire Police as we take a peep at how they tackle heinous crimes like rape, murder and arson.

With its wobbly Office style camera work and diligent detectives it tries to capture a rough insight in to how your local police force work and just how deskbound detecting crime is these days, which isn't as bad as they can clearly work on more cases at once that way through modern surveillance and communications kit. The coppers are not here to make celebrities of them selves like some of these shows and this purely the camera lurking on their shoulders and around the workplace as they do stuff and try and catch the bad guys.

My thoughts on crime are well documented on dooyoo and in some ways this interesting and rather revealing documentary as far as that demographic goes reinforces mine and your stereotype opinions and suspicions on just who is committing what crimes in the U.K. When you hear of a certain crime in the news you have a very good idea who did it as it has got that polarised of late.

With the news that over 300 serious offenders that have absconded whilst on bail have re-offended with likewise offences you want to watch programs like this just to try and find out what the hell is going on. I suspect its happening because criminals are *allowed* to slip though the net sometimes to protect certain coppers jobs who off load cases on to the next guy down the chain because their workload is too high due to that cost cutting and league table positioning. We know the jails are stuffed full and so it figures the CPS doesn't want too many more to put in there. Why not let increasing numbers go seems to be the plan. Why on earth we don't initiate a private prison building expansion to create jobs in recession and so able to lock up the bad guys is beyond me. There seems to be a crane at every school or college for new build for our school kids but no new incarceration projects going on.

-The Episodes-

'Murder'

A woman's body burned beyond recognition is discovered in idyllic countryside field on a warm summer's day near a small rural village on the Hampshire border. The coppers know the body was taken there in a suitcase and database searches and eyewitness accounts of a battered Vauxhall narrow the culprits to just four people.
The investigation climaxes as they get an I.D on the body, a young Polish girl that was working in a Winchester Hotel, a Sri-lankan overseas co-worker soon number one suspect. It turns out he killed her because she was cheating on him with multiple male partners and that bought shame on him, even though he was sleeping around too. Statistically most murders are crimes of passion or infanticide outside of London.

What's interesting here is you see how easy it is to catch these people when they don't plan to kill. There's always excellent forensics, CCTV and witness tracks left behind when the killer doesn't set up the murder and so arrests come quickly, all very reassuring. The countries 10% foreign nationals, of which the killer was, make up 20% of all killers in the U.K, which makes it even easier to detect. The episodes biggest chuckle was when one detective tried to google 'sex attacks in Winchester' on the police stations in-house system and the 'porn filter' blocked it!

'Rape'

Episode two concentrated on rape and sexual crime in Portsmouth, the Hampshire Police running the first rape specific crime department outside of London, the 'Crystal Unit', the idea being to trial it for 6 months and see if it's worth rolling out across the country. Rape is deemed the second worse crime for society behind murder here and so the cops take it very seriously, even though it has a very low conviction rate, upsetting women's groups.

The dynamic of the team was interesting, half women, half men, the women coppers reassuringly as cynical as the men by the end of the episode. The first case we see them working on was an alleged gang rape, a woman in Southampton claiming three black men and a white man raped her. The alleged offence was supposed to have taken place at a Southampton hotel against her will, where the main protagonists did indeed check in using credit cards as seen on CCTV, hardly the covert actions of rapist. As expected it soon became clear from the CCTV and her body language that the she was lying and decided for some unknown reason to claim the guys had raped her, the evidence very clear that wasn't the case and this organised group sex, she even enjoying breakfast with the guys two hours before the accusation ful of smiles. It transpired the police dropped the charges two days later but did not charge the woman with anything for her blatant abuse of police resources, not even with wasting police time or even racist behaviour, which is what really grates with men over false rape claims and why us blokes think the 6% low conviction rate is not surprisingly low if the system allows some women to get away with this and hide behind the anonymity law, stoping other women coming forward who have been raped that would push up conviction rates by coppers who want to solve crime. Other cases featured in the show also resulted in the girls dropping the charges, one case recovering evidence of the girl being 'videoed' on a cell phone having sex over the bonnet of a car no less, soon asking for the accusation to be dropped when the footage is discovered.

Even though the unit kept up its 100% attrition rate for all cases, meaning they followed each offence through to the CPS with the woman on board, 49% was down time, no cases at all on the desk, so the unit threatened with being disbanded. The impression you got from the detectives was the reason it was closed down because many of the cases were false claims or too complex to build a case in that six month time period as most were vulnerable women with mental health issues or family and booze problems and getting themselves into a tricky spots because of that. The chief detective made the telling comment that most, if not all cases, involved booze and the girl agreeing to an intimate space with the guy. Some women are very complex creatures indeed as are some men quite nasty to take advantage of that. The Cops have a tough job on this section.

15,000 rapes were reported across the country last year with only 996 convictions. A Russian national drinking too much vodka was successfully charged in the engrossing hour for forcing sex on a Lithuanian national in her room.

'Arson'

House fires are 25 times more likely in rented or council accommodation compared to private residencies, fatal ones 45 times more likely, according to one of the regular statistics flashed up on the screen during the three episodes. Whenever there's a fire that makes the news were people have died it's usually a top floor box flat on a grotty sink estate. Chip pan fires after a few beers at student abodes aside it's generally a fag down the sofa or foul play to blame for house fires, as was the case here.

A known drug dealers flat in Portsmouth has been torched and man killed in the top floor flat. It quickly transpires the flat was indeed being used for drug dealing and a rival gang had targeted it before. We don't see any of the suspects interviewed as they are facing other court appearances to be tried on but we know they are nasty pieces of work. With no good leads to convict the men a £10,000 grand reward is put out for a name and conviction, a king's ransom to a needy junkie. The chief detectives don't get their man this time but we do get an insight on the drugs trade and how the big shots misdirect cops and stay out of jail, just as smart as the cops most of the time and always one step ahead. The show also proves that drugs are still the number one reason why people go to jail.

http://www.merseyfire.gov.uk/aspx/pages/IRMP/IRMP _final/analysis.htm

-The Conclusion-

Crime is a huge issue in Middle-England and quite big one in the working-class communities where most of it takes place. But with league tables the cops have almost given up catching the bad guys and the best use of time seems to be to catch speeders and handing over their duties to community wardens. It's all very depressing. Its been banged into us that even if we do call the cops for help you will be put on hold and so unless its really serious then don't bother calling, why the government claim crime is falling if you ask me. It's quite clever if you think about it. But for me they would *win* votes by increasing jail space to at least 100,000 places. Get these guys off the streets!

Three shows wasn't enough for me and I reckon this would make for a very good weekly visit type show where we follow crimes through from start to finish, getting a real insight on Britain's criminal class and judge for ourselves how good the cops are. .

On the whole the show worked well and with no back ground music and only the whirr of the photocopier to distract you it was interesting viewing that held your attention. Its nice to know that when the police are allowed to make arrests they are pretty good at it and when Cameron gets in lets hope he builds those prisons, gets on top of un-metered immigration boosting those prison numbers (17% or inmates are now foreign nationals) and most importantly get in to those sink estates to sort those bloody baseball capped chavs out!

http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/adviceandsuppor t/prison_life/femaleprisoners/

Summary: The face of crime is changing