Re: RAF Police
Here's a breakdown of my (limited) work with the RAFP:
I gave a witness statement for a guy who nearly killed someone when he crashed his car whilst drunk. The policeman cleaverly worded the statement in first person tense to leave no ambiguity and ensure that the guy got stitched up. For example, I truthfully stated that I had witnessed said officer in the bar drinking on the night of the accident. I also stated that he was of a boistrous nature. This got recorded as "I witnessed Plt Off Blah in the bar, in my opinion he was drunk and behaving aggressively." On the 6th iteration, I got him to change it to reflect what I saw. Now, I'm not defending the lad in question, what he did was wrong, but I felt no need to embellish the details to make it easier to shaft him. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he nearly killed someone and his punishment was discharge from Service. No custodial sentence, no fine, no dishonourable discharge.
Next time, after returning from 2 months in the Gulf, found a ticket on my car because the tax had expired. I had 7 days to report to the RAFP with my documents. The 7 days elapsed whilst I was away too, so I got reported to the Station Commander for "keeping an untaxed car on the base." Thanks. Sorry for letting my tax expire, but when I left the renewal form hadn't come through and, to be quite honest, I had better things to think about.
Then, coming home from DM. Bags were loaded onto the Tristar pallet (unsupervised). We all buggered off to the mall for a last chance to shop. The 2 Atsy coppers turn up late because they had been out boozing the night before. We all got called back, had to remove each bag from the pallet and "verify that it was our own." Even though they were all labelled, we weren't allowed to verify on behalf of our Sqn buddies. At the end of this labourious exercise, there was one bag remaining. The owner had gone for a run and could not be contacted at all. After an hour, it got TFD and they chucked it on the pallet anyway.
On the plus side, the plod aren't clever enough to have uncovered our smuggling racket yet...