In thirty years with the police, Iain Donnelly has seen and done nearly everything: from being a uniformed constable on the beat to counter-terrorism and surveillance; from CID to child sexual exploitation investigations; from intelligence to running national data analytics projects.
During that time, he has seen the service change irrevocably, to the point where the public no longer knows what to expect from the police and the police service no longer knows what to expect of itself.
Tango Juliet Foxtrot (police code for 'The job's fucked!') reveals how constant political meddling and a hostile media narrative have had a devastating impact on the morale of police officers and their ability to combat crime. This has led to a situation in which the force has been decreased in size by 20,000 officers and 23,000 members of police staff and only 7 per cent of reported crime now results in a charge - compared with around 20 per cent ten years ago.
By turns fascinating, funny, sad and uplifting, this is a book about how and why British policing has declined over the past thirty years, told through the prism of one policeman's varied career and experiences. This is not the telly police, with improbable storylines and detectives who single-handedly sort everything out in forty-five minutes, or documentaries where traffic cops ham it up for the cameras, but the real thing - and the reality is often more amusing, alarming, heart-warming and frightening.
Crucially, Tango Juliet Foxtrot asks if policing in Britain has gone beyond the point of no return and proposes the changes that need to be made to turn things around.
