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The System's F*cked - First Chapter - Sneak Peak
Chapter One
Walking the Knife Edge
“Hold onto the handrail until the ride comes to a complete fucking stop”
“Get on the floor now!” PC Brown screamed at the male clasped in his hands. His teeth bared. His earpiece ejected from his ear and dangled lifelessly as he struggled with the suspect.
A sharp push to the chest, and PC Brown stumbled, nearly losing his footing. But he couldn’t let go. He knew, in that moment, that if he went down, the mob screaming around him wouldn’t let him get back up.
PC Brown pressed his weight into the flailing male, who was wiry in stature but had been consuming more than just Smirnoff Ice in the local club toilets.
“Get the fuck off me!” the male screamed, throwing a fist to PC Brown’s jaw. In an instant, PC Brown ducked, and the strike connected with his ear. The pain felt far away, numbed through the haze of adrenaline and fear. PC Brown thrust the male against the wall, desperately trying to get him under control.
“Police brutality!” Someone screamed.
“You’re live streaming on TikTok!” Another barked. “Everyone fucking hates you!”
Where the hell is my backup? PC Brown thought.
Hands found the lip of his body armour. Fingers clawing at his face.
“Let him go! He’s done nothing wrong!” a voice called. Female. Young. A flash of gold looped earrings and lip filler. “What’s your collar number? Identify yourself! You can’t do that!”
“Move back!” PC Brown ordered, with a swift push of his hand. Someone stumbled. The cry of assault. PC Brown couldn’t look. Didn’t have time. The suspect was trying to break free. Another blow to PC Brown’s face. The taste of iron in his mouth. More screaming. Cursing. Fighting like he was about to be mauled by a rabid dog. “Put your hands behind your back!” PC Brown ordered, in an attempt to apply handcuffs. The male kicked out, colliding with PC Brown’s knee. He felt it buckle. He knew he would suffer in the morning, but he would worry about it then.
PC Brown pushed his hip into the back of the male. An elbow struck him in the chest, his body armour softening the blow.
With a snap of his hand, he unclipped his Captor spray and doused the male in the face, then released it to dangle on the floor, entangled between them on its lanyard. PC Brown looked behind him. Snapped a glance at the gathering bodies that formed like an angry mob. But instead of pitchforks, they had mobile phones. Instead of burning torches, they had live streams. PC Brown was being broadcast for the world to see. He would make the For You page, and then he would hit the news. He may even go international.
PC Brown never wanted to be famous. He wanted to help the public, and in his twenty years of service, he was close to celebrating his fortieth birthday in the morning. His wife had booked a meal for him and his daughter, but he wouldn’t be there to celebrate due to short staffing. He had missed the last two birthdays, and he had forgotten Christmas even existed outside of a half-eaten cheeseboard in the nick.
PC Brown hauled the male to the ground with a hard thud. The putrid alcohol doused air ejecting from the male’s lungs.
“You’re hurting him!” More hands found him. Another push.
“Get back!” PC Brown screamed. His throat burning from the captor spray.
“I’ll burn your fucking house down with your kids inside!” The male wailed. Face red. Spit slapping PC Brown’s face.
Someone called him a bully. Someone demanded he remove his thin blue line patch.
Kneeling on the male’s flailing limbs, PC Brown breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the satisfying click of handcuffs.
But the danger wasn’t over yet. He was alone, in the middle of the busy town centre. People walking past slowly, watching the spectacle. More mobile phones. More jeering. More insults. Not one person offering help.
PC Brown grabbed his dangling captor spray, holding it out as a line of defence between anyone who wished to get too close, lest he get a boot to the jaw like what happened to his colleague last Thursday.
Finally, he transmitted on his radio, screaming for backup. For transport. For anyone.
Unknown time passed. A minute? Five? Ten? No one knew. For PC Brown, it felt like an eternity. His shirt sticking to him, drenched in sweat. His mind racing. Eyes darting at any threat that may come his way. If they rushed him, he would be powerless to stop them. Someone threw a bottle, which exploded in a flurry of shards near his head.
All of this to earn the same as a manager at Home Bargains.
Finally, he saw the angelic blue of flashing lights cutting through the dark. The blare of a siren. The blast of a horn. A few bodies in high-vis jackets with ‘POLICE’ stamped on the front of them. The cops cut through the crowd and dragged the screaming male to his feet. No older than twenty years old. Locked up for public order and assault police.
PC Brown composed himself and gave the details to his colleague as the male was placed in the back of the van.
He limped back to his post at the edge of the town centre. His knee throbbing. The insults and the screaming still ringing in his ears.
He still had four hours of his shift left. He hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t so much as taken a sip of water in the last eight hours. This was his third arrest of the night, and he still had three statements, three handovers, three lots of body-worn video to upload, three use-of-force forms to complete. The male would no doubt be given a community order to attend a drink awareness course, and the assault police element would slap him with a fifty-pound fine, if he was charged with it at all.
And PC Brown would awake in the morning with a swollen knee. An aching body. Spending his birthday watching videos of himself on social media, being torn apart by those who had never been in that situation, but claimed they could do better. And then there was the inevitable complaint that would come. Maybe not even off the suspect. But a bystander, or worse, a colleague. The meeting with professional standards, and his service, his pension, his years of dedication would hang on the decision of someone in a back office who hadn’t strapped their stab vest on in over a decade. All for doing his job.
He would hear on the news that the police were having their resources stripped away further, then criticism that the police weren’t doing enough, and he would go to work in a few days to do it all again, whispering to himself silently as he sat down and looked at his swollen workload that the Job’s Fucked.
Halfway through writing up his statement, another emergency call came in, and he knew that there wasn’t anyone else available to attend. His shift was meant to be twenty officers strong. A minimum of ten. Today, they paraded on with six, and his supervisor was apparently trying to get support from other sides of the force, but the cavalry bells were yet to arrive.
As the night went on and the calls kept rolling in, PC Brown sat at his desk nursing his cold cup of coffee and his ever-growing workload. He looked through his emails. His pension had been cut, and a new scheme was coming in. He saw that his days off had been cancelled due to him being required to attend court. His family wouldn’t see him for nine days out of ten. His wife barely knew him anymore, and his children only saw what was left of him in between shifts.
He sat back in his aged chair which yearned loudly. He clenched his burning eyes shut under the fluorescent light. Another email came through saying he had a complaint from a case three years ago, which he now had to write up and justify each of his movements. He had case files coming out of his ears. His group chat on his phone from colleagues he started with now a boneyard of broken dreams, filled with the names of those who had since moved on away from policing. A video had been sent to him of him completing a stop and search, and it had gone viral on social media. Armchair detectives criticising him.
The police aren’t good enough.
The police are bullies.
The police are corrupt.
The police are XYZ.
He had been thinking about it for a long time. He knew what he had to do. He joined the police to help people, but PC Brown knew that with his terrible management, his unmanageable workload, and the strain the job was putting on his health and his family, he knew he simply couldn’t do it anymore. You cannot help someone if you are broken yourself. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and his cup was chipped and bone dry. The only moisture it ever felt was the alcohol he drank to force himself to sleep at night, so the nightmares didn’t bother him.
His team was made up of university students who didn’t like getting physical. His superintendent was a direct entry, who hadn’t ever walked the streets in their life. His chain of leadership cared only about stats and data, and not the beating heart of the front line.
He looked on the force intranet. A colleague had ended their life. A colleague he knew. A man with a family. With children. Then dwarfed by an article praising a recent DEI recruitment drive. Another article claiming the force was one of the top in the country, with the senior leaders holding a placard in their freshly pressed uniforms.
All of it lies.
He had to do it. His time had come.
He opened up his email and addressed it to his supervisor.
“It is with deep regret that I must resign. I can no longer do this. I am sorry. I did my best.” And that night, the thin blue line got even thinner. …
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