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Into the Night: A Year with the Police
As heard on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.
'Told with the verve and immediacy of a novel' - Iain Sinclair
A vividly told yet reflective account of a year as a volunteer police officer, examining the nature of policing, its impact on those who are policed and on our communal life.
A former carer, primary school teacher and education researcher, Matt Lloyd-Rose became a volunteer police officer to try to understand the challenges facing young people in Brixton, the place he lived and taught. He got more than he bargained for. Each Friday evening, he put on the uniform and policed South racing through it on blue lights, patrolling its streets, entering a parallel version of a place he thought he knew.
Into the Night takes you on a journey to the heart of our society’s most complex and controversial institution, showing the best and worst of ordinary from macho thrill-seeking and shocking misogyny to quiet moments of kindness and care. Its pages are filled with the homeless, the lonely, the sick and the angry, with teenage gang members, confused drunks, violent partners, runaway dogs and an illegal hot-dog vendor who won’t take no for an answer.
Into the Night is an exploration of what it would mean to reframe policing as a caring, rather than enforcement, role. It is also a luminous portrait of South London, the epicentre of Britain’s struggle against racist policing, surfacing hidden histories of resistance and abuse.
'Acutely observed and tenderly written' - Polly Morland, bestselling author of A Fortunate Women
'An important and timely book written with empathy and real life experience' - Shami Chakrabarti
'A textured, compassionate book about cities, loss wounded souls.' - Sukhdev Sandhu
'Told with the verve and immediacy of a novel' - Iain Sinclair
A vividly told yet reflective account of a year as a volunteer police officer, examining the nature of policing, its impact on those who are policed and on our communal life.
A former carer, primary school teacher and education researcher, Matt Lloyd-Rose became a volunteer police officer to try to understand the challenges facing young people in Brixton, the place he lived and taught. He got more than he bargained for. Each Friday evening, he put on the uniform and policed South racing through it on blue lights, patrolling its streets, entering a parallel version of a place he thought he knew.
Into the Night takes you on a journey to the heart of our society’s most complex and controversial institution, showing the best and worst of ordinary from macho thrill-seeking and shocking misogyny to quiet moments of kindness and care. Its pages are filled with the homeless, the lonely, the sick and the angry, with teenage gang members, confused drunks, violent partners, runaway dogs and an illegal hot-dog vendor who won’t take no for an answer.
Into the Night is an exploration of what it would mean to reframe policing as a caring, rather than enforcement, role. It is also a luminous portrait of South London, the epicentre of Britain’s struggle against racist policing, surfacing hidden histories of resistance and abuse.
'Acutely observed and tenderly written' - Polly Morland, bestselling author of A Fortunate Women
'An important and timely book written with empathy and real life experience' - Shami Chakrabarti
'A textured, compassionate book about cities, loss wounded souls.' - Sukhdev Sandhu
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383 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 18, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 17, 2023
I’m always deeply suspicious of anyone who can work for an organisation for less than a year and then go and write a three-hundred-page biography about it. I was a delivery driver for a Chinese Takeaway longer than this guy (Lloyd-Rose) was a special constable, and (quite rightly) no one is publishing my book about Chinese Political instability during the Great Leap.
Honestly, I found Lloyd-Rose intensely unlikeable, mainly because of his continued role as a passive observer. If you’re a policeman, surely you’re someone of action. Someone who gets stuck into fights and literally disrupts gang-dealings – that’s what I wanted to read about. Instead, it’s just him waxing lyrical about the evils of judging people by their looks and toxic masculinity. What I particularly dislike is his use of the term “we said” and “we then did this”. I checked, and he doesn’t use the term “I did” until page two-hundred-and-two, and even then, that was him asking not to iron a shirt. That’s right, a wannabe copper, writing a tell-all exposé on the police, didn’t want to iron a shirt.
It gets worse. Clearly some of his shifts were non-events, as he writes entire chapters about plaques he sees while walking the beat. Half-way through there’s a four page aside to an Anny Brayx memorial celebrating her role as a squatter in London during the 1970s. Then, when he isn’t doing all the limousine liberal “the system is terrible” pontificating, Lloyd-Rose puts in the most annoying little quotes which are harvested directly from Californian self-help Instagram pages. Seemingly, you’ll only be quoted by him if you’re a Buddhist, a lesbian or an inhabitant of the Amazon Rainforest (ideally you’d be all three, experience in law enforcement is optional).
To conclude, a man who should have never been a copper has written a book about his year volunteering as a part-time copper. Guardian readers everywhere will no doubt celebrate his moaning disparaging and impassive yarn about one of the hardest jobs going, but the rest of us will consider him to be a soggy paper bag, someone who would be better suited to creating mindfulness videos on YouTube.
I was going to finish this off by making fun of the fact that he went to McDonalds and ordered a “veggie wrap” but instead I’ll highlight this: He doesn’t name any of the coppers he worked with or explore their backstories. He capitalises the term “Special Constable” but writes “regular” (as in full-time copper) all in lower-case.
Honestly, I found Lloyd-Rose intensely unlikeable, mainly because of his continued role as a passive observer. If you’re a policeman, surely you’re someone of action. Someone who gets stuck into fights and literally disrupts gang-dealings – that’s what I wanted to read about. Instead, it’s just him waxing lyrical about the evils of judging people by their looks and toxic masculinity. What I particularly dislike is his use of the term “we said” and “we then did this”. I checked, and he doesn’t use the term “I did” until page two-hundred-and-two, and even then, that was him asking not to iron a shirt. That’s right, a wannabe copper, writing a tell-all exposé on the police, didn’t want to iron a shirt.
It gets worse. Clearly some of his shifts were non-events, as he writes entire chapters about plaques he sees while walking the beat. Half-way through there’s a four page aside to an Anny Brayx memorial celebrating her role as a squatter in London during the 1970s. Then, when he isn’t doing all the limousine liberal “the system is terrible” pontificating, Lloyd-Rose puts in the most annoying little quotes which are harvested directly from Californian self-help Instagram pages. Seemingly, you’ll only be quoted by him if you’re a Buddhist, a lesbian or an inhabitant of the Amazon Rainforest (ideally you’d be all three, experience in law enforcement is optional).
To conclude, a man who should have never been a copper has written a book about his year volunteering as a part-time copper. Guardian readers everywhere will no doubt celebrate his moaning disparaging and impassive yarn about one of the hardest jobs going, but the rest of us will consider him to be a soggy paper bag, someone who would be better suited to creating mindfulness videos on YouTube.
I was going to finish this off by making fun of the fact that he went to McDonalds and ordered a “veggie wrap” but instead I’ll highlight this: He doesn’t name any of the coppers he worked with or explore their backstories. He capitalises the term “Special Constable” but writes “regular” (as in full-time copper) all in lower-case.
September 4, 2023
I think this book would have been a lot better had it been released 3 years ago. As it is the book doesn’t tell us anything new or offer any insights into policing especially when i read it the same day reports into the met were published saying the exact same thing as the book. Haunted by the recent deaths in Lambeth from police (Sarah everard really came in my mind when I was reading about Clapham and the fact it is never mentioned feels icky. The book was clearly written around 2013 and there has been no ties made with present day which feels like an oversight.)
Essentially it felt like an out of date diary.
Essentially it felt like an out of date diary.
April 13, 2025
I borrowed this book from the library whilst I was browsing the shelves. I like anecdotal books, especially from this line of work (police, medics etc) and find them really interesting. The author of this book became a special constable for a year to write it. It was interesting to begin with, but then as it moved on it just seemed to be the same thing over and over again, and some of that had nothing to do with the police. It became boring and unfortunately I lost interest in it by the half way mark. I did finish it but nothing else really interested me in the rest of the book.
July 22, 2023
This book reads as if one of the author's pupils has been granted VIP work experience and seems to assume his audience has never seen a police officer in their lives. This was particularly evident when the author gave a highly detailed account of what a police car looks like and the noises it makes in one chapter.
I have no doubt the writer believes he has good intentions and clearly wants to paint himself as the good natured hero the specials were waiting on but unfortunately much of the book didnt land that way. It came across as condescending and patronising towards the reader and people he was policing. This does not surprise me as it takes a very unique type of person to want full police powers that badly they don't want money.
I was expecting a gritty insider view of the culture within the police and what I got was a bored primary school teacher writing notes with a ridiculous amount of bubble and squeak.
Aside from the poor writing, the author makes weak attempts to romanticise the profession which in the context of 2023 is problematic. He acknowledges the mistakes of the past in Brixton without actually expressing an opinion on it in a "other police are bad but not me" manner. The culture within the police force is a huge point of controversy at the moment and the writer needs to accept that his silence at the time contributed to the headlines we see today.
I reached page 200 before giving up from cringing. I do hope this book helps in any police reform but I would imagine the officers who can and choose to read this book would make a joke of it.
A great book for any teenagers looking to get into the career.
I have no doubt the writer believes he has good intentions and clearly wants to paint himself as the good natured hero the specials were waiting on but unfortunately much of the book didnt land that way. It came across as condescending and patronising towards the reader and people he was policing. This does not surprise me as it takes a very unique type of person to want full police powers that badly they don't want money.
I was expecting a gritty insider view of the culture within the police and what I got was a bored primary school teacher writing notes with a ridiculous amount of bubble and squeak.
Aside from the poor writing, the author makes weak attempts to romanticise the profession which in the context of 2023 is problematic. He acknowledges the mistakes of the past in Brixton without actually expressing an opinion on it in a "other police are bad but not me" manner. The culture within the police force is a huge point of controversy at the moment and the writer needs to accept that his silence at the time contributed to the headlines we see today.
I reached page 200 before giving up from cringing. I do hope this book helps in any police reform but I would imagine the officers who can and choose to read this book would make a joke of it.
A great book for any teenagers looking to get into the career.
May 21, 2023
A harrowing and haunting read, that tragically did not really illuminate anything new about the police force that I did not already know suspect. I am a person who believes that the abolition of the police force would be a good thing, and reading this confirmed my views. It is a complex, thorny issue and Matt Lloyd-Rose gives a fairly balanced, nuanced description of his time working with the Met, whilst also highlighting some of the horrors that I suspected were rife. I have always said that if I was in any danger from a male the very last people on earth I would enlist to help me would be the police force. They simply don't take female safety seriously and in the very worst cases demonstrate a total lack of regard for female lives - the death of Sarah Everard haunts all of us, forever. This and Susanna Moore's 'In the Cut' are two of the best books I have read about the rampant, deadly misogyny of the police force and its violent repercussions.
I was fascinated to learn about the sociologist Egon Bittner who wrote with great clarity about the police in the 1960s - he made a study of Denver police in skid row neighbourhoods and wrote observations about his time with them that are remarkably pertinent and his writings are scattered throughout the book as Lloyd-Rose regards him as something of a sage. He wrote a series of books that expanded his ideas of what the police are actually for (something I remain quite woolly about!), and why their role feels so blurry and problematic and diffuse. "He looked at the crudeness and imperfections of police work head on, examining the way that they arise from the role itself, as much as from the people who perform it. And he confronted the irony that representatives of a tainted institution go out every day and tell other people that they are doing something wrong."
"I was intrigued to learnt that half a century earlier Bittner had identified that policing is a caring role akin to nursing and social work, but that its true nature was starkly rejected by the police themselves. His insight did not seem to have been digested by the Met. Most of the regulars I met thought it was not our job to deal with messy social issues and tried to dispatch them as quickly as possible so we could get back to the real business of battling crime. They felt a mixture of pity and scorn for the Neighbourhood Policing Team, who dealt with community issues full-time. No one 'likes being obliged to do thing day-in-day-out that are disparaged by his colleagues,' Bittner wrote. 'Moreover, the low evaluation of these duties leads to neglecting the development of skill and knowledge that are required to discharge them properly and efficiently'. Until we believed those complex social challenges were out job, Bittner suggested, and until we respected the officers who worked on them, we were unlikely to do this work well, or want to do it at all."
"Policing was not what I had expected and it was not what it seemed. Much of it appeared to be care work and youth work conducted bluntly, reluctantly, even punitively. A lot of the officers I met wanted to catch bad guys, not support vulnerable people. It was not that they thought it unimportant - they simply did not think it was their job."
"Domestic abuse happens on a scale far greater than I would have believed possible before becoming a police officer. DV calls seemed to be the pulse behind everything we did. According to a report I read, a domestic abuse call is made to the police in the UK every minute - and it is known to be significantly under-reported. Every time a report came in, we had to investigate and complete a Form 124D."
"Patrolling South London, we competed to deal with robberies and hoped that someone else would answer the DV and mental health calls. Faced with complex social problems, we felt more like medieval doctors than pioneer nurses, applying lances and leeches to afflictions we could not hope to cure. Attending DV calls could come to seem pointless. Cynicism set in. The call came out and we would leave it hanging. We were not properly equipped, and we craved one-off situations with clear-cut outcomes"
"Only about 15 per cent of people arrested are female. 'If men behaved like women,' wrote the criminologist Barbara Wooton, 'the courts would be idle and the prisons empty.' "
"Listening to the breathless excitement of the officer who found the vibrator, his delight that the call of duty had called him to the bedroom of a twenty year old woman, I felt as if I was back in a teenage changing room again. I was reminded of the banter of the most confident, athletic boys at my school, the boys who successfully and repeatedly struck up relationships with teenage girls....The officer who found the vibrator was not a teenage boy. He was a professional contracted to work with vulnerable people, people in distress. His behaviour was a violation of trust and privacy - of his duty as a police officer. I wondered again how such a moment had become possible within the Met." (this was obviously written way before the Sarah Everard case and many, many other offences that have come to light since then which feels like a huge omission?)
One of the most horrifying things I found about this book was also the extreme ignorance of the officers. Officers that worked the beat in Lambeth were not schooled in any of the history of the area? Knew nothing about the fraught and complex race relations - about the Brixton uprisings of 81 and 85. Surely this should be a vital part of the training if the Met are to ever learn from past offences??! James Baldwin's quote is very apt here: "They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it they cannot be released from it."
"When I began policing, I struggled to understand the depth of the distrust and anger still felt towards us by certain sections of the community. As I heard the stories of Cherry Groce, Wayne Douglas, Ricky Bishop and Sean Rigg, it began to make more sense. How could we expect people to presume the best when they saw another IC3 teenager being searched, or four police vehicles descending on one black couple?"
"Crime is term that contains rather than explains. Complexity disappears behinds its facade....We try to enact a societies hopes, but often dramatise its frustrations....Homelessness, loneliness, teenage gangs, domestic abuse, addiction. There is no consensus on how to resolve such complex social issues - the question of who should do what circles endlessly. Bittner's point was that, while the debates rage, the police are the stop-gap institution, doing what they can i the absence of someone-more-suitable-doing-something-more-appropriate."
I was fascinated to learn about the sociologist Egon Bittner who wrote with great clarity about the police in the 1960s - he made a study of Denver police in skid row neighbourhoods and wrote observations about his time with them that are remarkably pertinent and his writings are scattered throughout the book as Lloyd-Rose regards him as something of a sage. He wrote a series of books that expanded his ideas of what the police are actually for (something I remain quite woolly about!), and why their role feels so blurry and problematic and diffuse. "He looked at the crudeness and imperfections of police work head on, examining the way that they arise from the role itself, as much as from the people who perform it. And he confronted the irony that representatives of a tainted institution go out every day and tell other people that they are doing something wrong."
"I was intrigued to learnt that half a century earlier Bittner had identified that policing is a caring role akin to nursing and social work, but that its true nature was starkly rejected by the police themselves. His insight did not seem to have been digested by the Met. Most of the regulars I met thought it was not our job to deal with messy social issues and tried to dispatch them as quickly as possible so we could get back to the real business of battling crime. They felt a mixture of pity and scorn for the Neighbourhood Policing Team, who dealt with community issues full-time. No one 'likes being obliged to do thing day-in-day-out that are disparaged by his colleagues,' Bittner wrote. 'Moreover, the low evaluation of these duties leads to neglecting the development of skill and knowledge that are required to discharge them properly and efficiently'. Until we believed those complex social challenges were out job, Bittner suggested, and until we respected the officers who worked on them, we were unlikely to do this work well, or want to do it at all."
"Policing was not what I had expected and it was not what it seemed. Much of it appeared to be care work and youth work conducted bluntly, reluctantly, even punitively. A lot of the officers I met wanted to catch bad guys, not support vulnerable people. It was not that they thought it unimportant - they simply did not think it was their job."
"Domestic abuse happens on a scale far greater than I would have believed possible before becoming a police officer. DV calls seemed to be the pulse behind everything we did. According to a report I read, a domestic abuse call is made to the police in the UK every minute - and it is known to be significantly under-reported. Every time a report came in, we had to investigate and complete a Form 124D."
"Patrolling South London, we competed to deal with robberies and hoped that someone else would answer the DV and mental health calls. Faced with complex social problems, we felt more like medieval doctors than pioneer nurses, applying lances and leeches to afflictions we could not hope to cure. Attending DV calls could come to seem pointless. Cynicism set in. The call came out and we would leave it hanging. We were not properly equipped, and we craved one-off situations with clear-cut outcomes"
"Only about 15 per cent of people arrested are female. 'If men behaved like women,' wrote the criminologist Barbara Wooton, 'the courts would be idle and the prisons empty.' "
"Listening to the breathless excitement of the officer who found the vibrator, his delight that the call of duty had called him to the bedroom of a twenty year old woman, I felt as if I was back in a teenage changing room again. I was reminded of the banter of the most confident, athletic boys at my school, the boys who successfully and repeatedly struck up relationships with teenage girls....The officer who found the vibrator was not a teenage boy. He was a professional contracted to work with vulnerable people, people in distress. His behaviour was a violation of trust and privacy - of his duty as a police officer. I wondered again how such a moment had become possible within the Met." (this was obviously written way before the Sarah Everard case and many, many other offences that have come to light since then which feels like a huge omission?)
One of the most horrifying things I found about this book was also the extreme ignorance of the officers. Officers that worked the beat in Lambeth were not schooled in any of the history of the area? Knew nothing about the fraught and complex race relations - about the Brixton uprisings of 81 and 85. Surely this should be a vital part of the training if the Met are to ever learn from past offences??! James Baldwin's quote is very apt here: "They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it they cannot be released from it."
"When I began policing, I struggled to understand the depth of the distrust and anger still felt towards us by certain sections of the community. As I heard the stories of Cherry Groce, Wayne Douglas, Ricky Bishop and Sean Rigg, it began to make more sense. How could we expect people to presume the best when they saw another IC3 teenager being searched, or four police vehicles descending on one black couple?"
"Crime is term that contains rather than explains. Complexity disappears behinds its facade....We try to enact a societies hopes, but often dramatise its frustrations....Homelessness, loneliness, teenage gangs, domestic abuse, addiction. There is no consensus on how to resolve such complex social issues - the question of who should do what circles endlessly. Bittner's point was that, while the debates rage, the police are the stop-gap institution, doing what they can i the absence of someone-more-suitable-doing-something-more-appropriate."
August 2, 2023
An interesting read from the point of view of a special constable in the Met Police. Particularly interesting was his research on the history of the formation of the police force and the original intention for what a police officer should be, and how that differs from what the role is now. It left me feeling quite sad about what our society has become and how 'care' (rather than control) is underrated as a method for making society better (and reducing crime).
August 17, 2024
Like a year in the life of a special constable. Matt Lloyd-Rose was a school teacher. But at the point in his life of writing this book he’s becoming and being part of the policing effort in London.
He combines stories that are current with points out of history. It’s the correlations and crossover that I found most intriguing.
Matts view is that the job the police were set up to do, is mistly the job they are doing, and the part of policing that works the best in our cities. Which is caring. And that’s the job that police themselves don’t generally want to be doing. Nor is it the job they think they should bf doing in the whole.
Which is why where Matt describes in this book, the best beats/nights/times of his policing career - where the police care and will work in ways that care - the impact of this book is surprisingly strong.
The way Matt ties in what Robert Peel inagined the police would be or the writings of men like Egon Bittner and quotes from books like “Surge” (Hay Bernard) makes for a breadth across subject matter that is fascinating.
Thought it a brilliant book snd an excellent read for anyone interested in- because actually this is a subject that’s massively important band needs much greater attention than is currently given.
He combines stories that are current with points out of history. It’s the correlations and crossover that I found most intriguing.
Matts view is that the job the police were set up to do, is mistly the job they are doing, and the part of policing that works the best in our cities. Which is caring. And that’s the job that police themselves don’t generally want to be doing. Nor is it the job they think they should bf doing in the whole.
Which is why where Matt describes in this book, the best beats/nights/times of his policing career - where the police care and will work in ways that care - the impact of this book is surprisingly strong.
The way Matt ties in what Robert Peel inagined the police would be or the writings of men like Egon Bittner and quotes from books like “Surge” (Hay Bernard) makes for a breadth across subject matter that is fascinating.
Thought it a brilliant book snd an excellent read for anyone interested in- because actually this is a subject that’s massively important band needs much greater attention than is currently given.
November 25, 2023
A pseudo-sociological study of the Metropolitan Police Service by someone who worked a few night duties as a special constable a decade ago.
The author appears to have spent most of his time in uniform walking or driving around Lambeth doing not very much; every time he does enforce the law it results in a deep moral quandry, even where it's clearly the correct thing to do (for example, seizing an uninsured vehicle). Perhaps policing just wasn't for him. In any case his stories get very formulaic and almost repetitive. Turn up to incident, do not very much, finish duty, go to cafe, ponder, force some kind of tenuous link back to a decades old sociological study on policing. Repeat ad nauseum.
I do admire him for actually going out and doing the job of a police officer before criticising the Met, but the cynic in me thinks that the timing of the book is to capture readership at a time of a growing anti-police sentiment in the left wing press. Whether the accounts he tells are exaggerated or not I don't know, but given policing has undertaken a radical culture change in recent years, one would question the validity of his conclusions in 2023, the year of publishing.
The author appears to have spent most of his time in uniform walking or driving around Lambeth doing not very much; every time he does enforce the law it results in a deep moral quandry, even where it's clearly the correct thing to do (for example, seizing an uninsured vehicle). Perhaps policing just wasn't for him. In any case his stories get very formulaic and almost repetitive. Turn up to incident, do not very much, finish duty, go to cafe, ponder, force some kind of tenuous link back to a decades old sociological study on policing. Repeat ad nauseum.
I do admire him for actually going out and doing the job of a police officer before criticising the Met, but the cynic in me thinks that the timing of the book is to capture readership at a time of a growing anti-police sentiment in the left wing press. Whether the accounts he tells are exaggerated or not I don't know, but given policing has undertaken a radical culture change in recent years, one would question the validity of his conclusions in 2023, the year of publishing.
March 11, 2024
What struck me most about this book was Matt's obvious compassion and his fantastic moral compass. I was gobsmacked by the attitude of some of his colleagues, racism, misogyny and inappropriateness to mention a few. Picking and choosing which jobs to go to, domestic violence being one no-one wants, I couldn't believe what I was reading at times.
Maybe new recruits should spend a rotation in the care professions as it seems to me that there is a serious lack of empathy and understanding. Yes, they have an important job to do but often it isn't what they signed up to do, the typical criminal these days comes from systemic social problems such as poverty, gang related issues and poor mental health. The police are just sponges, mopping up the unfortunates that society has swept into the gutter.
It's horrific and must be soul destroying.
Maybe new recruits should spend a rotation in the care professions as it seems to me that there is a serious lack of empathy and understanding. Yes, they have an important job to do but often it isn't what they signed up to do, the typical criminal these days comes from systemic social problems such as poverty, gang related issues and poor mental health. The police are just sponges, mopping up the unfortunates that society has swept into the gutter.
It's horrific and must be soul destroying.
September 18, 2024
‘Into The Night: A Year With The Police’ by Matt Lloyd-Rose is a non fiction book which was heard on radio 4. The book is about Matt Lloyd-Rose’s work as a special constable for the police in rough areas like Brixton and Lambeth over the period of a year.
The book really delves deep into modern policing and does not shy from the truth of what faces the police in the rougher areas of London. The book details the truth of the challenges that face the public and the police including gangs, stabbings and domestic violence among many other crimes.
This book was really informative and was a really interesting read. I recommend this book to anyone interested in what life is like in the police and the realities of what people are facing in the more rough areas in this country like Brixton and Lambeth.
The book really delves deep into modern policing and does not shy from the truth of what faces the police in the rougher areas of London. The book details the truth of the challenges that face the public and the police including gangs, stabbings and domestic violence among many other crimes.
This book was really informative and was a really interesting read. I recommend this book to anyone interested in what life is like in the police and the realities of what people are facing in the more rough areas in this country like Brixton and Lambeth.
December 18, 2024
Thoroughly enjoyable read highlighting misogyny in the Met. Whilst the focus on the misogynistic practices in the Military is nothing new. This book highlights behaviours within the Met that are still seen as the norm or passed off as banter. My only criticism would be that this book wasn’t long enough. Clearly talented I will watch with interest on what Lloyd-Rose does next.
March 1, 2025
Originally sceptical about the author's brief stint as a Special, and from the perspective of having been a Special myself (and for many more years than the author), I found this a realistic and honest account of the state of policing. A helpful insight for any aspiring police officers, if not a bit depressing.
March 24, 2025
Bed wetting liberal realises that "tough" men and women have to go and deal with the nastiness and dregs of society so good people don't have to and then decides to write a book about it. It all felt very underhand and essentially spying on decent hardworking coppers who deal with bad people whom limp wristed wets like him could never actually do.
April 21, 2025
While this was a fascinating insight into both the life and roots of police work and officers, I just couldn't get past the fact that the f*** word showed up on like every other page, and some of the domestic abuse and stuff was pretty intense and just a little much; so I couldn't quite finish it.
May 22, 2023
Really interesting - I listened to the abridged BBC Version of this book and though it was really good.
July 4, 2023
This for me is exactly what a story about being in the police should be like! The only thing that let it down for me slightly was the constant reference of an author and the things they wrote about. I didn't enjoy those parts but it wasn't a huge issue.
This is absolutely packed full of all sorts of weird and wonderful stories from Matt's time in the Police. Definitely gets you thinking and really opens your eyes! Very interesting read which I completed in a very short time. Loved the short chapters and the details were great. Really good read
This is absolutely packed full of all sorts of weird and wonderful stories from Matt's time in the Police. Definitely gets you thinking and really opens your eyes! Very interesting read which I completed in a very short time. Loved the short chapters and the details were great. Really good read
November 3, 2023
Interesting enough to finish. I personally like his citations of others. Lots of waxing lyrical on things already known. Worth a read but didn’t grip me.
November 19, 2024
An okay read
Not very riveting and it took getting through. It was average as far as other police story books I have read in the past
Not very riveting and it took getting through. It was average as far as other police story books I have read in the past
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews