No Comment: What I Wish I'd Known About Becoming A Detective

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Finding the suspect was easy – if not the partner, it was generally someone the victim knew, with “stranger rapes” in dark alleyways so rare that they were dealt with by a separate unit.

McDonald has now written a book about her experiences, No Comment: What I Wish I’d Known About Becoming a Detective, in which she lays bare the realities of life in the police force, and which the police force is unlikely to use as an advertising manual for potential new recruits.Reflecting on years of personal and professional experience, she opens up to readers about her struggles with mental health and different treatments over the years, hoping to provide reassurance and guidance to anyone confronting their own anticipated, or unanticipated, struggles with mental health. Baroness Louise Casey, a former government crime adviser, found the Met to be “institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic”.

In the Ukrainian city of Poltava stands a building known as the Rooster House, an elegant mansion with two voluptuous red roosters flanking the door. Mr Lloyd-Rose said that while he didn't witness "overt aggressive discrimination" there was a consistent "reinforcing of norms and boundaries, something insidious" that frequently involved targeting female staff. She had never heard of this uncle and no one - especially her grandmother - seemed willing to tell her about him. The Met Police's Direct Entry Detective scheme was aimed at turning people with no experience of the police into detectives. We sat one morning at a table beside the steamy kitchen hatch of E Pellicci, a beloved Italian caf in the East End of London dating back to 1900.It is a more nuanced story than the one usually told about the Met, but one partly echoed by Louise Casey’s recent report on the force, which declared it institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic, but also warned of frontline officers experiencing higher burnout rates than frontline doctors during Covid. Long addicted to true-crime stories, she thought that she might become a barrister but couldn’t afford the fees. We see the immense pressure she is put under as she struggles to adapt to her extraordinary new circumstances - and weighs up whether she, or any of the other Direct Entry detectives - can survive in the force as it is. One young woman was assaulted by a senior officer at a borough party, but didn’t tell for fear it would “only cause trouble”; another was spied on in the shower by a male officer who had recently been appointed to lead a sexual offences team.