To ask if you can become a detective without being a police officer?

[LardeeLar]

Or do you have to go out on the beat for a few years first? I think solving cases would be fun but wouldn't fancy wandering around council estates trying to pick kids up for selling weed. Or hitting the streets and intervening in punch ups.

@Ginfilledcats

Detective is a dank. You have to have a degree and pass many exams to get to detective. And yes you have to do you time on the beat.

detective is not a rank. Constable, sergeant, inspector,, they are ranks. A detective is a specialist post, like traffic cop, dog handler or mounted role, and yes you still have to be a uniformed PC before you can do any of those

Go for it, with your experience from tv shows you should apply for direct entry senior ranking detective.

And I bet you don't get a vintage Jag to drive round in, either . . . .

prob better to join line of duty or mystery inc if you want some action

National Crime Agency does a direct entry as well so worth looking at that. Maybe better chance of dealing with more exciting cases maybe than a territorial force.

DH was a detective, he went back into uniform when he got promoted but was a DC and a DS. He said lots was boring, sitting 8 hrs in a car on stake out. One of his best friends is someone he was paired up with, they passed the time by trying to annoy each other and I can confirm all the practice was worth it because they can be the two most annoying men in the world.

The exciting bits are usually sad as it is likely to be a tragedy for someone, pulling people out of a bombing with dead bodies and bits of people all around haunts him decades later.

I have a very close family member who is a detective in the met. I think the biggest thing not considered is the hours! They often work a 20+ hour shift! Once they where on such a big case that they barely came home for the week. Popped in to pick up some fresh clothes and shower and that's about it!

Have you considered buying a vintage typewriter and writing crime novels? You can then travel around meeting old friends, and murders will occur wherever you go. You'll be allowed to visit crime scenes and see evidence, and even solve the crimes before the actual detectives do. And you get a jaunty theme tune.

I've always fancied being a private investigator. Sit in a car all day seeing if someone who is on the sick is actually doing a marathon. Looks fun.

What GCSEs do you need to gather a wealthy family in their parlour and tell them that the killer is sitting in this very room?

Just waiting for @jasmineallenestate to leave a comment

Definitely echo PP re the hours! Lots of endless boring hours and paperwork and the same woke wank that permeates everywhere nowadays/it is not like TV!
A friend worked the system by rising rapidly up the Traffic division where promotion is easy if you have a brain cell and can play the politically correct game and then transferred horizontally to CID. It was boring. He is lie a barrister and earns ££££ doing a massively more interesting job.

I hear you OP. I always fancied being a zookeeper, because they get to ride the lions

CID is crap nowadays. There is a reason that they are introducing new routes - because they can't fill the posts. There's a reason for that. My DH is accredited detective, spent several years as a DS and now won't take his inspectors exam fir the fear of being posted back to CID. We are both police.
You can take the NIE and apply for a civvy investigator post.
You won't be dealing with exciting things. You deal with malicious messages, prolific shoplifters, burglaries.

Do you enjoy paperwork, getting your RDs cancelled, being recalled for court from your holiday only to be told by the barrister they've no ide why you're there ? Being a police officer nowadays is pretty much a combo of social worker and MH nurse with everyone blaming you for everything wrong in their lives. It's not a job to go into because of what you see on telly because it really isn't real.

If you want a true picture of modern policing read "Wasting Police Time" by PC Copperfield

It's not just the met that have some form of direct entry detective programme. Over the past few months Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, GMP, Hampshire, Suffolk, Sussex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and probably others, have all recruited for some form of direct entry detective route. Although 'direct' entry, lots of them involve about a year of regular policing first though.

@daisypond what does your friend think of it?

Being a detective was one of the hardest jobs I ever did. One of the biggest difficulties (of many )was never knowing when you were going to get home. It wasn’t unusual to work 24 hour shifts. My friend is a DI in London and has a direct entry trainee Detective who he says is very good. The only difficulty is he doesn’t have enough experienced officers to help her and he doesn’t have time to supervise directly. I think that would be tricky to handle at a crime scene when uniform officers will expect to see decisive decision making. I did do some training of officers from the NCA and saw some really bright direct entry investigators who came from a Project Management background.... really engaged and capable in the classroom. Whether that translated in the real world I wouldn’t know. As an aside I would argue that the NCA don’t necessarily have more interesting work than big city forces - they started with drugs importation and have tried to diversify into other areas like large scale child abuse cases ( children’s homes) without having officers with experience of those kinds of investigations. London has lots of specialist departments like Anti Terrorism which offer great work but you have to survive the Borough based work first to get there. Having skills like languages can certainly hasten than progress. I’m now non operational in a specialist department which works well with my family needs. There’s no way I could have managed childcare in CID.

As above I didn’t take promotion because having moved to specialist crime there was no way I wanted to go back. It was horrific. ( times of 300 robberies a month and an office full of TDCs )

@Isthisanokname certainly the Sussex programme requires a degree and you have to do 1 year on the beat first.

You'd really need police officer experience to get the basics of the law .
The fitness side of it is hilarious the bleep test is a complete joke if I remember rightly it's over 15m and up to level 8 practically a brisk walk .

I would like to be a gardener, perhaps with a friend, and stumble upon murders whilst pruning the roses, then solving them with my brilliant brain, then capturing the baddies and celebrating with a nice pot of tea.

@Needanewnamenow

I would like to do this but then only deal with the sorts of crimes you see on Vera 😂

There must also be a timed test because you have to solve the crime within a couple of hours, you must also be able to solve the crime by some comment made by your wife/ son/newsagent in a totally different context giving you total enlightment. Really you should always concentrate on the person with the best alibi, they're usually deviously guilty.

@rwalker

You'd really need police officer experience to get the basics of the law . The fitness side of it is hilarious the bleep test is a complete joke if I remember rightly it's over 15m and up to level 8 practically a brisk walk .

5.4!

Colleen Rooney did it without being on the beat first.

I have family that were in the Police and several friends and husbands of friends all except one ( very specialised) were a beat Policeofficer first. Two were detectives ,one inspector (murder) and one looking after an MP the others were prosecutor and Sargent going for inspectors and the other still in very specialised area. Family member - one out with injuries and the other now works in UN.
One friend went to Canada. Very difficult to get in and rigorous fitness in the area she wanted. All have regular fitness and medical checks yearly and more often if injured. It is a hard and often boring job and very cold on stakeout. One was on regular protection duty so think 12 hour shifts in the cold, wet, snow, ice for years and years and is suffering health wise now.
It is a hard job and not like tv. My cousin did enjoy being on the bikes and when he moved over had to drop a friendship he had since he was 12 as the lad was in prison. He found that difficult.He rose to Inspector.
It can also be very stressful especially if you have a family and the divorce rates are high.
I think you need to look into it a lot if you want to join.

Yes you can become a detective without doing time on the beat. It is called direct entry detective scheme in the met. I think you may have to have a degree