Ben Aaronovitch Quotes

Hyde Park Corner is what happens when a bunch of urban planners take one look at the grinding circle of gridlock that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and think—that’s what we want for our town.

Flexible," I said. "Meaning we're making it up as we go along.

“Somebody’s lying,” I said, which got me a look of amused indulgence from Stephanopoulos and a snort from Seawoll. Of course somebody was lying—we were the police—somebody was always lying to us.

Ask not for whom the buck stops, I thought, it stops for thee.

The main purpose of an administrative meeting is to establish collective guilt for whatever fuck-up arises out of its decisions.

Police doctrine is, even if you’re waiting for someone to do something violent to your suspect, you should de-escalate the situation because at the very least a peaceful solution produces a ton less paperwork.

After a slow start the police have taken to mobile technology in a big way—mainly because it means you can pretend to work anywhere: at home, the canteen, the local boozer.

The media always calls this sort of thing senseless, but the motive made sense—it was just stupid, is what it was.

And having made sure my attention was focused in one direction the universe, which likes a good laugh, smacked me in the face from the other side.

The ABC of policing literally goes: Assume nothing, Believe no-one, Check everything.

From a policing point of view, guns are a pain. Once someone is known to be tooled up, your operational priorities are suddenly fucked up. It all becomes about managing whoever was stupid enough to pull a gun in central London and your number one priority is public safety, followed closely by officer safety and then, not so closely, by the safety of the moron with the gun.

There’s nothing like having your girlfriend talk in geological time to make you feel insignificant.

For police officers, “close relative” frequently rhymes with “prime suspect.”

God, money is so wasted on the rich.

I considered lying for all of about two nano-seconds, but I don’t have a death wish—not even a figurative one. Of course, philosophically speaking, truth is a slippery concept and one should always be alive to nuance.