Taking a statement from anyone can be a long process on account of the fact that your average member of the public wouldn’t know the truth if it donn… - Ben Aaronovitch

“Shouldn’t I know about these things?” I said.
“The list of things you need to know about, Peter, is extraordinarily long,” said Nightingale.

It’s one of those weird truths you learn early on as police that quite a high percentage of the public have all the survival instinct of a moth in a candle factory. They run the wrong way, they refuse to move, some will run toward the danger, and others will instantly whip out their phones and take footage.

Half-caste, I thought. I hadn’t heard that one in a while. Not since Mum fell out with Aunty Doris, who having grown up in Jamaica in the 1950s regarded political correctness as something that happened to other people.