Watching the news as I often do, I saw the Christchurch Press roasting a male recruiting officer for telling a young man his attire was a little gay. As we are looking for a 1000 new officers I thought I would hit the streets and ask the boys on the front line what they thought about gayness in the police.

What did they say? “The place is infested with them”.

Perhaps this recruiting officer did have cause for concern after all. It wasn’t gay men that drew the most flak. They aren’t the effeminate type, and they know it’s their job if they get out of line.

The lesbians on the other hand seem to be the main source of discontent, with male officers. They are congregating in various police stations. Takapuna was named as one, which would be, either a stronghold or an outpost depending on your point of view.

It would come as no surprise that recruiting young men might be difficult if they spoke to a frank police officer.

The recruiting problem doesn’t get any easier if the retention rate of serving officers is so low. The real training for a police officer is the first two years on the street. That’s were you have to cut the mustard, and it doesn’t help if you don’t have good senior staff to guide new trainees.

Looks like there is more trouble on the other side of the thin blue line than we thought, and once again only half the story in the media.