Jay Darkmoore

Former police officer.

Jay Darkmoore is a former police officer. In September, still an unknown, he posted a thread to X that quickly went viral. In it, he detailed his decade of service, and the compounding factors that inspired his departure. Quotas, authoriarianism, censorship, left-wing capture, and the profound mechanisms that embolden bad cops and demoralise good ones.

Jay issued a public appeal to several notable podcasters, offering himself up to blow the whistle on a crumbling institution and share his inside stories of the job.

We took him up on that offer. This is that conversation.

What did we learn?

”There’s a huge problem with our public service, and it’s only getting worse.”

Time and time again, we’re told this isn’t true. Actually, things are only getting better: violent crime is down, theft is down, murder is down, you’ve never been safer.

But that somehow doesn’t feel true. Perhaps, that’s because it isn’t. In 2025, everybody knows someone who has been the victim of a serious crime, and that number seems to only be increasing. Whole regions of major cities in Britain are treated as no-go zones - if you find yourself there, don’t pull your phone out.

The statistics don’t seem to reflect our - if you’ll pardon the term - ‘lived experience’. What’s happening?

“You can never believe a police statistic: they can be fudged so easily.”

The force know that public trust is fading. To combat that, they found a solution: arrest quotas. Each district will have a unique set of goals to meet regarding number of arrests, number of citations, etc.

This, in theory, will motivate police officers to crack down on criminal behaviour and be more willing to act when identified. Sounds good, right?

Wrong. Jay outlines how this policy has created a perverse incentive structure whereby police officers are incentivised to make easy, unnecessary arrests. In fact, senior officers breathe down the necks of juniors on their way to ‘crime scenes’, instructing them to make an arrest - before the assessment has even been made. Jay relays stories of investigating domestic violence claims, only to find that what transpired was nothing more than a heated argument. Not a police matter, but still someone is led away in cuffs.

“There were times when I was sat across from someone in an interview, and I was thinking to myself: ‘You’re an arrest for a statistic. I know no further action is going to be taken’. They should never have been there.”

But is it not better to be safe than sorry? If some wrongful arrests are the price to pay for catching the real criminals, is that not preferable?

No, no, and no. As Jay describes, this isn’t only an unjust practise - it achieves the opposite of its so-called desired effect. In reality, it can be a powerful tool for what should be personal squabbles. Jay illustrates with an example of a domestic case whereby a man accused his female partner of an assault from 8 months prior. The two now lived 300 miles apart; to Jay, there was absolutely no cause for arrest. Still, the police took her in, and the incident was used against her in a custody proceeding months later.

"When we have this sledgehammer-to-crack-a-walnut strategy, not only do we fail the real victims, but we enable the abusers - the police becomes a third-party proxy form of abuse.”

But this is only one example of how quotas create bad incentives. The conversation moves to a quote of a different kind…