Monday Night with the Likely Lads

Monday night.

1700: On duty at FHQ. Log on.

1702 : Sift through umpteen emails concerning - System Downtime/Parking at Cell Block/Daily Information’s/ Weekly Information’s/Monthly Information’s/Court dates/System On-Line/ System Updates/Policy Reviews/Federation Minutes/Retirals/Shift changes/New Starts/leavers/Support Staff Recommendations/ Shift Nights Out/Forthcoming Events/Training Dates ad infinitum……………

1735: Log on to Case Files. Sift through umpteen messages concerning – Statement Requests/Allocated Cases/Notes from the PF/Please Add Complainer’s Nationality/ Pleas Add Complainer’s Occupation/Please Add the Colour of the Complainer’s Curtains/Please Ensure CCTV Footage is Available in the Correct Format/Have You Considered Door to Door? Ad infinitum……………..

1750: Quick cup of coffee.

1754: Log Off.

1755: Grab Utility Belt, CS, Stab Vest, Radio, Hi-Viz, Hat and Probationer.

1800: Hit the streets running.

1825: Two likely lads down a side street. Spaced and Furtive. Quick Sec 23. Couple bags of Herbal. Caution, Interview, Charge. On your way.

1850: Return to FHQ. Lodge the Herbal.

1900: Hit the Streets running.

1915: Two unlikely lads down another side street both glugging from a bottle of wine. Caution, Interview, Two Fixed Penalty Notices. On your way.

1945: Three Stop searches (More unlikely lads). All blank.

2005: One likely lad pissing into the front door of a trendy clothes shop (The one where you pay £85 for a pair of tatty looking jeans). Another FPN although Mr Urinator came mighty close to a Breach of the Peace (Nothing better to do/Money Grabbing Bastards/You’re only doing this to make up your quotas – Just feel free to insert whatever you’ve heard before). FPN duly administered from the “Bladed Off” position.

2030: A small group of unlikely lads. All drunk or stoned. Harassing passers by. Loud, Boisterous, Intimidating, aggressive and verbally abusive. What started off as a “Just look lads, calm yourselves down” ends up as an action call, street fighting and three other units in attendance, gratefully getting me and the Sprog out of the brown stuff. Close call doesn’t do it justice.

2100: Return to FHQ with two Custodies arrested for a Breach. Caution, Charge, Photograph, Fingerprint. Court for the following day.

2230: Quick cup of coffee.

2235: Compile Police Report. Draft and re-draft, submit for typing standards. Submit to Supervisor for checking. Make amendments. Re-submit to Supervisor for checking. Add any case related documents.

0200: Pack up and go home.

The Sprog

I have to mention, before I delve into the myriad posts of "Life on the beat", that I have, in tow, a probationer. Or as my erstwhile colleague Noddy would say, a Sprog.
For the benefit of anonymity, from hereon in said Sprog shall be affectionately referred to as Junior.

Junior, it has to be said, is not a "fresh oot the bag" Sprog. He's been in for a wee while and is currently dipping his little pinkie into the inky depths of city policing. Having been stuck out in the country for last few months.

Junior, like most Sprogs these days, is old enough to be the very fruit of my loins. Which is a sobering thought, especially when I'm rambling on about times and memories that, although still like yesterday to yours truly, occured a number of years before he was born.

Having said that, he's a good listener and has a cracking sense of humour which, in my book, is probably the only definitive requirement for being a plod.

He's shaping up to be a decent cop and, hopefully, this short stint in the Toon will give him some worthwhile experience.

Providing he stops shouting at me, "Do you want sugar, I said, do you want some sugar with your Tea?".

Aah the joys!!!!

More later.

A year. really?

Okay. It's been a year.
Too long not to at least make some effort to put something out there.
So, the last twelve months?

Driving courses, specialist courses, officer safety courses, statements, court, reports, investigations, CCTV, foot pursuits, licensing checks, domestics, knife crime, nights out with the team, junkies, junkies, junkies, shoplifters, muggers, OAPs, partnership agencies, foot patrols, mobile patrols, van patrols, lost patrols, new boots, stab vests, notebooks, plain clothes operations, traffic operations, custodies, colleagues, phone calls, e-mails, fixed penalty notices, radio checks, firearms, drunks, bouncers, suicides, RTCs, complaints, overtime, Intoximeters, long shifts and Chilli Con Carne.

I mention Chilli Con Carne as it's one of my Saturday night regulars, pre cooked by the missus for a quick heat in the microwave. Well, you've got to get your priorities right.

I'm a tad jaded at the moment, but still loving every bloody minute of it. One thing I've learned is that it's great (sometimes) being a cop.

More later.

Telling tales out of School

It seems my posts are down to about 1 per month which seems, to some of my erstwhile friends and family, to mean that I’ve run out of things to say. Well, I haven’t. It’s just that I feel it is important to ensure that the context and delivery of my blog is direct and effective in reflecting my truest perceptions of the Job.

I’m not one really for taking a high political stance on issues. I don’t go trawling the net for MPs or councillors comments in order to drag the soapbox out. Government policies on policing may well come and bite me in the backside at some point but I feel that there are enough of you out there dredging it all up to more than compensate for my lack of inertia on these topics.

Needless to say I am not apathetical about these issues. I do care. Honest. It’s just that I prefer to stick to the day to day realities (in an increasingly unreal world) of policing rather than delve the depths of political machinations. If that is your forte, then good on you. Keep it up.

A friend of mine from New Zealand emailed me the other week and asked how much of the stuff I blog about is made up. I was a bit taken aback by this. Was this a serious questioning of my integrity? How could I make all this up? I told him it was all true. There are bits that have to be embellished in order to keep the narrative flowing and the perceptions true but, on the whole I do not fabricate in order to generate interest or praise. It is as it’s written. I pointed him towards the likes of Gadget and Whichendbites to keep him on track.

Talking of other bloggers this was fantastic and the type of writing we should all, at times, aspire to.

I have a multitude of stories to pass on. When the time is right and my head is straight, you will get them.

Gaz

John Doe

I spent 14 hours on my last 8 hour shift dealing with the unexpected. Stumbling onto a nightmare like an errant burglar tripping over the family dog. Unsuspecting, whimpering and snarling, the beast awoken from its sentinel guard over a sanctuary few of us ever want to broach.

A seemingly minor call turning and biting, ripping into the flesh of my personal psyche like no other has done before in my brief time as a cop. And after, so much after, leaving me drained and hollow. Sleepwalking like the beast we had awakened.

No training really prepares you for dealing with “Offenders”. Nothing, especially when the evidence is staring you right in the face, can force you to accept the repellant truth of what sits in front of you in the interview room.

Control, during our brief (in the grand scale of things) encounter, is a common bond that we share. But the bond stops at that. His control is steeped in maintaining the lies he is manufacturing. Mine lies with the restraint in not reaching across the table and ripping out his windpipe.

Here lies (sic) before me is the antithesis of who I am, or purport to be. Father, husband, protector. He is guided by morals that are so far removed from my own that I have a great difficulty in accepting that a person can really descend to the nadir of such immorality.

But, I digress. Again I have to accept the unacceptable. The restraint is what separates us. The fact that I wholly believe in the course of Law and Justice. And that course will run. Without it, would I be as accountable? I do my job, to the best of my abilities. Realising how important it has suddenly become. All the stuff before, all the other cases, calls, dealings, arrests, detentions, the whole bloody shebang falls by the wayside. This, for once, takes dominion.

Driving home that night, as always, gave me chance to reflect. But I am still trying to sort out what happened. What (or who) I, and my colleague, actually dealt with. Trying, desperately, to keep my mind focused on the road whilst simultaneously clearing the dreaded distortion. Acceptances of certain truths are hard to come by and I could not help but feel somewhat tainted by the day’s events. This one will not be the last and that makes me fearful.

A scene replays in my head. Whether this is wholly relevant to what I have witnessed or not, is up to you, dear reader. It is one of many. If you have never watched Seven, go away and buy/rent the movie now……

David Mills: Wait, I thought all you did was kill innocent people.

John Doe: Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? An obese man... a disgusting man who could barely stand up; a man who if you saw him on the street, you'd point him out to your friends so that they could join you in mocking him; a man, who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn't be able to finish your meal. After him, I picked the lawyer and I know you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that he could muster to keeping murderers and rapists on the streets!

David Mills: Murderers?

John Doe: A woman...

David Mills: Murderers, John, like yourself?

John Doe: [interrupts] A woman... so ugly on the inside she couldn't bear to go on living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer, a drug dealing pederast, actually! And let's not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed... forever.

Collage

There hasn’t been the opportunity, of late, to add anything to the blog as work has been intense, involved and, as always, demanding.

The intensity has been constant and trying to take stock of events has been difficult. I have a collage of images and incidents wrapped around the grey stuff in my head and it takes time to take stock and order them into some sort of coherent and understandable form so that I can really assess what has been going on. Distortion. Again.

The dead, mostly men, have played a significant part in the collage. Their faces are dotted here and there amongst the insane, the criminals, the junkies and the drunks.

Most of the time when we are called, the dead are usually, well, dead by the time we get there. Having passed on alone and face down on the bedroom carpet or in bed. Sometimes, especially with the junkies, they’ve OD’d. Needles still in arms, the detritus of a wasted life lying around. Spoons, citric juice, empty wrappers, silver foil. Some of this you will have seen before. Usually on a bust or by chance that you’ve came into their property prior to them taking their final (and absolutely last) hit. Do I feel sympathy here? Should I? It’s difficult. This was somebody’s son or daughter, brother, sister, boyfriend, lover. It can be difficult to reconcile that with the fact that you’d maybe dealt with them before for theft or deception or fraud or assault. The general rules and morals the addicted have to live by are as alien to me at times as the thought of shooting all that crap into my veins would be. Ergo the difficulty in sympathy.

One occasion, recently, a male died right in front of us. Battered and bruised, lying in the street at some ungodly hour. He was still conscious and breathing when we got there. Trying to put all your training into place. Remembering what to look for, how to react. Trying desperately to stem the panic rising in your guts, hands shaking through fear or adrenaline, or both. He tried to sit up at one point. I don’t know if he could see me but his eyes were black. There was a murmur. Maybe a last shout before the darkness engulfed him and took him off forever. Was I the last person he saw? I can’t, no matter how much I try, remember what I was saying to him. Was I sympathetic and understanding? It’s gone. The rest of it flashes by. The ambulance and paramedics, securing the scene, waiting for others to arrive and take over and give orders and generally do what they have to do to make sense of what had happened. The call came in a short while later. DOA. Enough said. I got home that day and slept for 15 hours straight. Waking only to place his face on the collage and file it with all the rest before getting up, dressing and going out to face it all again.

More later.

Advance to GO

Haven’t really had much to say of late, hence the lack of entries. However, time for an update and a catch up.

Since barrelling through my 2 weeks at college, I came back to force to find I was on the move. New station, different part of town but on the same team. And, to be honest, the move couldn’t have come sooner. I had hit a few low points in my, so far, short career and was in desperate need of a fresh start away from the stress and constraints of city centre policing.

Suffice to say there were a couple of times when the warrant card was almost out my wallet and onto the sergeant’s desk. But I managed to bare my soul and tactfully explain frustrations to my receptive superiors and, thank god, they sat up and listened.

But there has to be an element of perspective here. In so much as I am by no means a spring chicken. Suffice to say I’ve been around the block a few times. Not that I am denigrating my younger colleagues for their lack of life experience. Far from it. It’s just that my outlook tends to be based on more older, traditional values and these tend to be reflected in my perceptions of how policing should be done.

I like being pro-active. Getting stuck into stopping people and cars, gathering intel, catching criminals at it, being highly visible, speaking to the young and old alike and generally getting noticed by the types of people that either don’t want to see us or those that are more than glad to see a bobby doing his job.

For some time, that was what was lacking at my old station. Coupled with the dreaded admin weighted round my neck like an anvil, I felt I wasn’t doing the job I’d set out to do some 18 months ago. But, the chance came along and I have grabbed it with both hands, stirring up a new vigour and far more positive outlook on things. There are still plenty drawbacks but, I feel, the time is ripe for the aforementioned “getting stuck in”.

And what a beat I have. A couple of large housing estates, one of the older more “characteristic” parts of the city, some green belt developments, a main arterial route and, if that wasn’t enough, an equally diverse population within. As one of my colleagues tactfully stated, “It’s Brown on the Monopoly board”.

Superb.
Gaz