by Matt Delito
‘Keep an eye on our American friend over here,’ I told Pete, and I walked over to the security guard.
‘Hey, have you had a chance to look at the security tape?’ I asked him.
‘Yeah, he clearly handed over a tenner and a twenty. I guess he’s just not used to the money over here,’ he said, with a shrug. He didn’t seem particularly upset.
‘We’ve got a bit of a problem. I don’t feel comfortable transporting this fellow on foot, and all the support is tied up on another incident in the next borough at the moment.’ The security guard nodded; he understood where this was going. ‘If I encourage him to calm down and apologise, would that be okay?’
‘I’m not happy, man,’ he said, and handed me Sasha’s glasses; they came off during the struggle, and he must have picked them up.
‘Thanks,’ I said, inspecting the glasses. They seemed to be more or less in one piece.
‘But yeah, if he apologises and gets the hell out of my shop, I’m happy. I’m not here to be abused, but I haven’t got time for shit like this neither.’
‘Yeah, I completely understand. I’m sorry about the lack of support, but our prisoner transport vans are deployed elsewhere. I’d much rather have taken him in, but apparently something serious is taking place, and I don’t really know what it is.’ I shrugged apologetically.
‘No worries, I understand,’ he said.
I went back to the American.
‘Right, buddy, there’s two ways we can do this. We can either sit here and wait for a van to arrive, check you into custody, interview you, and deal with you properly, or we can send you on your way. What would you prefer?’ I asked.
‘I get to choose?’ he asked, clearly thinking I was trying to catch him out with some sort of practical joke.
‘Well, yes. But if you just want to walk away, you’re going to need to do some serious apologising, starting with my colleagues here, then with me and then the staff here,’ I said.
‘Could you please take these handcuffs off me,’ he said. ‘I would like to shake everyone’s hands, and apologise properly.’
I wasn’t too sure what to do about that particular request. If I am being honest, I knew it was more luck than skill that enabled us to get him in cuffs in the first place, and I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to pull off the same stunt twice.
I conferred with Pete and Sasha. They were both sitting just behind the American. First I spotted Sasha; her face was completely red. Glancing over at Pete, I realised they were both shaking with laughter. Both of them were trying their best to keep the giggles under control, and I was getting pissed off. What the hell was going on?
‘Are you okay to take the cuffs off?’ I asked them. Pete opened his mouth, but didn’t trust his voice not to break into all-out laughter, and so simply nodded, produced his handcuff keys and let the giant free from his captivity.
‘So, about those apologies …’ I said.
‘Erm, yes. Of course, sir,’ he said. As if struck with a magic wand, his behaviour had completely changed. He was as polite as they come.
Turning to Sasha first: ‘I let anger get the better of me, ma’am. I am so very sorry. Please forgive me.’
Next to Pete, then to me with slight variations on the same apologetic theme.
With that out of the way, he bounded out to the main part of the restaurant, much faster than I would have expected from a man his size. I ran after him, but needn’t have panicked; he was the very picture of grace and politeness. He tried to tip both of the restaurant staff £20 for their trouble and the offence caused. They refused to take his money, although they were happy to accept a spectacularly well-performed grovel of an apology.
Finally, he turned to me again, apologised once more, and whisked himself and his wife out of the restaurant.
I immediately rang in to cancel the van, and was asked by the operator to return to Mike Delta (the station identifier for our home police station).
‘Yes, yes, received. We’ll take the bus!’ I radioed back.
‘What the hell happened back there?’ I asked, as I turned back into the area beside the counter to find Pete and Sasha collapsed on the floor, howling with laughter.
‘He …’ Sasha began, but had to abort her explanation attempt in favour of gasping for breath
‘She …’ Pete said, before being similarly overcome with giggles.
‘Jesus,’ I said, getting annoyed.
I decided to leave them to their fits of debilitating laughter, and I joined the restaurant staff to get confirmation in writing that they were happy that the case was resolved by the American apologising.
When we finally left the restaurant, my two colleagues had gathered their wits a little. A little, at least.
‘What the …?’ I asked.
‘Well, when you went to speak to the security guard,’ Pete said, ‘the wife walked up to her husband, and said that if they had to stay here for another five minutes he wouldn’t get any blow-jobs for the rest of the year.’ The last part of his sentence was barely audible, as both he and Sasha were in fits of laughter again.
‘Jeez,’ I said, fighting to stop my inner eye from envisioning any sort of sexual encounter between the two of them. ‘You are buying the beers at the end of this shift, Pete. I’m definitely going to need some mental bleach to get that picture out of my mind.’
Hell hath no fury like an 11-year-old without BBM
‘We’ve just had report of criminal damage in progress, outside 12 Church Walk. An IC27 youth, around 11 years of age, smashing up a car. On an I-grade.’
On this shift, I was an Incident Response Vehicle (IRV) driver – meaning I was responding to emergency calls about incidences that had recently happened or were still taking place.
When we are on duty, we’re assigned call signs comprised of two different radio-calling identifiers. One of them is our shoulder number (in my case, Mike Delta 592), which only changes if you are promoted to a different rank or you transfer to another borough. The other is the call sign of the vehicle or unit we are assigned to. This changes from day to day, although most call signs have particular duties; for example, one will be the Missing Persons car, another will be an ‘odd jobs’ car, and others will be assigned only to super-urgent calls.
My call sign for the radio that day was Mike Delta 20. Thus far, it had been a dreadfully slow day, so the call coming in over the radio engaged me enough to stir myself me into some semblance of excitement. I don’t mind chasing after a group of troublemaking kids for a few minutes if it wakes me up.
I reached for the PTT8 lever in my car, and pushed it down.
‘Show two-zero,’ I spoke into the microphone mounted next to my sun visor, and heard a distorted version of my own voice, feeding back through the radio I had clipped to my Metvest.
‘Received,’ replied the operator above the echo.
I pressed the ‘999’ button on my dash, and the car’s mobile disco facilities sprang into life. As the siren wailed, I spun the car around. Church Walk was just around the corner. I careened around the last bend, the slightest hint of a squeal coming from my tyres against the asphalt, and saw a young chap climbing over a low fence.
He’s not running away, I thought. In fact, he’s coming towards me.
‘Show TOA9 for Mike Delta two-zero,’ I said, as I engaged the ‘run lock’ and climbed out of the Vauxhall Astra.
Run lock is one of the fun features built into a police car. It enables us to press a button, take the keys and lock the car with the engine running. If anyone tries to put the car in gear or open a door, the engine stops again. Run lock is useful when you have to leave your car parked somewhere with the radio and the flashing lights still operating: by leaving the engine running, it doesn’t run the battery flat, but nobody can steal the car either!
‘Hi there. You okay?’ I asked the kid, as he came towards me.
He nodded.
‘You haven’t seen anyone trying to smash up a car, have you?�
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He nodded again.
‘That was me,’ he said, and shrugged with a lack of commitment that made me stop in my tracks. How do you make a motion showing a lack of caring without caring? Mentally, I was shaking my head at this kid’s utter lack of … well … anything.
I blinked a couple of times.
‘Uhm … okay. Why did you smash up a car? Where is it?’ He pointed at a dark red Volvo that was parked outside number ten.
We walked over to the car together, just as another police car showed up.
‘TOA two-six,’ my radio crackled, as the two officers climbed out of the car and started wandering towards us. I was about to send them on their way again, when a man emerged from one of the houses. An extremely agitated man.
‘He smash the car! He smash the car!’ the man shouted in a Turkish accent. He was walking briskly, gesticulating wildly. I took another look at the Volvo. It could have done with a wash, for sure, but all the windows seemed to be intact, and I couldn’t see any obvious damage.
‘What did he do?’ I asked the man, as I gave him a once-over. He was wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms, a food-stained T-shirt and the air of someone who had just rolled out of bed.
‘He smash the car!’ he said again.
I glanced back and forth at my colleagues. We deal with traffic collisions on a daily basis. We have seen a lot of smashed cars in our time.
This, I concluded, was not a smashed car.
‘In June! He smash the car!’
‘What exactly did you tell the people when you called 999?’ I asked him, as it dawned on me what was going on.
‘I say he smash the car!’
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘You can’t dial 999 about an incident that happened several months ago. If someone is smashing up your car, breaking into your house, or attacking you, call 999. With this—’ I sighed. Realising my approach was futile, I changed tack. ‘Do you know this young man?’ I asked him, as I pointed at the kid.
‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘He is my son.’
‘He stole my Blackberry!’ the kid piped up.
I’ll save you the confounding banality of reporting a running dialogue. It took us the best part of 40 minutes to complete the puzzle of what had happened – the kind of puzzle that sits on the shelf until the cat has taken off with half a dozen pieces, and nobody really cares whether it’s ever completed or not anyway.
I would be lying if I said that my job didn’t involve dealing with a lot of this type of puzzle.
It turned out that back in June the father had taken the son’s Blackberry as punishment for something or other – as parents are wont to do. In my day, we were sent to our room right after dinner, or deprived of watching Columbo for an evening. These days, the kids have to give up their Blackberry privileges.
Fair enough.
The boy retaliated for this grave miscarriage of justice by taking a cricket bat to the family car, smashing up the bonnet, the windshield and a couple of the side windows. The police were called, and the kid was taken in for criminal damage.
This time, the little scoundrel had started a fight at school, and once again the dad took his mobile away. Then ensued a lot of screaming and ranting. The dad thought he was going to smash up the car again, so he called the police.
I’d heard enough. I took the boy aside.
‘Mate, why do you do stuff like that?’ I asked him. ‘You can’t go around starting fights and smashing up cars – that’s not going to get you any friends. I understand you might get frustrated and angry, but you’re a clever kid, and it’s not good news if your own dad has to keep calling the police on you.’
The boy replied (I swear to god this isn’t a word of a lie), ‘I have anger-management issues.’
‘Uhm … Who told you that?’ I asked. ‘Have you been to see a doctor?’
He hadn’t. This was a 13-year-old kid who had self-diagnosed himself with anger-management issues. I didn’t know what to make of any of it.
‘He’s in a gang, you know,’ the kid suddenly said.
‘Who?’ I tried to clarify.
‘My dad. He’s in a gang.’
Over the past hour, I had already caught him out in half a dozen lies – was this another trick? As a precaution, I called Carl, one of my colleagues, over and asked him to run the father and the kid through the PNC10, CAD, and Crimint11 to check whether we had any intel12 on them.
‘What does he do?’ I asked the boy, mostly just to keep him talking.
‘He has a gun,’ the kid replied, looking at the tips of his Converses as he spoke.
Carl was just getting off the radio. He came towards me, shrugged, and shook his head in a manner that I took to mean there was nothing particularly suspicious about either of them.
‘A gun? Really? Where does he keep it?’ I asked the kid.
‘In his car, under where the spare wheel is,’ he said, and glanced up at my face to gauge my reaction. ‘I’ve seen it. It’s black.’
Now, I was facing a choice. If there is a suspicion of guns, I can’t really do anything without Trojan assistance – i.e. armed police – but the kid had been lying to me all morning, and he had already implied several bad things about his dad, apparently only to get back at him. At the same time, I couldn’t ignore this piece of information, either. Since the dad indicated that the car was the suspected goal for the son’s attack, it gave me an idea.
‘Can I see your keys for a second?’ I asked the dad. He dug the car keys out of his pocket, and as he did, I took a closer look at him. He didn’t appear to have any clothing on him that could hide a firearm. I took the keys off him and turned back to Carl.
‘The kid’s just told me his dad has a gun in the car. Nick him for suspicion of possession of a section five firearm. Get Belinda to help you,’ I told him.
Carl walked over to Belinda, said a few words, and together they approached the dad. They cuffed him with his hands behind his back before he had any idea of what was happening.
He was handcuffed in a ‘back to back’ configuration, creatively named such because the backs of your hands are facing each other, behind your back. Other ways of handcuffing people are a ‘front stack’ (imagine folding your arms, and having a set of rigid handcuffs applied from wrist to wrist), or a ‘rear stack’ (the same, but on your back). It’s also possible to do a ‘palm-to-palm’, but since we use rigid handcuffs, if you’re going to cuff someone palm-to-palm you may as well not bother handcuffing them at all. It doesn’t do much to impede movement, and they could potentially use the rigid bar between the cuffs as a weapon.
The dad started struggling, shouting abuse at my colleagues whilst they searched him, but they didn’t find anything untoward. I kept an eye on them, just to make sure everything was okay, but Belinda and Carl seemed to have the situation under control.
I started walking over to the Volvo, but the kid stopped me.
‘Not that one! That one,’ he said, pointing towards a Mazda MX-5 parked further up the road.
I was rather doubtful at this point; I have owned an MX-5. They are great fun – proper little drivers’ cars – but there’s one thing they don’t have, and that’s a spare wheel. I take a look at the key ring the dad gave me but, unsurprisingly, the keys he gave me for the Volvo were Volvo keys. There weren’t any keys that would fit on the Mazda on the key ring.
‘Do you know where the keys are?’ I asked the boy.
‘Yeah,’ he said, and sprinted off. Two seconds later, he came running back out of the house, clutching a set of keys.
I opened the MX-5’s boot. There were a couple of holdalls in there, but they were empty. I was pissed off with the kid – lying about a gun in your father’s car? In my head, I was already formulating the stern ‘talking to’ I was going to give him; already envisioning the grovelling I would have to do to the dad after arresting him for no reason whatsoever. Images of formal complaints, and of me having to explain myself to the borough commander, flickered through my brain.
>
This was going to be a long day.
On a whim, partly to buy time before apologising to the Dad, I lifted up the floor carpet … and I noticed something. The whole carpet in the boot was raised up on a block of carefully cut Styrofoam. It was incredibly well done, and the minor alteration to the car boot raised the boot floor by just an inch or so. It was nearly invisible. The Styrofoam was clad in a thin layer of fabric, and there was a hole cut in the material. I could see a small loop of material, so I carefully manipulated it with the tip of my biro, lifting it up, ever so slowly.
Bingo. There was a gun in there. A Glock, perhaps? I didn’t know for certain – I’m not great with firearms.
I pushed the flap shut with the tip of my pen, moved the floor carpet back into place and closed the boot, locking the car up carefully. I walked over to the father, and gave a nod to Belinda.
‘It’s a gun,’ I said. She arrested him for possession, and I got on the radio.
‘Mike Delta receiving five-nine-two,’ I transmitted.
‘Five-nine-two, go ahead.’
‘I’m going to need Trojan assistance. We found a gun in the boot of a car,’ I said.
‘Oh, and could you send a van on the hurry-up, please, I don’t know if anyone is watching us. We’ve also got a kid we’re going to have to take into custody.’
Every damn time I complain – even if it’s just in my head – that a shift is too quiet, something ridiculous happens.
I suppose this is why we generally use the acronym QT – in order to avoid saying ‘Quiet Time’.
In this instance, we were on the scene for another ten hours.
My colleagues returned to the nick13, taking with them the father and son duo, along with a further five officers who had to come out to do a section 18 search of the dad’s house. We found another two handguns, a rifle, a small amount of class-A drugs and a sizeable stash of ammunition for the weapons in the house. We also found another handgun carefully taped under the passenger seat, in another hollow cut into the upholstery of the MX-5. It turned out that the dad wasn’t an active gang member, but that the local gangs used him as a handler, to make sure their guns weren’t found during raids on the houses of known gang members.