If you were caught with your arms folded even for a second you were ordered to “Give me ten!” by one of the PT instructors, meaning you then had to get down onto the floor and perform ten press-ups. If you let out a ‘tut’ or showed any dissent whatsoever it then became “Give me twenty!” Having done this once I rose to my feet and found my arms ached so much I instinctively folded them again, thereby inviting a further twenty press-ups as punishment. I tutted out loud at my own stupidity and I was then given another twenty. By the time I’d finished I felt utterly exhausted and didn’t know what to do with my arms.
We were sometimes ordered to crawl across the full length of the hardwood gym floor using our elbows to haul ourselves along, which was as excruciating as it was pointless. There was a wall at one side of the gym about seven feet high to a viewing gallery, and quite at random we were frequently ordered to run straight at it and climb over. It wasn’t easy, but we all managed it, eventually. Anyone who struggled even briefly was mercilessly derided by the instructors and named ‘Chris Bonnington’, which was the name of a famous British mountain climber at the time.
In the cross-country runs I usually did well, and on one occasion I finished in second place in the whole course. It seemed my lungs were recovering from the effects of five years’ smoking. We sometimes played softball on a playing field near Dishforth’s runway. On rare days of fine weather, Jet Provost aircraft would repeatedly perform ‘circuits and bumps’, and my mind would wander to the pilots inside the aircraft: numerous safety checks, shouts of “More power!” and “Pull back gently on the stick!” and so on, then back to the officers’ mess for tea and biccies.
Our final practical test involved one of the largest male sergeants pretending to be drunk, wandering around the streets of Dishforth in jeans and a football shirt, complete with a glass bottle in one hand, singing away loudly, occasionally shouting obscenities. I was chosen to sort this person out. I tried verbal reasoning and was promptly told to “Fuck off” several times. I grabbed one of his arms and immediately found that he was as immovable as a tree. He was deliberately blocking my attempts at putting a wrist lock or arm entanglement on him, or even a bum’s rush. His limbs were rigid and I wondered whether a man as drunk as this would have all his faculties about him as he did. I swung from his arm like a rag doll, and made no progress in suppressing him at all. It didn’t occur to me to remove the wooden stick from inside my right trouser leg and hit him with it, or to trip him and push him to the floor. He was a colleague after all, and he was only acting. Maybe if he’d hit me and caused me to feel some pain then I could have handled it better. It was just not in my nature to be violent, even less to be able to turn it on at will. Until that moment I could count on one hand just how many times in my life I’d seriously lost my temper.
After about five minutes a truce was called and it was declared a draw. I felt embarrassed that I’d not subdued the man and handcuffed him. But he didn’t get away, no-one was hurt, and so it was a satisfactory conclusion of sorts. From that moment on I wondered what would happen when I inevitably faced the same scenario in the real world.
After the tenth week it seemed I might make it to the end of the course after all, so I felt able to risk a bank loan. I bought my first car. I wanted a brand new car, but I didn’t want to pay too much for it, so I bought a Citroen 2CV. It was £3,400, and was called a Beachcomber. It was white with two wavy blue lines running over the top from front to back, like D-Day invasion stripes. It looked like a massive blob of toothpaste, and it appeared very gay indeed, in both senses of the word. I drove to Dishforth for the last three weeks in my little car, which had a top speed of 72mph, downhill, with a favourable wind. It was fun to drive, and it was different. I didn’t want an old Ford Cortina, and I wasn’t bothered about speed. Tall Dave sat in it with a bemused expression on his face, and trying to be polite said: “Well, at least it smells like a new car.”
The night before graduation we had an end of course fancy dress party in The Packhorse Club. I went as The Riddler from the Batman television series. I’d often commented to my classmates that I found many of the exam questions unnecessarily complex, more like riddles, hence the attire. That night the discipline was relaxed, and we were allowed to address the sergeants by their first names. We all stood together on the dance floor with linked arms singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, encouraged by the instructors. There was a palpable sense of camaraderie between us.
As a result of all the choreographed fighting in the gym I was surprised to find out that we’d qualified as orange belts in Jujitsu. I thought it had all just been a lot of sweaty wrestling sessions and had no idea it was for a formal qualification. We’d also gained recognised qualifications in First Aid and Life Saving, from the hours we spent partially drowning one another in Thirsk baths.
On Friday the 8th June my parents witnessed me marching smartly across the parade square at RAF Dishforth with the rest of the sixty-six males and sixteen females of Course 2/84. Luckily the day was fine and dry, with cotton wool clumps of fair-weather cumulus floating by on a warm summer breeze. It was a proud moment. I had transformed myself from an unemployed travelling vagrant into a police officer. We all felt very professional, disciplined and extremely proud to be wearing the uniform. But I still didn’t feel like a copper, and I didn’t really know what it was like to be one either.
The following Monday I started another two weeks at Epperstone Manor, on a residential Local Procedure Course, in the company of the ten candidates I’d started with. We familiarised ourselves with the forms used by Nottinghamshire Constabulary and their methods of policing: crime reports, prosecution papers, road accident forms, property handling forms and so on. Each of the forty-three forces in England and Wales had their own unique methods at that time as there was little or no national or even regional standardisation. A crime file consisted of a pink front, synopsis, witness statement(s), contemporaneous interview notes, exhibits and a list of the offender’s convictions in full for the court to examine. It was years before the national standardised MG series.
Near the car park of the old manor there was a small open-air swimming pool. It was clean and ready for use but it was unheated. We celebrated the end of the course by jumping in. This was a tradition, apparently. I was very glad it was summer!
We were given just over a week off and our start date in the real world was Monday 2nd July. I’d grown up in Sheffield, and it was an accident of geography that caused me to join the police in Nottinghamshire. I imagined I’d be given a pedal cycle and told to ride around the small market town of Retford and the quiet leafy lanes of the surrounding villages where my parents lived. But the postings list revealed I was being sent to inner-city Nottingham, a place called Hyson Green. I didn’t know the area, and the name made it sound lovely. I had absolutely no idea what was coming.
POSTING
GREGORY BOULEVARD
I needed somewhere to live close to my workplace. Hyson Green was a forty-five minute drive from my parents’ house in north Nottinghamshire. I drove into Nottingham and bought an A to Z map from a newsagent. I was shocked when I saw the area for the first time. It didn’t look anything like the quiet villages around Retford. Adjacent to Hyson Green was a suburb called Forest Fields, which also sounded lovely, so I drove there to take a look. I found dark rows of Victorian red-brick terraced houses adjacent to an open space of green called The Forest. This was a large playing field rising up on one side, some of which was covered in mature deciduous trees. Part of the flat area was the site of the annual Goose Fair. I bought a local paper, the Nottingham Evening Post and scanned the property section.
The first flat I visited was the one I moved into. It was a self-contained rooftop bedsit above a large private house in the Mapperley Park area of Nottingham. It was close to Hyson Green but still a discreet distance away. A huge churchy door in a high wall off the main road led up a winding path through a dense garden to the house. On the left was the door t
o my flat, up a steep staircase that was entirely separate from the rest of the house. The family were clearly quite wealthy and seemed pleased a young policeman was interested in their flat. We liked one another immediately and after fifteen minutes of discussion I was offered an initial six month lease. All I needed then was permission from my employers.
My official posting was given as ‘Radford Road’. I had no idea at the time why I’d been sent to an inner-city station, when many of my training school colleagues had been sent to rural or semi-rural locations. Perhaps it was my darkskinned recruitment photograph and the bizarre way the police even today put ethnic minority officers in similar areas. I decided to find the police station and introduce myself in advance of the actual day I was due to start.
I found Radford Road but as I drove along the full length of it, probably just over a mile, I couldn’t find anything that looked like a police station. There was a large square building in the final stages of construction on a corner looking very much like a fortress, but there wasn’t a blue lamp outside or any other indication as to what it was. I pulled in to a petrol station near some gasworks and asked the large sweaty man behind the counter, who replied:
“You mean the cop shop on Gregory Boulevard. The new one’s not open yet. Go to the end and turn left at the lights. Good luck, you’ll fuckin’ need it!”
I drove slowly along Gregory Boulevard and found a small sectional concrete building near a tall block of flats. I saw the word ‘Police’ in small letters on the wall. Part of the sign was missing and the remainder was covered in thick layers of accumulated dirt. There was nowhere to park at the front so I drove around the back. Everything at ground level was covered in graffiti.
I found parking for less than a dozen cars but I managed to squeeze my narrow 2CV into an area that was probably not a designated space. The shabby two-storey police station was tightly sandwiched between other similar buildings, and rubbish was strewn about everywhere. The smell of my new car was replaced by an unpleasant mix of traffic fumes, fried food, cigarettes and decay. I opened the back door of the building using my brand new police key and stepped inside.
All was quiet, and as far as I could work out, there were only two people on the ground floor; a woman in civilian clothes seated at a desk near the public counter and a uniformed sergeant probably in his late thirties in a small office. Both were busy with typewriters and the sergeant’s one-fingered tapping came to a stop when I stuck my head around the corner. I introduced myself to them both and we shook hands. Joan smiled and seemed really nice and the sergeant then suggested we go up to the canteen and make tea.
I followed him up the creaking wooden stairs; the linoleum was filthy and worn out, in common with the rest of the building. I was led into a small kitchenette area which had only two round tables and half a dozen chairs. At the sink, the sergeant turned on the tap.
“We’re moving out soon. Two weeks actually. Down the road to the new building. Have you seen it? The CID are already there.”
“Yes, I have, I think so,” I said, remembering the square fortress I’d seen near the petrol station. “Is it the new building on the corner?” I asked as he switched on the kettle.
“Yeah, that’s it. It’ll be great to get away from this shithole. The local fuckin’ snaffs never leave us alone here. Every time you leave your car it gets damaged. We had bricks and bottles chucked over the other day. They really fuckin’ hate us. Still, you’ll probably be based up at Broxtowe, not round here.”
I hadn’t a clue what he was saying. Something about cars getting damaged. His candour shocked me. I glanced out the window at my 2CV. The sergeant filled two mugs just as his blue Burndept radio crackled loudly with some urgent shouting.
“Sorry, I’ve got to go, there’s just been a till snatch up the road. Help yourself to tea, there’s milk in the fridge, there...” and he ran out of the room thudding down the stairs as though taking four at a time. Looking out the back window I saw him in the driver’s seat of a panda car, revving the engine and shouting into his radio. The car was a pale blue Vauxhall Chevette with white doors and a rectangular box on the roof with POLICE written on it. A dim blue lamp on top started rotating slowly as he drove away with loud screeching from the tyres. There was no siren of any sort, not even a two-tone.
I finished making tea and wandered through an empty upstairs towards the front of the building. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the station. I stood at the window overlooking the busy road. This wasn’t RAF Dishforth where drivers freely admit they didn’t have a driving licence or they were too drunk to get out of their cars. I wasn’t sure I was prepared for it. It occurred to me that there was a huge gap between the pretend and the real world. Not only that, what the bloody hell was a ‘snaff’?
I moved into my bedsit flat in late June after being granted initial permission. The inspector still had to visit in order to give formal confirmation the address was suitable for a police officer. My first day at Gregory Boulevard police station soon followed. I arrived at 7.30am for an 8am – 4pm day shift. I found the building in an opposite state to my first visit; empty of furniture, but with plenty of staff. There was a tense atmosphere similar to that created by a hastily retreating army. Boxes were being emptied and police officers were tearing up sheets of paper and stuffing them into large bags. It all seemed very chaotic. It might have been easier to have simply set fire to everything, as other retreating armies did.
I was to be assigned a tutor constable who would be my guide for several weeks. Until this period of tutorship was completed I was not expected to venture out on my own. He wasn’t at work that day, so I was asked to help move furniture. The inspector spoke to me briefly and introduced himself. He asked about my new address and I arranged for him to visit the next day so that he could inspect it. I helped carry some large grey cabinets into a police van and made more tea.
I was then taken to the new station almost a mile away on Radford Road. It was a superb new building compared to the one we were leaving, which had long-since become unfit for purpose. There were plush new carpets, bright walls, shiny fire doors and new furniture in most of the rooms. It was enormous and seemed entirely self-contained. There was a huge canteen and bar area on the top floor, and in the basement a complex of corridors with male and female cells. Workmen were still wandering around the building, tools in hand, carrying miscellaneous bits of apparel yet to be fixed in somewhere. It was an exciting, busy time. I spent the day carrying things about, and at 4pm my shift was over.
That evening after work I decided I needed to familiarise myself with Nottingham. People would be asking me directions, and at the time I hadn’t a clue. I drove my 2CV into Hyson Green, parked outside an off-licence and bought four cans of Australian Castlemaine XXXX from a convivial Sikh proprietor. I put the beer on the front seat next to me and drove around the city, trying to remember street names, an open can wedged between my legs.
After a while I fled to the outer suburbs. I found some beautiful rolling countryside on the north eastern edge of the city, hills that reminded me of Sheffield. I put on Roger Waters’ new album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, and drank as I drove around. Memories of hitchhiking around Australia were in my mind, and I felt uneasy about what I was doing in the police. I remembered my brother-in-law’s words about leaving anytime, and I thought I might. I needed to give it some time though, but how much? The job was fine so far, but I hadn’t done anything yet.
The inspector from Radford Road appeared at my door the next evening. He stayed less than five minutes. He seemed impressed with the flat, despite its modest size. It was in a quiet location, with a private balcony at the top of the house and this was impressive in itself, high amongst the tall trees surrounding the house. This was probably one of the reasons why the rent was so high, at £145 a month. It was a lot considering my salary at the time was less than £400 a month.
I spent a few days at Gregory Boulevard before it was abandoned. The enquir
y counter had been almost constantly busy with what I could only describe as socially challenged locals, referred to by colleagues as ‘snaffs’. “There’s another fucking snaff at the counter...” was the usual comment. Or “I just dealt with this cunt, what a complete fuckin’ snaff he was...” and so on. It seemed the hatred reserved for us by the public was entirely mutual. I asked what ‘snaff’ meant and was told it was Sub Normal and Fucking Useless, a derivative of the Royal Navy expression SNAFU, meaning the same, or similar.
The location of the old police station and the frequency of visitors day and night created a claustrophobic atmosphere as though it was under siege. Joan seemed to be the only female enquiry clerk who worked there, and she was constantly busy. As I shifted furniture around I saw Joan seeing off some particularly unfriendly locals with the help of Jimmy, an amiable red-faced police officer. Jimmy sold me a black leather pocket-book cover for £5 he’d made himself, which amazingly I used right up to my last day in the job. Jimmy and Joan were polite but firm with the customers, if a little sarcastic, but I don’t think the visitors ever realised this. If you remain calm and polite, it seems a lot of thick people don’t realise you are taking the piss.
The biggest problem the locals had at that time was the loss or theft of their social security cheques, known as giros. They knew that if they could acquire a crime number from the police the social security office would then give them a replacement; hence the near constant queues at the police station. Crime numbers were readily issued in order to get rid of them as quickly as possible, even though fraud was suspected in many cases. Nobody seemed to care about crime rates, nationally or individually. There were no league tables or media comparisons with other forces, so the main concern for cops was simply getting through the shift in order to go home.
Housing, neighbourhood and welfare issues were dealt with at the police station too; lots of problems that were frankly nothing to do with the police. No-one else seemed interested, and the police couldn’t escape by shutting their doors at 5pm like other agencies. There were some dire social problems in the area, originating mainly from an enormous 1970s flats complex behind the old station linked together by suspended concrete walkways. It looked incredibly depressing and seemed to be inhabited almost entirely by snaffs and criminals.
Who'd Be a Copper? Page 6