The Laughing Policeman: My Brilliant Career in the New Zealand Police

by Glenn Wood

  However, Sergeant Edwards was unhappy with the section’s results in general. He was grumpy and sulky when he passed out our paper, saying he thought we could have done better. He wanted us to be the top section but we fell somewhere in the middle. The majority of us had passed, so I think he was being a bit unfair, but it still took him a couple of periods to accept we weren’t the geniuses he wanted us to be.

  Three of the cadets had failed the exams and were asked to leave Trentham, their careers over before they had started. Others who failed were given a reprieve through the chief inspector’s discretionary power, as it was felt they could improve enough to pass the second and final exams. The cadet’s attitude, popularity and physical accomplishments were taken into account when this decision was made, and these candidates were aware they were on borrowed time.

  It was hard on everyone when a cadet was dismissed from training. For three months these guys had been our friends, our room-mates and people with whom we’d shared the rigours of training with. It reminded us of our own vulnerability.

  Those of us that were left had earned a break. We’d survived the first term and had just one more task to perform before we received a week’s leave. It was an assignment we were looking forward to - station duty. For three whole weeks we were going to be (almost) real cops. The idea was to send us back to our home towns to work under the supervision of the local police.

  This was well cool. We’d be wearing our uniforms for the first time in public and although we had no actual power of arrest we would be in the real world, protecting and serving with the best of them.

  The only way Joe Public would be able to tell we weren’t real cops would be by our hats, which had a plain white band instead of a chequered band. A removable white band, though it would be a brave and probably unemployed cadet who would take it off. We also had the word ‘CADET’ emblazoned on our shirt epaulettes instead of a number but it was hard to see and invisible if you were wearing your jacket. Besides the public never looks closely at cops, all they see is a uniform. And they seldom question if the person telling them what to do actually has that right.

  The next day Goose and I were on the bus home. Great, another six hours of Bob Marley. Tragically Trentham hadn’t shaken Goose’s Rastafarian faith. If anything he’d got worse and was often heard muttering about growing dreadlocks when training was over. He certainly had no chance of that at Trentham. If your hair even looked like growing, the clippers came out. This was a bit of a shock for me, as prior to Trentham I’d been sporting a rather fetching afro hairstyle. Well, I thought it was stylish; my wife informs me it looked gormless. I remain unconvinced as I was considered something of a style guru in my younger days.

  Mum and Dad were pleased to see me (they had to be, I was their son). Dad had hidden his illegal booze and Mum fussed around cooking things for me. This was actually a good idea because the police had made the classic mistake of letting us select our own meals, buffet style. This meant no-one was around to make me eat vegetables, so I didn’t. For the past three months I’d eaten nothing but roast meat, potatoes, bread and gravy. Occasionally, very occasionally, I would make a small sacrifice for health and include a tiny spoonful of peas, but that was it. For lunch I’d create my own masterpiece, the pie sandwich. This culinary delight involves placing a large meat pie between two slices of bread, adding tomato sauce, and then chowing down. It was a treat. I spent the entire year vege-free (except for when Mum got hold of me), and boy did I pay for it later.

  On my first night at home my parents invited all our relatives around to show me off, which meant parading around in my uniform while they all went ‘Ohhh doesn’t he look handsome.’

  Worse was to come. The next day the Taranaki Herald came to the police station to take photographs of myself and Goose. They had decided to do a story on our station duty. It made the front page (not a lot happens in New Plymouth), which meant for the next three weeks all my friends also went ‘Ohhh doesn’t he look handsome,’ but not with the same sincerity.

  Actually it was quite a buzz being in the paper and even more of a thrill walking around town in uniform. I felt important and it was interesting bumping into people who had seen me just the year before as a loser second-year sixth schoolboy. Now I was a cop. Suddenly they perceived me differently. I now had the power to deprive them of their liberty if they pissed me off (I couldn’t of course but they didn’t know that).

  It was a weird feeling being out on patrol for the first time - exciting but kind of scary too. We didn’t attend any major incidents in my first week, just routine burglaries, drunk and disorderlies, car thefts, suspicious persons, that kind of thing, but I found it fascinating to be putting what we had learnt in Trentham into practice.

  On the other hand, the New Plymouth cops found it annoying. If I was to point out, for example, that the correct procedure for dealing with a young offender caught shoplifting was to take the suspect into custody, fill out a notification form 333 and place him in the care of a youth aid officer - rather than giving him a clip around the ear and phoning his Mum - then the local boys got a bit narky. But they were generally pretty good. They could see that Goose and I were full of youthful exuberance and were doing our best to make a good impression.

  New Plymouth isn’t the wildest of towns and it wasn’t until the end of the second week that I was involved in an incident that bought home the realities of the job. I was working a late shift in the I Car (incident car - first called to all major events).

  It had been a quiet shift and we were just about to break for dinner when we were called back to the station. There had been an accident on Mt Egmont (this was before it became Mt Taranaki). We were briefed on the situation and directed to New Plymouth Base Hospital to await further developments. It seemed two young climbers had got caught in a blizzard and one had stumbled over a bluff falling about 50 metres. His condition was not known, but because of the length of the fall and the rocky area he had fallen into it didn’t sound good. Search and Rescue were on the scene and would be either attempting to save the climber or retrieving his body, depending on what they found. We were to stand by at the hospital and help out where we could. After about an hour we received the call that a body had been found and was being flown back to the hospital mortuary. We were to wait there and receive the corpse.

  I was dreading it. I had never seen a dead body before and had no idea what to expect. I’d heard the other cadet’s mortuary visit stories but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to experience. We arrived about five minutes before the body did and a big silver table was being scrubbed down in preparation. A doctor and two nurses were dealing with the sterilisation of the equipment, but they weren’t very chatty and got on with their work, almost completely ignoring us.

  The doctor’s job was to confirm that the victim was dead and the nurses were to assist in cleaning up the body. Our job was to take possession of any valuables that may be still on the corpse and then find out who he was and get the body ready for identification by his relatives. Thankfully we wouldn’t be breaking the sad news to his family, which, in my opinion, is the worst job in the police.

  The cop I was with was one of the older guys and he was winding me up, though in a good-natured sort of way. I think he could tell how nervous I’d become and was trying to make light of the situation. Humour seems to be the most common method cops use to deal with death. When I first saw police joking around a body, it seemed ghoulish and insensitive, but after a while I realised it was a coping mechanism that allowed them to do their job without any lasting psychological damage. As soon as a corpse becomes personalised it immediately forces you to deal with the fact that it is someone’s son or daughter, mother or father, brother or sister, friend or lover and it’s human nature to delay that moment for as long as possible.

  My time had finally arrived and without warning the body was wheeled through the mortuary doors on a battered old hospital trolley. The corpse was contained in a la
rge canvas body bag, which had been packed in at the accident site. The body bag was in very poor condition - it was dripping wet from the ice and snow and stained and bloody. I didn’t want to go anywhere near it. This wasn’t an option and I was called over to help unzip the bag, remove the corpse and move it onto the newly scrubbed trolley. I held the bag firmly as the other cop unzipped it. The first thing I saw was a ragged hole in the middle of the victim’s forehead. His skull had been smashed open and the pulped interior of the brain was exposed. It was a gory sight and I felt horrified, but at no stage did I feel like fainting or vomiting.

  As we stripped the body and cleaned it up, the thing that upset me the most was the man’s age and the lack of other injuries. He was a fit and healthy man in his mid-twenties – not much older than me, and he could easily have been one of my mate’s older brothers. I didn’t know him, but that didn’t make his death any easier to take. There were a few bruises on his legs but from the bridge of the nose downwards he was in almost perfect condition.

  The huge hole just above his eyebrows left no question as to how he died. He must have taken the full impact of the fall on that one spot, in the centre of his forehead. Perhaps he fell on a rock - I don’t know, but whatever happened he wouldn’t have felt a thing. Death would have been instantaneous and at least that was a blessing.

  The hardest job was trying to make the body look presentable for identification. A great deal of care went into displaying it in the most sympathetic way. The nurses cleaned the edges of the wound and we warmed up the body so it wouldn’t look so blue and cold but there was very little we could do to hide the hole in the dead man’s head. In the end we covered the top of his skull with a sheet so his relatives would only see him from the eyes down.

  The police may be insensitive bastards behind the scenes but I’ve never seen any cop be anything less than professional, understanding and supportive, when dealing with a bereaved family.

  I was present when the boy’s father identified the body and it was one of the saddest moments of my life. He didn’t break down or cry; he simply nodded his head and walked away. Not in an uncaring way - the devastation he was feeling was painful to witness – I think he was just overwhelmed by the hopelessness of the situation. There was no doubt it was his son and he was clearly dead. It was cruel and final.

  After he had left I felt completely and utterly drained. I hadn’t cried and wouldn’t allow myself to. This was my job from now on and I knew that I would either deal with these situations or they would destroy me.

  At the end of the night the senior officer back at the station took me aside and told me I’d handled myself well. It was good of him to say so and I appreciated it, but somehow his praise fell flat. I just wanted to go home.

  Goose heard about my experience the next day and was keen to know all the details. Suddenly I had an edge. I was the most experienced cadet of the two of us as I’d handled a death. I played down the incident and made out I’d just been a bystander, which was close to the truth. Back in Trentham however, the story would grow to include me flying the rescue helicopter in gale force winds while steering with my teeth then winching the body off the mountain single handed.

  For his part Goose had been in a fight and witnessed a couple of arrests. By the end of the second week I’d say we were even on the ‘who’d had the best station duty’ stakes. I edged ahead in the third week by getting my photo in the newspaper again. Goose was well pissed off. It happened like this.

  Two days before going on leave, my shift decided to have an Armed Offenders exercise. All they needed now was an armed offender. Guess who?

  I was rapt. They drove me to a deserted farmhouse, gave me a rifle plus heaps of rounds of blank ammunition and told me to shoot anything that moved. This was more like it. I was armed and dangerous. They waited until we arrived before telling me that three squads of highly trained killers and two tracker dogs would be sent after me. Foolishly unfazed, I set about barricading myself in the house, determined to go out in a blaze of glory.

  The layout of the farm was as follows. The main house had two bedrooms looking out onto paddocks at the front of the section. The land was scrubby, but there was bugger all cover out that way, so I ruled it out as a possible attack point. The lounge area looked towards the east, which again was surrounded by paddocks, though there was a hedge and a few trees, making it a more attractive proposition for attack. I pinpointed this as the most likely line of approach for the squad. To the rear was the toilet and laundry then, about twenty metres away, was a tin garage and a woolshed. My plan was that after I’d blown away a squad or two, I would make my escape into the barn, then blast my way out the side window into the bush beyond. Then I’d live on the lam for a few weeks before finally making it over the border to Mexico.

  On the west side of the house was the kitchen. It looked directly onto several large piles of firewood and general rubbish, just beyond that was a huge gully with a roaring river in the middle. There was no way anyone was going to approach from that direction.

  My plan for the first half hour was simple: I’d run from room to room looking out all the windows until I spotted something, then I’d shoot it.

  I didn’t have to wait long. I saw a couple of guys moving behind the trees so I fired several rounds out the lounge window. It would have been impossible to hit them from that distance but I wanted them to know they’d been seen. As soon as the shots were fired the figures hit the ground and disappeared. Jeez they moved fast. I watched the spot where they had dropped for about five minutes but couldn’t see a thing. I had no idea where they’d gone and it made me jittery.

  They’d moved up to the trees pretty quickly so maybe they were coming in from other areas as well. I ran around every window straining my eyes for movement. I was now utterly in the role of the crazed offender trapped by the pigs in his own house with nowhere to run. My adrenalin was pumping and I was determined to take out as many of them as I could. It was frightening now to think how quickly it became a ‘them or me’ scenario. I shudder to think what it must be like in a real siege situation.

  I moved out the back for a quick look around in the yard, just to make sure my escape route was still clear. As I stepped onto the rear steps a dog handler appeared at the corner of the garage. I fired two quick shots and retreated into the house.

  How the hell had he got so close so fast? And where was the rest of his squad? Shit, if he was around that side of the garage they’d cut off my escape route, unless I ran for it. No - that must be where the rest of the squad were, in the barn. Goddamn it.

  My head was spinning. Where had they come from? I’d been watching that side of the house like a hawk! I couldn’t think. I ran to the lounge window and fired at shadows. Suddenly I had an overwhelming desire to get out of the house. I was trapped like a fart in a sleeping bag.

  I knew it was only a matter of time before they stormed the place so I decided to fool them. I’d duck out the side door, hide behind the wood pile and shoot them through the kitchen window from the outside. They’d never expect that. Then, once confusion reigned, I’d escape down the gully and take my chances in the river. Brilliant.

  I must have exited through the side door just as they stormed the back of the house because seconds after I hit the woodpile I saw a couple of cops appear at the kitchen window. Holy Crap they’d moved fast. I was blown away by how efficiently they’d taken the place. But I think they were expecting a firefight inside the house and were looking a bit confused at the lack of shooting.

  ‘Right,’ I thought, ‘I’ll fix that,’ and I opened fire at the coppers in the window. They got a hell of a shock, but nowhere near the fright I got when I rolled on my back to reload and stared straight down the barrel of a very large rifle.

  ‘Drop it, yelled the person holding the gun.

  I damn near shat myself as another fifteen guys with rifles appeared and pointed the guns at my head. I dropped my weapon immediately, all thoughts of going out in a
blaze of glory evaporating.

  At this point I expected the Armed Offenders guys to say ‘Okay gottcha, well done lads’ and we’d all have a jolly good laugh. No way, this was serious stuff and as the squad leader covered me one of the other guys ran at me and pushed me roughly onto the ground. I felt handcuffs being slapped on my wrists and before I knew it I was being searched. As they held me on the ground the two dog handlers came over and let their dogs have a go at scaring me to death. Both Alsatians were straining at their leads, trying to take a chunk of me while their handlers held their jaws just out of biting distance. Apparently this was making a very good photo (such a relief that my absolute terror wasn’t for nothing).

  After they’d roughed me up for a while the squad leader kicked me onto my back and said ‘Okay, set the dogs on him.’ My heart stopped. Then I heard him laugh and someone took my cuffs off. After that we were best of mates (so I wouldn’t sue) and we started the debriefing.

  It was one of the shortest exercises they had ever had. Normally the offender barricades himself in the house and they have to smoke him out. They were disappointed that they didn’t get to gas me but what the hell, there was always next time.

  Apparently the uncrossable gully wasn’t, and a squad of Armed Offenders had traversed it to surround the house from the west. My best escape route, it seems, would have been the barn as they hadn’t been able to cover it by the time I left the house. Typical isn’t it - if I’d stuck to my original plan I’d have been drinking Margarita’s somewhere over the border instead of lying face down in the dust covered in dog spit.

  The next question was the most important – ‘how many cops had I shot?’ I said I would definitely have plugged the dog handler (which brought about much hilarity as apparently he gets shot on every exercise), and I would probably have taken out the two cops in the window as well. They nodded soberly and wrote a new page in their operations manual entitled ‘What to do when faced with an offender who has never had a logical thought in his life.’