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

by Glenn Wood

  I grabbed the crazy woman’s wrist and twisted the syringe away from her. She screamed with frustration. For a small woman she was incredibly strong and it took all my strength to get the needle out of her hand. I gave the syringe to the nurse, who wasted no time in sticking it into the patient’s arm. About five minutes later the woman had calmed down and was lying strapped to the bed with a glazed look in her eyes.

  I apologised straight away to the nurse for relaxing my grip and she was very nice about it, saying it was a trick the patients often used. They would lull you into a false sense of security and then they’d strike. She said you got used to it after a while. Not me, I thought: I had no intention of staying in that place one millisecond longer than I had to.

  The rest of the day passed without any more violent outbursts, (unless you count my own after one of the nurses beat me at pool during lunch hour) but it was impossible to relax in the secure unit. The patients watched you like psychotic hawks, just waiting for you to show a signs of weakness they could exploit. A bit like our instructors back in Trentham, come to think of it.

  The next couple of days were spent with the out-patients, voluntary patients who hadn’t been placed under protective care. Some seemed to be just as dangerous as the incarcerated ones, the only difference being they had yet to commit a crime, or be caught committing a crime.

  I saw a lot of genuinely sad cases as well. People whose lives had been ruined through depression, and sane, rational folk, who had just been worn down by day-to-day life. I can’t say I enjoyed community service at the mental institution, but I certainly learnt a lot.

  Next up was driving school. I was dreading this. I had already proved my abilities behind the wheel needed work so why drag me through the humiliation of cocking it up in public?

  A and B section had already done driving school and by all accounts it was really hard. Wayne had caused a sensation by being the first cadet in the wing to have a smash. He hit a bus - or claimed the bus hit him. I found highly amusing. If you remember, Wayne was the extremely tidy one, and his driving was just like his housekeeping, methodical and error-free.

  It was one of life’s great ironies that Mr Perfect was the only cadet to have a crash, and one I milked for all it was worth. I wasn’t the only one either. Wayne got a new nickname - TY - after the code number on the form a police officer has to fill out when he damages a car on duty. His smash also took the heat off my anticipated disasters, for a while anyway.

  The driving instructors were even more sadistic and sarcastic than our other instructors, unbelievable as that may seem. My first time driving with one of these guys was an extremely nerve-racking experience, especially after they discovered I’d only had my driver’s license for six months. They treated me like a complete novice, showing me where to put the key and which way to turn it (I had some ideas on where I would like to have stuck the key but kept them to myself.)

  It started spitting with rain halfway through my first drive and after 5 minutes I noticed my instructor had moved very close to the windscreen and was peering out of it. I took the hint and activated the windscreen wipers. As the blade passed in front of his face my instructor suddenly leapt back yelling, ‘The road! The road! There it is!’ Sarcastic bastard.

  That set the tone for the rest of driving school - even the section’s most experienced drivers were getting a hard time. Our every move was scrutinised and our every mistake leapt upon.

  Despite the barbs and the pressure, we learned a lot. The practical exercises were cool, too. We did a number of interesting driving exercises and reflex tests. One in particular involved a large set of traffic lights and three lanes made out of cones. Instead of having red, orange and green colours in the traffic lights there was an arrow pointing left, an arrow pointing right and the word ‘stop’ lit up in red. The exercise required us to drive towards the lights at a set speed, then react according to which light came on. The instructors delayed illuminating the light until the last possible second. If we went the wrong way or knocked over a cone the instructor tutted and wrote in his book in red ink.

  The three speeds we had to travel at were 30 kilometres an hour, 50 kilometres an hour and 80 kilometres an hour. At 30 I got a left-hand arrow and made it into the lane, knocking over two cones as I turned (a shake of the head and a tut). At 50 I anticipated a right arrow or a stop but got a left arrow and drove into the wrong lane, knocking over two cones (a head shake and the red pen). At 80 they illuminated the stop sign but I didn’t react quickly enough, locked up the brakes and skidded, annihilating five cones and a sand bag (a shake of the head, two tuts and the red pen). Worse was to come.

  Our next driving test was held at Manfield racetrack which had been hired for the day. Not content with sending novices onto a professional racing circuit, our driving instructors made the track harder by putting cones around the course. They used them to cut down the angles on the corners and placed two cones close together in the middle of the back straight, expecting us to drive between them at top speed without knocking them over. A generous 12 centimetres had been allowed on either side. At the end of the straight was a vicious right-hander, leading into a series of S-bends. To make the hairpin corner even tougher they placed cones on the front right of the bend, narrowing the angle and making the course’s most difficult corner virtually impossible.

  One unexpected bonus occurred when we went driving at Manfield. Carey was able to sneak away from teachers’ college for the day and she and two friends joined us at the track. Manfield is located near Palmerston North and it seemed a shame to be so close but yet so far. Naturally I had asked permission for the girls to come along but never dreamt it would actually be granted. It seemed the driving school instructors liked the idea of having a female audience and approval was granted. I decided to take full advantage of having my girl at the track and sauntered over to Carey, gave her a hug and asked the girls to join us at the starting blocks. As I was the only cadet with any female company, my standing in the male ranks went up considerably. Not for long, as it turned out, but for now I was riding high. I had bought not one, but three girls to Manfield for my female-obsessed colleagues to ogle. I was pretty damn cool.

  The instructors thought themselves cooler and asked the girls if they’d like to go for a ride around the track with ‘real’ police drivers after we ‘pretend’ cops had finished. The girls replied coyly that it would be fun and it was all arranged. This sounded dodgy to me but the glimmer of a driving school pass convinced me to keep my mouth shut. Having finished flirting with my girlfriend and her mates (for the time being), our driving school instructors turned their attention back to us.

  We were told to do three laps of the circuit as fast as we could without knocking over any of the cones. Our instructors would be watching us from the control room and would be in touch via the car RT to correct any problems we were having. We drove in alphabetical order and by the time they got to me everyone but Phil had driven. Nearly every driver had knocked over cones but no-one had done much wrong.

  I got through my first lap with no problems at all, even managing to boot it between the cones on the straight without tipping them. The second lap went well too with the instructor saying I was doing okay but that I should brake before the corners rather than into them. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I thought, now completely in control of the vehicle and ready to push it harder in the last lap. The male urge to show off in front of his mate had kicked in and I decided to really go for it. I was confident I could handle both the vehicle and the track. I reckon this weakness in the male psyche has caused more problems than both politics and religion put together.

  Add this to a recurring problem I’ve had in my life - I get something right, I become overconfident and I push it too far – and you have a truly lethal combination. (I still do this by the way. You would have thought that after 50 years of injury and accident I would have learned something). At Manfield, I’d only had 18 years of injury and accident behind me and knew nothin
g.

  I hit the straight at full throttle, cleared the two cones (one wobbling slightly) and approached the tight right-hander, still going flat out. This time I thought I’d feather the brakes in the corner and accelerate out of it. Imagine my surprise when the car left the track and began spinning round and round in the grass. Suddenly I was facing the wrong way on the grass verge, which luckily was quite large.

  The engine had stalled and the only sound I could hear was laughter coming out of the RT. Then I received a message from my instructor: ‘Gonzo, you’re supposed to drive on the other side of the cones.’

  I started the car, reversed off the grass and limped cautiously through the s-bends to the finishing post. Phil came and took the keys, saying nothing but giving me a look of immense sympathy. I was the only cadet out of the entire wing to spin out at Manfield, a fact that every cadet found highly amusing and, as you can imagine, it frequently cropped up in conversation.

  Carey was, of course, hugely supportive, saying she was very impressed at the way I managed to get the car out of the grass without hitting anything else.

  The grins on the faces of her mates were removed soon after. It was time for the instructors to show off their driving skills. Well, one of the instructors anyway. Their chief was an extremely experienced police driver who had done a considerable amount of motor sport racing as well. He was the one who volunteered to give the girls a quick spin around the track. I don’t think Carey and her friends had taken the offer seriously but there was no way they could get out of it now. They hopped nervously into the car, Carey in the front and the other two in the back, then off they went.

  Man, that guy could drive. He burnt rubber at the start, hung the car into the corners and gunned it down the straight without looking even slightly out of control. I caught a glance of the girls as he completed the first lap and had to smile at the panic in their eyes. From trackside the instructor’s driving was bloody impressive; apparently from inside the car it had been terrifying. The girls exited the vehicle white as sheets; all claiming never to have been so scared in their entire lives. The instructor was very pleased with himself. And somehow, next time I saw the girls, I got it in the neck for getting them into such a death-defying situation. I spluttered my innocence but to no avail.

  Only a third of the cadets passed driving school. I wasn’t among them. We were assessed on every aspect of driving, with marks ranging from poor to excellent. Only three excellents were awarded and, in a moment of supreme irony, I received one of them. It was awarded for my outstanding ability in crossing railway lines. The rest of my marks were poor or average. This meant I wasn’t allowed to drive a police car anywhere other than at railway crossings. I suspect someone was taking the piss.

  We were told later that a high failure rate was normal and those of us who failed would re-sit their police license at our station of placement. A license would be issued if we passed the station test, which apparently involved driving around the block without hitting anyone.

  Having just sent us to the loony bin and given us every opportunity to wipe ourselves out in speeding vehicles, our instructors decided it was time to blow us up.

  Yes, explosives were next, as you can imagine, I was very excited. Perhaps now I could discover where I’d gone wrong with the beer-can bazooka and my home-made incendiary devices.

  Before we were told how to make things go bang, we received a stern lecture on the dangers of explosives. We were warned about the severe consequences of playing around with ammunition of any kind. As if.

  I did notice Senior Sergeant Hanley shooting a few looks my way during the lecture - I could only assume he was lining me up as an unofficial leader for the upcoming demonstrations. The more inexperienced cadets would be able to come to me for advice and guidance. Inexplicably, he forgot to spell this out, but still, we were going to blow things up so I got over my disappointment quickly.

  Because the police are not as good as the army at demolishing things, our instructors brought in armed forces explosives experts to show us what to do. In my opinion ‘bomb-blower-upperers’ are gods, so when I first saw the army guys I felt let down. These so-called explosive ‘experts’ had little or no visible scarring and had all their fingers. Surely any bombardier worth his salt would have used too much jelly at some point or stood too close to the blast area. I mean, you are supposed to learn by your mistakes so, in an area like explosives, you’d expect visible collateral damage. I was not an expert and I had inflicted multiple injuries to my person, so it stood to reason that a real pro would be sans limbs. These soldiers were way too unscathed to be real bomb guys.

  Surprisingly, they seemed to know their stuff. They told us about cordite and detonators and time switches and black powder and fuses and dynamite. They even told us what to watch out for if we received a bomb call. They were less forthcoming with actual disarming information. In fact, when I asked them which wire I should cut when faced with a ticking bomb, they said that I shouldn’t be cutting anything and should be calling the bomb squad instead. Undeterred, I suggested the credible scenario of the bomb squad van crashing on its way to the site and there only being 2 minutes left in which to defuse the device and save the city. They told me if this happened I should use the eenie, meenie, minee, moe method.

  The lectures were cool and I was dying to get on with the actual blowing up stuff, which we’d be doing the next day. We were driven out to the army bomb site early the next morning and were told to line up around a roped-off area. Inside the ropes were all sorts of exciting things, all primed to be blown to smithereens.

  The demonstrations got under way immediately. First were the small bangs as we were shown how detonators worked. I was amazed at the power of these tiny explosive devices - they did enough damage by themselves so it was scary to think what they could do when attached to a decent-sized bomb.

  Next we were shown the blast from a single stick of dynamite (big and loud), then a coil of cordex was bought out. The cordex rope looked like an ordinary wire but was highly explosive. As we were having its properties explained, the world’s stupidest duck flapped down from the sky and sat on the wire. The instructor, literally seconds away from detonation, wondered why his audience had suddenly burst out laughing. The hilarity was followed by cruel but funny cries of ‘blow up the duck!’ The instructor took pity on the dumb creature and shooed it away. Once the duck was safely clear he pushed the detonator. The cordex rope went up with a bright flash and a kurrump noise. It was most impressive. That duck never knew just how close he came to becoming an entree.

  After the explosion our instructor proved he was less sympathetic to humans. He told us if you wrapped a strand of the cordex around someone’s neck then detonated it, it would blow the head clean off the body. Then he cackled. I wasn’t alone in finding this a little scary.

  The blasts got bigger and louder as a fascinating array of explosives were detonated. We were hoping the grand finale would be a car being blown up, as we’d been told that had happened the year before, but it was not to be. They’d detonated one a few weeks earlier and a soldier had been injured by a flying tyre. This made them gun shy, so to speak. Instead they’d dug a 10-metre hole in the ground, packed it with high explosives and then filled it with water.

  We were moved around to the far side of the rope and told to watch the hole.

  So intent were we on not missing the blast that we failed to notice our instructors sneaking off to the other side of the rope. The miserable sods were planning to soak us with the lake of water that was about to be blasted into the air.

  That day fate was on the side of the cadets: the wind changed just before the explosives were detonated. There was a huge boom and the ground beneath our feet shook. A single column of water blew straight up in the air to a height of about 10 metres, then, to our great delight, cascaded down upon our instructors.

  They had their revenge later in the day during an Armed Offenders Squad demonstration. We were shown a number of
tactics used by the AOS, which I found very interesting given my recent experience as an armed offender. The squad worked brilliantly as a team and were very skilled. It made me realise how well I’d done to have shot a couple of AOS members during the exercise in New Plymouth. These guys really knew their stuff. They moved like ghosts and if you were lucky enough to see them moving then they also had you in their gun sights.

  After going through a few basic manoeuvres they familiarised us with their weaponry. Most impressive it was, too, and we had live demonstrations for the rest of the afternoon. Towards the end of the day they brought out the smoke grenades then showed us how to explode them and use the smoke as cover. Next came the highlight of the demonstration, tear gas.

  There are several types of tear gas bombs. The one we were shown looks like a rocket and is fired from a bazooka-style gun. It is an effective weapon for many reasons. Earlier in the year an offender had holed up in a caravan which was sitting in a large field. He had a rifle with him, making approaching the caravan very dangerous. The decision was made to fire a tear gas canister through the caravan window. The rocket style was selected as it flew further and straighter than the others because of three fins that flicked out the back when it was fired. The high-powered rocket ploughed straight through the side of the caravan into the interior. Seconds after the impact, and before the gas had a chance to disperse, the offender came flying out the door surrendered. He was in quite a state as he thought the tear gas canister was a mortar bomb and believed the police were trying to blow him up. Having seen the rocket (I nicked an empty one as a souvenir), I can understand his reaction. It really did look like a surface-to-air missile and it hasn’t been in the police’s interest to correct this misconception.