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

by Glenn Wood

  ‘That was a very effective hold, Constable Wood.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ I replied hoping like hell he wouldn’t ask me to show him how it was done. I had no idea, and couldn’t have repeated it if I’d tried. He seemed happy though. He nodded and walked back to his office. That was the last compliment he ever paid me.

  For the next few months work settled into a pattern. As I was still the youngest on the section I was rostered on the beat most of the time, especially during night shift. I didn’t mind. I liked being on the beat. When you were in the cars you spent most of your shift being called to incidents, which was exciting, but meant running around like a mad thing and you’d always have heaps of paperwork to do at the end of the shift.

  Being in the cars also meant there was a good chance I’d end up working with someone I didn’t like, such as the hell bitch policewoman. A shift with her seemed to go on for ever, probably because she seldom deigned to speak to me and when she did it was to say something sarcastic. I tried to be nice for a while but that just seemed to antagonise her more. In the end we would just sit in silence. Eight hours is a long time to be in a car with someone who won’t talk to you.

  On the beat, I could do what I liked. Occasionally I’d be called to an incident within walking distance of the town square but not often. The rest of the time I was left to my own devices. If I was feeling brave enough, I would venture into the inner-city pubs. I didn’t do this very often because there was more chance of running into trouble in the pubs and I discovered early in my career that I didn’t enjoy confrontations.

  This was something of a drawback, as a policeman’s life is about 80 per cent conflict. Oh, I could handle the fights, the abuse and the arguments and I was more than capable of looking after myself. I simply didn’t like that part of the job. A lot of cops did - they lived for it and were at their happiest when wading into a fight. Not me; if I could avoid trouble, I would. I enjoyed the part of policing where I felt I was doing some good, such as finding a kid who has been missing for a few hours, recovering stolen property, putting a bad guy behind bars, settling an argument through reason rather than violence. I liked happy endings.

  My policing style meant I spent more time trying to prevent crime rather than solving it. After the pubs had cleared out I’d go around all the shops in the central city and make sure they were locked up and secure, then I’d poke about in dark alleys trying to catch out a burglar or prowler. Now, it’s important to point out this is standard procedure for a beat constable. I don’t want to paint myself as a shining beacon of goodness, single-handedly keeping Palmerston North safe from evil (if you’ve been paying attention I’d be amazed if you’d got that impression).

  I was honest and well meaning and always tried to do my job to the best of my abilities. I was also lazy, lacking confidence and easily distracted. Quite often I would find myself a dark comfortable spot at the back of a picture theatre and hide there for a while watching the movie, scampering out just before the final credits. I also got to know the late night radio DJs and would pop up to the station to visit them when things got boring outside. I wasn’t above finding a cosy spot for a bit of a kip on duty either. Hey - you try finding something to do in Palmerston North at 3am on a wintry Tuesday night.

  More often than not beat was uneventful, although you never knew what was just around the corner. One night, it was my sergeant.

  He’d just got back to work after his nose injury. Sadly the blow that smashed his nose also broke the camel’s back. He’d had enough and decided to take early retirement not long after he got back to work. This made things extremely difficult for me. After the leadership I’d received from my sergeants at Trentham I found it discouraging to be working for a guy who wasn’t interested in the job any more. He couldn’t be bothered teaching me anything and was just working out his time. He wasn’t nasty to me, he just wanted an easy life. With retirement plans to sort out his focus wasn’t on the job.

  This wasn’t ideal. It was also dangerous.

  On the night he picked me up from beat. We were the only ones available to attend a domestic dispute that had turned nasty. We received updated details while travelling to the address. We were told the woman involved had left the house and there was only a guy left in there, alone.

  ‘Cool, hardly any reason for us to attend,’ I thought.

  He was upset and depressed.

  ‘Diddums,’ I thought.

  He had a gun.

  ‘Oh Shit.’ I thought.

  Surely the armed offenders would be called out. Nope, my sergeant and I were going to handle it. The guy didn’t have a record and hadn’t threatened anyone or fired his weapon so we were going to have a chat with him.

  As has happened so often in my life I discovered that ‘we’ actually meant me. This became obvious when both of us arrived at the house and my sergeant waved me towards the front door, which was wide open. Sure, he was following behind me, but I was still going first.

  Halfway down the front path we heard a shot from inside the house. This was not good. We beat a hasty retreat behind a fence. I was fairly sure he hadn’t fired at us, as the sound was muffled and contained. The sergeant agreed and motioned for me to stay where I was while he headed back to the car. Assuming he would be calling for reinforcements I kept my head down and watched the front door. There was no sign of movement inside the house. Everything was quiet.

  The sergeant returned quickly. He hadn’t called for reinforcements; he’d gone to get his gun.

  As you probably know, the New Zealand Police are not armed. What you may not know is that all members of the police have ready access to guns. Revolvers are often carried in a locked box in the sergeant’s car and other weapons are easily requisitioned if required. However, I should qualify this by saying that in my three years in the police I was only ever armed twice (not counting exercises or training). Disturbingly this was not one of those times as the gun was firmly in my sergeant’s hands and he was not letting go of it.

  Okay, I thought, at least that means he’ll take charge and handle the situation. Wrong. He propped himself up on the fence, aimed the revolver at the door and motioned for me to go inside.

  I hesitated, unable to believe what was going on.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll cover you.’

  Oddly enough I didn’t feel particularly inspired by this. He was ordering me to go inside the house where an emotionally unstable, depressed man had recently fired a weapon, at God knows what, while he and his gun, stayed outside. That didn’t seem very fair, or very safe.

  Looking back it seems unbelievable I didn’t even argue with him. But I was 19 and a rookie cop. He was my sergeant and I’d been given a direct order. It was a weird situation to be in. He was breaking every procedure I’d been taught when attending an armed domestic situation. But he was the sergeant in charge of the situation and it was his call. Trentham had conditioned me not to question a superior officer’s orders, no matter how insane they might be.

  I inched my way towards the front door, unsure who was going to shoot me first, the guy inside or my sergeant. All the lights inside the house were on and I had a clear view through the kitchen and into the living room. I couldn’t see anyone. I was reluctant to move inside by myself and desperately wanted the sergeant to come with me. But he didn’t move from the safety of the fence line and continued to wave me on. Fat lot of covering he’d be able to do when I was inside the house and he was still out in the garden.

  I took a deep breath and crept into the house, keeping to the walls. I didn’t know what to expect. The shot we’d heard earlier could have been anything - a misfire, target practice, a warning. Part of me hoped the guy had shot himself. That would be yucky and messy but at least it would reduce the chance of my developing unplanned new orifices.

  The man with the gun was sitting on a chair in the lounge; his legs were thrown across the arm of the seat. He was very much alive and cradling a .22 rifle in his arms
. A half drunk bottle of scotch sat beside the chair. An unlit fire rested in the hearth. The room was cold.

  He didn’t even seem to care about me. His head turned my way as I came in, then he looked away and continued staring at the wall. I was pleased to see he made no move to raise his gun, although he made no move to lower it either.

  I didn’t know what to do so I asked him if he was okay. He snorted and said not really. I mentioned the shot we’d heard earlier. He pointed to a bullet hole in the back wall and said that he’d shot the house.

  Fair enough, I thought. It was his house, and it was highly preferable to him shooting innocent young policemen.

  I said I’d be happy to talk to him about whatever it was that was bothering him if I could have the gun. He shrugged and motioned for me to take it.

  He offered no resistance as I took the gun out of his hands. I let out a sigh of relief and sat down next to him, trying to find out what was going on. After a few moments of awkward silence he opened up and began to talk to me. His wife had just left him for another man, which was obviously upsetting, but what was really getting to him was that she was entitled to take half of everything he owned. He told me he had worked really hard on the house while she was out spending his money and now she was forcing him to sell it. I knew this was only his side of the story but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the guy. I nodded a few times and commiserated with him, tutting about the misery heaped upon us by the many cruel and heartless harpies of the world. I even threw in a couple of ‘Women, Boy’s’.

  I suddenly remembered the sergeant was still outside. His gun arm must have been getting mighty tired by now. I picked up the .22 and took it outside. My Sergeant seemed relieved to discover I hadn’t been killed and I was pleased to note he had made some progress up the path. He was looking as if he might have made it inside, sometime in the near future. I explained the situation to him and he took the gun off me then put it in the boot of his car. We went back inside and picked up the house owner. The sergeant decided we should take him back to the station, where we could keep an eye on him. I agreed as the jilted dude was pretty depressed and was in no fit state to be left on his own. Besides, he had discharged a firearm in the suburbs, which was not ideal from a law and order perspective.

  Firearm offences normally carry pretty stiff penalties but his situation didn’t demand the full weight of the law be employed. We found a suitably lenient charge, arrested the guy and locked him up for the night. This allowed us to keep him under observation for the night then release him to friends the following morning, after he’d had time to mull over his actions. In our opinion the guy wasn’t a menace to anyone but himself. He was seriously hacked off with his ex-wife but hadn’t threatened her so we believed he didn’t constitute a danger to her or to the public in general. In due course he had his day and court and because of the mitigating circumstances and as he had co-operated with the police (by not shooting me) he received a brief spell of community service.

  It was a satisfactory result except for two things. The guy still lost half his house and I lost a great deal of respect for my sergeant. He had put me in a potentially life-threatening situation with little or no back-up. If the guy with the gun had flipped out I would have been stuffed. I lacked the experience to talk myself out of a hostage situation and the position my sergeant adopted outside wouldn’t have afforded me any protection had the guy begun shooting. I didn’t mention my concerns to anyone (except Carey) and I didn’t dwell on the incident but it made me feel even more insecure within the section. The Sergeant retired a couple of weeks later.

  This paved the way for a shake-up of my section. Some of the guys were leaving and several new faces were coming on board, including a new sergeant. The lucky candidate was to be announced within the next few weeks.

  I was looking forward to having a new commander in chief. Perhaps a change in leadership would improve morale.

  Even though I’d found my first few months in the police very hard, I knew, in some ways, they were also going to be my easiest. As a novice constable I’d been forgiven mistakes that would soon become unacceptable. My superiors had not yet caught on to the fact that I was a bad luck magnet and lacked common sense. My innate ability to fall over things had not yet surfaced and I hadn’t given up trying to keep my uniform in tip top condition. I wasn’t tired, disillusioned or sick all the time and the officers were yet to use me as a pawn in their political games. So, all in all, things weren’t going too badly.

  Which was lucky, as I was technically still on trial with the police. It took two years before a Constable received a permanent appointment and it is very easy to be thrown out within that period. Performance reviews were held every six months with your sergeant reporting on your progress. These reviews formed part of your permanent record and were used as a basis for your final selection. This would be tricky for me as my original Sergeant had left and I’d receive a report from a sergeant who had only known me for a month.

  I wasn’t too worried about this as I was determined to make a good impression on my new sergeant. I was still very enthusiastic about my career. The incidents I’d attended up to now had

  whet my appetite for action and I was keen to throw myself in boots and all. Yes indeed, my brilliant career in the New Zealand Police was like a flower about to bloom. Who would have thought there was a plague of locusts waiting just around the corner?

  The final book in the series – Cop Out: The end of my brilliant career in the NZ Police – is available on Kindle now.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Mum, Dad and Julie, for everything; and to Phil, Godfrey and Quentin for being brave enough not to change their names.

  To all my police instructors, it wasn’t your fault.

  To Alix and Struan, Dave and Kerrie, Euan and Teresa and Maria, Eunice and Lisa, thanks for being my guinea pigs.

  Thanks to Luke for the original cover and to Jimi for the new one - plus all your techy designy work.

  And to anyone else I may have inadvertantly forgotten.

  For god’s sake Devon read it, you’ll like it!