Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes

by Tom Ratcliffe

  This was around the April of my final year at University, so I was relieved to have gainful employment in the bag before being cast out into the real world. I filled in the rest of the Summer and Autumn with a menial clerical job I had picked up on the University campus, and on a Monday in the November I reported to the Force Training Centre as a new, fresh-out-of-the-crate recruit, fully vetted and ready to go, but with a strong underlying feeling that my arrival in this area of employment was little more than a sophisticated accident.

  The first week was busy, loads of paperwork to fill in, books handed out, talks from various people about basic things to watch out for, things you must do, mustn’t do, getting sworn in, sworn at, and generally run ragged by everyone we encountered.

  Compared to today’s inductions it was a different world. Back then you were told,‘if you don’t like it then the bus stop’s outside and there are plenty of people who will be grateful to have your job, so if you’re going to start moaning about anything, don’t bother.’

  Today they spend ages being given talks on equal opportunities, complaints procedures and what to do about bullying in the workplace. We were given the whole lot very succinctly in that one sentence.

  Another brief but fundamental piece of advice came from a man from Complaints and Discipline who said,‘There are lots of things out there that will get you sacked, but the three most dangerous are prisoners, property and prostitutes.’ He went on to illustrate his point with a series of tales of policemen who had been led astray or betrayed by well intentioned dealings with all three. I made a mental note to take exceptional care with all property, and all the more so if it belonged to a prostitute. Especially one I had arrested.

  The beard which I had sported throughout my student days was removed before my start date, leaving just a moustache – but even that was ‘not allowed’.

  ‘What about him over there? He’s got a moustache, and that bloke there’s got a beard.’

  ‘I’m not talking to them, I’m telling you – get rid of it. If you don’t like it, the bus stop’s outside and....’

  ‘Give me ten minutes, I’ll get rid of it.’

  And that was that. Discipline through and through, much of it apparently ridiculous. But then a high standard of discipline meant we were better suited to serve society and do the job we were trained for. Or at least that was probably the plan.

  In line with this philosophy physical training was high on the agenda, so much so that by the end of the first week I ached from top to toe and was convinced I had flu, but it was just sheer fatigue. It seemed paradoxical that for a force so keen on fitness there were so many rotund figures knocking around the place. We were told that such people were ‘ten year tossers’, people who had joined a decade or more earlier when Police pay was truly abysmal, so to have joined then generally meant that:

  a) no-one else would employ you and

  b) the service wasn’t fussed who they took on.

  In some instances they were right, there were a considerable number who deserved that label, but then again there were many more who had joined around that time who were very honourable, honest and decent officers.

  It is just that very few seemed to end up on my shift.

  The improvement in pay and conditions in the intervening years was often pointed out to me, as if I had somehow cheated the older in service by joining on a decent rate of pay without suffering the privations of the previous years.

  After a week at the Force Training Centre I was slightly fitter, sworn in and equipped with uniform. The following Monday I reported to the District Training Centre for ten weeks’ basic training. This meant daily parades, more physical fitness, lots of parrot-fashion law, and ‘practicals’. Practicals involved instructors at the Centre playing the part of members of the public, one or sometimes two recruits would be selected to play the part of ‘officer dealing’, and then briefly be kept out of sight while the rest of us were told what the practical would involve. The unfortunate Constable or Constables would then be called onto the scene and have to deal with whatever lay in wait.

  The instructors’ main task seemed to be to ensure that whatever you tried to do to resolve a situation you didn’t win. They would then laugh heartily at your efforts, and tell you how you should have done it. I thought they were being unfair. I didn’t realise until after I left that they were actually making it more lifelike than even they perhaps realised.

  Some of these exercises ended in farce; a ‘domestic’ scenario culminating in the instructor playing the part of the wife-beater being picked up by four officers and carried into a small tree, his body coming to rest with his private parts meeting the tree at speed. Sweet revenge indeed! Not a scripted finale, and definitely not Health and Safety approved. Nor was the scenario of the man trying to gas himself by sitting in a closed garage with the engine running on his car. The selected pupil for the lesson walked up and down the Training Centre’s row of garages several times, uncertain what drama was about to unfold, and oblivious to the grey fumes seeping from under the up-and-over door only yards away from him. Eventually a muffled voice from within shouted,‘How realistic are you going to make this, you blind jerk?’ The student in question rapidly rose to the rank of Inspector over the next few years, which was not very reassuring.

  One of the quaintest practicals was that of the homeless man, who regaled the passing officer with tales of woe and misfortune, begging for some form of assistance. The exercise ended when the officer uttered the words ‘It’s not my fault you’re a tramp. Now sod off and stop bothering me.’

  It turned out the unfortunate gentleman should be directed to the nearest Salvation Army hostel, where no doubt a bowl of soup and a warm bed awaited him, as a brass band played ‘Abide with me’ in the background. Good old-fashioned traditional policing, unchanged for 100 years or more. I liked that one, and vowed to use it in the social crusade that I felt my career could become.

  There was also plenty of swimming, presided over by an instructor who possessed amazing abilities in the pool, but outside it he was only really good at two things – playing the fruit machine and drinking. He had an abrasive charm, and by repute had been sent into training as he was too violent and dangerous to let out on the street. I didn’t believe this at the time, but should have done as it was perhaps a hint at some of the people I was to work with in the future. My abiding memory was of him watching a black girl recruit trying to get out of the deep end of the pool, simultaneously battling gravity and her leopard skin patterned swimsuit, which threatened to remain in the water as she emerged. To the modern recruit the incident would have brought about a screaming fit of challenging this and objecting to that, as the air rang with words like ‘jungle’, ‘darling’, ‘phwoaar’ and some very inappropriate references to coconuts, but in truth the biggest hurdle to her getting out was that she was laughing so much.

  Beneath the instructor’s banter was an affection and compassion, and a mutual respect for his encouragement which matched the enormous effort which she put into the swimming, an activity which was obviously not her forte. It wouldn’t happen today, but a recruit in a similar position today wouldn’t get the same results. They’d probably just get out by the steps.

  The ten weeks of training saw an exam at the end of each week, a rigid 70% pass mark was applied and woe betide the ‘dippers’. I was spared any ‘dipping’ – I came close now and again, but as with most things in life, it doesn’t matter how close to the line you are, as long as you are on the right side of it.

  Christmas mercifully punctuated the ten weeks, giving a fortnight off to recover. I returned after the break as a member of the ‘senior’ intake, and with my peers I watched the new junior intake as they struggled to cope with their unfamiliar lifestyle. I was starting to climb the ladder of experience, and felt more at home in my new world. By early February I was back with my fellow newbies at the Force Training Centre for two weeks of ‘Local Procedure’. This consisted of more physi
cal stuff, punctuated by lessons which all seemed to begin with ‘forget the crap they taught you at the District place – this is how you really do it.’

  Rather confusing really, but not ours to question.

  After this came the first step into real life, when we went our separate ways ‘onto Division’, or into the real world of policing, and starting over once again.

  Two

  During Local Procedure I was told I would not be posted to my home town, in case of potential embarrassment if I were to encounter friends or relatives when early in service. So for my sins I was posted to the opposite side of the County, to the County town, where the Police station was situated on the ground floor of the Headquarters itself. Not good, I was told – ‘you get all the bosses watching what’s going on.’ The truth turned out to be quite different – it was more a case of all the middle level supervisors, the Inspectors and their ilk, thinking the higher ranks were watching them. Most of the big bosses (with a few exceptions, as I was to find out later) hadn’t a clue what went on, they didn’t even want to know, mainly because if they identified a problem it put the onus on them to solve it. The Inspector level on the other hand spent so much time trying to look good that they often lost touch with the ‘ground floor’, which is probably why we, the workers, got away with so much.

  Promotion prospects also looked good for me as a male – there were three toilets on the ground floor, clearly marked for those permitted to use them: Men, Women, and Senior Officers. If ever there was a hint for promotion-hungry policewomen to buy a recipe book and a pram, that was it.

  The same ‘bottom of the ladder’ feeling I had had in training was back again as I started my first day of ‘proper’ work, and walked into the parade room at 5.45 on a Monday morning. I had to look forward to two years as a Probationary Constable, known colloquially as a Probie. Of course my arrival pushed the previous new Probie one rung up the ladder, and he moved on as a member of the shift, where I was the rank outsider. The advantage was that mistakes could be forgiven (up to a point), and also I had the first ten weeks ‘in company’, meaning I was put with a Tutor Constable who would take me under his wing and guide me on the right path. Or not, as the case may be. In the fullness of time I was actually to have two tutor cons, the first of whom arrived at 8am (‘I don’t do earlies so you won’t see me at 6 o’clock any morning’) and greeted me with the words,‘I only became a tutor so I would have someone to do the writing for me. Don’t ever put on a statement that I was there because I’m not going to Court to cover your mistakes.’ Reassuring stuff.

  So my very first patrol was with one of the ordinary block members named Gus, a most professional man whose job it was to look after me for the two hours until my mentor dragged himself out of bed. Gus drove me around the town for a while, pointing out a few landmarks and trying to give me basic practical advice. Driving round in a marked car for the first time also made me realise how very much ‘on show’ I was – drivers’ behaviour was totally different to when I drove in my own car. This was the first true evidence of the line I had crossed in joining the Police. I was on society’s side, but not really part of it. I was the one who people expected to see when they needed help, but didn’t want around when they preferred to be left to their own devices.

  I asked Gus how he would go about stopping a car. Such a basic thing, but a point where I as the man in uniform, the authority figure if you like, would initiate an encounter with someone who didn’t really want to be spoken to. How did he deal with such a situation? So he showed me. The next car we came up behind, he flashed the headlamps and it pulled over. The driver sat in the car, puzzled as to what if anything he had done wrong, and why he had been picked to be stopped. Gus walked towards the open car window.

  ‘Good morning. The reason why I’ve stopped you is just for a routine check of your car, tyres and tax disc, that sort of thing. Do you have your driving documents with you by the way?’ and so he went on. He had instantly answered the questions that the driver wanted answered. He was polite, calm and reassuring. In those first two hours he taught me many things by good example and gave me a framework I was to use thousands of times stopping cars and people over the years to come – his firm but friendly manner was inspirational. Neither of us could know it at the time, but his career was to end some years later when he stopped a car one night, and two minutes later was kneeling in the road with a large knife held to his throat. That incident was to be his last ever operational matter, and he retired shortly after on ill health, his nerve irreparably broken. Mind you, at least he was alive.

  At 8am my tutor Alex Richards arrived. This heralded several weeks of an overbearing know-it-all attitude, one which gave me great sympathy over the rest of my service for those just starting out. I started my days on patrol as passenger in a panda car. My mentor didn’t believe in walking – for him anything that walked for work was a lower form of life.

  My first four shifts ran from a Monday to a Thursday and were ‘earlies’. The shift started at 6am and finished at 2 in the afternoon. I then had Friday to Sunday off, before starting the proper monthly rotation of shifts. This began on a Monday with seven 10pm to 6am night shifts, finishing at 6 o’clock on a Monday morning. The Monday also formed one of two ‘rest days’, even though you were asleep for half of it. The next block of seven shifts from the Wednesday till the following Tuesday was ‘lates’ from 2 to 10pm every day, followed by two more rest days to take you to a Friday, when the early turn began. Seven 6am to 2pm shifts brought you to Thursday afternoon, which gave way to a whole three days off before returning to the start of the cycle on the Monday, when it was back to nights at 10pm. Apparently it was better for you to work seven in a row as it gave your body time to adapt to whatever shift it was you worked. In reality by the time you got to the one weekend a month off that the system allowed, you were so tired that you needed the three days to start feeling even remotely human again. This was a shift pattern I was to work continuously for the next fifteen years.

  Having said that, you can’t join an emergency service and be expected to provide a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week presence without some sacrifice, and no shift pattern is going to be perfect, though with hindsight the 7-on 2-off system was probably as far from perfect as you could get.

  So my first round of shifts proper started on a Monday night. With four earlies under my belt I was looking forward to putting some practical experience onto the bare bones of knowledge given in training.

  The shift paraded on at around ten to the hour. ‘Parading on’ was an archaic term which actually involved a briefing punctuated by the drinking of tea, smoking of cigarettes, cracking of jokes and breaking of wind.

  Alex and I left the Police station and drove into town, and after only a few hundred yards my tutor pointed ahead – it took me a moment to spot what had caught his eye, and then I saw it. A tramp. A gentleman of the road. Leaning against a barrier at the side of this particular road without a care in the world.

  ‘Wind your window down,’ said Alex as we slowed. This was wonderful – I had seen the vagrant ‘practical’ in training, and now in real life I would observe with care as Alex directed the unfortunate gent to the nearest Salvation Army hostel. This meant I had the opportunity to learn the whereabouts of this charitable establishment without having to ask a colleague first and betray my ignorance.

  The car stopped with my window immediately adjacent to the tramp, and I noticed that he was not just leaning against the railings for the rest and relaxation, he was also relieving himself into the road. Any romantic notion about tramps evaporated as a smell of strong white cider and urine floated into the car. Alex opened his mouth to offer the man directions, but the advice given was quite unexpected.

  ‘Why don’t you f—- off and die somewhere you f—-ing filthy bastard? You’re disgusting, pissing in the street like a dog. Go on, f—- off.’

  The tramp stayed resolutely leaning on the railings, grinning happily at us, nodding gen
tly. Alex glared at him in contemplation for a moment before giving up, putting the car into gear and driving off.

  So that was the real life version of dealing with tramps.

  In truth the correct way was probably somewhere in between, and strangely I don’t know to this day where the Salvation Army hostel is in that town. The benefit was that we didn’t arrest him, there was no desire to do so, as the first thing we would have to do would be to put him in the car, and I doubt he would have been the only ‘passenger’ so to speak.

  That set of nights provided a number of ‘firsts’ for me. You must bear in mind that I had come into the strange world of law enforcement from a very sheltered and almost artificial start to life. I had gone from prep school to grammar school to University, I had spent my non-academic time in a large house in a rural area. It was an excellent upbringing in a home full of care, consideration and intellectual stimulation. An overlay of religion meant that anything involving death was glossed over, and could generally be avoided. That first week on nights was to be instrumental in altering my perception of life and death.

  We had a call to do a ‘death message’. Someone has to do these things, and as with anything distasteful or odd, the Police are usually that ‘someone’.

  Unexpected deaths are the worst, so on the face of it this one actually looked a little more promising than many – go and tell Mrs. Riley that her 80 year old husband Patrick had collapsed and died while a patient at the local hospital. As he was already in hospital I imagined the death would be at least half-anticipated. On the way to the address I decided how I would approach this – the wife (or now more correctly ‘widow’) would answer the door, I would introduce myself, sit her down quietly, break the news sympathetically and probably leave after summoning a neighbour or relative, and the two would be reminiscing quietly as I left perhaps half an hour later after a cup of tea. It sounded good. I would no doubt be guided by Alex’s experience. He would steer me gently when or if things didn’t go quite according to plan.