I thought about how much I had drunk, and how I felt. Not drunk, far from it, but the ends of my fingers had a slight numbness which was always my first indication that I had alcohol in my system, and I had a guess at around 30 microgrammes. This would put me below the legal limit of 35 microgrammes, but to be honest I would not have been surprised to find I was over. I did not feel it would be sensible to drive for a little while, and was beginning to regret my festive bonhomie, even if it was in a good cause.
Paul had a provisional guess that his reading would be around 30 to 35, so we were both thinking on the same lines. The station Sergeant, Barry Morris, led us to the machine and gave us a slightly disapproving look, but said nothing. He set the machine up, Paul and I gave our samples in turn, and sat back for the result.
To our astonishment I blew 5, and Paul blew 7. Neither of us were within a mile of the limit. Barry looked at us.
‘That’s a bloody disgrace, that is.’
‘Sorry Sarge, but 5 and 7 is really low. I’m amazed,’ I said. ‘Anyone over the limit must have to have a proper skinfull.’
‘I mean it’s a disgrace that you two go on the piss on Christmas Day and can’t even get into double figures!’
He turned back to the machine and tested his own breath alcohol level.
It came out at 52, comfortably over the limit.
‘There you are – a day at my desk and a decent reading. Bloody amateurs the pair of you. Now get back on patrol, I’m off to the doctor’s room for a sleep’.
And so saying he disappeared for the rest of the shift.
Fourteen
Time is a relative concept, apparently, and although there have been 24 hours in every day I have worked, it certainly feels as if some have gone past much faster than others, and as the days blended into weeks, months and years, my time at Newport as a whole passed very quickly. From arriving under a kind of cloud, albeit of someone else’s making, and being rather conspicuous as a result, I quickly became accepted as a block member. It was a time of my service when I felt truly at home and at ease with my work. Some days were better or worse than others, but there was a confidence shared by everyone that as individuals we could cope with our lot, and as a group we could fix pretty well anything. I don’t think there was a single day when I wasn’t happy to go to work.
Some members of the block left, either on promotion, or to go to another station, or to go to a specialised duty. I knew it would be some time before I could specialise, but there was no rush. I had spent three years as a foot patrol, but now I had a driving authority and my whole career ahead of me and I was in no rush. I was quite content, and was learning more day by day and week by week. As and when I was ready to apply for a traffic course I would do so, and in those days all applications consisted of a short report to your Sergeant and Inspector, and provided you had their backing then you went on a list to await your turn.
This system was the same for all specialised duties, until the Detective Inspector at the station came up with a surprisingly modern idea – he had a space for a trainee detective, and asked for anyone interested to pass their details to him. His idea was that while he knew of several applicants who would be able to do the job well, he wanted to hear from people he hadn’t worked with in case there was undiscovered talent which had not come to his attention previously.
He then conducted a series of ‘interviews’. These were in reality little more than an informal chat, and the successful applicant would be chosen by him alone, but it was the first step on a ladder of equality and fairness, which has led to the system we have today.
Nowadays applicants are carefully screened by way of application form, paper-sift, shortlist, and finally interview by a panel of three independent interviewers. At the interview all candidates are asked the same questions, some of which are even relevant to the post applied for. Notes are taken by the panel and compared later to allow a mark to be awarded to each candidate. This shows who performed well and who didn’t, so that in the event of any argument there is documentary evidence to forestall any appeal.
The successful candidate is usually quietly notified a week before the interviews, but the interview process makes sure the ones not chosen don’t have any grounds to whine about unfair treatment.
But this veneer of equality was in its infancy as the DI went about his own selection procedure. He decided to interview everyone who had applied, and asked them all the same questions. One of the applicants was Paul, my Christmas drinking companion. His lack of sustained alcoholic intake would surely count against him, but undeterred he presented himself at the appointed time. The interview was done in the DI’s office, and had a whiff of the business meeting about it, coffee and biscuits provided and all very pally and relaxing.
After a bit of general talk about length of service, career aspirations and suchlike, the DI came to the heavier questions.
‘What do you understand by mens rea?’
‘Something to do with legal things I think,’ he said, his mind trying to remember the full definition.
‘Is that the best you can say?’ asked the DI.
‘Well you should know what it is without asking me – you’re the bleeding D.I. after all.’
Paul had missed the point of this line of questioning, so the interview moved on. The next move was a shock question and was very ‘modern’.
‘Paul – what’s your view about homosexuals in the Police Force? Should we treat them any differently?’
Fifteen years as a private and corporal in the Lancers stood Paul in good stead.
‘I’d shoot ’em Sir,’ came the instant reply. ‘Dirty bastards, shoot the lot of ’em’.
‘And that’s your answer is it?’ asked the DI.
‘Solves the problem doesn’t it?’ said Paul.
The remainder of the interview was a little flat after this outburst.
Paul remained in uniform and never quite worked out why he didn’t get on CID.
The next applicant, Jeff Pound, was more promising material if no more confident of success in the interview.
The same questions were delivered, but in slightly different order. After the preamble came the ‘shock’ one.
‘Jeff – what’s your view about homosexuals in the Police Force?’
Jeff thought for a moment. The DI was impressed by this contemplative silence, and took advantage of the pause to have a sip from his coffee.
The pause was due to Jeff being a bit taken aback, and he wasn’t sure how seriously to take the whole thing, especially as he had been tipped off to the effect that he had not got the post anyway. His reply took the DI by surprise.
‘I’m generally against the idea, but with exceptions.’
The DI remained impressed – a thoughtful answer must be on the way – ‘What do you mean by exceptions Jeff?’
Another sip of coffee.
‘Well as I say, not my cup of tea, but you seem OK.’
The spray of coffee from the DI covered half the desk, but after a flustered pause the interview continued and was soon apparently back on track – more questions about crime detection, interview technique and personal experience, but the atmosphere remained edgy.
Then.
‘Jeff – what do you understand about mens rea?’
Quick as a flash came the reply – ‘Men’s rears? You’re on about these homosexuals again aren’t you?’
‘GET OUT!’ shouted the DI. ‘Don’t ever apply to me to be a detective again.’
And so ended another unsuccessful application.
Not all movements were away from the block, however, and newcomers would arrive to replace those who moved on. Most who joined us were new Probationers, and as at my own first posting each one pushed the preceding one a little further up the ladder of career maturity. Intensely proud as I have always been of basic uniform work, it is a fact that anyone who returns to a block usually does so either because their career has gone into reverse or because it needs a boost. It
might be that after a few years on traffic, CID or Special Branch someone would decide to go for promotion, and the best thing to impress an interview board was to be able to say they had returned to their career roots to get a feel for street-level policing again to ready themselves for supervisory duty. This type of returnee to ‘section’ generally didn’t want to be there per se, and didn’t intend to stay long. Others who had been pushed back, rather than jumped, often came to the realisation that they had little chance of moving off before retirement, and settled down to working their last few years as quietly as possible. It didn’t always mean they were lazy, often far from it, and they would be a source of knowledge and advice highly valued by those of us who were younger in service.
The other category of block member was the ‘plodder’; the man who was happy with his lot, had no dreams of promotion or specialisation, probably lived in or near the town, and was happy to gain a good level of stability in exchange for years of more routine, less specialised work. It was on these that the service relied to provide a backbone to support the more ambitious. I remember a senior officer who once said to me that he was amazed to find figures showing that around 70 per cent of Bobbies never tried for promotion.
My reply was that it was just as well. He couldn’t work out why, as to his promotion-focussed mind it was an act of folly not to contemplate climbing the ladder at every opportunity. My view was that if everyone spent their time seeking promotion, then about 70 per cent would be disappointed and risked losing motivation when their dreams were not realised. The service depended on those who saw the life of a Constable as a vocation, not a starting point. Although I wanted to specialise, I could fully understand the attraction of this philosophy – any problems you couldn’t cope with you would pass to your Sergeant, as they were the ones who were meant to supervise, so they could be passed anything you felt you needed help with. And the life of a Constable was never really truly routine – a shoplifter was the same round of arrest, interview and paperwork, but the individual, the circumstances, the excuses, the result – they were different every time.
I had wanted a career dealing with people – I’d landed the very best. I was seeing a cross-section of humanity I couldn’t even have dreamed of; the rich, the poor, the gifted, the stupid, the clever, every emotion under the sun, every facet of character you can imagine and a few more besides. This was the result of crossing that line, going from being an everyday member of society to what was effectively an outside observer, enforcing the laws laid down to produce a little peace and quiet as an end result.
It is said that a Police Force is a mirror of society, and this has to be broadly true, as society after all provides the people who become Police men and women. I say broadly true, because you would hope the selection procedure would weed out those with undesirable attributes which might affect their ability to maintain the standards expected (and sometimes even achieved) of a guardian of the law.
Of course, some slip through the net, resulting in a few very odd characters who I had the dubious pleasure of working alongside.
One such man was Harold Meacher. He was very much on the last lap as far as service was concerned. He had spent nearly 30 years as a uniform copper, so had joined before I was born. He never worked quickly, he did his bit and went home at the end of each shift; no one ever expected him to be the one catching a burglar red-handed, or saving anyone from anything particularly life-threatening. He would avoid driving a car if possible, preferring to patrol by bicycle. While this was a nice traditional touch, it also meant he would not be sent to anything urgent. His driving record was poor – he managed to cause some slight damage to a police car almost every time he took one out. This meant paperwork for him, and also for his Sergeant, and by this possibly deliberate trail of minor motoring incidents he ensured that he was never forced to go motorised. He was a ‘plodder’ if ever there was one.
In the light of this, it was therefore a great surprise when he came in for his food one night shift sporting a black eye and a slightly dishevelled air.
Paul Lenehan asked him first – ‘Been fighting Harold?’
‘No,’ came the reply. ‘I fell off me bike.’
After a brief silence Paul spoke again. ‘How come you’ve got a black eye from falling off a bike? No grazes on your forehead or anything. What exactly did you do?’
‘I was standing on the seat and lost my footing.’
I think everyone had a mental picture of this rotund, middle-aged Bobby performing some sort of circus trick in the High Street at midnight on a dark green, 3 speed bicycle, complete with turned in handlebars – but his next words complicated the picture further.
‘I got punched by a bloke I’d been watching, you see.’
‘So have you locked him up then? What was he doing? Why didn’t you shout for assistance?’ asked Paul. ‘ We never heard you call up.’
Levels of concern were now raised quite high. The idea of a colleague suffering an assault and not having the rest of the block come to his help gave a feeling of failure, but Harold went on:
‘I saw a light on at a window in those new flats by the dock, the posh expensive ones. The curtains were open but I couldn’t see in because the ground floor windows are quite high, so I put my bike against the wall and stood on the seat to get a proper view in. There was a couple shagging on the settee, at it like knives they were, and after a while the bloke saw me at the window, leapt up, opened the window and belted me one. I lost my balance and fell off the bike seat, and he just shut the window and left me there. I suppose you’d call it quits really. I’d been watching them for over twenty minutes.’
We were all a mixture of surprised and amused by this, but it was not untypical of the sort of bizarre thing you would expect to come across in a day’s work, and we thought little more of it.
On the next set of nights however Harold was again the focus of comment. He came in for his food with the front of his raincoat covered in mud and grass cuttings, but smiling and happy.
‘Harold – you been fighting naked men again?’ quipped Paul in reference to the previous month’s incident.
‘No, just checking property like any good Bobby.’
‘Not implying that we’re not doing the job just because we don’t come in covered in mud and grass are you?’ asked another.
‘No,’ said Harold, ‘I found another couple at it hammer and tongs in one of the bungalows at the top end of town. I could see them through the patio windows.’
‘How come the mud then?’ asked another member of the block.
‘Well they’ve got long curtains, so I couldn’t get a proper view unless I got right down on the ground to look underneath,’ came the rather worrying reply.
Harold retired a few months later, but I am sure he found plenty to do in his retirement.
It was a little disturbing thinking that we had a closet pervert on the block, but then there are probably plenty of bank managers and accountants with similar past times, so maybe this was just another reflection of society in the police, albeit a slightly distorted one.
Fifteen
I found more and more that the days went past quickly at Newport. I think it was a case of more experience breeding more confidence which seemed to generate more enthusiasm, within limits of course. But I still had to pace myself with over a quarter of a century to survive.
In among the obvious work which revolved around the inevitable crime and traffic matters was a wide variety of the sort of work that goes unnoticed by society and generally uncommented on by Police. This is the work that ‘someone else’ fixes up, that everyone knows is done but most don’t want to get their hands dirty with.
Near to the town was a canal, and beyond that a tidal river with big expanses of marsh at its banks. The river only came up to the edges of its banks in the highest tides, and consequently a farmer kept sheep on this land as the animals could survive on the available grass and retreated to the high banking between the river and cana
l in the event of a high spring tide.
One February morning, as the farmer checked the flock after a storm, he found a bit more than he bargained for in the shape of a body at the edge of the high tide mark. Being a bit squeamish he did what society does and phoned the Police. From the corporate entity that is the Police, an individual would go forth and pick up the bits, so to speak. On that cold, windy, wet morning, I had the joyous task of being that individual.
There were two routes to the river bank – one involved a twenty mile round trip by car, the other a short trip by canal boat from a nearby chemical works.
I think the boat was retained as a fire tender of some sort, and was equipped with medical equipment and a stretcher. As a student I had had a couple of holidays on canal boats, both very enjoyable with some memorable events. Perhaps the best involved two newspapers, a dozen raw eggs and a group of American tourists outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, but that is another story.
This day, however, was to have no such fun. My Inspector and I went on board and had a reasonably pleasant start to the trip, although the scenery and possible end to the journey were less inviting. There was always a hope that the ‘body’ would turn out to be a mannequin or some other debris, or even that we wouldn’t find it as the description of the location was vague. However, after about an hour of trudging up and down the embankment we found it. Had we been more pedantic we could have insisted that it was in fact on the next divisional area, but in a rare fit of self-sacrifice and duty we didn’t.
Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes Page 14