We ended up with five in custody. Three from the original assault on the nurse and two for trying to prevent Thompson from making the arrests when he arrived. Amazingly enough, and to his eternal credit, the nurses practice manager arrived in his own car, right in the middle of it all, to rescue her and bring her down to the Nick.
She must have put a call into him at some point. Not bad, considering they all had their NHS issue mobile phones taken off them recently to save money. Back at Ruraltown Nick it was like a scene from Blackhawk Down. The offenders were kicking off, shouting, protesting their innocence and trying to violently attack the escorting police officers all the way to the cells. It took the best part of an hour just to get it all sorted out with the custody sergeant.
When the final cell door slammed shut, we had a quick review of what had just gone on. The prisoners had spat, head butted and kicked their way through custody. They were still shouting from the cells, they hope our kids get cancer etc The nurse had a broken finger, a bruised jaw, a black eye and had lost all her personal possessions in the mele.
Her phone, keys, purse and cash were gone, an opportunist theft by one of the foul-mouthed kids watching at the edges of the fight. Her husband how unfashionable arrived at the Nick to see her. He was not a happy man. Wait until he sees the sentencing! Free solicitors, forensic samples, clothing, interviewing officers from CID, ID parades for the nurse. All this followed no doubt by endless tactical adjournments, five expert character assassinations of the nurse by the defence, grinning, inane mouth-breathing defendants waving at fat, useless, chain-smoking baby-mothers in the public gallery.
And for what? Some kind of meaningless community sentence. Each prisoner has so much previous that we have lost count. And the paperwork for a job like this will be massive. It is now past We have to go.
I speak briefly to Mr District Nurse. I apologise for all the crap his wife has been through tonight. Thanks for getting there so fast , he says.
I shrug and mumble something about that being the least we can do. Back out into the night. I have lost at least two of my team to the paperwork for that job. The prisoners, having failed to threaten their way out of custody, will soon start to complain of spurious chest pains, say they are going to kill themselves or just start banging their heads against the walls.
It happens all the time. His crew-mate is our dedicated Special Constable. We tell him that at least his mother thinks he is special. Victim Support pulled out from our Nick months ago. Something about funding problems. I have that nervous feeling you get while trying to drive, read a map, listen to urgent updates coming over the radio and talk to Control on the hands-free. As a PC a small percentage of the calls I attended were real dramas. Now, all the calls I attend are real dramas.
This is because there is only one uniformed Duty Inspector at a time in F Division, and we are expected to attend the serious incidents personally. F Division is so huge that there is more or less always a serious drama for me to rush to.
Dealing with the incidents does not present me with a problem. I have spent my entire career in response or specialist uniformed front-line policing of one kind or another. One of my correspondents summed it up nicely once by saying it is like going to watch the same play each night, only with different actors.
This one is a double fatal road crash on some fast road in the North of F Division. Four more are seriously injured. The Controller; he is phoning me every ten seconds with information I already know, easing the conscience of a man who can only stand by in horror by transferring the tension to someone else. This is the worst kind of drama for us.
The officers from the response team are trying to save lives and calm the shattered pleas from relatives who were in the car behind and saw it all. This has taken place outside a private school for girls. The daughters of the privileged have just returned from the ski slopes of Europe. Or at any age. My people work fast without speaking. They eye their Sergeant as he sweats under his armour. He nods at a car, points at a victim, puts a finger to his lips indicating a distressed witness and all the time on the radio closing roads, eyes tightly shut as he accesses his mental map of the area.
They know what he means by every gesture and they respond. I arrive. I was their Sergeant once. This lasts for as long as it takes me to see the first body. Everyone is here now. Like some bizarre, colourful ritual; fire and rescue personnel, paramedics, an air-ambulance.
The huge rumbling dual carriageway is a silent, deep red stained strip of concrete. I stand and catch my breath. I turned it down. My people need me and I need them. Citizens may come here to die but I would be finished if I ever left. Standing in a pool of watery engine oil in the middle of the Winnie Mandela block on the Swamp Estate at the edge of Ruraltown at 9. When it came to a new sign for the play area, no one involved could speak proper English so the replacement was made in the manner of the vandalised original.
This is how Playground Number 12 came into existence, and I always think it is a perfect social comment on the whole area. The more professional mules swallow drugs, the swamp mules stick them elsewhere. Condoms are not used for birth control here; reproduction and the subsequent child benefit payments on this estate are a major source of income. Along with being a mule. There is indeed, no one here. I do these tasks myself to save emergency response patrol time the only officers out after dark and so that I can get an idea of what disturbs the good citizens of the leafy suburbs 10 miles away.
I remember the song. Down on the Swamp Estate at the edge of Ruraltown, people do not believe in the criminal justice system. It is very soul-destroying and very stressful for everyone except the offender. The situation is exactly the same for us as police officers. I know personally of a man who suddenly punched an officer to the floor with no warning, then took a swing at his head with a kick which only failed because the man was drunk, and finally drag him along the road until the officer managed to fight himself free.
The man then walked away from the court with a set of meaningless fines and community based conditions. This happened in front of many people at a local bus stop, probably all of whom will have heard about the court disposal and learned the obvious message from it! You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account.
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Home About Uncategorized. Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:. Email required Address never made public. Name required. Introduction ». I remember first meeting him, in a little restaurant not far from Euston Station; he was full of ideas for how the legal system could be changed, and how the poor, weak and elderly on his patch could be protected from the depredations of nasty, recidivist criminals.
Few of his ideas have been adopted; common-sense never got anyone a QPM. We published his book, Perverting the Course of Justice , not long after that first meeting.
He has written on a number of occasions for the national press and has spoken a fair bit to the BBC. In the police, speaking out can cost you your job. The spit helps the rings to slide off more easily.
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