Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes (11 page)

More work brought more arrests, and with them came a number of appearances at Court. I would only need to attend court in the event of a ‘not guilty’ plea, and most of the time the defendant would be represented by one or other of the local solicitors.

When I saw these men at work it made me all the more grateful that my involvement in criminal law was more at the raw material end rather than the ‘refining’ department inhabited by solicitors. The solicitors on the other hand saw themselves as consummate professionals, an image which they were all the more keen to impress on their clients as more esteem meant more guaranteed work, and court was their opportunity to shine. If they could secure an acquittal for their client, and make the Police look small into the bargain, it was not just a guarantee of repeat business but also a guarantee of personal recommendation throughout the lower echelons of
society. Equally for an officer to ‘put one over’ a defence solicitor was a cause for celebration on our side, and while we said nothing of our failures, the victories were the stuff of legend.

The Criminal Law Act allows Police to use ‘reasonable force’ to effect an arrest. What constitutes ‘reasonable’ is subjective depending on the circumstances at the time, and has to be justified by the officer if called upon to do so. A defence solicitor will jump at the chance to show that any force used was excessive, and many an officer has been backed into a corner after admitting using a truncheon only to be accused of needless violence – ‘Come now officer, my client was simply running up to you to give himself up. You must surely have realised he meant no threat. He has told the Court so himself.’

A colleague could see this situation coming when the questions started as to why he had punched a handcuffed prisoner in the back of his panda car as he was driving the man back to the station.

A silly question came – ‘Officer, how hard did you hit my client?’

What are you meant to say? I hit him a bit – a light tap? A little punch?

You know the next question will be ‘so why hit him at all? – this was obviously unnecessary.’

So he simply and correctly told the truth – ‘I hit your client as hard as I possibly could, Your Worships, and what’s more, if I could have got my truncheon out in time I’d have hit him with that too.’

A momentary pause.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Because I was driving at 50 miles an hour on a dual carriageway when your client got his foot up and kicked me in the head. I could have lost control if he had carried on, so my only hope was to disable him from doing it again. I was trying to render him unconscious but I regret I didn’t quite manage it. If he had kicked me again and I had lost control of the car he could have been injured. It was my duty to prevent him being hurt.’

A superb reply, and who could criticise such care in looking after a prisoner?

If pushed, Solicitors would also use any ploy they could think of to discredit evidence (mind you, early in my career it wasn’t a bad idea, given some of the excesses that went on) and some would try personal attacks too.

On one occasion a Magistrates’ Court trial was under way for some minor assault, and the defence line was once again that excessive force had been used when the arresting officer had used his truncheon on the prisoner. If the force was deemed excessive, the arrest became unlawful and the case would almost certainly fail. To make matters worse, the defence had learned that the arresting officer was known among his peers as ‘staffer’, due to a readiness to use his ‘staff’ at any opportunity.

After the evidence regarding the use of said ‘staff’ came the inevitable line of questioning:

‘Constable, I believe you have a nickname within the Police Station.’ (It would look better if the officer admitted to his own nickname rather than having it put to him).

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Would you please tell the Court what that nickname is?’

‘Your Worships, I don’t think my nickname is of any interest to the Court, or of any relevance at all to this case.’

The solicitor responded quickly – he could smell victory.

‘Your Worships I think you will find the officer is wrong on both counts and I must insist he tells the Court his nickname.’

After a few moments’ deliberation the Magistrates sensibly decided that they should hear the nickname and would then be able to make their own minds up regarding its relevance.

‘So,’ said the defence, ‘your nickname please?’

‘Well, if you must know,’ said the Bobby, ‘they call me “donkey dick”.’

There was an awful silence for a few moments, and their Worships decided that the nickname was indeed not relevant to the case.

To be fair to the legal profession, (even if such a stance is not always reciprocated) while some are on a little crusade, they are in most cases just doing a job. It is right that everyone suspected of an offence should be able to have legal advice to ensure that their interests are properly represented. Some lawyers do a rather too enthusiastic job, others do a bare minimum. But there was considerable surprise when a solicitor called to represent four suspected thieves made what can only be called a very lame effort in representing them in interview. He was the type who could normally be relied on to advise ‘no comment’, especially if (as in this case) the evidence was a bit on the thin side. The suspects had been arrested miles from home, in a cul-de-sac in
an affluent area, but had said at the roadside they were lost, and the screwdrivers and other tools in the boot were for their own use if the car broke down. Our point of view was that they were ‘going equipped’ for theft. All had numerous convictions for theft of and from cars, but previous convictions would not be used in Court except at sentencing. A great deal hinged on the account they gave of themselves in interview, so really the chances of any prosecution being formally instigated were slim. But instead of the ‘no comment’ we expected, a written statement was produced from each, giving conflicting stories with no real explanation for what they were doing or what they had with them. Consequently they were prosecuted, and to our surprise and satisfaction, duly convicted.

I spoke ‘off the record’ to the solicitor some while later. I asked him why he appeared to have done such a below par job in the prepared statements. He was quite indignant – ‘I represented them as I do all my clients. I put their accounts to the court so the magistrates could make their own minds up about the case.’

‘Did the fact you live in the cul-de-sac they were stopped in, and had just taken delivery of a shiny new Jag have any bearing on the advice you gave them?’

He paused and smiled.

‘No comment,’ he replied.

The whole business of arresting people, gathering evidence and presenting it would almost inevitably sometimes lead to complaints which our little-loved Complaints and Discipline Department would deal with. They were widely feared and distrusted – after all, if you had done wrong you didn’t want them anywhere near, and if you hadn’t done wrong they didn’t seem to care and treated you as guilty regardless. It was ironic to see some of the more senior figures who were appointed to that department over the years. Of one such appointment a colleague said, ‘No wonder they’ve put him in as boss there – talk about poacher turned gamekeeper – there isn’t a disciplinary offence he hasn’t committed and got away with, so he knows every trick in the book.’

Everyone accepts that they may occasionally make mistakes, and some actions may require disciplinary action, but it was the approach of the Complaints Department that really got up people’s noses. They worked on the basis that if an allegation of (say) theft was made, then they would investigate it. No problem with that – however, the allegation could be investigated and found to be entirely false, but the newly
vindicated officer would then find themselves being punished for some minor misdemeanour which had been accidentally stumbled on from ages ago, but that had just happened to be found in the enquiry.

It was often said that if they applied the same verve to hunting career criminals as they did to hunting their own kind, the crime rate would plummet.

In a fit of innovation a ‘reporting hotline’ was set up. If there was something going on that you didn’t like the look of, you could ring the Complaints people anonymously and pass on any information. The publicity surrounding this ‘hotline’ explained that any such information would be treated in total confidence, and the reporting was quite anonymous if you didn’t want to leave your name. This promise was shown to be rather hollow when as we paraded on one day, a ‘wag’ dialled the hotline number, blew a raspberry into the handset, and replaced it.

A few moments later the phone rang.

‘Who just phoned the hotline from this phone?’ asked an angry voice from headquarters.

‘I thought the hotline was anonymous,’ said the Bobby who had picked it up at our end.

‘Who’s that?’ asked the headquarters voice.

‘Don’t you know?’ he responded.

‘No.’

‘Well sod off then,’ he said, and put the handset down again.

Summer came to Newport, and once more working earlies was almost a pleasure. Getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning was hard work, but driving to work on empty roads in bright
daylight was very pleasant. Later in the day the rush hour started and I would watch frustrated men in company cars all struggling to get to their desks for 9 o’clock. My ‘office’ was their road, and I was often glad that my applications for so many real office jobs had been fruitless. For night shifts I preferred the Winter months, as you would go out to work in the dark and return home in the same night. To have darkness come and go inside a shift I found a torture. At least in Winter you could kid yourself you were still going to bed at ‘night’, provided of course that you could stay awake long enough to drive home without falling asleep and ending up in a ditch.

One bright summer morning we sat in the parade room shortly before 6 o’clock, waiting for the Sergeant to come and do the briefing. The windows were open as it was warm even at that time, and a gentle breeze wafted in, bringing with it the sound of the odd car passing and the occasional birdsong. Then the unexpected – a brief screech of tyres, a loud thud, and silence. In a film there would have been sounds of smashing glass, roaring engines, and debris falling from the sky for half a minute or more. In real life it was short, not very sweet, and almost disappointing in its brevity.

Looking out of the window towards the crossroads outside the station revealed the problem. A milk float was directly across the road, with a motorbike embedded in its side, still upright. The rider lay motionless on the ground beside it. Several of us ran out to the scene. One of the two very long serving traffic men on the block spoke to the milkman who gave his explanation –

‘Well I ’d just come over the lights, going up to the Setton
estate to do my round, and then I realised I’d forgotten my round book, so I just turned to go back to the dairy.’

The approaching motorcyclist had never imagined the milk float he was preparing to overtake would suddenly go ‘hard a’starboard’ right in front of him, and had hit it full amidships.

I went to the rider whose eyes were fixed wide open, staring through the open visor of his crash helmet.

My first aid training said that before anything else you should try to elicit a verbal response from the casualty, so I spoke to him.

Sensible question first -

‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yeah, yes,’ came the groaned reply.

Then, said the training, you find if they are in any way paralysed or lacking feeling in the extremities before administering first aid proper.

‘Can you move your toes?’

The feet moved slowly.

‘Yeah, I can.’

‘Can you move your fingers?’

The gloves twitched.

‘Yeah.’

‘Can you feel any pain?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where does it hurt?’

‘It’s…it’s me bollocks!’ he moaned. No wonder he was lying still. I thought I had done my bit at this point and left any further first aid to the ambulance crew who had conveniently just arrived.

The rider had hit the side of the milk float in such a way that his impetus had threatened to hurl him across the crates full of glass bottles, so he had made the split second decision to hang on to the handlebars like grim death to prevent being ripped to pieces by several gallons of gold top. The consequence of this was that he was slammed testicles first into the protruding filler cap on the bike’s petrol tank. In the long term it was probably the lesser of two evils, but at the time he was paying a high price and wondering why he hadn’t taken his chances with the glass.

Motorcyclists usually come off second best in accidents, unfairly in many cases as even if the driver of the other vehicle is at fault, the soft target gets the most damage. Blamelessness is no protection at the time of impact.

One of the oddest motorcycle accidents I ever heard of was dealt with by a long-retired colleague a good few years before I joined. He was called to a report of an accident involving a van and a motorbike on a very busy dual carriageway in the morning rush hour. When he got there he found the motorcyclist being more or less mummified in bandages by the ambulance crew, and the van parked at the side of the road. It was one of the old Bedford J4 vans, being used by a group of building labourers for transport to and from the site each morning. Oddly however, there was no sign of any motorbike. He approached the van driver for an explanation of the accident.

‘Well it’s like this,’ he said ‘I drive the van and pick the lads up each morning, and this morning we were on our way to the site when we came across Joe here on his motorbike. It had
broken down you see, so I stopped and we all had a go at fixing it, but it still wouldn’t go. So I says we’ll give him a tow. I got the rope out, put one end on the towbar on the van, gave him the other end and said to give me a wave when he was ready. I got in the van, he gave me a wave and off we go. We’d gone about two or three miles when one of the lads in the back says “I think you’d better stop”. How was I to know he’d tied the rope round his middle and not to the bike?!’