The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (12 page)

C11 – it had previously been known as C5(2) Department – had been formed in March 1960. Its aim had been to collate details of all the top criminals (known as ‘Main Index' men, including some who had never been arrested) and gather information about them – sightings, car registration numbers, associates – by means of the local collators' offices, via the beat and CID officers on whose ground the criminals lived. In addition, C11 operatives' informants, telephone intercepts, covert OPs, photographs and bugging devices (both in buildings and on vehicles) were utilised in order to collect and disseminate the information to the units most suited to deal with it: the Flying Squad, the Regional Crime Squad or the Drugs Squad. The unit provided Prison Liaison Officers, who reported back details of serious offenders about to be released from prison as well as passing on information gleaned from other prisoners.

C11 seldom carried out arrests themselves; of course, if necessary they could do so, but that was not their specified role, which was a clandestine one. Having carried out their work, they melted back into the shadows. They also possessed a fleet of nondescript vehicles: vans (whose sides often displayed untruthful business logos), cars, taxis and motorcycles. Their surveillance squad which was set up in 1978 was second to none; mainly recruited from the uniform branch
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they were highly trained, with interchangeable and reversible clothing, and they were unobtrusive, able to neatly fit into the surroundings of an East End pub, as they would be in the American Bar at the Savoy.
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Other surveillance officers were trained by the Special Air Service as ‘rurals': operatives who would climb trees, burrow into the ground and on one auspicious occasion, an officer remained up to his neck in water for forty-eight hours to keep observation on suspects. Needless to say, any police officer who involved C11 in their investigations held them in the highest esteem.

On 12 January, Detective Sergeant Colin Hockaday, who was running the Crime Squad at Paddington Green, was told by Detective Superintendent Ness – who knew that Hockaday had just joined ‘D' Division from the Flying Squad and who was an authorised shot – that he was seconding him to join his team in the hunt for Martin. The following day, Thursday 13 January, Hockaday and the other officers, including some from C11s Unit No. 2 Team, attended the briefing at Paddington Green's incident room.

Most of the officers present did not know Martin, including the C11 surveillance team. During the detailed briefing, Superintendent Ness explained that Martin was a transvestite who could pass for a woman and distributed colour photographs of Martin, plus other photographs in the possession of police – in excess of twenty of them, plus nineteen photographs of Stephens. He was described as being aged 35, five feet ten, of slim build with a prominent nose, with long blond hair, blue eyes and crooked teeth who walked with very short, mincing steps, like a woman. Enquiries had revealed Purdy's identity who was believed to have associated with and provided transport for Stephens, plus his photograph and address, together with Enter's address which were passed on to the team. Superintendent Ness emphasised the danger element when dealing with Martin, that he had already shot and wounded a security guard during the course of a robbery and a police officer during the course of a burglary, and stressed that on the last occasion he had been arrested he had had two firearms in his possession and that of the twenty-four guns which had been stolen from the Covent Garden gunsmiths, five were still not accounted for. Therefore, extreme caution had to be exercised at all times. The sighting at The Chelsea Kitchen was mentioned as were other recent sightings where it was stated that Martin had outwitted the police by driving off the wrong way down one-way streets, having no regard whatsoever for the safety of members of the public. It all indicated that he was still in the London area.

The plan was to keep observation on Stephens. She was described as being five foot five, aged 25, slim build with very short hair, the colour of which could change daily, and if this resulted in her meeting Martin, to follow, then ‘house' him. It was not the intention to arrest Martin on the street; in the event that Martin was followed to a premises, the authority of the Deputy Assistant Commissioner ‘A' Department (Operations) had been sought to deploy D11, the police firearms team, to contain the situation with the intention of peacefully carrying out Martin's arrest. They would not be called in earlier because this would be stretching their resources, plus the fact that (at that time) they were used on static plots, not mobile ones.

However, there was always the possibility that Martin could become aware of the police presence, in which case he might have to be arrested in the open; therefore two of the ‘D' Division officers, DC Peter Finch and DS Colin Hockaday, would be armed with Smith & Wesson Model 10 six-shot revolvers. They would also man the OP. In the event that Stephens made off in a vehicle from her address, they would alert C11 by radio and then follow on behind the surveillance team. However, should Martin be spotted, it would be C11 who would be closest to him and therefore they sought authority for two of their officers to be armed as well. This was granted and Detective Constables John Jardine, a 37-year-old Scot and 34-year-old John ‘Fred' Deane were also armed, in their case with the handguns issued to Central officers: Smith & Wesson Model 36 five-shot revolvers.

Arming the police had always been a contentious matter. The British police were the envy of the civilised world for going about their duties largely unarmed. However, during the early 1880s two Metropolitan police officers were shot dead and another seriously wounded by burglars, which in 1883 prompted the
Evening Standard
to lead a press campaign to arm the police:

It is not only foolish but absolutely cruel to send policemen to combat men possessed of revolvers, without any arm, other than a short club. If the law will not protect the police by heavy penalties from armed resistance, they should at least have weapons to enable them to defend their lives.

The superintendents of divisions loftily stated that their men did not wish to be armed; however, the rank and file disagreed and in a poll, 4,430 out of 6,325 officers opted to be armed with revolvers while patrolling night beats in the outer divisions.

The first officer to fire his weapon was Police Constable 161 ‘P' Henry Owen. On 18 February 1887, he fired all six shots from his Webley ‘Metropolitan Police Revolver' into the air to awaken the inhabitants of a burning house in Keston Village after all other means had failed: ‘I blew my whistle, lustily called out “Fire!” and hammered at the shutters.' Owen's inspector supported his actions; his superintendent did not. A report was forwarded to one of the two assistant commissioners, Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Pearson, who, three days after the shooting rather dismissively minuted the papers to the commissioner with the words, ‘I do not attach much blame to the PC.' Nor most likely did Thomas Cyrus Haslitt, the 87-year-old occupant of the burning house, plus the three other members of his family, who were awoken by the sound of the gunshots, especially after PC Owen assisted in rescuing the contents of the building and extinguishing the blaze, which gutted the premises.

The practice of night duty patrols carrying firearms started to die out in 1893 and following the inadequate weaponry and poor marksmanship displayed by police during the Siege of Sidney Street in 1911, 1,000 .32 Webley & Scott automatic pistols were issued. However, within a short space of time, these became dangerous with many being capable of being fired when the safety catch was on. During the 1930s, a total of nineteen new pistols with 608 rounds of ammunition were issued to each Metropolitan Police division.

During the invasion scare period of the Second World War, the total sum of the armoury allocated to the Flying Squad was a single .32 pistol, kept in a purple case. Its existence was religiously signed for over a period of years before it was discovered that it was unable to fire in any event.

Initially during the post-war years, when the need arose firearms were issued to officers who had some previous experience of them from the armed forces or from gun clubs. Usage of these .38 Webley & Scott revolvers required the officer to fire six shots, with three of them hitting the target. There was, however, no instruction on how the weapon should be loaded. When two police officers were shot dead (and another severely wounded) at West Ham in 1961, firearms were issued to police regardless, to anybody who wanted one, but their knowledge and use of firearms was practically non-existent. One officer loaded his revolver, put it on full cock and simply did not know what to do with it. His colleagues hit the floor while one of their number pluckily shoved a pencil between the gun's hammer and chamber and relieved him of his weapon. Another caused mild panic in the canteen as he brandished his revolver asking anybody who wasn't rushing to get out of the door, ‘Where's the safety catch?'

Following the savage murders at Shepherds Bush of the crew of the Q car ‘Foxtrot One-one' by Harry Roberts et al. in 1966, there were still few officers who had a clue about weapon handling. One CID officer with a complete disregard for the procreation of a family stuffed a loaded pistol, with the safety catch in the ‘off' position, down the front of the waistband of his trousers. But following the Shepherds Bush murders, a firearms unit was formed, known as D11 Branch. Although this was a dedicated unit, training courses were introduced for them to train up divisional and central officers, both uniform and CID. Initially, a four-day course was considered sufficient and divisional officers could, if the need arose, be issued with the Smith & Wesson Model 10 six-shot revolver with a four-inch barrel and for Central CID officers, the more concealable Smith & Wesson Model 36 five-shot revolver with a two-inch barrel. With the abolition of the death penalty, gun crime was on the increase and with it the need for more armed officers.

In 1979, a survey was carried out of all the divisions and branches of the Metropolitan Police to assess how many authorised shots should be trained. It was left to the respective commanders of the twenty-three divisions to determine how many and they arrived at a total figure of 4,601 authorised officers. This was agreed, but by the end of 1979 only 3,820 officers had been trained and when in April the following year a new survey was held to see if the initial figure of 1979 was still a precise one, the commanders now stated that a far more realistic figure was 6,039 authorised shots.

There were simply not enough sites for the officers to be trained and by 1982 complaints that insufficient numbers of officers were being trained were flooding in to D11 Branch. In a review of June that year, D11 complained in turn that they believed that the level of training was insufficient. Ranges were, of course, still required but so was the need for the trainees to practise in realistic surroundings to assess what their actions in dangerous and life-threatening situations should be and D11 suggested a field-craft village be built at the existing training ground at Lippitts Hill. This was ignored and therefore the instructors looked around for temporary accommodation in disused industrial sites which could be utilised. St Olave's Hospital, Bermondsey appeared to fit the bill; by 1979, only forty patients remained and they were transferred to New Cross Hospital and it had partially closed; in fact, it never did re-open and was fully closed in 1985. But the very idea of the disused hospital being used by the police was sufficient for the concept to be denounced by the divisional officer of the public service union, NUPE, who declaimed in the Socialist Worker Party's
News Line
, ‘I am appalled to hear there is even the suggestion of the use of the building for a frightening form of police training.'

This then was the level of police firearms training in 1983.

  
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.  They were given the honorary application of ‘detective' to precede their rank; however, they were not CID officers per se.