Confessions of a Police Constable (5 page)

I suppose this is why we generally use the acronym QT – in order to avoid saying ‘Quiet Time'.

In this instance, we were on the scene for another ten hours.

My colleagues returned to the nick
¹³
, taking with them the father and son duo, along with a further five officers who had to come out to do a section 18 search of the dad's house. We found another two handguns, a rifle, a small amount of class-A drugs and a sizeable stash of ammunition for the weapons in the house. We also found another handgun carefully taped under the passenger seat, in another hollow cut into the upholstery of the MX-5. It turned out that the dad wasn't an active gang member, but that the local gangs used him as a handler, to make sure their guns weren't found during raids on the houses of known gang members.

I guess if there's anything to learn from this, it is: don't take your kid's Blackberry away from him if you've got a gun in the back of your car. And if you do, don't call the police on him yourself.

Or, you know, don't hold weapons for gang members. That might be even easier.

‘GET BACK!' I screamed at the top of my lungs, as I slowly shuffled away from the man standing opposite me on the seventh-floor landing of a council estate.

The staircase I had just ascended was behind me. To the right of me, there was a low black railing and a 70-foot drop. In front of me was a Customer
¹⁴
.

The man seemed dazed, not entirely with it in general, and absolutely, feather-spittingly furious.

Something had happened to him. He had completely lost the Ordinance Survey maps and headed out into the deepest, worst-lit corners of incoherence. He was sobbing, shouting, mumbling, drooling, spitting. The words ‘Elise' and ‘I'm going to fucking kill him' kept being repeated.

My adrenaline boost was giving me tunnel vision and aural exclusion. I was aware of it, but I wasn't able to use it: I couldn't hear or see anything apart from the man I was facing. He wasn't a very tall man – about five foot seven, perhaps. He was around 40 years old, IC1, with a build that suggested a long, hard life of substance abuse. He was hunched forward, holding onto the railing with his left hand.

I reached for my radio and pressed
the
button – the orange one, right between the volume dial and the stubby antenna on my Motorola personal radio. Officially, it's known as the Emergency Assistance Button. Frequently, it's known as the ‘whoops' or the ‘shit has hit the fan button' too. In this case, it was the ‘I need some bloody backup, bloody quickly' button.

As I pressed down, the other transmission that was in progress (something about an RTC
¹⁵
) was cancelled, and I could speak for ten seconds without having to clutch my radio's transmit button.

‘Urgent assistance required,' I said, as calmly as I could, without breaking eye contact with the man, who was edging closer to me very slowly. I told the radio where I was, and followed up with the words that I knew would catch everyone's attention: ‘IC1 male with a knife.'

I took a firmer grip of the GFLB
¹⁶
I had in my right hand, and crept back until I felt my foot touch something behind me. I realised with a jolt that the only direction I
really
wanted to go – further away from the addict in front of me – was blocked by a wall.

The man didn't have an actual knife. ‘Knife' is what you say over the radio to convey ‘sharp weapon'. Samurai sword?
Knife
. Bayonet?
Knife
. Stanley blade?
Knife
. Surgeon's scalpel?
Knife
. Similarly, all bat-like weapons are ‘sticks', and any projectile weapon is a ‘gun'. If that sounds a little bit backwards, well, I'd urge you not to worry about it too much. When you are dosed to the eyelids with adrenaline in an extreme situation, it's a lot easier to say ‘knife' than trying to decide whether you're facing a madman with a
foil
, a
sabre
or an
épée
. From our point of view, if it cuts, slashes or stabs, it's a knife.

This particular madman, however, was holding a whole different class of ‘knife'. In his hand he had an injection needle of some sort. It was tiny. The only reason I knew he was clutching it was the occasional flash of surgical steel in the overhead lighting.

I've faced suspects with a baffling array of weapons. Guns, of course. Bats, knives, tyre irons, rolling pins, cast-iron pans, and even a chainsaw once. Nothing scares me as much as a hypodermic needle. When you're against somebody with a bat, it's a fair fight: they have a stick, you have a stick, you both have a bit of a tussle, they get arrested, job done. You may walk away with some bruises, perhaps even a broken bone, but ultimately it's a situation you've been trained to handle. Guns are slightly worse, of course, but there's a solution for that too, and over my years in the Metropolitan Police, I've perfected the art of running-away-very-fast-and-waiting-for-the-cavalry-to-arrive.

When faced with a needle, you have a huge problem: if they come close enough to be wrestled to the ground and arrested, they're close enough to give you a tiny scratch. It seems strange to be completely out of your head on adrenaline because of a weapon you can barely see, and yet a million statistics back you up. For example, in England, injecting drugs causes 90 per cent of all cases of hepatitis C and 6 per cent of all HIV cases. I've had my hepatitis jabs, of course, but a cure for HIV is still far enough away that I'd rather not have to deal with it.

The man took a step closer just as my radio jumped back into life. ‘Mike Delta five-nine-two. Status update?' I briefly touched my PTT
¹⁷
.

‘Could do with some help here, guys. He's armed with a hypodermic needle.'

‘Received. ETA one minute,' the operator fired back.

I tried talking to the man again, interrupting his incoherent tirade: ‘Mate, let's get you some help. We'll find out what's happening, and I'll help you. I promise.'

He took a step closer still, but some of the wildness seemed to have been extinguished from his eyes; a sign that I was getting through to him, I hoped.

‘Mate, I know you're hurting. I can help you. I don't want anyone to get hurt,' I said, and involuntarily moved my baton side to side a little. My knuckles were white from gripping my 21 inches of extendable stainless steel. The movement caught his eye. He straightened up slightly and, in the process, slumped lightly against the railing.

Behind him, I spotted two of my colleagues. They must have gone up the wrong stairway into the estate and ended up behind the man. Or perhaps they knew the layout better, and went around on purpose?

Whatever the reason, they held an advantage by being behind him and it suddenly became my job to
keep
that advantage. I started talking, careful not to stop. I knew that I had to keep his attention on me.

‘What's your name? Can I call you Simon?' This is an old trick of psychology: call someone by the wrong name, and they will be rattled enough to give up their real name.

‘Matthew,' he barked back.

‘Matthew? That's great. My name is Matthew too. We're like brothers, you and I. You're not that much older than me. Perhaps you could have been my bigger brother, and we could have been Matthew and Matthew. That would have been confusing, wouldn't it?' I forced a laugh. Matthew looked confused; he started to laugh, but then remembered whatever it was that was bothering him in the first place, and a look of determination came over his face.

My colleagues advanced behind him. Our tactics worked. Matthew was oblivious to the impending attack. Craig grabbed his arm and Tim put him in a headlock.

‘Drop the needle,' Tim shouted.

Immediately Matthew did as he was told. For a brief moment I thought he might try to throw himself off the balcony, but the three of us held him back, and minutes later he was led downstairs in handcuffs.

When we finally had Matthew under arrest, we ran him through the PNC. His PNC record had warnings for drugs, violence and for being a known carrier of hepatitis A and C.

The three of us looked at each other, and a shiver ran down my spine.

‘I'll take a knife fight over this any day of the week,' I half joked. Instead of laughing, my colleagues nodded silently in agreement.

We had all walked a little bit closer to the edge than we were comfortable with.

My Ticket had expired.

The
ticket
I'm referring to is my police driving licence. As well as a standard DVLA driving licence, in order to be allowed to drive any police vehicle, you need to have a special driving licence. To receive this licence, officers do a course, followed by theoretical and practical exams.

Police driving licences come in different levels, starting at ‘level 4'. This is the ‘boring' ticket that allows you to drive from one place to another, but not on blues and twos
¹⁸
. You can do a ‘compliant stop' – which means that you can drive behind somebody and turn your blue lights on to pull them over – but if they drive off, you have to call off the pursuit. This happened to me once when I had only the basic ticket, and I felt pretty daft having to let the guy drive away. Thankfully, in London there's never a helicopter far off. The helicopter followed him to a petrol station, where I was able to go and arrest them. It transpired that he had a sizeable amount of drugs in the car. ‘Sorry, I didn't see you, officer,' the driver had said. Nice touch.

There are dozens of different driving courses you can take. I have a solo ticket (that's for riding police motorbikes) and the advanced driving qualification. The advanced course is rather interesting, and includes all sorts of high-speed pursuit stuff. It's a shame that my end of the borough has 40mph limits (or less) everywhere, so I never get to open the cars up properly.

Much like normal driving licences, police licences expire. Unlike normal driving licences, they expire rather quickly. When I'd realised mine was almost up, I'd gone to the driving school at Hendon to have it renewed, but the instructor I was meant to go out with had had to break his appointment when he was called off to something or other. You'd be surprised how often that sort of thing happens; I have a feeling he moonlights for the DPG
¹⁹
, which would explain a lot.

An expired ticket isn't a disaster. It normally means you end up ‘operating' on a Panda – a term still in use despite police patrol cars having not been black and white for several decades – or one of the area cars, with someone else driving. However, on one occasion, I also managed to make it to work late. As a punishment the skipper
²⁰
decided to send me out on foot patrols through some of the shopping centres and markets that had recently been plagued with drugs and shoplifting.

Whilst assigning the job, the skipper explained it would ‘help build character'. I had pretended to be insulted and grumpy as I left. ‘Pretended' because, honestly, I don't really mind foot patrols all that much. It does mean you're not on response duties, but it's actually quite nice to have an opportunity to stroll around the borough for a day. You talk to people, you get some exercise, and it's a completely different experience to spending all day flying, tyres a-screeching, from call to call.

The morning's foot patrol, however, had turned out to be less than pleasant. Heavy clouds were sagging with the weight of grey depression, ready to ejaculate their heavy, sleety load all over my freshly washed overcoat. January will always be a dreadful time to be on foot patrol.

Thankfully, I'd managed to spend a fair bit of time getting to know the café owners around my sector of the borough. A chat and a coffee here, a quick vandalism report and a cup of tea there – it all makes the world spin merrily on.

Lunchtime came along eventually and, since it was a Friday, I decided to treat myself to a greasy delicacy from Burger King.

Just as I finished the last bite of my double whopper, my radio interrupted my daydreaming.

‘Five-nine-two receiving Mike Delta?' it squawked.

‘Retheifsglowblead,' I replied, with my mouth full of burger and my last two fries.

The couple sitting on the next table glanced over momentarily, before hunching over their trays, laughing so hard I briefly thought they might do themselves an injury.

‘You broke up there, say again?'

‘Receiving, go ahead!' I repeated, smiling at the couple, with a shrug. I ended my transmission.

‘Hey, they don't like waiting, what can I say?' I said to the giggling couple, and winked.

‘We have a Code Zulu up on Eastern Terrace. Are you free to deal?' the CAD operator asked.

It has been a long time since you were able to buy an off-the-shelf ‘police scanner' to listen in on police conversations, like they do in the movies, but there remains a rather obvious security flaw: as I sit there, finishing my lunch, the couple at the table next to mine will be able to overhear everything my colleagues talk about. Mostly, it will be boring stuff: a shoplifter, a colleague needing an Op Reclaim recovery of an uninsured car, or CCTV reporting some youths drinking in the park. However, occasionally, much more serious matters will be transmitted over radio.

As a precaution, our Airwave radios are encrypted. Not as heavily as elsewhere, though. On American cop shows, you often hear them say things like ‘10-4' (we'd say, ‘Received'), ‘10-23' (we say, ‘Stand by, please') or ‘417A' (we say, ‘Suspect with a knife'). You don't really want to have to look up all sorts of inane codes for every thinkable situation (apparently ‘10-41' means ‘Will you be requiring an ambulance?' What's wrong with saying, ‘
Will you be requiring an ambulance?
'). However, in the UK we do have a few codes that we use, even over the military-grade-encrypted radios. We'd use a code like ‘Code X-ray' for a sexual assault, for example; ‘Code Yankee' could be a bomb threat.