Confessions of an Undercover Cop

There was an art to fixing a clamp and some of the clampers had it down to nth seconds. They had a competition to see who did it the fastest. The officer posted with them had to write out the ticket as quickly as possible, slap it onto the car windscreen and then leg it. It pleased me to be posted with a fast clamper. I hated lingering. Once the clamp was on, the only way for it to come off was for the driver to pay the fine and then the de-clamping van would turn up and take it off. We couldn’t. Or at least that’s what they always told me.

If the driver of the car appeared before we left there was often a showdown. I had sympathy but, ultimately, they shouldn’t have parked there. And they should have looked out for the clamping van. We took a lot of verbal abuse. Sometimes it was physical.

Like all cities, parking in London is very difficult and very expensive. If you find a space it’s easy to overrun your meter by a few minutes. Some people took liberties and constantly parked where they shouldn’t and they deserved to be clamped. Some folk, usually the yuppies, would deal with it as an occupational hazard. If they got clamped early in the day, they wouldn’t phone up and pay the fine until much later. They’d treat it as a parking cost and put it on expenses.

If a vehicle was parked in such a way as to cause an obstruction, we would call the towing lorry who would turn up and cart the offending vehicle off somewhere deep in south London. I had less sympathy with them. It was difficult enough to drive in London, especially driving emergency vehicles through the packed streets. If you caused an obstruction, you were fair game to be towed. A few people reported their car as stolen only to discover it had been towed off. A sharp and harsh lesson.

Some clampers took great delight in finding expensive top-of-the-range cars to clamp, and those with exclusive private registrations. If they nabbed someone famous they’d lord about it for ever. The same with fancy cars. I hated being posted with that type of clamper. We’d spend most of the time in Mayfair and the posh streets of Westminster looking for the best and biggest cars. It drove me mad and those shifts were the longest.

Every clamp van had an hour for lunch. Police officers’ breaks were constantly interrupted; you always had to be ready to drop-and-go in an instant and you frequently didn’t get a break. It was different on the clamp van. They always had a full hour. You’d either get 12–1 or 1–2 for lunch, varying it to fit in with the second van. Except for Fridays.

Every Friday lunchtime the clamp van would travel to Lambeth, pull up outside a grotty little pub and park alongside the clamp vans of other local authorities, builders’ vans and other assorted lunchtime drinkers. I suspect some CID from nearby police stations may have imbibed too, back in the day when lunchtime drinking was almost a convention.

I’d buy a takeaway coffee from the tiny café opposite the pub and sit in the clamp van with my sandwich, bag of crisps and an apple while my clamper would enjoy his hour with colleagues. I’d read the tabloid newspaper bought by the clamper that morning and I’d skip over the pages of bare-breasted ladies. I’d get ahead on the paperwork while he’d be in the pub watching the strippers.

I hated my time clamping and was so glad when I never, ever had to do it again.

Willy warmers (#ulink_6cfa9403-4ffc-5960-b653-b960c34958ef)

It’s cold on night duty. Freezing on occasion. I suggest thermals. Or thick tights. But being cold was not the reason I was knitting at four in the morning when posted as station officer.

I was station officer because I was biding my time, waiting for my posting to Surveillance and trying to keep out of trouble. I’d already had a month on the dreaded clamp van and now it was my turn on the front desk. This included fielding the drunks, redirecting the lost, and taking reports from those wishing to make complaints of thefts or lost property. After midnight it usually fell quiet.

My case files were up to date and the correspondence in my tray had been dealt with, as much as it can ever be. I’d read the daily bulletins and made regular cups of tea for the custody office and CAD room, the hub of the station where all messages were received and allocated, hence Computer Aided Despatch. I’d checked the missing persons binder and the lost dogs, of which there were none; the kennels were empty. My thumbs had been twiddled until they were sore.

As night duty was a week long, it became boring. By Wednesday I decided to take in some knitting. If I followed the pattern, I found it was one of the few craft-like things I could do without winding myself into a knot. I was knitting baby clothes for a friend of mine who was pregnant. Little mittens, socks and baby cardigans are small, easy to do and quick to make, an ideal filler during the night once the city had settled down.

At 2.30 a.m. a call came out about a disturbance in the upstairs room of an exclusive restaurant in the St James area. It was a private party that had ended with a family at war – drunken, argumentative and causing a breach of the peace. Five men and one woman were arrested. The rest of the party turned up at the front desk, irate, drunk and demanding solicitors. They insisted their loved ones had to be released, now, this instant.

My attempts at calming them down failed. The sergeant in the CAD room heard the raucous carry-on and came to my assistance. Two of them ended up arrested for causing a disturbance and swearing at the sergeant and me. One of the remaining crowd tried to reason that his family had been falsely arrested. I listened, nodded and asked him to take a seat while I made tea and coffee for them while they waited for news. Feeling generous, I threw half a packet of digestives onto the tray too.

By 4 a.m., those in the cells were sleeping, as were some of the rabble loitering in the lobby.

One of the arresting officers, Joe Fenelli, stopped by the front office for a coffee and a chat. I was busy – knit one, purl one, knit one, knit two together – working on the sleeve of a baby cardi.

‘That’s them settled down,’ he said. ‘All over a bit of posh totty.’

I laughed.

‘What you knitting, Ash? Willy warmers?’ he asked, pulling a thread of wool.

‘Hey, get off!’ I tugged it back. ‘Yeah, I got white, lemon and baby blue,’ I joked, knit knitting away.

The following morning some of the prisoners went to court for breach of the peace and the others were kicked out, sheepish and hungover.

A couple of weeks later I was issued with a Regulation 9, a form 163, that the Complaints Department (now Professional Standards) issue to give notice that someone has made a complaint about you. Everyone on duty when the Hooray Henrys were arrested was served with a 163. The whole shift had been subject to complaints from the wealthy and influential family. The allegations comprised a variety of things including unlawful arrest, insubordination and abuse of force. Mine was for ‘performance of duty’ issues.

It was alleged that while on duty I was knitting willy warmers, neglecting my post when I should have been conscientious and diligent. What nonsense. I couldn’t believe it. And to think I’d been kept inside the station to keep me out of trouble!

An independent panel was convened to interview every one of us.

‘Officer, why were you knitting at five a.m. in the morning?’ said the chap on the left.

‘It was four o’clock, sir. And I took my knitting to work because it was very quiet and nothing much was happening.’

‘During work time, officer? Surely there was some paperwork you could do? We’re always hearing about how much paperwork there is these days.’

I confidently told him, ‘All my paperwork was up to date, sir.’

He looked surprised.

The woman on the panel looked down her nose at me and said, ‘What exactly were you knitting, miss?’

I hated being called ‘Miss’.

‘Baby clothes, ma’am. For a friend. One of my colleagues, PC Fenelli, joked I was knitting willy warmers but I wasn’t, it was a baby cardigan.’

The older man on the panel woke up and said, ‘Willy warmers? What are they?’

No one answered.

I filled the uncomfortable silence by adding, ‘I was knitting the sleeve of a baby cardigan, sir. It can become tiring on night duty when you’re posted to the front desk. Nothing much happens past two in the morning during the week but we still have to man the front office. I hadn’t had a refreshment break and you can’t really expect to be relieved for an hour by another officer when it’s so quiet indoors and they are busy out on the streets. I sat and ate my sandwiches and did some knitting at my desk during what would have been my break.’

That must absolve me, surely?

I was wrong.

The lady of the bench glared at me. ‘Could you not read law books? You don’t know it all, officer. There are plenty of updates and changes in policy and law to become familiar with, I am sure.’

My quiet protestations of, ‘But that would well and truly put me to sleep!’ were ignored.

They had me.

I was given words of advice and told that in future I should read Blackstone’s police manuals during the nights when I was bored.

And to think, I’d given that family our last packet of biscuits. That’s gratitude. It put me off knitting, too. I never did finish those willy warmers.

Cut! (#ulink_a117c805-d76d-5844-a574-be15daf23637)

A few days after the willy warmers’ incident I was back on day shift and still station officer. I made the tea and coffee, checked my handover files and offered to do some typing for one of the dyslexic blokes on shift who was bogged down with his paperwork. I liked to do a good turn and as a quick typist it earned me a few favours in the bag.

I hoisted the manual typewriter onto the counter and swept to one side the bundles of flyers and vouchers that littered the front desk. These comprised the usual advice leaflets for those who find themselves homeless, for domestic violence victims, plus some small street maps and handouts for new restaurants and fancy cafés that enticed customers with generous discounts in return for reviews. Theatres did the same to fill seats at preview shows. A pair of tickets for a West End show cost just a pound. It wasn’t a gratuity because these offers were given to all offices, hotels and shops around the West End and were meant for all to enjoy the perks, police and public alike.

A flyer for Vidal Sassoon salon in Mayfair fluttered down to the floor. I picked it up. ‘Models Wanted. Free haircuts.’ It sounded perfect as I was thinking I could do with a new style for the new job. I phoned and booked my free cut for Thursday, 3.30 p.m., after the early shift finished.

Thursday was uneventful on the front desk and I arrived keen and eager at the hairdresser’s. I signed the consent form, rather chuffed to be having my hair cut at a place I would never usually be able to afford. I skimmed the small print and sat down, unconcerned. It’s only hair, right? It grows back.

My hair was shoulder-length with layers of rotten half curls, hanging limp at the ends. It was time to shed the remnants of a shaggy perm. I needed a new look. Being out of uniform meant no more pinning it up beneath a police hat and it could fly free.