A Fair Cop

‘Mick, I said grab him. It’s dead weight. He’ll flatten you like that. Really get hold of him.’ As he said this, he gestured a bear hug with his arms. He wanted me to take hold of the man and catch him. My face would have to be touching him for this. I had to do it.

‘Sarge…Are you sure?’

‘Just do it, lad. I know it’s not nice. We’ve all had to do it.’

I knew he meant it. I took hold of the man’s waist with a bear hug and braced myself ready for the fall. ‘Go on then, Sarge. I’ve got him.’

So there I was, hugging a dead man with my sergeant standing next to me on the top step of the ladder with his Swiss army knife, about to cut the flex. Maybe one day I will be able to see an amusing side to this, but this man was someone’s son, and someone’s brother, and his last moments must have been desperate. I still look back on this with great sorrow. I tensed up, as I knew that catching the dead weight wouldn’t be an easy task. ‘Here goes, then.’

With these words, I felt the man’s body weight plunge down onto me. I had no chance. The weight crashed down and the man’s body came directly on top of me, forcing me to fall to the floor. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back with the man’s face directly above mine. All the trapped air slowly released from his lungs and out of his mouth. His eyes stared into mine and our noses touched. His inflated tongue brushed across my cheek. ‘Shit!’ I bellowed and I momentarily developed superhuman strength and shifted fourteen stones of dead weight from myself. Sergeant Hopkins looked down and despairingly shook his head. I stood up and shouted the same word again. I couldn’t help it.

Once the body was down, we carefully placed the man flat and waited for the Scenes of Crime Officer (SOCO) to come and photograph the knot around his neck. This is necessary, because it’s possible to tell from the way the knot is tied whether or not the deceased tied it. This obviously helps to determine whether the death is suicide or murder.

With this specific incident there were no suspicious circumstances. We later found out that the man had been on antidepressants for around seven months, but he hadn’t taken his tablets for the previous nine days. Clinical depression had killed him.

Such was the effect of the suicide on me that I needed to see my best friend, Tim, just to talk about it. I described to him what I’d seen that day. During the telling of the story, I kept referring to the deceased as the ‘rich man hanging,’ and that’s how I’ll always remember him.

Tim was a great help to me that evening just because he was a mate and he listened. I didn’t know it then, but he and his wife Cath were to help me again in the future.

Chapter 3 Summer Madness (#ulink_8305ff1a-7149-510c-9ce7-6226fe094ab2)

Within two years of becoming a police officer, I had established myself as a member of the PSU (Police Support Unit). Better known as riot police, the PSU are available for large-scale incidents both planned and unplanned, like high category football matches and riots, as well as carnivals and demonstrations and the like.

I enjoyed the training for the PSU as it was physically demanding and was based mainly on teamwork. From about my teens, I was always a keen sportsman and I have trained hard in the gym since before I can remember. It might seem odd, but it had been my ambition to be a contestant on the Gladiators TV programme and in 1998 I passed the physical fitness test for it. I managed to get down to the final hundred out of over sixteen thousand male applicants. Sport has always been a passion, and working long shifts in the police service hindered my training. I used to find this aspect of the job very frustrating.

The PSU training was done in the grounds of an old hospital and the derelict buildings were very useful for practising ‘building entries’ in riot situations. On training days, there would be maybe fifteen or twenty police officers who would role-play rioters. They would throw blocks of wood and petrol bombs at our line of shields in order to prevent us from advancing to a certain point given to us by the PSU commander. I remember that on one of our training days, I was in a line of eight officers all with full-length shields. We were on the front of three lines. One of the mock rioters threw a petrol bomb high in the air towards us. We were standing directly next to an old storeroom-type building. The petrol bomb landed on the roof, which unfortunately sloped directly down onto the officer at the end of the line. In a flash of flames, the whole roof lit with fire and as the petrol spilled down the slope, the officer was engulfed. His supposed flameproof overall was inadvertently put to the test. It failed miserably. He ran around in panic, screaming for help. The flames soared from his feet to his head. Three short blasts of the instructor’s whistle sounded to indicate an immediate termination of the exercise. Three safety officers ran to the burning man, who by now looked like a stuntman as he walked, still ablaze, with his arms out in the crucifix position. One of the safety officers charged at him and rugby-tackled him to the ground. The other two used fire extinguishers on him and, within seconds, the flames were put out. We all lifted our helmet visors and watched with concern. To our relief, the officer got to his feet and removed his helmet. He shook his head, but was smiling. Due to the skill and speed of the safety officers, he’d escaped uninjured. One of them asked us to congregate at the car park so that he could debrief the incident. There was an unusual silence as we walked back. Occasionally, I would hear a shield crash to the ground, as an officer got too fatigued to keep it up. They weighed over twenty pounds.

For you to hear me say I loved these kind of things might make you question my sanity, but such incidents bring hundreds of police officers closer together. It’s a feeling of kinship and we would always try to protect each other from harm. I loved that closeness. To me, a special part of being a police officer was the feeling of togetherness it produced. I was to learn how naive this view was later in my career.

To be called from normal duty onto a PSU team for the day, or sometimes longer, was something I enjoyed. It broke up the daily routine of being a patrol officer, which is nothing like the way it’s portrayed on television. I found that a lot of what I did was mundane clerical work, not requiring the real skills of a police officer. However, the good days as a patrol officer were very good.

The summer of 1995 provided many PSU days for me to attend. The temperatures were record-breaking and there had been a prolonged drought in the UK, leaving water levels in many reservoirs at an all-time low. This was the year I gained experience of real riot situations.

The first riot I ever attended was in Bradford. At the time, I wasn’t aware of the cause, but I later found out it was as a result of the arrest of two young men. Their arrests had sparked a violent reaction from the local community and it resulted in hundreds of people surrounding one of the local police stations.

I saw the news that morning before I went to work. I was due to start on a late shift at 2 p.m. Pictures on the television from the previous evening in Bradford showed police officers in full riot gear coming under fire from various missiles, ranging from house bricks to petrol bombs. Several cars were on fire and many of the shops had been looted. It didn’t occur to me that, in just a few hours’ time, I would be caught in the middle of it all myself.

I remember the day well. The temperature soared into the 90s. The prospect of working in full riot clothing, which comprised overalls, flameproof balaclava, shin and knee guards, arm protectors and, worst of all, body armour, was not a pleasant one. It was only when I arrived at work that I was told by my inspector that my collar number was listed to go to Bradford in a PSU serial. This would comprise six constables and a sergeant. Being crammed into a transit van with all those clothes on was going to be very uncomfortable in this heat. I didn’t even contemplate the riot itself. I thought that if there had been trouble on the previous night then most of the violence would have subsided. How wrong I was.

The journey in the van from Dewsbury (where I was stationed) to Bradford was about twenty minutes. The disorder from the previous night became more and more evident the closer we got to Bradford. Bricks were still lying in the roads and most of the shop windows were broken. They displayed handwritten signs apologising to customers and saying it would be a while before they reopened. Occasionally, we drove past a burnt-out vehicle, or we’d see a large patch of black on the road from where one had been removed. The place seemed derelict, the streets told their own story: it was easy to visualise the previous night’s disturbance.

I saw shopkeepers sweeping up outside their shops or boarding up their damaged windows. My colleagues walked the streets in groups of four. Exchanging waves with your colleagues in these circumstances seemed compulsory. I liked this as it strengthened the bond between us all.

‘Right we’re here, lads,’ said our sergeant, who had the best seat in the van, in the front next to the driver. The rest of us were jammed in the middle compartment, fighting for space. We had arrived at the relevant police station in Bradford. ‘I’ll go in and see what we’re doing for briefing. You lot stay ‘ere.’

At least we could get out of the van for a few minutes and try to cool off. I stepped out and the scorching sun was immediately noticeable. I unzipped my overalls right down to my waist and sat on a grass verge. There were about thirty police vans lined up in the car park. I began to realise the scale of the incident.

Paul, one of my colleagues in my serial, came and sat with me. ‘Hope it doesn’t kick off in this heat,’ he said as he lay back with his eyes tightly closed.

‘Me too. Imagine running around in this with the shields.’

‘We won’t even get out of the van, Mick. The gaffers will be too bloody scared to upset folk by having us out of the vans. We don’t want to look too aggressive now, do we?’ Paul made no attempt to hide his sarcasm.

‘What do you mean, mate?’ I asked.

‘Well, all they’ll want now is for this to pass over without any more drama. They don’t give a shit about locking up the villains. The gaffers don’t need to worry about them in their world, do they? So long as we don’t get criticised. Wankers.’

As we spoke, our sergeant ambled back from the station to our van.

‘Right, lads…’

‘And lasses, Sarge,’ came a voice from inside the van. Helen, the only female officer in our serial, peered out of the side door and smiled at the sergeant.

‘Sorry, Helen. Anyway, lads and lasses, listen in please. I’ve just been speaking to the chief super and he wants us to go to Neville Street and basically show a presence. We’re under strict instructions not to get out of the van. I’ve been told to remind you that the press are buzzing around, so be aware, please.’

‘Does he know how bloody hot it is in that van, Sarge?’ Paul sounded angry.

‘He’s got pips and crowns, Paul. He doesn’t need to think of things like that. Right, I suggest you all get a quick drink and we’ll set off.’

As we walked across to the station, Paul continued making comments about what he thought was in store for us. I prepared myself for a long and uncomfortable shift.

Neville Street wasn’t far from the station and when we arrived, there was a crowd of about two hundred youths in the street and approximately ten police vans, all with the windscreen protectors down. There were no officers to be seen out on foot. There was a dirty smell of burning rubber lingering in the air from the previous night. The crowd was chanting at us: ‘Come on, pigs, pigs, pigs.’

Every so often, a brick would be launched from the middle of the crowd towards the vans; occasionally one would land on our roof. The noise each one made was deafening and menacing and every time it happened, our conversation was temporarily silenced. Every ten minutes or so, the senior officer at the station would ask to be updated on events. The crowd grew bigger and the number of missiles thrown increased.

‘Are we sitting here like cannon fodder all day, or are we gonna start to lock these toe-rags up, Sarge?’ asked Paul, with an ever-increasing sound of exasperation in his voice.

‘I can only go by what I’ve been told to do, Paul, and that is that we sit tight until told otherwise.’ From the sergeant’s tone, I sensed he was intimidated by Paul, who had over twenty years’ service.

‘It’s bloody ridiculous, this. Why have they got us all over here if they’re not gonna use us?’

‘Look, just wait and see what they want us to do. I’ll let them know that it’s kicking off a bit out there.’

By now, the frequency of bricks hitting us had increased and there was a loud bang at least every couple of minutes. The van was getting badly damaged. The chants got louder. I saw some graffiti on a shop front. It said, Another Blakelock. I assumed that this referred to PC Keith Blakelock, who was brutally murdered in Tottenham in disturbances during the 1980s. This was often reported in the media as The Brixton Riots. Whoever sprayed this was either planning to do something very serious to a police officer, or he was trying to frighten us. He had succeeded in the latter, for myself at least, but I didn’t say anything.

As I thought about this, we were ordered to travel up Neville Street to a rendezvous point to meet with other units, as we were going to be deployed on foot with shields to try to disperse the mob.

‘About bloody time,’ said Paul, as he zipped up his overalls and pulled on his balaclava. ‘Let’s get these idiots locked up.’

We slowly drove up Neville Street only to be faced with about fifty of the crowd, blocking the road. To my horror, I saw a similar number of youths running towards the van from behind. We were trapped. Bricks and glass bottles rained down on the van, each one as frightening as the others had been. We all sat forward with our elbows on our knees and our heads down.

‘I’m stuck here, Sarge,’ explained the van driver, with panic in his voice.

‘Urgent assistance, Neville Street,’ bellowed the sergeant into the radio.

We were at the mercy of the rioters who had circled us. Bricks and bottles continued to smash into the van. There was nothing we could do as they closed in on us from all directions. They used scarves and bandanas to conceal their faces. Some had arms full of bricks, whilst others brandished long sticks and baseball bats. Once in a while, one or two of the rioters would pluck up the courage and come right up to us and strike the van with bats.

‘Lock all the doors,’ ordered the sergeant. This, I can assure you, had been done a long time before he’d said it.