Who'd Be a Copper?

by Jonathan Nicholas

  The PCSOs were assigned to us because their role was seen as similar to ours, that of community engagement, so we were asked to sort them out. They were eventually told to patrol the streets and get to know the community. It was a wide brief, but we didn’t know what else to do. After a while their role became better structured within the organisation, but it took some time. Nowadays you’ll see PCSOs standing guard at a murder scene, with the media stating ‘Plenty of police activity here’ and so on, when in actual fact there isn’t a police officer in sight. Lots of old ladies used to tell me: “It’s nice to see all these police about” when in actual fact I knew they were PCSOs and not cops. It gives an impression there are a lot of cops when there really isn’t. In this respect the public are being conned. Many of them do a great job of community engagement, but so often when they find themselves at an incident there’s the familiar cry on the radio of: “Can I have a police officer please?” because they can’t actually deal with anything, even though they are paid more than many cops. There’s nothing worse than being partnered on patrol with a keen PCSO, particularly near the end of a shift, because they are very good at finding things for other people to do.

  I understand they have been asked to work beyond midnight to assist police officers, but the majority are in a strong trade union, UNISON, who politely told the police where to go. Many of the more unpleasant tasks such as working unsocial hours are therefore done on a voluntary basis and not by compunction. Meanwhile cops have to do as they are told because they have no industrial rights. The government recently slashed police officers’ starting salary by £4,000 pa at a stroke knowing there was nothing they could do about it.

  In November I attended my first tenants and residents meeting on the council estate at the local community centre. It was the first time I’d witnessed the depth of passion some people have for the area in which they live. This was the same area many colleagues had told me was ‘just full of snaffs’ and wasn’t worth bothering about. I was introduced to some strong characters, and realised how much effort many people put into helping their own community. One lady had spent forty years volunteering at the community centre, often five times a week, and had never received any financial reward or recognition. I later submitted a report to the Honours Commission and she was rightly awarded an MBE.

  Looking around the table at these meetings I decided to make a conscious effort to become as involved in the community as I could. I joined the community centre management committee and realised how precarious the running of such places were, despite their vital role in the community.

  One of the first things I noticed at the community centre was how often the roof was being repaired. I saw council workmen scrambling about up there and one of them said he’d been to repair it dozens of times, but local kids just kept ripping it apart. They seemed to enjoy throwing the tiles around like slate Frisbees. I asked why there weren’t any spikes at the corners to stop them climbing up and was told it wasn’t possible because the kids might hurt themselves. As a consequence the problem had persisted for years. I was sure something could be done so I made enquiries with the council. Within a few months I managed to get some very nasty rolling spikes installed around certain parts of the building, with warning signs. The roof was never damaged again. This is just one example of what’s known as Problem Solving Policing. It comes from the personal ownership of a beat, a pride in the area and responsibility. The results can be astonishing.

  There were three parts to my beat area: the council estate of around 800 homes, a posh estate of around 500 homes and a large hospital. The middle-class area caused few problems, other than parking issues when staff and patients across the road refused to pay for parking at the hospital. The council estate took up the majority of my time, until whenever there was a crime spree at the hospital.

  When I took over the beat area, crime at the hospital was horrendous at between seventy and a hundred incidents every month. I’d been reluctant to get started; it seemed such a daunting task. In 2004 a report was published internally by Nottinghamshire Police entitled ‘City Hospital Problem Profile’. Senior officers in the CID were concerned at the amount of crime on the campus. The report fell down through the chain of command like a block of lead until it finally came to rest with me. I don’t think anyone knew what to do, so how on earth was I going to tackle such a huge problem?

  I decided to introduce myself to the hospital security staff, a group of sub-contracted people working from an office in an old red brick building. I gave them my police phone number and asked them to contact me whenever crimes were reported. I also asked the police control room to do the same. If I was on duty and I was able, then I’d attend the crimes myself, so that I could closely monitor the situation. It was hard work at first because I didn’t know anyone on site and I didn’t know my way around.

  My first customer was a local drug addict who’d been stealing from the hospital for years. I was astonished to find that everyone seemed to know his name and already suspected him of committing a huge amount of crime on the campus. I asked security to ring me every time he appeared. It wasn’t long before a computer had been reported stolen and this man had been seen on CCTV wandering the corridors at the same time as the theft. He was seen empty-handed and then a few moments later carrying a bulky item in a bag. He’d done this type of thing many times before and it seemed nothing could be done about it. Clearly this was not the case. I took statements and preserved the CCTV evidence. Soon afterwards I traced the man’s address and obtained a search warrant. In his disgusting first floor flat we found a hospital computer stuffed in a wardrobe. He claimed in interview that he’d just found it and was intent on handing it in to the police.

  I arrested this man half a dozen times for stealing from the hospital, and each time he was found guilty at court but evaded prison. At that time he had 126 previous convictions. Eventually we managed to get him evicted and moved away because he was caught illegally subletting his council flat.

  I went on to arrest a dozen members of staff at the hospital, including two doctors, one of which was masturbating at colleagues in his coffee breaks. I won’t go into too much detail here as I’ve already written another book about it, but it proved to be one of the most rewarding times of my service. I was making a real difference both at the hospital and on the council estate. Rewards come from job satisfaction, and I was getting huge amounts.

  RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

  In 2005 I dealt with a man on the estate for threatening behaviour, the witness statement for which is still used in some training circles today. His eight-year-old son had smashed an old lady’s window and I’d taken the lad to the victim’s house to apologise. He was under the age of criminal responsibility, so the matter wouldn’t go any further. I was then returning the lad in the police van to his home address in order to inform his mother. His father appeared from a vehicle parked outside the address and began shouting at me. The reason the statement was so remarkable was that I wrote it using colloquialisms, in the manner of Thomas Hardy and in the precise language the offender used. Cops always try to use some direct speech when required, in order to add realism, but never quite to this extent. The following is a verbatim excerpt, but I have changed the name:

  ‘I stopped the police van and a group of youths began congregating around the vehicle. Jimmy Smith emerged from his vehicle and immediately threatened violence towards me, using such language as:

  “Come on ye fuckin’ bastard, come on ye cunt” and similar profanities. He said, “What ye been doin’ wi’ me lad ye fuckin’ bastard get out ‘ere an’ al fuckin’ sort ye aaht ye bastard.”

  I informed Mr Smith that his son had admitted breaking a window and he replied in profanities:

  “That’s cos you fuckin’ med ‘im seh that ye cunt he’s only eight.”

  I tried to communicate with Mr Smith numerous times and explain my actions but he seemed in a blind rage and would not listen to me. I noticed he smelt strong
ly of intoxicants. He then took up a fighting stance at the door of my police van and held both fists up in the air threateningly and repeated, shouting loudly:

  “Ger aaht ‘ere an’ ‘al fuckin’ ‘av ye, ye fuckin’ bastard.”

  There were children and members of the public around the vehicle and I considered alighting from the van and using my CS spray on Mr Smith but after a very quick risk assessment of the situation I thought it may have been unsafe to do so with so many children around. I said to Smith:

  “You are not listening to me so I am going.”

  I reversed down the narrow cul-de-sac and as I did so I heard Smith shouting in my direction:

  “Yeah fuck off ye bastard fuck off,” and other similar profane language.

  I would describe Mr Smith as a white male, rather dirty and shabby looking, with very bad teeth, shaved head with some evidence of scarring on the same, earrings, and some tattoos visible. He was about 5’9” tall and appeared very thin as if undernourished. Apart from using profanities constantly his speech was very rough as if he had been poorly educated, if at all.’

  I could have hit the panic button and called for assistance. It was the middle of the day, so there would have been plenty of help around. But I’d encountered the man before, and I knew his history. As aggressive as he was I didn’t feel particularly threatened because the windows were down on the van and the doors were not locked, but he made no attempt to assault me. I also knew that what I could do to him after the event would hurt him more than a roll around in the gutter and an empty CS canister. He had relationships with three women across Nottingham, had children with each, and he’d just been visiting one of them.

  I wrote this witness statement immediately after the event and took it to the Housing Patch Manager at the nearby housing office. A few weeks later I was present in the County Court applying for an ASBO against him. I watched the judge’s face when he was handed this statement and began to read. He raised his eyebrows when he reached the above section and put the statement down in front of him. He removed his half-moon glasses and looked across the court at me and my patch manager.

  “I’m satisfied with this, so I’m going to grant an immediate two year anti-social behaviour order on this individual.” I was very pleasantly surprised. Even though the evidential threshold is lower in civil proceedings such as this, it was a great result considering I didn’t have any other evidence.

  Mr Smith never breached the ASBO. His son later became a regular at my music club and I grew to know him very well. I even met his father again several times before he was imprisoned for a serious assault. One weekend a few years later, when on prison leave, Mr Smith hanged himself in nearby woods.

  In the same year a community police officer colleague, Darren, set up a youth club for the kids on his beat area. He had soft drinks, a huge TV and a games console. Funding was obtained from various charitable sources and it worked very well. Inspired by Darren’s success in 2006 I set up a youth club of my own, based not on computer games, but music. I formed a music club with grant money from a Nottinghamshire charity and rented the community centre two evenings a week. In the early stages both my teenage sons helped, attending the centre for two hours twice a week.

  As with any such project, initial attendance was poor. I put ads in the local newspaper and posters in shops and public notice boards. I worked normal shifts and then stayed at work or returned to the community centre in the evening after work. It was entirely voluntary and I was not paid. After a few weeks the kids discovered it and music club nights became very popular with thirty or forty kids running around knocking hell out of the drums kits and electric guitars. It was an astonishing success and even I was surprised.

  After a while some of the older kids became more serious and found it difficult to progress with the young ones constantly distracting them. I decided to run Tuesday nights for young pre-teens and Thursday nights for teenagers. A small group of teenagers attended every Thursday and were so keen that I often found them waiting at the door when I arrived. Because I was on the community centre committee I had my own keys and store room for equipment. I could only play the drums, so my sons taught guitar and keyboards. I also arranged and paid for a few of the keener members to have professional tuition in Nottingham. I bought a PA system and the lads learned by ear how to play songs by Muse, Metallica, Led Zeppelin and Rage Against the Machine.

  After a year all the effort paid off when the teenagers became quite accomplished rock musicians. The group called themselves Convicted, though few of them actually had any convictions. I was thrilled when lads from some of the roughest families on the estate became involved in the music club, and who in turn invited their friends along. I was working with some of the local target criminal burglars and thieves and we were on first name terms. There were echoes of the relationship my first sergeant had with the villains he drank with in the Smiths Arms many years before. The trust I gained took some time to build, and with some it was hard work, but I knew it was worthwhile. Sometimes when walking the estate in my uniform I’d be approached by a group of lads who would say, “You’re our music teacher, why are you dressed like that?” Eventually I knew almost every young person on the estate, and the majority of the troublemakers were members of my music club.

  It’s a very difficult balancing act between the informal instructional role of music teacher, and operational uniformed cop. It was a steep learning curve for me, and I did make many mistakes. In the early stages there weren’t enough adults present, and I struggled to cope with the sheer numbers in attendance, but my sons were a real help. For the first time I realised how satisfying teaching can be. Of course there were many occasions when I wondered why I was doing it, but then there would be times when everything worked well and I realised that as the facilitator, none of it would have happened without my efforts. Such rewards are worth more than money.

  Some of the kids were ‘challenging’ as the modern saying goes. To be frank, quite a lot were noisy and bloody awkward. I only had one major problem on a music club night and it only lasted twenty minutes. An unknown youth from a different estate had been disruptive all night and at the end refused to leave. As I took hold of him to escort him to the door he tried to head-butt me. I brought him to the ground and handcuffed him. I always kept my flexible cuffs in my jeans pocket. He had been unaware I was a police officer, so when I told him the shock on his face was priceless. After a tearful apology I let him go. I suspected a complaint might be forthcoming and it did, a few weeks later. It wasn’t from the lad or his mother; they thought I’d acted appropriately, considering he later confirmed that he was indeed intent on head-butting me. The complaint came from a youth worker.

  My inspector summoned me to his office and in essence told me the police could no longer lay hands on anyone unless it was to make an arrest. I was shocked by this news. We were not allowed any physical contact whatsoever. I decided to circumvent this by arresting everyone I touched, or at least whenever I needed to I’d utter the words “You are under arrest”, and then de-arrest them moments later, which was apparently acceptable. It sounds absurd but this was the result, and it was all about being risk-averse and covering your back.

  From an operational point of view the music club was brilliant. I knew who my targets were, where they lived, who they associated with and even the clothes they wore. If reports came in of anti-social behaviour in the vicinity I could tell even from scant descriptions who the perpetrators were likely to be. I’d visit mum and speak to her, and the problem was usually resolved without the need for any formal action. Many of the parents knew who I was and what I was trying to achieve with the music club. I was keeping the kids active, giving them something to do, teaching them a life skill and steering them away from trouble. I handed out guitars and drum kits across the estate, with a promise from them that they would be used for practicing. I rarely lost any equipment, and for every drum kit in the estate there would be half a dozen or more kids u
sing it.

  I destroyed barriers between the youth of the estate and the police, which was incredibly important. It was an area officially designated as having some of the worst rates of social depravation in England according to the government’s own statistics, and so any help was appreciated. The most depressing aspect of life on the estate was that the kids had very low expectations. They didn’t think they’d ever achieve anything and seemed mired in hopelessness. I saw it as my job to break this link as much as I could. I was always disappointed therefore when I heard some of the kids tell me of response cops driving by telling them to fuck off.

  Convicted played their first public gig at a neighbouring community centre just before Christmas 2007. They opened with a young lad playing Smoke on the Water very badly, but I could see he was chuffed with it. This particular lad had some serious behavioural problems which tragically led to him taking his own life a few years later when he was only fourteen.