The following summer the older regulars of the band played in Nottingham city centre, at a council event in the Old Market Square. They opened with a blisteringly loud version of Wake Up by Rage Against the Machine, with the lead singer making full use of the radio mike, wandering around in front of the temporary stage. Then without stopping they played Killing in the Name of followed by Metallica’s Enter Sandman, Sad but True, and the Muse songs Plug In Baby and Time is Running Out. They sounded brilliant and the volume was cranked up beyond eleven on the music club’s three hundred watt Marshall amplifiers. I’m not sure passing shoppers knew what was going on! You can see for yourself because some of the music club sessions including this gig are still on YouTube, if you search for Edwards Lane Music Club.
I suppose it might seem odd, a serving police officer helping to create this scenario. It seemed even weirder when you take into account our gig bus was a fully liveried police prison van, used to scoop up drunks on a Saturday night. It was ideal transport, mainly because I could park it anywhere, and the kids loved it. The next summer and for the following two years they played the Sherwood Festival on Woodthorpe Park and a gig in Bulwell market place, on a lorry stage. Convicted also played a set at the Nottingham Playhouse, but the gig didn’t go very well. It’s strange how some gigs just don’t happen the way you want them to! If you’ve ever played live you’ll probably know what I mean. Because the prison van went everywhere with us, we never encountered any trouble.
Between gigs and the music club meetings I rewarded the regular attendees with trips away. I took some to the local Rock City music venue, and to see Metallica at the Nottingham Arena. I rented a council minibus and took five kids to see Muse at the Hallam FM Arena in Sheffield, and Kasabian at the Nottingham Arena. The best concert, however, was in June 2008 when I took three lads to Wembley to see Foo Fighters, in my own car. Anyone with any knowledge of this gig will know it was the night Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones came on stage and played some Led Zeppelin songs. All my hard work with the music club was rewarded in a single evening!
I’m not conceited enough to claim all the credit but at both the hospital and the council estate crime rates began falling rapidly. It was my aim to create a village atmosphere on both the council estate and the hospital campus, where I was known by as many people as possible. The idea was that if you thought you were known by the local sheriff then you may be more reluctant to cause trouble. It works well but creating it can be very time consuming, and you can’t afford to let up even for a few weeks.
By 2006 crime was falling anyway, as mysteriously as it had climbed in the ‘80s and ‘90s. No-one knows the reasons for this fall in crime which spread across the Western world, though there have been many theories about it. I personally think it may be connected to lead-free petrol and better computer graphics. Science fiction writer William Harrison predicted in 1966 that the masses would one day be pacified by huge viewing screens in their homes and wouldn’t often venture outside at night.
Other beat areas were continually plagued by anti-social behaviour. In 2009 there was very little on my estate. Kids are great at doing what they do to amuse themselves in a way that often annoys others, messing about and causing a general nuisance. Today this is called anti-social behaviour. You and I did it when we were kids too, but in those days it was just called ‘playing out’.
I developed a good working relationship with most of the city council youth workers and they began to help a lot more. This was formalised with a joint working partnership agreement, and the youth club eventually became a regular event managed by youth services, with my music club added on. One of the criteria they insisted upon was that I should be CRB checked, Criminal Record Bureau checked, for working with kids. I agreed, and they paid for it, but it struck me as a little absurd. I couldn’t become a cop if I had a record, and if I acquired one I would have been sacked almost immediately.
Every time I ran out of money I searched locally for more grants. The application forms were a regular hurdle and each time I had to show accurate accounts of where the money had been going. I kept all my receipts and luckily my books were regularly audited by some brilliant community accountants who worked for free. Towards the end I was astonished when I realised I’d spent over £27,000 on the council estate kids.
My efforts were recognised in 2007 when I was awarded the title of Community Police Officer of the Year. I’m not sure I did anything more than anyone else, but my sergeant at the time was good at submitting flattering reports about his staff, and I was grateful. Darren, my colleague with the computer game club, had won the same award, and another colleague, Gary, ran a fishing project for kids on his beat, which was equally successful.
It was nice to be recognised, and my wife and I travelled to London with the assistant chief constable for the national finals. The event was exciting and the food was lovely, but a lad from West Yorkshire police won the national prize. I also attended Lancaster House in London where I met the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, along with hundreds of others from all three emergency services. It was apparently his way of saying thank you to us all, which was nice.
While very busy with the music club two evenings a week, my work at the hospital was as demanding as it was rewarding. I was locking up a lot of people, some visiting criminals and thieving patients. I was juggling my time between the two housing estates and the hospital, and I was never bored.
SURVEYS AND INDISCRETIONS
In the summer of 2006 I was sent with other community police officers on a management training course run by Derby College. It was called ‘Introductory Certificate in First Line Management’. We were expected to manage the rapidly increasing number of PCSOs on our beat areas and so this was intended to be of some assistance.
We were tasked to research and present a project entitled ‘Suggestions for Change’, and it could be anything connected to improving our employer’s working practices. One colleague chose improving the uniforms, another the use of vehicles, and for a while I hadn’t a clue what to do. Eventually I decided to make a suggestion around a ‘clocking on’ system for police officers, purely because so many colleagues seemed to be doing precisely what they wanted and were, quite frankly, taking the piss.
As a member of the public you might be surprised to hear this, but cops do not have a clocking on system when they arrive for work. You probably think it wouldn’t be necessary; cops are honest people, surely? Cops are human beings too, so if the sun shines, if they are hung over, or if their kids are late for school, then just like everyone else they might be late for work, or not turn up at all. In the early years of my service when the organisation was tightly run and discipline was stricter, there wasn’t a problem. But latterly, with less discipline, a culture developed where almost anything could happen, and it very often did.
I devised a three-page, ten question ‘Supervisor’s Questionnaire’ and issued a copy to thirteen sergeants in various departments across the city division. The results were not particularly scientific, but nevertheless they were astonishing and even I was surprised:
1. Six out of thirteen supervisors (46%) stated at least one or two members of their staff were late for work or left early in an average day.
2. Eight out of thirteen supervisors (61%) stated one or two members of their staff were late for work or left early in an average week. Two of these supervisors actually stated that three or more staff were doing this in an average week.
3. Three of thirteen supervisors (23%) stated they suspected they had some staff on their team who were not working the minimum hours.
4. Eight out of thirteen supervisors (61%) stated they had been unable to contact a member of staff at least once or twice in the last six months.
5. Four out of thirteen supervisors (30%) stated they had to speak to the same person more than once regarding their time-keeping.
6. Three out of thirteen supervisors (23%) stated they had used, considered, or threatened the use of the disciplin
e procedures against a member of staff regarding their time-keeping.
7. Seven out of thirteen supervisors (53%) stated supervision would be easier if the organisation were to introduce a formal clocking on and clocking off system.
8. Seven out of thirteen supervisors (53%) stated the organisation would function better generally if such a system were introduced for all staff.
The majority of these absences were unauthorised. Cops were therefore stealing time from their employer on a wholesale basis. It demonstrated an appalling lack of will and discipline amongst the majority of the supervisors. Could this be the unintended result of sending new recruits to an ordinary FE college? It seemed that many hard working, conscientious cops were going unnoticed and unrewarded while some of their colleagues blatantly took the piss.
My solution to the problem was the use of the police identity card, the Warrant Card, as it was known, to be used at a machine inside the building. The cards were already linked to the main entrances on the swipe system, so the IT department could presumably arrange this without too much difficulty. I drew up a nine-month schedule of change associated with the introduction of the system with progress and monitoring by various departments until it had been successfully rolled out across the force. There were 2,499 cops in Nottinghamshire at that time. Even if a quarter of this number was frequently late or absent in an unauthorised manner then a huge amount of time and money was being lost. More annoying to me was the obvious fact that those of us who were conscientious had to work that bit harder.
I submitted my report; a copy of which I know went to certain senior officers. I also kept a copy for myself. I passed the course and was awarded my certificate. I expected some interest in this work, but my suggestions for change disappeared, along with the report. The courses also came to an abrupt halt. I suspect some senior officers didn’t wish for a clocking on system either. Could it have been because some of them were the worst offenders?
They’ve since tried to address the issue by making everyone book on duty with their own personal issue Airwave radio. But many cops circumvent this by not turning their radio on all day, and so it continues.
I am always curious to see other points of view on a range of issues, so in 2006 and 2007 I attended as many training courses as I could. I spent a day on a ‘Gay Awareness’ course, another on a ‘Gypsy Awareness’ course, a ‘Migrant Workers Awareness’ course, an Autism Awareness’ course, and an ‘Islam Awareness’ course. All were very interesting.
The Gay Awareness course was conducted by an overweight, middle-aged, ex-Metropolitan police detective with a beer belly and a pock-marked face. I could tell he had a huge amount of life experience in the police and he told us of many gruesome incidents and hardened criminals he had dealt with in London. He was irreverent and refreshingly frank, and reminded me in every way of Philip Glenister’s colourful character Gene Hunt in the TV cop series Life on Mars. He seemed very masculine and I found myself occasionally glancing at the door for the gay instructor to waltz in all dressed in pink and speaking like Larry Grayson. This didn’t happen because the hardened detective from London was the gay instructor. That was the whole point of course. He told us about his life at work in the ‘70s when he made up the names of various elusive girlfriends he’d been shagging all weekend, in order to fit in with his work colleagues’ banter. All the time he had a male partner he could never discuss because he knew he’d be ostracised as a ‘puff’, a ‘bender’ or a ‘queer’. It was very sad to hear, but then in later years when he finally came out he described how it was as though he’d been released from a life sentence in his own personal prison. It was a brilliant day’s input and utterly shattered all gay stereotypes.
I was equally astonished by the Islam Awareness course, but for different reasons. A dozen of us were seated in a large happy-clappy semi-circle in the classroom, as is the modern method, waiting for the instructor to arrive. A man walked into the room dressed in long white robes and wearing a hat that looked like a white fez. He stated he was a serving cop, though I’d never seen him in uniform or driving a police car on the front line. He stated he was of Pakistani origin but was born in the UK. He told us some brief details of the Quran, the Pillars of Wisdom and so on. I’d read of TE Lawrence’s exploits in Arabia, and of course I’d lived in the Middle East for eighteen months, so it was very interesting. Then he asked if anyone had any questions.
A colleague spoke up:
“What do you think about the use of alcohol in this country, as you said in Islam it is forbidden?”
Without any hesitation the man replied: “We will never be reconciled to the way you drink alcohol, never. We will never accept the way your women dress either, and get drunk the way they do. We will never accept your way of life. We will never accept this as true Muslims.”
He spoke with a great deal of self-assurance bordering on arrogance, and with a deliberate emphasis on the word ‘never’. The room was stunned into silence. No-one dared ask another question. I found it curious that he used the words ‘your’ women and ‘your’ way of life, when he’d already said he was born in the UK. I immediately pondered the thought: What hope was there for integration?
This experience had been on my mind so much that a few weeks later I sent the following email to the training school:
‘I am surprised to see Notts Police is still sending people on the above course. I myself have attended such a day and found it interesting as I realised how rigid, intractable and intolerant the Muslim faith is, and it went some way to reinforcing my own stereotypes of Islam. To that end it was an interesting day. However, now that the government has officially discredited ‘multiculturalism’ and deemed it to be a failure, I would have thought such a course would now cease?’
I was aiming to provoke a reaction, but I heard nothing for several weeks. The course needed to change as it was clearly having the opposite intended effect. Typically in Britain’s modern police service, when something even remotely controversial is said in this manner a straight answer or a debate about the issue just doesn’t happen. All you get is a bollocking.
I received this email from a gaffer:
‘Can you come and see me on Monday, say 11am, to discuss an email you sent to training following your Muslim Course.
Thank you.’
I knew the chap reasonably well and I didn’t have a particularly high opinion of him. I remember in the ‘80s, when we were both constables, being sent with other officers to a serious assault on Radford Road outside the Smiths Arms. The offender had dropped a bunch of keys in the street which were crucial to the investigation. It was 9.30pm and we were off duty at 10pm. Walking together we both saw a bunch of keys in the road. He looked at me and said: “I haven’t seen ‘em!” and walked away. He went home at 10pm while I remained behind to book the keys into the property store and provide a witness statement. I was late off by over an hour. Though he was on a different section on another occasion, we were both sitting in a response car near the police station when as the driver he was called to attend a domestic incident in the Aspley area of Nottingham. He had his feet up and wasn’t doing anything. To my astonishment he said over the radio: “I’m busy taking a statement at the moment, is there anyone else can attend that?” as he turned to me and smiled like an accomplished liar. Someone else was then sent to the job. He frequently took two hours or more for meal breaks, he never seemed busy and the word ‘conscientious’ was clearly not in his vocabulary.
I explained what had happened on the Islam course and exactly what had been said. Almost immediately he dismissed my opinions, telling me I was wrong to send the email and the content was also incorrect. It was not up for debate. He then said to me:
“It’s not for Muslims to change their way of life it’s for us to adapt to theirs. We have to be sensitive as to where we drink alcohol and how we dress.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“What? Are you serious?”
“Yes I am. In fact you a
re lucky I’m not taking this matter down the discipline route. Don’t send any such emails like that again.”
I was astonished. What was happening to race relations in Britain? The London bombings of 7/7/2005 had surely demonstrated there were real problems in Britain with a failure to integrate.
This gaffer reminded me the police and other public bodies in Britain were now under a legal obligation to promote diversity. When did this happen? I don’t remember signing up to become a political evangelist. The job was hard enough without having to actively promote a hare-brained government idea. I thought the police were supposed to be independent of politics anyway? It seemed we were being as cynically manipulated as during the 1984 miners’ dispute, but in a much more subtle and pervasive manner. What if the government suddenly decreed the police should actively promote Richard Dawkins’ Flying Spaghetti Monster?
The Home Office finally became concerned about radicalisation of British born Muslims by creating the ‘Prevent Strategy’, which was supposedly designed to put a stop to it. Years later some places on the Nottinghamshire Prevent Team became available and so I applied. I considered myself fit for the role having lived in the Middle East, with some knowledge of Arabic and Hebrew. I studied the Prevent policy document and as I turned the pages I wondered when the really useful strategies would start, but they didn’t. It was 90% waffle and politically correct tiptoeing. I thought then how the whole thing was doomed to failure, but at least working on the team might be interesting, and remove me from shift work for a while.
I turned up at the interview early and primed, my head full of job-speak nonsense you need to pass interviews these days. I introduced myself and was asked to sit and wait for a while before my interview. All seemed to be going well until the waiting continued for half an hour, and well beyond the time of my interview. What was the delay? I was then told by a person in plain clothes that I was no longer suitable to apply for the post. I asked why.
Who'd Be a Copper? Page 18
