Cop Out - The End Of My Brilliant Career In The NZ Police (The Laughing Policeman)
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It would have done too except Michelle turned out to be an invisible room-mate. In the first six months she lived with us I saw her four times. The house was just a front for her parent’s sake. While they thought she was living with us, she was in fact staying with her boyfriend. Still, she paid the rent on time so we weren’t complaining.
The only problem was the complex charade we had to go through when her parents rang. Our cover story was that she was in the shower or something equally plausible and she’d ring them back, then we’d call her boyfriend’s house and pass on the message. The things we go through for love eh! Or lust. I don’t know which causes more problems.
Of course that wasn’t the way things were for Carey and me. We were truly in love. Pure, Disney-like love, the sort Snow White had for her handsome prince, right up until the first time he cut his toenails in bed.
The only problem with this kind of dedication is that it makes Jack (or in this case Glenn) a dull boy. Sergeant Nelson noticed it and made several strong and derogatory references to my devotion to Carey in my first progress report. These written assessments of your performance were completed by your sergeant at regular intervals (every three months) and formed part of your personal record. During my first ‘chat’ with Sergeant Nelson he told me I was spending too much time with my girlfriend and not enough time getting pissed with my police mates and shagging other women. His words not mine.
I was flabbergasted. What I did in my private life was of no concern to the Police Department as long as it didn’t affect the way I did my job. His comments got my back up. Who the hell was he telling me how to live my life? And advising me to cheat on my girlfriend, no less. I couldn’t believe his nerve. I was so astounded I didn’t think to let him know how I felt. I just sat there and said nothing, steaming away.
Looking back, I think my indignity stopped me from realizing what he was trying to tell me. In an extremely heavy-handed way he was trying to give me some very sage advice. He was telling me not to rush into a serious relationship before I was ready. Remember I was only nineteen at the time. It all makes perfect sense now and it would have been good counsel had it not been delivered with Sergeant Nelson’s trademark size twelve boot marks all over it. Once my hackles were up there was no getting through to me and I dismissed his ‘advice’ out of hand.
A wake-up call to the reality of my relationship came about a month later.
I had always been a sociable guy with plenty of friends and a passion for life. But of late I’d been feeling quite low. My job was hard. I wasn’t impressing Sergeant Nelson as much as I needed to. I was tired from all the early starts (I’m not a morning person in the same way that Freddy Kruger wouldn’t be the best choice of baby sitter) and I wasn’t seeing my friends as often as I used to.
I was at a low ebb in my life and I didn’t know why.
The answer came loud and clear at a party Carey and I attended. It was the first get-together we’d been to for a considerable time. We had been spending every spare moment together to the exclusion of everything else, bar work and study. I hadn’t wanted to go but the girl who was holding the party was a good friend of Carey's and we’d promised to be there.
The party was being held was a typical student house: dingy and full of really bad furniture. It was also rocking. By the time we arrived things were in full swing. We made our way awkwardly to the lounge and Carey and I sat down together on the couch, watching the chaos that surrounded us. I got up, poured us both a drink, then returned to sit with Carey and watch everybody else have a great time. As we sat there holding hands, I watched two drunk guys I didn’t know doing a limbo dance under a broomstick. They were both wearing comical face masks and spent more time cheating the height of the broomstick than actually limboing, especially when the limboee was a woman. As I sat there like an old man on the couch, realization of how dull I was becoming hit me like a sharp slap across the face. Sergeant Nelson was right (not that I credited him for my revelation) my youth was passing me by. Carey and I had become inwardly focused. It wasn’t her fault but our affair was strangling the life out of me.
Our relationship changed forever that night. I told Carey I wanted to mingle, jumped off the couch and joined in the half-arsed limbo contest. The two guys in the face masks were called Bruce and Dave and they were teacher’s college students as well, surprise, surprise. They were also the devil incarnate. We hit it off immediately and a night of drunken revelry ensued.
Half way through the night, a not so secret society was formed from the punch-line of an embarrassing commercial that was playing at the time. Those of you who have good memories and are really old may remember it. The ad was for the most bizarre product to hit the New Zealand market: it was a non-alcoholic drink called Claytons that looked vaguely like whisky but tasted nothing like it.
The idea of a ‘man’s drink’ like whisky existing in a non-alcoholic version was revolutionary back then. Low alcohol drinks were yet to be invented. In the early 1980s there wasn’t the choice of beverages we have today. If you had an extra teaspoon of sugar in your tea that was an energy drink, no-one drank water unless they were really poor; and the only time you got an alcoholic soda was if your dad spilt his beer in your Fanta.
So it was a brave move introducing non-alcoholic Claytons to a very sceptical market. It was doomed to fail, which was a shame because Claytons had the most fantastic tag line I’ve ever heard: ‘The drink you have when you’re not having a drink.’ I’ve never worked out what that meant; although once you’d tasted the gunk you realised the line should have been: ‘The drink you have when your taste buds have ceased to function.’
The television ad was a gem. It opened with an Australian bloke in a pub telling the punch line to what was obviously the best joke in the world. The line was: 'Now we can all get some sleep.’ Gales of laughter ensued from the rest of his mates at the pub and the barman replied: 'Good one Jack, what’ll you have?’ Jack says: 'I’ll have a Claytons and soda.'
Fabulous stuff.
Naturally this ad had a cult following with the opening lines changed to:
'Now we can all kill some sheep.'
After much hilarious repetition of the hallowed lines, Dave, Bruce and I became respectively known as Jacks One, Two and Three (after our new found hero) and 'The Jacks' were born.
With a new lease of life, I decided to enjoy the party to the full.
I was not the only one.
Around midnight, the call of nature, and quite a few beers caught up with me and I made my way to the only toilet in the house. This was a civilized move on my part as the temptation to have a squirt in the backyard loomed large, but I’d promised Carey I’d be on my best behaviour and I’m a man of my word. So I made it to the toilet, unzipped myself and had a contented pee.
As least it was contented until I got the shock of my life. A hand suddenly reached around from behind me and grabbed hold of my penis.
This was a good news, bad news scenario.
The good news was that the hand wasn’t male and the bad news was that it didn’t belong to anyone I knew.
The young woman who had suddenly taken it upon herself to ‘help me’ told me to relax as she was a nurse. This fact offered me little comfort. I was busy thinking of what would happen to the piece of my anatomy she was currently examining (with a less than professional eye) if Carey happened to walk in. It turned out that Carey was the least of my worries. Before I had the chance to open my mouth to register my objection there was an insistent banging on the toilet door. A loud and very angry voice boomed out.
'I know you’re in there Cheryl.'
'Oh shit,' said my new ‘friend’ 'That’s my husband.'
Oh great. One minute, I 'm minding my own business, innocently having a pee, then the next thing I know I’m trapped in the toilet with a mad nurse’s uninvited hand wrapped around my genitalia and her irate husband about to smash the door in.
Instinctively I knew that telling him ‘It’s all r
ight, she’s a nurse,’ wasn’t going to help so I decided to get out of there as quickly as I could. I retreated from the nurse's grasp and sent ‘Mr. Floppy’ to his room without any supper, slamming the door as he went through. Sadly he wasn’t all the way in when I zipped up. Any men reading this may want to take a moment to readjust themselves. You know what I’m saying.
My yell of pain prompted Hubby to another fit of bashing.
'What’s going on in there?' he yelled.
I’d had enough by now, and was in excruciating pain, so I kicked open the door. I was relieved to see that her husband was smaller than me. Knowing I could take him, I became justifiably indignant.
'Your wife’s a loony.’ I told him, hobbling away in the most dignified manner I could muster.
After a careful re-zip I joined the others in the living room and related my sorry tale to the lads. Bruce and Dave almost spilled their drinks. I wasn’t the first guy to be accosted in the toilet that evening. The nurse had tried it on with every guest at the party who had a pulse and a penis. This didn’t do a lot for my ego but it did get me off the hook with Carey. Actually to her credit she took the whole event in her stride, treating the incident with the levity it deserved. I think the only person at the party not to find it amusing was the nurse’s husband. Not surprisingly their marriage ended soon after.
However, their union looked like a match made in heaven compared to some marriages I saw while in the police. Everything they’d told us at Trentham about domestic disputes turned out to be true and then some. I can’t calculate how many domestic incidents I attended in the course of my brief career but it was a hell of a lot. They ranged in ferocity from small misunderstandings to all-out war and they were always unpleasant and unpredictable.
Nine times out of ten it was the woman who had been assaulted, either physically or mentally.
I always felt out of my depth with domestics. It was very hard to offer matrimonial advice to a couple twenty years your senior when the only steady relationship you’ve had was a year old. Often it was like offering marital guidance to your mum and dad. The uniform seemed to help. Most people failed to recognise that the uniform was just a cover for a nervous nineteen year old boy. Sometimes just talking to the combatants was not enough and one or other of them would have to be removed. If physical violence had occurred we’d normally have enough evidence to lock up the offender (almost always the male) for the night. This was obviously just a temporary solution and more often than not the offender was shown forgiveness by the victim the very next day. It wasn’t unusual to see the offender being bailed out by the woman he’d beaten up the night before.
'I’m sorry,' is easy to say. It’s also easy to believe if you really want to. Until the next time.
In those days the law made it difficult to break the cycle of violence. Today the police have the power to press charges without a complaint from the victim. This is a very good law because it takes the pressure off the person who has been assaulted. If criminal action is brought by the police, the offender is forced to take the blame on their own shoulders and realise that applying pressure on the victim won’t result on the charge being withdrawn. Still, no amount of legislation can assist the couples who really don’t want help. I remember being called to an extremely violent domestic which I was sure would end in a serious assault charge being laid. The neighbours called us believing that the couple involved was killing each other. They weren’t far wrong.
We could hear the screaming argument before we got out of the car. This, and the fact that the front of their house looked like a bomb site, made us wonder what we were about to encounter. The front door lay broken and splintered on the lawn. Shards of shattered glass littered the steps and bright red splashes of blood speckled the doorway. Were it not for the raised voices within I would have expected to be walking into the scene of a murder.
The first thing we saw when we got inside was the husband. He was bleeding profusely from a nasty head wound. His wife was arguably in a worse state. Her clothes were ripped and blood flowed freely from an assortment of cuts and scratches to her face, arms and legs.
As soon as they saw us they stopped yelling at each other and began screaming at us, ordering us from their property and abusing the life out of myself and my partner. A few choice words and dark threats from my fellow officer calmed them down but they made it very clear they didn’t want our assistance. We told them that as a complaint had been laid we wouldn’t be leaving until we found out what had happened. After much muttering about ‘bloody pigs sticking their noses in where they weren’t wanted’ they calmed down and started talking. The husband had popped into the kitchen while his wife was cooking their evening meal and had proffered some less than constructive criticism. She had taken exception, grabbed hold of a cast iron frying pan and smashed it into the side of his head, knocking him to the ground. Being extremely solid in the skull area (more bone than brain) he was only dazed by a blow that I estimate would have rendered an elephant unconscious. He got straight back up and retaliated by throwing his wife through their glass-inlaid front door. She, evidently, was as thick skinned as he was thick skulled and she ran back into the house to continue the battle by throwing furniture at her husband. And that’s how we found them, screaming and bleeding inside their wrecked home.
Dinner was still cooking on the stove, though I suspect the vegetables may have been overdone. I wasn’t going to tell her that as she obviously didn’t take criticism well.
Neither of them wanted to press charges but we did manage to persuade them both to seek medical attention. We had to - if one of them had died from their injuries after we’d left, there would have been hell to pay. Grudgingly they let us call an ambulance to ferry them to an Accident and Emergency clinic, at great cost to the taxpayer. We even secured their front door before we left without receiving a word of appreciation. In fact all we got was abuse. It was a thankless bloody job some days.
In case you are wondering how the police reported on cases like this, I’ll let you in on the secret. We carried with us at all times a notebook of short report forms called Police 101 Reports. According to Police General Instructions the form could be used for logging details of:
· Street Arrests and Minor Offences - i.e. offences liable up to three months' imprisonment.
· Cautioned Offences - Where the offender’s details can be obtained at the scene and the reporting member believes that a verbal caution is a sufficient deterrent.
· Suspected Offences - When investigation subsequently discloses no offence.
· Incidents - Where Police attendance is sufficient and no further correspondence need be submitted.
The cover flap of the notebook contained a list of frequently used incident and offence codes that were on the 101 forms. As many of these are still used by the police I think it’s worth noting the list down. This will give you an insight into the incidents and offences most commonly attended. Some may surprise you.
INCIDENTS
1A - Alarm Sounding
1B - Bomb Scare
1C - Car/Person acting suspiciously
1D - Domestic Dispute
1E - Emergency (It doesn’t say what kind, could be anything from a cat stuck up a tree to a sniper loose in the CBD.)
1F - Fire Call
1M - Mental Case
1N - Noisy Party
1P - Premises Insecure
1S - Sudden Death
1T - Truancy
1V - Vehicle Collision
1X - Attempted Suicide
1Z - Other requests by public for service (Would you like fries with that?)
The most common offences, according to my old 101 book were, minor found in bar, obstruction/hindrance of police, disorderly behaviour, offensive behaviour, obscene language, insulting language, drunkenness, fighting, idle and disorderly, wilful damage, unlawfully in building, careless use/driving and excessive speed.
Of the twenty two incidents recorded in my book, nine we
re audible or silent alarm calls, four were domestic disputes (one being the case mentioned earlier), three were suspicious people calls, plus we had one suspicious vehicle, one suspicious lights, a breach of a non-molestation order, a disqualified driver, a cannabis incident and my favourite, a 'public relations' event. My notes on this incident read as follows:
Minor motor accident involving dog, no injuries, minimal damage to the motor bike, dog's owner says the dog is okay.”
Oh yes, Constable Wood got all the big cases.
Protection Detail
Late shift, early May 1981. I finally got something right. I’d been patrolling the town square, taking bags of glue out of the hands of stoned kids, who should have known better and probably would have done had they not fried their brains with Bostik, when I noticed a suspicious vehicle. It was a clapped out Triumph Herald (a typical student vehicle) and it was parked right in the centre of town. This in itself wasn’t particularly suspicious. No, the thing that aroused my suspicions was that the car was filling with smoke.
I was fairly certain the car hadn’t caught fire, due to its two occupants showing no sign of vacating the vehicle. Indeed, they seemed happy to stay where they were. I figured out why when I got closer.
Ahhh, the sweet smell of cannabis. That pungent aroma of instant arrest.
I was anti-drugs in those days of course, in a particularly priggish, self-righteous way, and was more than happy to fall upon these law-breakers like an avenging angel. I feel a little embarrassed by my ebullience, as the first thing I did when I left the police was dye my hair red, get an earring and go to Amsterdam to get legally stoned. But that was in the future, my only experience of drugs up until then had been smoking bracken behind the bike sheds at school. It made me feel sick and I got a fungal disease. At this point in my career it was my sworn duty to lock up any druggies I stumbled across. And there they were, two teenagers having a toke in a Triumph.