Cop Out - The End Of My Brilliant Career In The NZ Police (The Laughing Policeman)

by Glenn Wood

  So far I’d only done damage to myself and my property, whereas ‘The full Gonzo’ promised much more.

  Bruce wanted another ski and despite the protestations of the outboard motor everyone thought it was a fantastic idea. The sight of other boaties fleeing in terror before his barely controlled bulk was extremely amusing. He jumped into the water, had trouble getting his skis on and floated quite a distance from the boat before yelling he was ready. I was standing at the starboard end (the back bit) of the boat watching him and Dave told me to throw out the ski rope. Attached to the end of the ski rope were two solid wooden handles that the skier holds.

  The best way to get these vital pieces of equipment to the skier is to swing the rope and handles in looping circles around your head and when you’ve achieved enough speed for them to go the distance, heave them out the back of the boat. I’d been watching Dave and his dad do this all afternoon and it seemed simple enough. This was not the case. Once I had the rope and handles swinging around my head like a mad rodeo cowboy I found it hard to work out when to let them go. The boat was also drifting sideways, just make it that bit more difficult. I let the rope and handles go at the absolute zenith of their speed, wanting to make sure they flew far enough out for Bruce to grab them. Unfortunately I lost my balance as I threw them and instead of sailing in a perfect arc out the back of the boat they sped towards the front, narrowly missing Dave’s father’s head and smashing clean through the boat’s front windscreen. The screen smashed into a million pieces as shards of splintered plastic spun end over end, twinkling like tiny daggers in the sun. Bruce gave a yell as one of the larger pieces and hundreds of smaller ones sheared off in a staggered angle towards him, hissing and splashing into the water centimetres from his chest. One bounced spectacularly off the side of his Action Hero helmet. Dave’s dad said some rather undad-like things and whirled his chair around to see what the hell had happened. I just stood there with a stupid expression on my face waiting to be banned forever from the boat, the holiday home and possibly the entire North Island.

  'Ohhh, sorry, I slipped.' I stammered ineffectually. Thinking how completely inadequate my excuse sounded even as I uttered it. I looked to my friends for support but they just stood still, drop-jawed. Dave placed his head into his hands as the realization sunk in that not only had I nearly decapitated his father but I’d destroyed the boat window and some of the front paint work in one ill-fated swoop.

  Dave’s Dad laughed. It was a full throaty laugh that had worked its way up from his stomach. It was one of the sweetest sounds I had ever heard.

  'Gonzo eh. Well we can’t say we weren’t warned.'

  Dave had filled his parents in on my personal history but they hadn’t believed the stories. Dave assured me later that evening that had anyone but me smashed up the boat then it would have been their last visit to Pukawa. For me it was just the start of many unforgettable holidays in that tranquil bay and also the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Dave’s parents.

  Dave’s Dad didn’t even make me pay for the damage.

  The rest of the weekend went without further incident and while it couldn’t be called relaxing, the boy’s weekend was just what I needed.

  I returned to the flat due to start work on a late shift. When I arrived home I noticed a note from Michelle (who was spending more time at the flat) saying that a fuse had blown on the stove so one of the elements wasn’t working. She carried on to say that Sheep would fix it when he came home.

  This offended my male sensibilities. I may be prone to klutziness but I was capable of changing a fuse, surely. I was so incensed that I went straight to the kitchen drawer, took out a fuse, snapped open the back of the stove and started hauling out the fuse blocks to see which one had blown. It certainly wasn’t the first one because it had plenty of juice flowing through it. More than enough to throw me clear across the kitchen. As I lay on the floor semi-conscious and twitching like a stunned trout, it occurred to me that I should have switched the power off before attempting to remove the fuses.

  'I’m sorry Sergeant Nelson; Constable Wood won’t be in tonight as he has electrocuted himself again.'

  During those few months before Christmas in 1981, I was hardly ever at work. My ulcer hadn’t settled down and I often took days off citing flu as the reason. Then I got the flu for real, probably because of my lowered resistance through poor diet and the odd cold shower. Michelle was back in the flat almost full time now and this put more strain on our hot water cylinder. This was bad news for the last one up which was usually me. I don’t wish to sound sexist here but what the hell do women do in the shower? I mean there’s not much to it is there? You zip the soap across your chest a couple of times, the suds and water dribbling down and washing the rest of your body by proxy, give your privates a shake, rinse, and Bob’s your freshly washed uncle. Shower completed in a few minutes. Not Michelle. No, she was in there for hours. Maybe it was all the curves; I have no idea. It may have had something to do with the many weird and wonderful new products that had materialised in our bathroom cupboard.

  Previous contents: Two disposable razors, one block of soap (Knight’s Castile - we agonised over this thinking that Castile sounded a bit blousy. We justified it by deciding that Castile was an attempt to woe the female market and that it was really Knight’s Castle, which sounded cool), two sticks of deodorant, a large value pack of combined shampoo and conditioner, some Brut body spray given to me by Carey (unopened) and a packet of raisins. Showering was hungry work.

  But now there were all kinds of thing in there, items I’d never heard of: exfoliating creams, body scrubs with honey in them (which would go well with the raisins), pre-pre-shampoo, pre-shampoo, shampoo, post-shampoo, pre-conditioner, conditioner, toner, gel, body washes, curl enhancers and feminine products that I really didn’t want to know about. All of it designed to keep Michelle in the shower till the hot water ran out.

  So, I got the flu. Then I got over the flu and felt well enough to play rugby again. Someone stood on my wrist, spraining it badly. This meant I couldn’t go on active duty at work and had to be put on light duties.

  I spent most of my recovery time writing reports to explain why I needed recovery time. Realizing I’d been absent from duty for the best part of three months due to illness and accident (so much for my campaign of increased vigilance) I decided to soften the blow by putting in a humorous report detailing my rugby injury. Ten minutes after submitting it I was called into the senior sergeant’s office.

  'What’s this Constable Wood?’ He said holding my recently submitted report aloft.

  ‘It’s an injury report sir.' said I with forced joviality.

  'It doesn’t seem to be in the correct format Constable,' he muttered.

  'I thought I’d lighten your day with a bit of humor, sir.'

  The senior sergeant frowned and looked perplexed. 'Humor, you say,' he said as if this was some foreign term he’d never encountered before. 'So, you find the fact that you’re on light duties amusing do you Constable Wood?'

  He had twisted the situation beautifully and all of a sudden the gravity of the situation struck me.

  'Not at all sir.' I stammered. I couldn’t believe he was making such a big deal out of an injury report.

  He placed the report in his top drawer, told me to go and write the report out correctly and dismissed me. The report was placed in my personal file and later used as part of the evidence as to why I should be thrown out of the police.

  While on light duties I was required to man the operations centre during night shift. This was an important job as it meant I’d be controlling all our section's movements during the most dangerous time of the shift. I would also be required to answer all incoming telephone calls and dispatch units appropriately. As well as doing this you had to respond to radio telephone calls, operate the computer system, keep a log of calls and movements and sometimes even attend to the front desk. And frequently, during night shift, you’d do it all by yourse
lf, often being the only cop in the entire station. Oh yeah, after 11 o’clock all the surrounding areas in the Manawatu environs, including Woodville, Foxton and Pahiatua switched over to the Palmerston North exchange so you had to handle all the calls and dispatches for those areas too. If you had any spare time you could stick a broom up your bum and sweep the floor as well.

  For the first two nights I concentrated hard, busying myself during the few down times by sending internal mail to my mates on the computer system. I also ran a lot of computer checks for my section colleagues. At the risk of bringing the Official Secrets Act down on my head I’ll explain how that works.

  When you are out on the beat or in the car you often run across bad people. If these bad people are acting suspiciously you may want to chat with them. Once you have their details - name, address, etc. - you will probably want to find out just how naughty they are. To do this you request a QP, or Query Person to give the procedure its full name. On receiving your call, the operator at the station will run the person's name through the police computer to see what pops up. The response will not only verify the information you’ve already been given but will also tell you if that person has any outstanding warrants or is wanted for any reason. If this still doesn’t tell you enough, you can go to the next step and request a QPR (Query Person's Record). This will give you the suspect’s entire criminal history, and is very useful in situations such as the following.

  You are wandering along on the beat at 2am, minding your own business when you come across Joe Nobody standing in a dark alley. You notice he is carrying a crowbar in his hand. You ask Joe what he’s up to and he replies that a friend has locked himself out of his house and he is on his way around to help break open the door. Unfortunately Joe has forgotten his friends address (silly Joe) so he’s given up and is on his way home. Not the most credible story in the world, but has Joe broken any laws? The answer is yes because a QPR reveals that Joe’s record contains many recent burglary convictions. He can now be arrested and charged with possession of burglary tools with intent to commit a crime. The result of the QPR gives you all the evidence you need to establish a prima facie case against Joe which has a good chance of resulting in a conviction.

  Other law enforcement tool Sergeant Nelson was insistent we used was the process of ‘tipping out’ cars. If you were on patrol in the I-car late at night and came across a vehicle which either had a dodgy-looking occupant or was parked somewhere suspicious, you were to stop the vehicle and question the occupants. Before doing so, it was wise to request a QVR (Query Vehicle Registration), which will tell you who the owner was and if the police had any interest in the driver, i.e. whether it was lost or stolen. If the answer came back in the affirmative and you were tailing the vehicle you’d struck gold and a high-speed car chase would probably ensue. This was the most fun it was possible to have in the police. Hurtling around the streets late at night tailing a stolen car and trying to run it off the road. In my book (and this is my book) there was no greater adrenaline high.

  It was even fun in the ops room, as you had to co-ordinate all the vehicles involved in the chase and try and set up road blocks. You also received a vicarious high listening to the excitement in your mates’ voices as they tore around after the stolen vehicle, yelling street names and locations into the mike.

  When a large number of QPs and QVRs are being requested, the operations room becomes a very busy place. These requests took second place to emergency calls and quite often you would be required to ask your colleagues to 'wait one' while you answered a call. I particularly enjoyed telling Sergeant Nelson to wait because I knew it ticked him off and there was nothing he could do about it. When you were in charge of the ops room you made the decisions and while you would often have to explain your actions at a later date, at the time it was down to you. Everyone else had no option but to do what they were told. Thinking back, it was a hell of a responsibility, especially for someone with my record. True to form I blew it.

  When things were busy I was fine. The problems came on slow nights. It was either a feast or famine in the operations room. I have spent nights in there when it was physically impossible to do everything required of you. All the phone lines would light up at once, including the 111 light, at the same time you were trying to direct three other operations and a car chase, answer RT calls, deal with a lunatic at the front desk and respond to numerous QPs and QVRs, all of which were deemed urgent. On other nights absolutely nothing happened and you were left sitting there twiddling your thumbs, slapping yourself to try and stay awake.

  After two such nights in a row, I decided to bring in my guitar to work. The idea being I could practice my playing when nothing else was going on. Sheep and Michelle applauded this idea as I was driving them mad in the flat. I am an appalling guitarist, but this had not dampened my enthusiasm. I first received guitar lessons as a teenager and things did not go well even then. Mum was aware of my lack of musical ability and decided the only person who would be able to endure my inept strumming would be a saint. She opted for the next best thing and organised for me to attend guitar lessons with a nun (Sister Georgina, a lovely lady and very good guitarist, in a sort of wholesome, religious way) at one of the local convent schools. Sister Georgina set about diligently teaching me the rudiments of scales, chords and rhythm (we soon discovered I don’t have any). However, I was unable to master even the most basic principles and her attempts to introduce me to the wonders of Seals and Croft and Cliff Richard fell upon tone-deaf ears. After two months of enduring my heavy handed slaughtering of her favorite tunes she quietly suggested that I give up the guitar and concentrate on rugby. I had broken a nun: not an easy achievement but one I was kind of proud of.

  My guitar lay untouched until it came time to decorate my room in the flat. Whereupon I retrieved it from Mum and Dad’s house thinking that it would look good just slung in the corner, as if I was able to play it but just couldn’t be bothered. Several months later I met a good guitarist at a party and he drunkenly showed me how to play the three basic cords of Deep Purple’s smash hit ‘Smoke on the water.’ This suited my heavy handed style and I practiced this mind numbing riff ad infinitum, driving poor old Sheep and Michelle insane.

  At least alone in the police operations room, there would be no-one threatening to break the guitar over my head.

  It was a slow night but the incidental chatter on the radio was interrupting the flow of my chord changes, so I decided to turn down the volume from the RTs. No-one was talking to me - it was just banter between beat and I-car. There were no calls coming through on the outside line and the cars were all just patrolling, rather than attending incidents, so I settled down to practice some fancy fingering. I had progressed past ‘Smoke on the Water’, thanks to Jack One who was a consummate musician and was now struggling with a few Neil Young classics. Half an hour later my sergeant burst into the operations room just as I was launching into a prophetic version of ‘Helpless’ and started going off his nut. At first I thought he just wasn’t a Neil Young fan, but then I realised there more to his anger. I’d got so lost in my muse that I’d forgotten to turn the RT volume up again. He’d been calling me for the last fifteen minutes. He was furious and reminded me that I was the only point of contact my fellow officers had and if they got into trouble I had to be alert and ready to respond. Apparently he didn’t count being tipped back in the ops chair with my feet on the coms desk, strumming my guitar, as being vigilant.

  He had a damned good point, which he made again and again and again. I tried to apologise, as I was clearly in the wrong and I knew it. But he wasn’t having any of it and another black mark went into my personal record. It looked like I’d be burning out rather than fading away.

  My Drug Buddy

  I had fully recovered from my rugby injuries by the beginning of December and as punishment for being a living, breathing disaster area I was required to work Christmas Day. It was bloody miserable. Especially when it came to dinner time an
d I had to pick up the prisoners’ meals. Our inmates' food was supplied by a local restaurant, (quite a good one) and it was our job to pick it up and deliver it to them. This entailed driving to the restaurant and watching dejectedly as the chefs brought out plate after plate of good grub, the mouth-watering smells driving you crazy on the long trip back to the station. When on breakfast duty I’d whip the foil covering off the plates and pinch a couple of sausages, scoffing them before returning. It seemed wrong that the scumbag prisoners who had been abusing us all morning were better fed than we were. I had to stop my sausage pilfering after two prisoners discussed their meals in the exercise yard. A complaint was filed after their tete-a-tete because one discovered he was getting less saussies than his mate. Following that, the chefs filled in an order with the exact amount of food they’d sent clearly printed on the front. We were told that any discrepancies would be investigated.

  The temptation was even worse on Christmas day as the restaurant provided our guests with a full Christmas dinner and pudding for desert. I was gutted. All I had back at the station was a couple of turkey sandwiches.

  There were only two prisoners in the cells that day and I carried both plates of steaming food and two dessert containers back to the car, muttering all the way. I threw the plates onto the front seat and drove aggressively out of the driveway. I was just about to fly into a gap in the traffic when a pedestrian stepped out in front of me. He was so full of festive cheer that he wasn’t looking where he was going. I slammed on the brakes, watching in horror as the plates and desert containers lifted off the seat and rocketed through the air, hurtling into the dashboard. Food flew everywhere, vegetables, gravy, turkey and mashed spud mixed with brandy pudding in a congealed mess on the patrol car floor. I didn’t escape the melee unscathed. A turkey drumstick bounced off the gear lever and landed smack in the middle of my lap, making an unfortunate gravy stain on my trouser front. As I reached down to remove the offending leg of poultry I heard a sharp rapping on my window. It was the pedestrian. He’d come over to give me an earful about watching where I was going. He retreated pretty quickly when he peered into the car and saw the look in my eye, the stain on my trousers and the drumstick in my hand.