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

by Glenn Wood

  Desperate not to be stopped, the driver of the stolen vehicle wrenched the car to the right, bouncing over the gutter into a large tree-lined park, his wheels spinning wildly in the grass. We hadn’t expected this and I yelled the details of this move into the mike, my voice breaking up as our car climbed the curb, bouncing me off my seat. The rear of our vehicle fishtailed as we accelerated on the soft ground. The sergeant’s car came up on our left, overtaking us as he found extra purchase by putting two of his wheels on a small concrete path. Mobile Beat appeared in front of us on the left having entered the park from the other end. They were level with the Escort and closing on it fast, as was the sergeant’s car from the right. I could see what they were planning to do. Both cars were going to drive in front of the Escort to form an impassable wedge. Then we’d come up from behind to ensure the offender couldn’t reverse out of the trap.

  It was a good plan, but not good enough. The offender worked out what we were up to and spun his car toward Mobile Beat, dragging on his hand brake to accentuate his turn. This straightened out his car and he slammed his front left fender into the rear left- hand side of Mobile Beat. I could hear swearing over the radio as the collision caused the police car to swing around unexpectedly in front of the sergeant’s car. The sergeant had no time to correct and he crashed into the front of Mobile Beat, both cars grinding to a halt. Someone was going to be filling in accident reports late into the night. For once, it wasn’t me and we continued the chase. We were the only car left tailing the offender, but I could hear ops giving instructions to the dog van which was closing quickly.

  Once out of the park, the Escort took us on a chase through a maze of suburban streets. Whoever was driving obviously knew the area well and we were hard pressed to stay on the guy’s tail. At one point my partner drove the police car damn near up the guy’s bumper then got a hell of a surprise as the offender stamped on his brakes. My partner also jammed on the brakes. We dropped back and followed further behind from that point on. The offender had already pranged two police cars and we didn’t fancy being the third. As soon as we fell back, the driver of the Escort slowed and leapt from the moving car, running as fast as he could towards the grounds of a nearby school. Our first priority was the offender, so we passed the now unoccupied Escort on the inside and raced up to the school gates, ready to jump out and give chase on foot. I was halfway out the door when my partner told me to stay with the car. This made sense. If the offender doubled back and the police car was unattended he could nick that as well. That wasn’t his plan and he quickly lost my partner, darkness swallowing him as he melted into the long shadows surrounding the school. When it became obvious he wouldn’t be able to find the runaway criminal my partner made his way back to the car. It would be pointless for him to wander aimlessly around in the dark. For one thing, his trail would make it more difficult for the dog handler to track the offender. I was waiting impatiently by our vehicle when he returned.

  'Where’s the Escort?' He asked.

  It was a bloody good question. I had forgotten about the stolen car which was still moving when we drove past it but was no-where in sight.

  A loud crash disrupted the suburban quiet. We jumped back in the car to investigate, but before we could drive off the dog van arrived. We indicated our last sighting of the offender and left him to it, anxious to solve the mystery of the missing Escort. Our search was short. We’d gone barely ten metres down the road when an anxious man in a bright green dressing gown emerged from a driveway and began waving vigorously at us. Pulling up beside him we saw what had happened. The driverless vehicle had continued down the street before veering off the road, careening down a steep driveway and smashing into a house. The vehicle had picked up a fair bit of speed and had punched right through the living room wall.

  The owners of the house were understandably distraught. The man in the green dressing gown rushed back down the drive and fell in beside another man in night attire. After watching them for a few seconds it was obvious they were a gay couple. It was quite unusual to see two openly gay men back in the early 1980s. Being a student town, Palmerston North was more liberal than most small New Zealand towns, but, in general, homosexuality was still firmly in the closet. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I found the whole scenario quite amusing. We were standing in the driveway of a nice house in the suburbs which had a car sticking out of the lounge, while the most camp of the two men ran around making sure our fingerprint man didn’t get powder on the couch. I don’t know if the homeowners were playing to the crowd or not but they displayed damn near every gay stereotype that night, going from hysteria to biting sarcasm. By the end of the evening the whole scenario had taken on the feel of a bad sitcom, complete with burly tow truck driver. I’d had enough drama for one evening and was glad when we got back to the station.

  The dog handler was already back, having drawn a blank on his search, as were the sergeant and the driver of the mobile beat car. They were typing away frantically trying to make a dent in the mountain of crash-related paperwork that now lay before them. My partner and I were also required to put in our version of the night’s events, plus a damage report on the house. We all spent the rest of the shift behind typewriters, except for the car thief who, having successfully nicked a car, pranged two police cars and avoided two cops and a dog, was tucked up safely in bed.

  S hootout

  Beware the full moon. It’s true. All the weirdos come out of the woodwork when the moon is at its highest. And if it falls on a Sunday, look out.

  Late shift, mid-March, Sunday afternoon. I was on duty with the hell bitch. She was, as usual, driving and not speaking to me. There was no particular reason for her actions except she found my presence intolerable and wanted me dead. Despite this I hadn’t given up on her. I was sure that somewhere deep within her hard-faced, miserable exterior there was a glimmer of humanity just waiting to be unlocked and set free.

  After four hours of stony silence, sitting locked in beside her, stealing the odd furtive glance at her tight-lipped, grim visage I decided maybe not and toyed with the idea of plunging a stake into her cold black heart. Just as I was deciding she was evil incarnate, a call came through on the radio. We were to proceed to a halfway house where a gentleman wanted to report his wallet missing. The address was a raggedy sort of place run by well-meaning people who wanted the poor unfortunates in society to have a home. The poor unfortunates were all for this, especially as they got free food and lodgings and the place was always full.

  Upon arrival we were taken into the guest lounge. It was a dismal room. Three mismatched lounge suites sat against the peeling walls. A television that had more ghosts than Westminster Abby perched on top of a battered sideboard, its oversaturated flickering holding the attention of a bored crowd.

  We were led into the middle of this depressing arena and introduced to the man who had lost his wallet. It was John Cleese. Admittedly, it was a John Cleese who had fallen on bad times, but a spitting image of the great man nonetheless. I looked at the hell bitch, she looked at me and I swear she smiled. I can’t be sure, it may have been gas, but it appeared the corners of her mouth had moved in an upward fashion. I was so distracted that I completely missed what the Cleese doppelganger had been saying. I soon caught up. He was about to take us to his room where the heinous crime had been committed. He stood up, threw his head and upper torso backwards on a most disconcerting angle and proceeded to do an exaggerated version of the Monty Python silly walk. His long gangly legs shot directly out in front of him, screeched to a halt then slammed back down to earth like they had lead weights attached. It was like watching a six foot epileptic chicken goose-stepping down the hallway. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. It was the most bizarre sight I had ever seen and I almost laughed out loud, certain the guy was taking the piss. I looked at the hell bitch again, and even she was trying to stifle a giggle. The goose-stepping guy muttered something about cranial imbalance but, I’m sorry, no medical
condition could have explained what he was doing.

  We got into the guy’s room, just barely holding it together, when he righted himself and pointed to the desktop, from where his wallet had been taken.

  There was a wallet sitting on top of it. I asked him if this was the wallet he was looking for. He did a double take, as if the wallet had suddenly appeared, and said, 'Thank you Constable, well done!'

  It was too much for me. I bade him a hurried good day, and burst from the room laughing loudly all the way back to the car. Incredibly the hell bitch was in a similar state, laughing fit to bust. It was scary. Then I realised what it took to loosen her up: human tragedy. Figured really.

  The rest of the shift couldn’t match that initial incident but it was still pretty strange. The oddest thing being that the hell bitch was almost civil to me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we were best buddies but the chill had definitely come off the air.

  Our next call was to a nice middle class area. A woman there had an unusual occurrence to report. I hoped it wasn’t anything to do with wallets.

  Actually the incident was quite disturbing. The complainant was an attractive woman in her late twenties who was living by herself in a suburban block of flats. The houses were all stand alone, but grouped closely together.

  The woman had been out shopping and returned home to find her glass ranch-slider door slightly open. She was certain she had shut it on leaving. As she approached her front door she became aware of something even more bizarre: there were moaning sounds coming from her lounge. The moaning did not sound like anyone was in pain; they were more like erotic moans. Given the options, that was probably preferable. She entered the room very cautiously, as you would, and was astonished to find the house deserted, the back door slamming shut as she came in the front. What was really strange was that her television was switched on and a blue movie was playing on her video. Either that or Days Of Our Lives had completely lost the plot. Naturally shocked, she switched the video off and called the police.

  As the attending officers our first duty was to examine the evidence, which meant viewing the offending video. A couple of minutes were enough to identify that yes, it was a blue movie. A rather graphic one too. As soon as the television came on we were confronted by the sight of a large breasted blonde being ravaged by a man who, in my opinion, was some sort of a mutant. Viewing this in the presence of the complainant and the hell bitch made me feel extremely uneasy, especially as they began discussing the size of the porn star’s equipment in quiet awe. I blushed bright red and turned the video off, not quite sure where to put myself. Forcing the obscene images from my mind, I ignored the giggling from the two women and got down to the serious business of investigating the incident.

  It was quite a complicated case. There was no sign of a forced entry and nothing had been taken or even disturbed (except maybe the cameraman who shot the video). The thing that I found most unusual was the demeanour of the female complainant. She seemed amused rather than worried. When I questioned her further she admitted to having a pretty good idea of what had happened.

  Video recorders were something of a rarity in the early eighties. So, if you had somehow managed to get your hands on a dodgy video, it wasn’t easy to find something to play it on. Especially if you were a randy teenager. Which was where her suspicions lay. A good friend of hers who lived a few houses away had a teenage son who had expressed interest in her video player. She said he could use it whenever he liked but had assumed he would play Disney movies, or at least, not sneak into her home to watch porn while she was out. This made sense as the complainant’s friend had a key to her house and it would have been easy for the boy to get his hands on it, thus no forced entry. Case solved.

  The woman didn’t want to tell us who the boy was or press charges. She just wanted to scare him by calling the police, reasoning this would dissuade him from trying it again. There was a remote possibility that the neighbour’s boy wasn’t to blame. If that was the case then the whole incident took on a far more sinister aspect and it was important we had a record of the event. We were fairly certain her guess was correct and we 101’d the case, removing the video for evidence. It was taken back to the station, labeled, filed and then lent out for various non-official functions and stag nights.

  The third incident of the afternoon occurred late in the shift.

  The radio call was enough to unnerve us, given the day we’d had. Concerned neighbours phoned the police to report screams from a female coming from a house in central Palmerston North. This is not the sort of call any cop relishes attending. It could be anything from kids mucking around to a murder. As soon as we got to the address a chill ran up my spine. The house appeared deserted and the front door was ajar. We called ops to let them know where we were and the hell bitch went next door to interview the neighbours, leaving me to check out the house by myself. Once again, thanks for that.

  As I approached the front door I received a psychic flash. I should point out that this does not normally happen to me, nor do I believe in any psychobabble mumbo jumbo malarkey. Chickens are safe around me. I don’t own any crystals and I’ve never played a Led Zeppelin album backwards. But at that moment I truly believed I was walking into a murder scene. I can’t explain how or why, but as soon as I pushed the door aside and entered the house I was convinced something bad had happened there. I expected to find a body around every corner and behind every door. The house was strangely empty. A freshly boiled jug bubbled on the bench, uncovered cake sat on the table and a coffee mug lay upturned in the sink. Streams of sunlight dappled the fur of a black cat asleep on the arm of an old chair in the living room but aside from that the place was deserted. It unnerved me and I got out of there as soon as I could. I told HB (my new found affectionate term for the hell bitch) what I’d seen and felt. It was too good an opportunity for her to resist and she made a sarcastic remark about my consulting the spirits to see what she’d be having for dinner that night. I didn’t dignify her remark with a response (mainly because I couldn’t think of one) and I asked her what we should do next. She shrugged her shoulders. What could we do? There was no evidence of a crime, no-one was reported missing and there was no damage to any property. Again, unable to hold herself back, HB smirked and said that constable Wood thinking the situation ‘was a bit creepy’ wasn’t enough reason to call out the secret service. She had a point (albeit a rather snaky one) and we resumed our patrol. Nothing further came of that incident but I remain convinced that something bad happened in that house that afternoon. I never found out what.

  The final incident of the afternoon I attended by myself. Being cheerful had worn the hell bitch out and she’d gone back to the station for a cup of tea and a lie down.

  It was a straightforward case. A young man had locked himself out of his house and wanted a hand getting back in. This wasn’t a great job for me as I sucked at lock picking, not having the patience or finesse to do the job properly.

  I arrived at his house to find him standing haplessly by the gate. He muttered that it had been a ‘bugger of a day’ and he just wanted to get inside. I looked at the door in question and after turning the handle hopefully to no avail I suggested he call a locksmith. He didn’t look keen.

  'Can’t you just pry the door open or something?’ He said. ‘I don’t want to wait around all night for a locksmith.'

  Cool, I thought. I was being given permission to smash my way in. I was good at smashing. Then a thought struck me. What if he wasn’t the owner?

  ‘You’re not a burglar are you' I asked. My finely honed interrogation techniques coming to the fore.

  He replied in the negative and showed me his wallet which had ID and proof of his address in it. Satisfied, I asked him if he was absolutely sure he wanted me to force the door. He nodded tiredly.

  Excellent, I thought, running through all the possible methods I could utilise to smash the door open. I narrowed it down to two: kicking or shoulder charging.

  The d
oor was solid oak and was firmly shut into a heavy frame so I decided on the shoulder charge. I took several paces back and ran at the door as hard as I could, turning my shoulder into it at the last moment. The door and frame wrenched away from the wall with a sickening splintering sound. Pain shot through my upper body as I realised the bloody thing had been dead bolted. Instead of just springing the lock I had ripped the entire frame off the wall. Rubbing my shoulder I looked at the resulting damage. The door was hanging on a funny angle, the hinges twisted and the screws dislodged. Pieces of splintered wood lay on the floor and the frame hung loosely from its housing, several steel nails poked through the frame like a row of vampire’s teeth.

  'Bloody hell,' said the owner of the house. 'Couldn’t you have opened it a bit more gently?'

  Probably, I thought, but where’s the fun in that. I pointed to the deadlock. 'It was double bolted sir. That was the only way to get in.'

  Actually it wasn’t. We walked into the house to find that the kitchen window was open. This came as a surprise. I assumed the owner would have checked the windows and doors before ringing us. He laughed in a sick sort of way, slammed the window shut and went to find a hammer and nails to secure his front door. I decided this would be a good time to leave and I gave him a hearty 'Pleased to be of assistance' as I went.

  When I got back to the car I thought about the open window. One of my sergeant’s favorite sayings came to me. 'Assume nothing,' he’d tell us. And then I thought of another of his adages. 'He who hesitates is stuffed.'

  You can’t have it both ways I decided and whistled happily as I drove back to the station.

  There are a lot of things you need to know when you are a police officer and some of them you learn by nearly killing your colleagues. At least that was my experience.

  My sergeant was a member of the Armed Offender’s Squad. No surprises there. He was large and violent and could shoot the eye out of a gnat from one hundred metres. The Armed Offenders don’t get to blow people away as often as they’d like so they have to stay sharp by holding exercises. With a grinding inevitability I would be called upon to act as an offender. For some reason every member of the squad took a malicious delight in hunting me down and killing me. On this particular occasion, the mid-year kill-a-thon, I was partnered with two other guys from the station. One was Bill the karate expert. The other was a recruit called Andrew who was new to the job but was already showing more aptitude than me. The scenario for the exercise was as follows: