Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes

by Tom Ratcliffe

  The Rover lurched hard right and then left as we rounded the geriatric fool, who gawped with a look of astonishment as we passed.

  When I considered all the training I had been given to drive a Police car I found it amazing that so many people thought driving was an easy thing to do, when in truth it is far from it. Ask the average man in the street if he can use an electric lathe, and they will probably tell you it is a skill beyond them, but ask them if they can drive and you will get a reply on the lines of ‘of course I can’, as if it were both easy and a God-given right.

  Soon after this near-miss we arrived at the industrial area where the job we had called up for was. It was an unlucky affair – a security man walking among piles of containers had not heard the gantry operating above him, and the gantry operator had not seen him due to the containers being piled three high in the surrounding area. The container weighed about 25 tons so it probably felt very little, and the security man came off very much the worse. The matter took a turn from tragedy to farce when the health and safety man expressed relief that the dead man had been wearing his hard hat in accordance with site rules. He could have worn a suit of armour; the result would have been the same.

  Another form, another sudden death, and back to work, and it wasn’t long before I had my first chase. The subject of the chase was a man who was known to have carried on driving despite being handed a very recent three year ban. He had two separate convictions for drink-driving, but was still using his car to get to work early in the morning. Towards the end of a night shift we positioned ourselves to cover the two exits from his road, and sure enough, out he came. Relatively few in his position will actually try to out-drive a traffic car, as the consequences of getting caught are normally much more severe after a chase than if you stop on request. But this man wanted to play. He was driving a big Ford Granada with an automatic gearbox, so all he had to do was press the accelerator and steer. I had to change my own gears, but mine was a newer car with more performance and better road holding. It was also the model I had driven most on my course, and I felt very much at home in it, and in accordance with the training I had checked the tyre pressures, oil level and other bits and pieces so had the inner peace of mind that it was set up as the manufacturer intended.

  The disqualified driver put up a good fight, and I followed him along country lanes and main roads, in and out of town for a total of seventeen miles, all the while being given succinct pieces of advice from my co-pilot who was also working the radio, and subconsciously hearing my instructor’s voice adding hints and tips. I was surprised how calm I was able to remain, all the while processing huge amounts of information as my eyes assessed and reassessed what was ahead. Around 5.30 in the morning we hurtled the wrong way up a one-way street into the heart of the city where I had started my career. During all the ups and downs of my early years, what would I have given to have been able to look into the future and see myself as I was now!

  As with any chase, the potential for disaster was enormous, but this was fun! By this time the other driver was getting desperate as he had tried almost everything and I was still glued to his tail. His last effort was outright speed, but his car was running out of steam as mine came on song in the higher gears. I remember seeing something around 105 miles an hour on a road where during the day it was difficult to go much over 25, and after a high-speed tour of some back streets he made a wrong turn and went into a cul-de-sac, crashed into a parked car, and to my annoyance got out and ran. I don’t mind driving at speed, but I object strongly to being forced to run. Fortunately he was even less of a fitness enthusiast than me, and after a short distance of reluctant jogging by both of us, he stopped.

  An almighty desire to beat the living daylights out of him was suppressed by a wave of common sense, deciding that to cause him any injury that could not be blamed on a crash would play into his hands at court, and his track record must surely point to a spell behind bars. It would be a shame to compromise this hope.

  I did things by the book, and had to prepare all the paperwork before going off duty, so I eventually finished my night shift at one o’clock in the afternoon.

  The driver went to court the following day, and just to show they meant business the courts gave him, of all things, another three year ban. Given that his previous ban had only started two months before, the actual punishment was a net increase of just eight weeks on the disqualification.

  I sometimes wondered why I bothered, but then people pay good money in theme parks for less fun than I had had that night.

  The levels of concentration needed in a chase are fantastic, and this was illustrated to me a few years later when an old school friend (a successful one at that) got in touch with me and invited me to a Porsche owners’ track day at a race circuit.

  My then traffic partner and I both went and were driven in turn as passengers round the track, tyres squealing, round bends and through chicanes, wearing crash helmets and secured by a five-point harness, hurtling past track marshals at intervals round the edge of the tarmac.

  After the experience, interesting though it was, my Porsche-owning friend expressed mild surprise that both of us as passengers had not fallen silent as other of his guests tended to, but had carried on chatting normally despite going at speed round a racetrack.

  We had to tell him that ultimately, not wishing to sound ungrateful, it was all a bit dull. It would have been much more exciting to do it as we did for a living, with houses, junctions, traffic coming the other way, a few half-blind pedestrians, some mothers with prams and young children, and maybe the odd stray dog to liven things up, and if you needed first aid just ring for an ambulance and wait ten minutes instead of having trackside medical facilities within 100 yards of any crash.

  Not all traffic work was rushing about though. There were long periods without a call, and you were expected to fill the time by actively seeking out motoring offences and stopping car after car to see what turned up. In between times you could park up and do paperwork, but it was expected you would remain conspicuous as a visible deterrent to the would-be motoring offender or travelling criminal.

  Seamus, the instructor I had had on my basic driving course, had been in just such a position some years earlier, and had parked on a main road near to a ‘pick your own strawberries’ place, which also had a stall laden with fruit if you wanted to buy it ready picked. The enterprising farmer who ran the business had further widened his scope for sales by selling strawberries by the bowl for consumption on the spot, but Seamus was being responsible that day and resisted the temptation, getting on with some writing in his car instead.

  He was touched and surprised therefore when the farmer came across to him with a bowl of his finest produce and a spoon.

  ‘Can I tempt you to a bowl of strawberries, Constable?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Seamus, taking the offering.

  ‘Would you like some cream on them as well?’ came the question.

  ‘Yes please,’ he replied, and the farmer added a generous amount of fresh double cream.

  He put a couple of strawberries on the spoon and put them in his mouth. They were gorgeous. Many people show similar gratitude to the Police, and it does tend to make you feel appreciated and a bit humble. Seamus felt thus, but not for long.

  ‘That’s just a pound please,’ said the farmer, smiling gently.

  ‘Sorry?’ said Seamus through a mouthful of fruit that had just lost some of it sweetness.

  ‘A pound please,’ he repeated. ‘75 pence for the fruit, and 25 pence for the cream. It’s written on the price board over there.’

  With one hand he indicated a prominent sign by the fruit stall, the other hand outstretched towards Seamus in anticipation of payment.

  Seamus paid. He couldn’t help but admire the enterprising nature of the man, but he had been well and truly ‘had’.

  Twenty-Four

  The freedom to go out and manage my own time was a revelation for me –
up to this point I had been used to having a Sergeant somewhere in the system at all hours, in one way or another monitoring (or ignoring) what you did. Now, as a traffic man, I was let loose with the expectation that I would justify my existence using my own motivation. Accidents in their various guises were not allocated as such, they were just things that were dealt with by whoever was nearest as they arose, and this random distribution meant we all had about the same number on the go from one month to the next. Sergeants appeared at the more serious bumps, but most of the time they would be stuck in the office with a lot of administrative stuff, and rarely worked beyond 10pm. The best way they had of seeing who was or wasn’t earning their place on traffic was by monitoring the ‘process book’. This was a large ledger into which you would enter details of all the tickets and associated paperwork as it was submitted for checking. All the supervision had to do was keep an eye on collar numbers, and if yours appeared only occasionally they would look for a reason why. It might be that you had been on leave, or bogged down with a couple of fatals, which was easily justified, but it could be that for whatever reason you were lacking motivation, and this was easily identified and ‘addressed’. But regardless of how hard you worked, the process book was a millstone around all the PCs’ necks. Like an inanimate extension of supervisory intrusion it sat on a table which you had to walk past on the way into and out of the office, and while no supervisor would ever admit to it being a ‘league table’ of work, it was.

  Until the day it disappeared.

  Witch hunts had nothing on the aftermath of this. There were obvious operational problems caused by its disappearance, as it was the only record that any file had actually left our office for the deeper admin offices of headquarters, but until the new book was well under way, the ‘league table’ was effectively suspended, as would have been the culprit for its disappearance had they been found. Being some eighteen inches square and two inches thick it was not the sort of book that might be accidentally disposed of by the cleaners, for example. Dirty work was afoot, but no culprit ever found.

  Years later I discovered the truth. Two officers had spent so many years in the shadow of the process book that having been in the middle of the ‘league’ for a while, and thus above suspicion, they decided the time had come to dispose of it. They felt that the most apt (and secure) way was to give it a proper send off. This was done à la Viking.

  The book was taken to a slipway on a nearby large river at dead of night, liberally doused with petrol, and floated gently onto the water. A match was then thrown at it, and after the explosive ignition it settled into a steady blaze as it drifted languidly downstream. The two officers stood to attention and saluted until it was a respectful distance away, made a pact of silence, and returned to their car, laughing uncontrollably.

  But while I was learning my new trade and enjoying every minute of it, Great Men were doing Great Things at Headquarters.

  A major project was nearing its end, and the net result of many hours of committee decisions was that the whole force should be reorganised and the administrative areas made fewer and larger. To this end there would be just four divisions instead of the existing seven, and from my perspective this meant four traffic groups, each covering a much larger area than before. This was wonderful news at first, bigger areas meant more flexibility, more freedom, and more variety. Then came the bad news. When the seven smaller traffic units merged into four, the actual total number of men in the bigger groups would reduce. In my new Division it was decided a reduction of two was sufficient. Being in a temporary spot I expected to be moved off, but not to worry I thought, after all I was only filling in so up to now it had all been a bonus. Anyway there would be some retirements before long, so in the interim I would simply drop to the top of the waiting list. The man I had been filling in for was promoted permanently, so that was one obstacle out of the way. Alas it was not so simple for me. One of the other divisions had ended up short-staffed due to a clerical miscalculation. (Well they had only been working it out for two years, after all.) A number of volunteers were called for to transfer across, and to nobody’s surprise there were none. The first signs of democracy in the Police were becoming visible, and in this spirit a series of presentations were made to convince people to volunteer, much like the efforts made by Highland landowners to convince crofters that a better life awaited them in the colonies. When this approach still yielded no raised hands, the green shoots of democracy were ripped up by the roots, and the crofting model was continued. Maintaining the spirit of the Highland clearances, two from Newport were selected, and as absolutely no surprise to me at all, I was one of the ‘lucky winners’.

  The reason, I was told, was that I lived nearer to the other area than most of the rest of the staff, so this move would save me money and time (as if I hadn’t worked that one out for myself). I put forward various arguments – Did the fact I had not volunteered show that I would rather travel further to avoid the other postings available? Did the fact I was next in line for a permanent traffic place not count? Did they realise that I had bought my house to suit my private life, not so I could be moved to fill inadequacies of the Force’s making? Most annoying of all, when I had bought my house I had been required by regulations to seek the approval of the Chief Constable to live there, and had signed a form to acknowledge that permission was given on the understanding that I would be prepared to work anywhere in the County. Everyone else had signed the same form in respect of their own house purchases, and so to move me on the grounds of where I lived was not a factor they should have considered. But they did. I contemplated dressing in women’s clothing and addressing everyone as ‘Your Grace’, but decided they might see through that one. Nowadays it would probably get me promoted, but the levels of paranoid enlightenment were far lower then.

  As a sweetener I was promised a place on the Traffic group of the new area ‘as and when a vacancy arose’, but I knew very well that verbal promises counted for nothing. It seemed just a way of trying to keep me quiet.

  The bottom line is that in a uniformed, disciplined organisation you should go where you are told, and I would have preferred the blunt approach to the short-change done up with ribbons that I got. I was sent a two-page letter from someone high-ranking, the first page having a load of flannel about ‘progress, change and the spirit of co-operation’. The second was more terse, giving a date of moving and a station to report to. It contained the ominous line that the Police Federation had already been consulted and was in agreement on the matter. This meant ‘shut up and accept it, no appeals allowed.’

  It was all a bit hollow with hindsight, as the bold reorganisation only lasted about 18 months, less time than was actually spent organising it. We then went from the four new divisions (which it was decided had been a mistake) to nine, then ten, then eleven, and eventually back to four, which apparently was not a mistake after all.

  Worst of all was the choice of town to which I was going. Benbridge. Thirty years earlier the area had been little more than a minor industrial town and a few nearby villages surrounded by farmland. Unfortunately like a number of other towns around the country that had done nothing to deserve it, it was identified for development as a ‘new town’. The farms were bought up, the planners given carte blanche, and the destruction began, thinly disguised as progress. When the building was complete, all they needed was people to live there, and it seemed that every ne’er do well and his wife, or perhaps someone else’s wife, had descended on the place. Despite the subsequent efforts of numerous ‘regeneration initiatives’ and the spending of countless millions of pounds, the area remained a pit of depravity. The welfare state had been established nationally to act as a safety net for those unable to provide for themselves, but most of Benbridge had turned the net into a mattress, and a comfortable one at that. Soon there arose a culture based around a system that pandered to your every whim without any expectation of effort or return on your part. If you didn’t want to work, you simply sign
ed on and the system gave you money. If you needed a house, the council provided one. If you spent your dole money on drink and drugs and became too mad to look after yourself unaided, then the system gave you a social worker, and if you wanted to take up a life of petty crime, then you could expect a solicitor, probation officer and so on, all at someone else’s expense.

  Large, unwelcoming estates greeted the Police, filled with large unwelcoming women with broods of unruly children. A very matriarchal, almost tribal society had developed as men came and went apparently at will. The standard system seemed to be on these lines –

  Man meets woman, man lives with woman, woman has baby by man to make him settle down with her, man sees child and exits rapidly at the thought of responsibility. Woman finds new man, lives with new man, has child by him to make him love her and settle down, man has same reaction and so on; the forces of evolution forever in conflict with the benefits system. The whole place was a moral vacuum where a virgin was defined as a girl who could run faster than her Dad, and rather than being a day of thanks and celebration, Father’s Day caused scenes of utter confusion.

  Left morally and socially unsupervised, the men evolved into two distinct groups. Some became skinny, whining weasel-like types, oozing untrustworthiness from those pores not blocked with spots. Others became tattooed, beer-gutted barrels of men, who spent their time in whichever watering hole was closest to their current home, endlessly telling each other how the England football team should be managed, and discussing conspiracy theories in a haze of cigarette smoke. Those who lacked the skill to become professional football coaches became taxi drivers. Those who couldn’t drive became unemployed. When finally old age and infirmity overtook them, which didn’t take long, their lives became a quest for further benefits to reflect their newfound relevance to the welfare state, and they were able to add another subject to the topics discussed in their pub-living environment – the appalling state of the National Health Service, and how it was failing the most needy, that is to say, themselves.