Bucking The System.

Bucking The System.
The Cinderella of the Constabulary.

By Neil Cairns.

Introduction.

This is a rendition of a part of the police service few know anything about. Many of the public do not even know it existed. I doubt if anyone else has ever written about the Cinderella of the Constabulary, possibly a better title than ‘Bucking the System’. The title is because the star of our story is a grumpy older copper, who thinks he knows it all, but really has a heart of gold. The ‘recollections’ are based on real events, but to protect the author and the actors names have been changed. So whilst you might guess where they happened, and possibly who was involved, you will never really know unless it was you. The reason for this is it makes it more interesting than to read a boring autobiography. It is based in a well known local town, Lestone, with an adjoining village Lynchglade, both not far from Durocoton in the late 20th Century. If you know your history, you know the towns.

The Schools Liaison Officer was a uniformed police constable, who went into schools to try to prevent crime and educate children; and who also dealt with crimes inside schools. It was not broadcast aloud, but run quietly and efficiently, and very effectively until the cash began to run out. He or she was not popular with many other police constables, nor some of the police management, as they thought it an easy job. How wrong they were, as you are about to find out. With no training for the job, a police officer was thrown into the classroom.

Copyright Neil Cairns 2007.
( A ‘SLO’ from 1995 to 2000.)

This book is dedicated to David Noakes, once our local town centre-bobby.

Bucking the System.

Police Constable 406 John Lawson was sitting at his desk, staring out of the office window. The ‘office’ was in fact the smallest upstairs bedroom of the old police Inspector’s house, now used as offices as the town has expanded over the years. The ‘window’ was a sash type, looking down over the now overgrown back garden, and into many other back gardens of the Victorian terraced houses that flanked the police station. That was a misnomer if ever there was one, it had ceased to be a police station years ago, and being tiny was now just a police ‘enquiry’ office, a sergeants room, writing room, a small kitchen, toilets and snooker room. The cells had not been used for years, they did not conform to the current EEC rules. Because the actual station was tiny, the inspectors house had been commandeered years ago, for the CID ( Criminal Investigation Department) with it one sergeant and one detective constable, SOCO ( Scenes of Crime Officer, a civilian,) and PC Lawson. PC Lawson was a Schools Liaison Officer ( SLO) and had the use of this tiny bedroom at the rear of the house, with its view of rear gardens. He often studied them, to relax or to think. Some were like the inspectors house garden, a jungle; others were very neat and well laid out. These neat gardens belonged to the retired people of Hockliffe Street, where the Police Station was situated, in the old market town of Lestone as mentioned in the Doomsday Book.

John had just put down an internal memo from the Divisional Commander. She was a superintendent and new in the job, based seven miles away in another town, and had little idea of Schools Liaison. Few people had, only those who had done the job knew how rewarding it was. It was the best job John had ever had. He was his own boss. His very young sergeant, who was also based eleven miles away, left him alone. The previous ‘Super’ had been very keen on school liaison. John was no youngster, he had served for a full pensionable term in the RAF prior to joining the local Constabulary when just forty one years of age. The comparison of discipline between the RAF and the police was difficult. There was no discipline in the police, it all ran on trust. But as John enjoyed hard work and produced good results, he was left well alone. Unknown to him, he was seen as a rather frightening figure by younger managers, and known not to suffer fools gladly. He had after all, been a SNCO ( Senior Non-Commissioned Officer) in the RAF for fourteen of his twenty two years service. Within two years of joining the police he had passed his sergeants exam. But he had no intention of getting promoted, he wanted to stay where he was. He was a coppers copper, not one to pander to the bosses.

The memo he had just read was a transcript from the government, telling police forces to increase their detection rates. This was in the mid 1990s. John had been a patrol officer, a panda car driver, a local beat officer (LBO), and had now got himself a nice five-day-a-week, no nightshift work position. Even in the few years he had served, he had noted a much greater interference with policing by politicians. They kept issuing dictates that the forces had to follow, or else. The divisional superintendent had instructed that every constable was to obtain at least three detected crimes per month, or else. It was this that John was mulling over in his mind as he stared out of the window. There was no problem at all in exceeding this figure, it was the fact they had made it a target, an official target, that annoyed him. The memo finished with a request that officers were to forward any ‘well done’ letters from the public to the ‘Super’ ( slang for superintendent) as far too many complaints were received, and very few complimentary ones. She wanted to balance things a little better. Another dictate John thought to himself, another target, something else to get little gold stars for, just as infant school children were rewarded for good work.

In John’s position as a police liaison officer for schools, he often had to attend meetings with other official departments, such as Social Services. He had very quickly made himself unpopular at these, simply because the type of people the social services attracted took so long to make any decisions. A copper on the beat, on the streets, has to make lightening decisions every day; on the spot as well, he thought to himself. Social workers had to have a series of meetings to get any meaningful decision. He considered them wishy-washy people. At one meeting he had attended, someone had asked what was to be done about the increasing numbers of juvenile offenders. John had suggested arresting them all and throwing them in prison, as that was his job. No one spoke to him for the rest of that meeting. Things only went from bad to worse when a couple of murders took place in the town. When John suggested ‘hanging the bastards’ the number of meetings he was invited to began to diminish. It had taken some time for him to get use to the fact that, in the RAF, an offender was dealt with within the week, very often the next day, and any fine was taken direct from their pay. In civvy street criminal cases took upwards of six months to just get to court, and then only about forty percent of those actually charged ever went to court. Any fines that went un-paid led to warrants being issued for the police to pursue. Very few ever got paid. In fact, it would be very true to say that John had developed a very jaundiced view of British Justice, now that he saw it from the inside. The only people who paid their fines were the normal honest types. Any ‘toe rag’ simply forgot it, and few were ever chased up. After all, they had a whole team of do-gooders to pander to their needs and provide excuses.

John put the memo into the ‘pending’ tray on his desk. The only other item on it was an ancient typewriter ( that ribbons were non-existent for, so he had to wind on new ones onto its old spools, getting black fingers in the process.) There was no phone, he had to use the one in the enquiry office, across the yard. He collected his hat and coat from the hook on the door and closed up for the day. There was a Morse Detective series on the television that night, something to look forward to.

The next day found John on route to one of his Middle Schools. The county still operated a Lower, Middle and Upper schools system. The Middle schools had nine to twelve year olds in captivity. This particular school was a good one, having been the towns Grammar School in better days, and was situated at the bottom of the High Street. As was usual, he walked as it was much quicker than joining the grid-locked traffic about at that time of day. He had once had the use of a little 250cc Honda motorcycle as a LBO, but after transferring to a SLO they eventually took it off him. That had dented his image at the Upper Schools. Arriving on a police motorcycle had had a positive affect on teenage lads. At the Middle School he was to give a ‘Citizenship’ lesson to two ‘year 8’ classes, these would be twelve year olds, and the boys quite difficult. He was well known to the school and its head teacher, arriving to be invited into her office and a cup of tea. Aha! thought John, she wants a favour if I am getting tea. He was correct. She told him of three lads who had been dishing out key rings and fobs to every child in the school. It was suspected they had been stolen from nearby shops over the last three weeks. A little light switched on in John’s mind, as will become clear soon. He carried out the lessons as requested, using the ripples of crime as his theme. It was simply based how many people were involved when one of the students was caught stealing. He used a story of a theft from a local shop as his basis, key rings in fact. He then got the class to suggest who else became involved, such as class mates, teachers, shop owner, friends, parents, and the police. In bad cases it might go to court, so there would be solicitors, witnesses and injured parties. The point was made that what started as a jape, became serious, and could lead to a criminal record, and how that affected getting a job or into university. Quite a few students were very thoughtful by the end of the lesson. One or two were fingering key rings in their pockets, John had not missed this, if nothing else he was an excellent people watcher and body language reader. You had to be if you were a police officer. Teachers also noted such things, and that was how the original thefts had come to light.

After the lesson, John was invited into the staff room. He was always careful not to just walk into one at any school, he was after all a guest; and not all teachers liked the idea of a uniformed Police Officer at large inside schools. Oddly, he was popular with children, he had been told this was because he spoke to them, not at them or down to them. He also told some smashing stories to emphasise things, and all children like stories. One of his Citizenship lessons that he did in the Lower Schools had become famous. He made the class go through what happens to litter and dog poo, where it laid on the ground, rotted, went down the drains when it rained, the water went into the river, the river into the reservoirs, and thence into our taps. We drank it. To six and seven year olds that had a positive effect. In the staff room the head teacher asked him about the key rings. He suggested their usual method, invite a parent into school so John could speak to the child in their presence along with the head. It was common practice with the county’s school liaison officers to deal with similar crimes committed in school, or in school hours. Only a pocket note book entry was taken, and a promise from the child to ‘go straight’ backed up by the parent. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, he never saw the child again for any other offence. Alas a few were already well on their way to becoming ‘toe rags’.

Whilst in the staff room, he made a suggestion to the English teachers that perhaps they might like to get some classes to write letters to him, thanking him for the lessons he gave. They agreed it was an excellent idea, and letter writing was part of the curriculum. A real letter to a real person from a student would make it a much better lesson, and the fact they were writing about something they had experienced would improve their efforts.

He left the head teacher to sort the interviews out with the three boys and their parents. He now needed to know from where the stolen goods came from. After visiting about five shops, he quickly found the three losers. He completed three crime reports for ‘Theft from Shop’ and the signed statement of the managers for the police to deal how they saw fit. As they had already written off the loss, they were more than happy, and even more so that the local police seemed to care and had already found the offenders. The little light in John’s mind was still bright, he had now already obtained three ‘detected’ crimes, the three required by the ‘Super’. It had taken him all of thirty minutes. All he had to do now was to exceed that figure.

Two days later found John again at the head teacher’s office of the Middle School in the town centre. Sitting outside it waiting were three mothers with the three offending boys. John made sure he was smart and in full uniform, complete with helmet, which added another four inches to his six feet stance. The boys looked up at him sheepishly as he passed and entered the office. Each boy was interviewed separately with his mother. All confessed to the thefts. They had struck on the idea one dinner-time, having gone out to buy sweets. One had taken his satchel with him as he had his lunch in it. They were well organised. One boy had kept the shop staff chatting and occupied, whilst the other two had found the key rings and fobs on long steel rods. It was simple for one to open the satchel whilst the other put his finger at the back of the rod, pushing them forward so they all tumbled off the end, into the open bag. They had done this on three occasions at three separate shops over three weeks. That meant instead of three thefts, John now had nine. He took the dates of the thefts down, so he could complete the extra crime reports. He reminded the boys that in law any child over the age of ten is legally responsible for their actions. They agreed they knew they were stealing. They were all twelve years of age.

Upon returning to the school, and having ‘lifted’ almost 400 key rings, they wondered what to do with them. The result was to give them all away to their friends. They very soon had 400 friends, nearly the whole schools student population. Every child receiving a key ring or fob knew it was stolen. So in law there had been 400 offences of ‘handling stolen goods’ committed. The teachers had by now recovered the majority of the stolen items, and about 75% went back to the shops.

All this went into the report submitted with the nine ‘theft’ crime reports John completed. The fact the boys had admitted the offences and the property recovered, and that the school would dish out any punishment meant John could write off the nine reports as ‘Detected, No Proceedings’, or DNP. Once he had completed the nine crime reports, he added another. This time it was a crime report for ‘Handling Stolen Goods’. To this report he appended a complete list of the schools attendance register, claiming a further 400 detected crimes. 409 detected crimes in one week by one officer would set the cat amongst the pigeons he thought to himself. Into an internal envelope went the reports, addressed to the Inspector of the CID Crime Desk at Divisional HQ at Durocoton. John sat back and awaited a telephone call, it might take a few days to arrive though.

Over that week, he went into five schools, after the lessons he gave he made the same suggestions about letter writing he had at the Middle School. He actually made this same suggestion to nearly all his schools, of which there were three Upper, six Middle, and twelve Lower; a total of nearly 3500 children. Lots of them did write in, and John forwarded the ‘well done’ letters as the memo had suggested.

One Friday morning he was called to the enquiry office to accept a phone call. It was from his Sergeant, who did not seem too happy. John was told to phone the Inspector at the CID Crime Desk. He did so. The Inspector had exploded when the 409 claimed detected crimes had arrived, he told John he considered that he was being flippant. John defended himself and quoted the ‘memo’ and insisted he be allocated the 409 detected crimes he had claimed. John was not afraid of any shiny seated officer worker, ( the black uniform trousers issued developed a marked polish if worn by an office worker,) even an Inspector. The Inspector almost had an apoplexy over Johns reply. It got worse when the Inspector slammed the phone down on John. What was wrong with saying that he need not work any more until he retired? He had the necessary three detections a week now, in credit for years ahead. After all, 409 detections were not to be sniffed at, and John had further suggested he might be put in charge of CID himself, as he had certainly beaten any figures they had for this month.

The phone went again after a few minutes. The Inspector had passed the problem over to a Sgt. John knew this Sgt well, he had a sense of humour, and had laughed when he first saw the 409 detections arrive in that envelope. John was told he could keep the nine thefts, but the 400 others would not be recorded, what would the general public think if they knew their police force was getting high statistics through school children committing crimes? John had known this all along, and smiled to himself that he had successfully got to the Inspector and the system, who would no doubt bring this all up at a Divisional HQ meeting with the ‘Super’. There would be a few sniggers at that meeting, from those who knew John.

Then for the third time that day, the phone went for John. This time it was the ‘Super’s’ secretary. She was in stitches, and having difficulty speaking for laughing. Apparently John’s ‘well done’ letters were to all be recorded, as they were good for the statistics. He had sent in over 1500 of them; and was 1490 ahead of the next contender. He explained to her how he had arranged it, and she finished the call still laughing away appreciating John’s point over Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.

To finish the day, John phoned the other four SLOs in the force, and gave them tips on how to buck the system. However, not everything went his way, amongst the internal mail the following Monday was a note for John. He was to be rostered for the next four Luton Town football games, in the riot van. It was well known that John hated football at the best of times, but being driven around Luton side streets in an armoured van looking for fighting fans was certainly not his cup of tea. That meant working four Saturdays, which meant cancelling four Monday schools visits, and that would upset teachers who had planned the lessons months ahead as part of their curriculum. It would mean some classes not getting his input. No, he was sure that the Police Force was not really interested in Crime Prevention, and especially Schools Liaison. You might buck the system occasionally but you cannot win them all.

Looking out of the office window, he settled down in the chair and noted the old man he had seen earlier had nearly completed hoeing his beans.

School Holidays.

John did not actually belong to the Inspector at his ‘police office’ from where he worked, he was part of the ‘Community Team’ based at Divisional HQ at Durocoton six miles away. Since the station had been decimated by moving all the CID, SOCO, Community Liaison, Crime Prevention and ancillaries to the Div HQ, John had been left behind. This suited him fine, he liked being his own boss. The reason for the moving of those once based there, was quite simple. There was a government moratorium in force. Budgets were being cut, and for the next few years many police forces would not be able to recruit. But, though he was not part of the staff, he still mucked in and did his bit. The Inspector was really pleased over this, as it meant John would stand in, in the Enquiry Office when the girl who normally manned it was on annual leave. He also found himself occasionally roped into section activities, such as mass house searches at unearthly hours in the morning, or bagging up huge samples of cannabis, one leaf from each plant as an ‘exhibit’. However, today was the last day of school prior to the long summer holidays. One problem with being a SLO was the fact one had to take ones annual leave during school holidays, though John’s two offspring were by now almost adults. John had two lessons to give in the afternoon, and a talk that evening to a youth group at one of the towns free churches. His ‘day’ sometimes actually ran for over twelve hours, with day and evening appointments, but as his department had no overtime budget, he would book his excess hours as ‘time and a third’ on his card, and take the time off in lieu. At one point he had run up over thirty three hours as time due off, during a busy drugs campaign, where every school and youth organisation for miles had demanded his attention. The drugs council run by the then ‘current’ in-power political party at Westminster, had funded the campaign issuing a really good set of leaflets to back it up. It was so successful, they had soon stopped giving the leaflets out, and it was the last of the youth groups John was to see that evening, and he had just twenty leaflets left for them.

For the following two weeks he was to sit in the Enquiry Office ( E/O) and deal with what ever came in through the door. Once this duty had been that of a police constable, as many things could then be dealt with straight away. It had been ‘civilianised’ some years before which meant any ‘police’ problems meant bringing back to the office a patrol officer. This would invariably be the current ‘probationer’, the one youngest in service and still in their first two years. But with John in the seat, this effectively added one man to the shift, which was never more than four anyway. With annual leave, additional rest days and court appearances, not to mention courses, the numbers out in Panda Cars was often just two officers. For a town of 45,000 people and five villages that was a very thin blue line indeed, but alas common in the mid 1990s in all forces in all areas of the country. If it was not for the Special Constables who came on duty at the weekends, the ‘van crew’ would consist of just one regular officer, its driver. After his E/O stint, he was on two weeks leave himself.

The day went well overall, the input John gave at the school he had visited went fairly well. They had been two ‘year 9’ classes of students at one of the ‘Upper Schools’. There were eleven classes in the ‘year 9’ group, and these were the last two he had had to do drugs lessons with. Year 9 students were mostly 13 year olds, the girls were alright, but by that age the boys were far more interested in the girls than him. It had been hard work keeping the male minds on drugs, probably because many of the lads already knew as much as John did about them. Where their attention suddenly brightened up was when John went into the after effects health-wise, and what the police powers were to search, and what a drugs criminal record would do to their job prospects. One particular lad had been a real pain, and kept making smart remarks about the police. John, not being a teacher and of the old school of discipline, had told the lad to stand up and first, make his point and then second, prove it. The lad did not get up, but sulked the rest of the lesson. Afterwards the teacher told John that it was not done to single out students these days, to try to embarrass them, though the teacher did say the lad needed a bit of discipline, and told John his name. The family was well known to the police, it was one of those families, all his elder brothers had either been ‘inside’ or were current ‘active’ toe rags. John knew the eldest lad well, but that is another story.

There was a gap of a couple of hours after the school talk, before he had to be at the church hall for his last drugs talk of the day. So he went home and had a decent dinner with the family. Seven thirty found him on a small stage preparing his talk, and last few leaflets. He had the ‘drugs’ suitcase with him, that had imitation drugs inside, as well as glasses that appeared full of beer, wine and whisky. The glass contents was actually clear resin dyed to look real. The ‘glasses’ were also really plastic. The seating in the hall had already been laid out neatly, and a puzzled look crept over John’s face as they began to fill up. Quite elderly people were sitting down. He turned to the caretaker who had let him in and asked him where the youth club was, and was he in the right place. The caretaker grinned, it transpired this was the ‘Youth Club’, it was a bit of a joke as they were really all over sixty-five. No matter, they would still go down as ‘youths’ on John’s statistics forms. HQ wanted to know how many children the SLO’s reached each term, and for what subjects. Because they were all real characters, and very, very interested in the drugs he spoke about, the lesson went on for nearly twice the normal time. Like the majority of older people, they knew nothing of Rave Parties, Ecstasy, the need to drink water, what part of the cannabis plant was the best, or that there were many type of cannabis. The fact that hemp is grown as cattle fodder in this country astounded them, and hemp is one of the group of cannabis plants. He told them a story of how a well know local toe rag had driven all the way to Kent, to steal lots of leaves from a hemp crop, dried them and sold then in the towns pubs and clubs as ‘hash’. Of course it was far too weak to be of any use, especially as it was supposed to be mixed with tobacco in a ‘spliff’, a hand rolled cigarette. They were unaware it was an offence to sell things like ‘Rizla’ papers to those under sixteen. The toe rag had been given a good beating by a few lads who felt they had been conned. The elderly audience were relieved to hear that really heavy drugs were not common locally, but youngsters treated cannabis and ecstasy as those present had treated cigarettes in their youth.

He finished the evening off by informing them that they were all drug addicts, to which they objected strongly. He then went on to prove that most of them regularly took alcohol or nicotine, or aspirin, or were on medication from their doctor. This made the point that not all drugs were illegal, though they might be legal and lethal. Then he reinforced the units of alcohol that were considered safe, using the set pieces from the suitcase. It had been real fun, and interesting, to talk to an ‘older’ group. He might do it more often perhaps.

Afterwards he chatted to many of them, over tea and biscuits, by now well over two hours late. It was dark as he left to walk back to the station. As he was not a patrol officer, he did not carry a radio, but did carry a CS gas canister, quick-cuffs ( rigid hand cuffs) and an extendable truncheon, now called a baton. He was after all still wearing a full police uniform. It began to rain. The town was quiet as he walked, this was before the towns by-pass had been completed so it was unusual. The rain began to pour. The baton was carried in a small leather pouch on his waist belt, which left the old pouch inside the right trouser pocket vacant. This had once held the wooden truncheon, but in Johns case held his umbrella. If you walked a lot such a device was a bonus in our inclement climate. As he approached the zebra crossing at the Leston Road, Hockliffe Street junction he put up the umbrella. By now it was raining hard, large puddles were forming, and the street lights were just about able to put pools of light underneath themselves. Though today this zebra crossing has an island at its centre, then it was a very long crossing, as it was at the exit and mouth of a round-a-bout. It straddled one exit lane and three entry lanes, four in all. John strode out onto the black and white markings, looking left and right for any traffic. There was none. It was not far now to the office, but it was certainly wet and miserable.

It was getting on for eleven o’clock now, as he trotted across the wet road. As he approached the middle of the crossing, he heard a car coming from his left, towards the junction from Leston Road. It seemed to be going quite fast considering it was soon to arrive at a round-a-bout. He looked in the direction of the car, and through the pouring rain he could just make out a small hatchback with only its side lights on. It was not slowing down. Whilst it takes some time to read this in text, in actual real time this was all within a second or so. The car failed to slow down, it was coming directly at him. It must be one of the town toe rags, out to kill him, John thought, by now beginning to panic and to take evasive action. The car shot past him as he threw himself backwards. Not only did he shout at it to stop, he thumped the side of it as hard as he could with his brolly. The brolly disintegrated. To his utter surprise the brake lights came on and the car skidded to a stop on the round-a-bout. Having fallen over into a puddle, John extricated himself and ran over to the car. The driver’s window unwound about an inch, and a pretty pair of female eyes looked out at him, terrified. John was angry, wet, and late. His brolly was ruined and the suitcase contents all over the road. He ordered the driver to pull over to the side of the road, and went to collect his bits and pieces. He then noticed the windscreen wipers were not working.

Now, although John was not a patrol officer, he did carry the pouch that had the necessary forms for Fixed Penalty Notices ( FPN), as he often dealt with parents who insisted upon parking on the zig-zags outside schools at school time. There were two type of FPNs, £30 ones for simple parking and other offences, and the £60 ones that put various points onto a drivers licence. John took out the long Endorsable FPN forms and began to complete it for the offence of ‘Failing to Accord Precedence on a Pedestrian Crossing’, fee £60 with two points. It transpired the lady driver had a baby in a cot on the rear seat, not strapped down. She had just left her friends house, forgetting to switch on her headlamps. She had placed the baby on the rear seat, but when she set off it began to cry. She had therefore driven towards the crossing looking into the back seat whilst comforting the baby. She had not seen the police officer in full uniform walking across the zebra crossing, as she was facing backwards whilst driving. The windscreen wipers did not work, her husband was going to fix them that weekend. As John filled in the long yellow form, the rain began to soak into its lower edge. The driver’s window was still only open an inch, but she had to open it further when he requested her signature. Finally he tried to sign the dotted line at the forms base for himself, but by now the form was so soggy it just tore. He gave her the offender’s copy, and explained what she had to do. That was to send the form plus a cheque for £60 and her driver’s licence, ( in those days a green paper one, not the plastic card as it is now) to the address on the back. In this case it was to the Clerk of the Court, Luton. She burst into tears, but got no truck from John. After all a few inches nearer and she might have killed him.

In a very bad temper and now soaked through to the skin, John dumped his oddments into his little upstairs bedroom office, and went home.

Saturday was a bright, clear and sunny day. A proper British summers day. It was 7am when he left his jacket still drying from yesterday on his office chair; he then rolled up his sleeves, walked across the yard and took up his position for the day, in the Enquiry Office. Nothing happened until 8.30am. The phone rang. Picking it up he listened to a male voice asking to speak to the officer in charge. Well, as both the other constables were out on patrol, and no Sgt or Inspector was on duty, that meant John was in charge. So he asked the caller what he could do for him. The caller’s wife had been stopped the evening before, and given an Endorsable FPN for nearly hitting a copper on a zebra crossing. The form was not signed by the officer so he had advised his wife not to do as she had been told. As John listened, his face first went pink, then red, then bright puce. He nearly burst a blood vessel as he gave the caller a real birth certificate, very loudly. He explained he was the officer whom his wife had very nearly killed, the wife had been driving with no lights, no windscreen wipers, and yes, John would only be too pleased to go to court over the matter, where ALL the relevant offences would be dealt with. A rather meek male caller agree that perhaps it might be better to pay up.

If the rest of today is going to be like this, thought John, I will need a check on my blood pressure soon. Bloody British Public!

Keeping Fit.

John carefully parked the marked police car, an old white Vauxhall Astra, in the reserved ‘Police’ bay at the bottom of the High Street. It was beginning to drizzle. The government’s moratorium was beginning to bite, and the car John was now locking up was in fact an old Astra model. If one looked carefully it had no radio equipment inside, and did not have the latest day-glow-red stripe outside. The speedometer read 181,000 miles, not bad for a one-owner car only three years old, the Police Force being the ‘owner’. He locked it all up and began walking back to the police office in Hockliffe Road. The car was to sit there all day, as a deterrent to the dishonest. As many of the local toe rags knew it was a ‘dummy’ its affect was questionable. They all knew that police owned vehicles had the word ‘Nil’ on the tax disc, where normally the fee was written; all the ‘plain’ CID cars were known to them. This Astra did have a blue light on its roof though, and the large blue letters spelling out ‘POLICE’ on each side. There had been a case of a little old lady standing by it one day a few weeks ago, waiting for hours for a bobby. She had had her purse stolen, and unaware of how quickly thieves act with bank cards, had had her bank account drained within an hour of the theft. She had obligingly written her pin number on her cheque book’s cover. This was perhaps not what the divisional commander had in mind when each town was told to put a spare marked car out to deter crime. There were not enough patrol officers about to drive all of them.

It was still before 8am as John strode along the High Street, he had to get back to the office to catch the ‘van crew’ who were all going off to the Gym at Div HQ, for training. Even though John was now heading towards his mid century in years, he still had to qualify annually to keep his ticket for CS gas, extendable baton and quick cuffs. It worried him not that the other police officers in the van were all in their early twenties, apart from the driver PC Martyn Smith. Martyn had joined late like John, but was still only in his early thirties. The trip to HQ was uneventful, funny how car drivers drive so well, and within the law, when a big white van with POLICE written all over it is about.

The training went well, the instructor knew of John and often teased him. After a particular rough time where John had been the baddy, and tried hard not to be ‘quick-cuffed’, the two young constables finally floored him and got the cuffs on. Both were panting and sweating at their efforts. The instructor commented what did they think they were doing to that old man. One swore back, as both sat on top of John, the other said they had begun easily enough as they did not want to break him. But John had really given them a hard time. The instructor said that any criminal is not going to help them, even if they do have a bus pass. John then spoke up from underneath, putting doubt on the fact the instructor might not have a known father.

After a light lunch, (these were the days when there was still a police canteen, now all gone due to cost cutting,) a game of volley ball was played. John was useless at ball games, but joined in anyway. Volley ball is similar to tennis, except that a huge heavy leather-covered ‘medicine’ ball is used, and fists are the rackets. At one point John saw his chance to hit the ball back across the net, but Martyn got there first. Martyn jumped and thumped the ball for all he was worth. To balance and counteract his right arm’s punch, he flung out his left arm. It caught John right across the throat, almost collapsing his wind pipe. John went down like a sack of spuds. He wheezed away for a while, trying to get his bearings, looking like a beached whale. Serves me right for trying to be a twenty year old he thought to himself, and staggered up to get a cold drink from the cool water dispenser. He was eventually able to swallow the drink, though it hurt. The game continued without him.

To finish the day there was the usual one and a half mile run. This was mandatory for everyone. Male officers had eleven minutes, and females thirteen minutes, to complete it in. Now if there was one thing John was good at, it was running. He always had been good at anything requiring stamina. The instructor set the whole team off around the sports field next to the headquarters building. As they were a very fit crowd, they went round the first lap in a bunch. By lap two three of then had begun to leave the others behind. First was Martyn, second was John. By the third and last lap John was on Martyn’s heels, lolloping along easily where as Martyn was beginning to falter. Half way round the last lap, John ran past Martyn and began to speed up, he opened up a longer and longer gap behind him. Martyn was furious and unable to catch him. Nine and a half minutes from the start John ran past the instructor, Martyn ten seconds later. The third was a female officer only two seconds after Martyn.

This one and a half mile run was abandoned the following year, and a system of running back and forth to a timed tape cassette was used; the runs getting faster and faster until you gave up. This constant turning caused John problems with his ankles, so he took it easy so as to just qualify, but he went down in history as being one of the fastest fifty year olds the force had ever had. After today’s run Martyn told John that one day he would beat him. The fact the system changed the following year meant he never would. It was a satisfying way of John getting his own back for the thump in his throat he has received earlier. Competitiveness between males is something females of the species have never understood.

The van wound its way back to the police office, through the now almost grid-locked traffic in the town. It was 3.30pm and lots of parents were on the roads, driving to and from the schools to collect their offspring. John had observed that some drove only a few hundred yards to do this, no doubt to show others they could afford a big 4x4 and block the footpaths outside the schools as good as anyone else. Martyn drove past the station into the High Street, so that John could get out and collect the dummy panda car. However, as things turned out other plans had to be made. Instead Martyn requested over the vans radio for a recovery truck. The local toe rags had stolen all four wheels, in full view of all and sundry in the towns High Street. They had even replaced the wheel bolts, showing their sense of humour. Later that evening four Vauxhall Astra wheels, still inflated, were found by a town-centre, foot-beat probationer constable, neatly stacked up just inside the grave yard of All Saints Church, some one hundred yards from the reserved police parking bay. The probationer had popped into the yard for a fag. Next day John tore up the ‘Theft from Motor Vehicle’ crime report he had completed the day previous, refitted the wheels and put the same car back in the police bay, just as instructed by his boss. He then took over the Enquiry Office again for the day.

A Day Out.

It was cold and wet and the Autumn mid-term holiday. John had been ‘volunteered’ to assist ‘A’ Section on a dawn raid with warrants on a number of know homes of local toe rags. The idea was to catch them in their beds at 5am, nice and early and half asleep. The warrants were for non-payment of fines. The back log had grown so large something had to be done. The courts could not afford to employ bailiffs due to the same moratorium the police were under. Anyway, bailiffs took a percentage of each fine as well as getting a fee. Police constables cost nothing, other than their normal salaries. John had not been in the van this time, but was seated next to PC Mark Jones in a nice warm, heated, insulated panda car. Mark was driving, and had been based in the town for getting on for ten years.

Officers often found a niche that they could fulfil easily, John’s was upsetting the public, Mark’s was catching disqualified drivers. He kept lists of whom they were, where they lived, and what cars they were known to have access to. A common trick was to send off for a duplicate drivers licence just prior to going to court, when they knew they were about to be disqualified. They would lie and say they had lost their old licence. The new one would arrive, with a different issue number, unbeknown to its holder. The old licence would be kept and the new one handed in to the courts, who would have a record of it from the DVLA. The idea being that they would carry the licence with them, fully aware that if they produced a drivers licence when stopped by an officer, the officer was unlikely to bother to check further. Mark had the current and previous issue numbers of their licences, obtained from the Police National Computer ( PNC). This meant he could arrest them on the spot and did not need to double check, driving whilst disqualified by a court is an arrestable offence. Caught in the action led directly to a magistrates court the next day, and hopefully prison. Alas, as things became more and more dumbed down by the government, this arrest now usually leads to just further bail conditions, and the offender continuing to drive uninsured.

Mark and John had completed the early morning raid, they had had to stand by in case one of those on warrant got away. The full van had bounced off to the divisional HQ as there were more cells there, and a court that morning to deal with it all. As the two constables drove back to town, the car’s radio sprang into life. The control room asked if the pair could attend what appeared to be a Breach of the Peace, and at ‘sparrow’s fart’ as Mark put it. It was only 6am. The call was to attend a rather well to do area of the town, where the houses all had names and not numbers. This led to them having to crawl along the road slowly trying to read the house names on unlit boards in uncut hedges, John waving his torch about. It really needed new batteries. Eventually they found ‘Mon Repose’ and saw a little red Mini parked on the road ahead. In the Mini was a lady, well dressed if a little brightly dressed. Now Mark was younger than John, and had not been in the forces. He was a married man with two children. He did not at first grasp what was going on. John did, straight away.

Both got out of the panda car and approached the Mini. It was this lady who had called the police. She claimed she was owed eighty pounds by the man inside. She was a masseur she said. John told Mark to stay with the lady whilst he would go in and see the gent. A knock on the heavy oak door of the very smart detached house brought forth a rather drunk late-middle aged man. John recognised him at once. He went inside and had a long chat to the man. It seemed he did not want to pay the lady for her services. He had sent off his wife and her friend to Centre Parks for the weekend, on a ladies weekend out. Feeling lonely he had phoned a number he found in the yellow pages. The lady outside had arrived, he had had his way, and got very drunk. When she asked for payment he had refused, and was still refusing. It is difficult reasoning with a drunk, it would be easier to reason with a two year old child. Eventually John opened a few draws in the room, found a cheque book, wrote out the amount of eighty pounds, and put it in front of the man. Handing him the pen, he reluctantly signed it after John explained just how this would all look in the local Sunday rag, well known for its ‘investigative journalism’.

John tore out the cheque, leaving the man to think of something to put on the counterfoil later for his wife to see. He went out to the Mini, handed the cheque to the lady telling her to bank it as soon as possible. She drove off happy. Mark still looked puzzled. Back in the panda Mark had eventually realised she was a prostitute, but how did John get the money out of the chap? John explained the man had been a well know councillor in the town, and the Sunday rag would have had a field day had the lady gone to them. Hence the signed cheque.

Mark had already planned his morning, and was set to sit up on a disqualified driver who he had information on. It seemed that this lad was driving a van for a building company. He took the van home at night, and was the driver who collected the building team on route to the jobs each morning. Logic said he must have produced a drivers licence to his employer, who would be unaware of his disqualification. At precisely 7am the lad was seen to leave his home, walk down the street and get into the drivers seat of a van. John was already round the corner, on foot, waiting for him. As the van came round John stood out in the road and stopped him. John began his first sentence by asking the driver if he knew one of his headlamps was not working. The lads face noticeably relaxed, and he got out to check. Mark then appeared from behind, having driven up and asked the driver his name. He recognised Mark, but still gave a false one, but Mark knew him by sight and arrested him. Mark then left John to park the builders van in the police yard, whilst he took the offender to the cells at Div HQ, and court. There would be a few chaps standing about on cold street corners, who would be wondering where their lift had got to that morning. John was not that vindictive though, he phoned the number given on the side of the van and left a message on the firms answer-phone, saying the driver had been seriously delayed, and the phone number of the station the lad had been taken to. So by 7.15am John was back at the police office.

He had nothing to do until 9am, where he was to contact the various schools ‘citizenship coordinators’, a teacher with whom he liaised for his visits and lesson inputs. He sat in the tiny canteen, which was just a table, three seats and a sink with a kettle on one side. Not all schools wanted all of his inputs, one Church School banned him from mentioning contraception in one of his lessons. It was always best to check, to offend would keep him out of that school. The cleaner had arrived, and John chatted to her about this and that. She had been lucky to keep her job as one officer had caught her cleaning the men’s urinals with a cloth, then wiping out the kitchen sink with the same cloth, then the dirty cups again with the same cloth. One wondered how many years she had been doing this as she had worked there for about fifteen. From then on everyone kept their own cup in their locker.

From some literature John had found an interesting programme was to be televised on Channel 5 TV. It was about drugs, and might prove useful for teachers to follow up his school visits. They could video it and use it in a lesson. Many teachers were middle aged and few had a really good drugs knowledge, the children often had a better grip on the subject, alas from the wrong angle. John had given a number of talks to groups of local teachers on teacher training days, not about the drugs but about the law side of things and the types common in the town. It was only too easy for a teacher to take a lump of cannabis resin from a student to stop them from taking it, or selling it in school. They then put it into a desk draw and forgot it. In law this made the teacher commit the same offence as the student, that is illegal possession of a controlled drug. If they did not want to tell the police, throw it down the loo he told them. But please do tell the head teacher, who would tell John but without any names or pack drill. This way at least some intelligence got through.

The literature also mentioned a web site that could be visited. The internet was still a new thing then, and schools might only have one computer available to students, usually in a library. John wrote a letter to all the coordinators mentioning the web site. It was very lucky indeed that a teacher tried out the site he had put in the letter. John had missed out a ‘n’ in Channel, using Chanel instead. It seemed www.chanel5.com was then a pornographic site. This particular teacher had the same surname as John, and was the deputy head of one of the Upper Schools. He pulled John’s leg for months later about the matter. Just imagine the local constabulary recommending that school children look at rude web sites was one jibe. John winced, because had it become known within police management circles he would have been on the carpet very sharply.

The Ambulance.

There was internal mail for John in his in-tray. Some nice person had collected it all from the enquiry office and distributed it about the Inspector’s house. John removed the A4 sheet from the envelope, sat in his chair, and studied it. It made no sense at all. Someone was asking him for a report of missing tools. To the best of his knowledge he had not completed any crime report that included missing or stolen tools since he had taken over as the area SLO, and that had now been almost three years ago.

He dropped it back into the pending tray, which was actually the in and out tray as well, there was only one. The other memo was a note to say his office was to be fitted with a telephone. That would not be too difficult he thought, looking down at the BT connecting plug already fixed to the skirting board. Sometime in the past there had been a phone installed in that room already, probably just at the end of the last ice age.

Today he was taking a young trainee Detective Constable with him to one of the Upper Schools. The visit was a two edged sword, one side was to introduce a detective to the school, the other was to get him a contact inside the school for a number of crimes, one being the stalking of school girls on their way home. This had been headline stuff in the local paper, and CID now had to do something. They walked the mile to the school surrounded by lots of noisy children, who ignored them. This, John told the DC who wore a grey suit, was actually good, because it meant the children were use to him being about in uniform. Today John was to give a small speech at the morning assembly, then a lesson to a year 9 group on self-defence, but not the actual actions, just to get over the idea the use of minimum force. Just how far could one go to protect ones self, the idea being of course to give the girls who were being followed confidence.

The two officers joined the school staff in the huge hall, as the children began to file in. They had spent fifteen minutes in the staff room whilst John introduced the DC to the teachers, and the reason he was there. After ten minutes the hall was packed, and one could see every face as the floor rose towards the back. The head teacher read out some notices, then the heads of departments read out their notices, then some sports fixtures were read out, then it came to John’s turn. He stood up and introduced the DC, telling the children (who were 13 to 17 year olds) about the stalking. Normally the hall only accommodated the children by year groups, but today the whole school was present, nearly 600 people. Then he handed over to the detective. The DC stood up, looked at the mass of faces, went very pale, and tried to speak. His forehead broke out in beads of sweat, his legs began to tremble, and he froze. It is called ‘stage fright’ and not unusual. John spotted it immediately and took the notes from the officer, and read them out for him. It was done so naturally not many children spotted it, but the staff all did, as years ago they, like John, had also suffered similar scenes themselves. It had not occurred to John that this might happen, since he had been a technical instructor in the last five years of his RAF service at RAF Halton.

After assembly the two officers went to the deputy heads office, who John thought would be the best member of staff to liaison with CID. In the hall John had mentioned the stalking problem, and has asked that anyone who might have information come forward, first to their class teacher, or as in the older students, their tutor group leader. John left the DC with the deputy head to go to take his lesson with the year 9 group. This was the last of eleven classes he had taken in this group, and they were streamed by ability. This was the lowest level one. The lesson started of well, as soon as John introduced himself, a girl in the front row put up her hand. John nodded to her and she then informed the class that this was the policeman who searched her home the week before, and arrested her brother, who was wanted on a bail warrant! Oh great, thought John, now how do I win them all back. The look on John’s face made the class all laugh, so he seized on the moment and launched into self defence and minimum force, being very careful not to mention the girls story. He could get into serious trouble if it was known he had discussed a real case with anyone other than a relative or their solicitor. However, he did make the point at the end of the lesson about what the powers of the police were.

During such lessons the subject of right from wrong would inevitably arise. John had always been amazed at just how black and white things were to teenagers. There were no grey areas at all. People were either good or bad. This was quite interesting as it was the very age group of this class that committed the most crimes. Was it because they thought once they had been bad, they might as well continue being a toe rag? Or as John thought more cynically, because few knew who their real fathers were, many coming from housing association areas of the town, and there was no adult male in the house to control the inevitable flowering of the teenage male’s natural instinct to be in charge. He corrected himself before he made any verbal comment, as a good ninety five percent of school children were hard working youngsters intent on getting good exam results. It was the other five percent that took up 100% of the police’s time.

Back in the staff room for a cup of tea, John saw that the deputy head and the DC were grinning and looking pleased with themselves. It transpired that the stalking case had been solved. A couple of students had risked talking to their class teacher, who had passed the pair onto the deputy heads office. The DC had been booted out of the office as it was not to be seen they were ‘grassing’ someone up. It was made to appear they had been summoned for some small discipline matter. Schools are a nightmare of rumours, with very fast ‘grape vines’ and children very quick to judge on the slimmest of evidence. However, no one need have worried. It appeared the ‘stalker’ was no lesser person than Mental Rockey, a rather backward lad who was now in his mid thirties. He would wander about telling off the clouds, and sitting on garden walls looking lost. It was the children who had nicknamed him with that title. He was still a child mentally, and often followed the odd child to school, or home again. ‘Rocky’ was a well known character in the area, and completely harmless. A new girl, who had recently moved to the area had been followed by him, and she told her parents, who informed the police. It was the media who had expanded the story. As quite often the case, why let the truth get in the way of a good story thought John. The bell then went for the end of the morning break. John and the DC walked out into the corridor, and it was John who heard the rumbling coming. He grabbed the DC and pulled him into a doorway, just as a huge herd of tiny hooves thundered past on route to the classrooms. Had John not pulled the DC out of the way, the children would have flattened him. The loud booming voice of the deputy head yelled from behind them for the children to walk. As if by magic the running stopped and quiet walking reigned. John told the DC he owed his life to him, lots of DC’s get killed in school corridors, it was part of an SLO’s training how to survive in a school environment.

The morning over, John and the DC walked back to the police office. John took up his seat in his little office, and again re-read the A4 sheet of paper. He studied the internal mail envelope to try to ascertain from whence it had come. The previous name on the front was of the Div HQ admin officer. Why would an admin officer want details of lost tools? What tools? No doubt he would have to chase it up one day, but the best thing was to shove it back into the internal mail system addressed to himself, that way it would take a few days to go round, and return. That would give him time to think.

At 4pm it was time to go off duty. John put on his grey civilian jacket over his uniform shirt and trousers. That way it did not look as if you were a policeman, so it was less likely one would be accosted by a member of the public on your way home. They would not understand if one tried to explain one was a SLO and had no radio.

As John walked out into the yard, he saw a car pull into the station’s rear yard. It was a civilian. A man got out of the car, opened the boot, and took out, of all things, a duck. The man then walked towards John and asked if a policeman was available, John pointed to the enquiry office door. The man then walked over to it just as a constable came out. The thick-set, greying constable was one of the old school, spending his entire career at this station, and a real countryman at heart. John heard the man ask the officer what he should do about the duck he was holding. He had hit it with his car. The poor bird was still alive, but mangled badly. The officer said that was OK and asked the man to give it to him, which he did. The officer then rang the poor birds neck in the presence of the now startled man. It seemed the poor chap thought the officer was going to call a vet, but he had just been disabused of this valiant thought. The officer then thanked the fellow, saying the duck would be a nice dinner for him, and then to the utter surprise of the fellow, the officer walked over to a panda car and drove off, with the duck. The chap continued to stand on the spot staring for a while, then slowly walked back to his car shaking his head. John just could not hold back a big grin from his face, and felt he had to explain the officers action. He went over to the chap and told him about the Road Traffic Act (RTA), accidents, and those that were required to be reported. Alas, hitting a duck was not a reportable accident. The officer he had seen did the right thing by putting the duck out of its misery.

The chap drove off, not really convinced over it all. It is a fact that only certain accidents that involve a fixed list of animals are ‘reportable’. For instance if one hits a donkey or dog, the accident must be reported; but hitting a giraffe, or an elephant, neither are reportable under the RTA. However, the owner of the damaged goods needs to be informed.

John set off to walk home. But life is not that simple. Just as he was about to go another car pulled into the yard. This time an elderly lady alighted from it, with a scruffy dog on a lead. It was a stray and had been found in a nearby village. But this village was in the next county, the town being on the border. Lestone was in Lutonshire, the village in Buckinghamshire. John suggested the dog be taken to the correct police area, and that any dog left at this place would only be held for a couple of days, then it would be taken to a pound near Newport Pagnell, and if unclaimed it would be destroyed, ( as was the then current system.) It was compounded by the fact the office was no longer a 24 hour station, and closed most of Sundays. No one at this office had the task of cleaning the one kennel, and John knew it was filthy. That meant the dog would be left unattended for long periods. The lady left with the dog to place it at Aylesbury, where at least any local callers from that area, who might have lost the dog, would be directed. Since dogs no longer required a licence, they had just become a nuisance to the police; back then there was no system in place to be able to trace or inform owners outside the immediate area. Today a computer system exists for just this purpose, and most towns now have council dog wardens to cope with something that is not really a police matter.

The following morning John arrived to be summoned into the Sergeants office. The duty Sgt asked him about the lady and the dog. It seems she had made a complaint at Aylesbury about John. When all was explained, it seems she was really complaining about the lack of a system within the police service, not the actions of a particular officer. The general public often have that problem, they cannot separate an action that an officer takes, or cannot take because of the law of the land, and the poor performance of an officer. The thing that annoyed John was, it would still be registered as a complaint against him, and could even be brought up in a court of law if his character was examined.

Bloody ungrateful public he thought to himself as he trundled up the stairs to his little office. Then ‘ping’, it came to him. He knew what that A4 sheet over the tools was all about. The incident was very similar to the dog one, the day previous. Again it was John putting his oar into an area that was not really his domain. Eighteen months ago he had been seconded onto the Div HQ Saturday night riot van. Why he ended up in it he never really knew. Along with a number of other officers he had gone over to Durocoton when there had been a ‘shout’. A ‘shout’ is an officer in serious trouble and in need of very urgent back up. One of the town centre night clubs had spilled out into their car park, and now very drunk youths were fighting. This had now got out of hand and the four officers on duty in that town were in trouble, hence the Lestone van was speeding its way over to assist. It only had four more officers on board, one being John, as any available officer jumped into it as it left. This left just two on duty in Lestone, unknown to the public and more importantly, to the criminals. A number of arrests had been made, taking off the streets the arresting officers to deal with their prisoners. That had led the duty inspector to stop anyone else going off duty as the available manning level dipped alarmingly. It was not the first time that the Special Constabulary was popular and very welcome, without them things would have become very, very serious indeed. So, John and a Durocoton officer, and one special, took over the town’s van crew. Lestone got one constable back, and no van crew. Luckily it was fairly quiet from then on. But just as the van crews were to be stood down, and John was totalling up his overtime as about six hours ( unpaid remember) the control room asked for a unit to follow and stop a suspected drunken driver on the A5 travelling north. The van just happened to be on the same road. Very soon it caught up with the suspect vehicle, and it was easy to see why someone had dialled 999. The ancient ambulance was weaving all over the road, and travelling very slowly. The van’s driver flashed the old ambulance, and switched on his blue light. This was enough to convince the driver of the ambulance all was lost, so it stopped, right in the middle of the busy A5 trunk road, in the middle of the town.

The driver was just fifteen years old, a young white male who was terrified. Laying on the floor next to him, where once there had been a passenger seat, was a very, very drunk middle-aged Afro-Caribbean. He was a carpenter, and the lad his apprentice. They were on route home to Birmingham. As events were to prove, the older man had begun the journey home from London earlier that day, but had become ill about St Albans. He convinced the lad to drive the old ambulance, as it was an automatic. But its steering was faulty and very stiff, and the lad just not strong enough to cope. To try to improve his poor health, the man had downed a few whiskeys, so was now over the limit. The fact was, was he still in charge of the vehicle? The poor Special constable was lumbered with arresting the pair, whilst John was given the task of getting the old vehicle off the road, and park it up somewhere. This was what the A4 letter was about.

John had parked it up behind the fire station, just off Brewers Hill Road. He could not lock it up as the doors were of the sliding type. He informed the control room of this fact, and was told that it was the problem of the vans owner, not a police matter. Of course, a few days later, when the carpenter came to collect his ambulance, it was still there, but all the tools had gone. He had made an official complaint as well as reporting a crime. Guess whose name was on the computer record for that night? John wrote a report explaining all the above. The police eventually paid out for the tools, John was expunged of all blame, after all he had been told to do as he had by a supervisor. It had been a sergeant driving the van that night.

Off Duty.

John was heading for his late middle age, and was suffering all that that entailed as a grumpy white male. He looked upon the current television comedy series entitled “ One Foot in the Grave” as a documentary, not something funny at all. That was because so much of what happened to its star, one Victor Thomas Meldrew ( played by the great Richard Wilson, one of John’s heros.), seemed to happen to him. When John had to work a weekend, something that was now not so often as when he was a patrol officer, (being a SLO had its benefits,) or had overtime to ‘burn’ off, he would take a day off during the week. He would chose one where he had no schools booked, so it was a bit of a lottery which ones he had, and not really something that could be planned very far ahead. Today he was out in the town off duty. He quite liked visiting the numerous charity shops and buying books and some videos, though not all. For his lunch and if it was a Tuesday or a Friday he took off, he would go to the All Saint’s Church’s tea shop. He was not religious, but it was a very pleasant place and he enjoyed its feel of ancient history. This aligned with its ancient customers, lots and lots of little grey haired old ladies, or ‘blue rinses’ as he called them. It mattered not that his hair, what was left of it, was also very grey.

He stood in the queue to get his mug of tea and tuna sandwich on brown bread, an order that he always had, and was familiar to the regular volunteer staff behind the counter. Behind him the little tables were hidden by many little grey female heads, all bowed in what appeared to be secret conversations, probably about the ladies at the next table no doubt from the little darting glances from one or two. As he picked up his tea and the plate of sandwiches, looping his shopping bag over his left wrist, he turned to walk to a table at the back of the rather small room. This was just as the elderly lady of an infirm disposition shoved out her walking stick in order to be able to lever herself up out of her chair. The stick went between John’s legs, and as he brought his rearmost leg forward to take a step, he was tripped up. Up into the air went the tea and its cup, and sideways and onto the carpet went the sandwiches. The knife and paper serviette that were balanced on the plate carried on the trajectory had the trip not happened. They bounced off the table in front the ladies, nearly stabbing one. John disappeared from view, ending up with his feet up in the air, tea all over him, and a walking stick trying to act like a propeller between his ankles.

Apologies all round, and a good hearty laugh back up by a replacement tea and sandwich restored the situation. But John was thinking why always bloody well me? It was the same when he went shopping. Invariably as he went to leave the shop, and elderly lady who had been served just before him, would stop right in the doorway and check her change. It mattered not to her that no one could get into or leave the premises whilst she carried out this vital task. This occurred so often that John began to suspect that on their 65th birthday, they all went away on a course on how to wind up John Lawson. In the Waitrose superstore, what ever shelf he wanted to look at, or into, there would be an elderly lady already positioned in such a way he could not get to what he required. He was forced to wait until she had squeezed every item on that shelf until she was satisfied the one she took was the least bruised, again it mattered not that she had now bruised all the rest. John suspected it was probably the same lady who seemed to appear in the charity shops, and lift off the shelf the very book he had just spied with an intention to buy it to read himself. And on the rare occasions he drove a car, usually his wife’s little Austin Metro, the car in front doing just twenty five miles an hour, with no apparent driver in view, in fact had a little old lady peering between the steering wheel spokes in charge.

John normally rode a bicycle about the town when off duty. It was the easiest and cheapest way to get about, and far easier to park. Even here he had been troubled, again with the older female driver of tiny Japanese cars, who would overtake him and just before they completed their overtaking would turn left across his front. The times he had nearly rammed the front nearside passenger door of such cars was now huge. Why can they not wait a few seconds to let me past their junction, then turn left he wondered. Whilst John had a balding grey head, like his running he was also a fit cyclist, and rode quite fast. This might be what confused people, an older man flying along on a bike. Most of his age group crept along at one pedal rotation a minute, hardly moving and defying gravity by not falling off.

Then there were the parents who suddenly recognised him with comments such as they had not initially recognised him with his clothes on. What they meant was, not in his uniform but in civvies, but it still brought startled glances from bystanders.

It was a fact, and still is, that many of the general public cannot separate Civil Law from Criminal Law. They mix them up, confuse themselves and everyone else, and end up by deciding the police do nothing about their complaint. Again, what they mean but fail to understand is, the police are unable to deal with matters that are not a criminal offence. Such was the situation when a little old chap complained to John that a dog in the park had bitten his dog. He knew John by sight and saw him outside Woolworths, and bore down on him. He accosted John even though John was off duty and out of uniform. John explained that dogs do bite dogs, and it was not a crime unless an organised dog fight. The little dog he had with him had quite a nasty wound to its shoulder, so John suggested it be taken to a vet urgently. This did not please the chap at all, he wanted the other dogs owner arrested there and then. So John asked for what offence? Under the Dangerous Dogs Act of course was the reply. John explained there was no power of arrest under that offence, and that that particular act applied only to the injury to a human being, not another dog. He went on to suggest if the chap want some sort of recompense over the matter, he needed to contact a solicitor, as it was all a matter of damage to property, by another bit of property; this was all a civil matter. This meant someone would have to pay out hard earned cash, and John had found that members of the public seemed to find this a difficult thing to cope with. The man asked why could the police not deal with it, which meant they had now gone full circle. John sighed and tried again to explain.

Like doctors and other professionals, it was becoming a dangerous thing to admit at any function your occupation if you were a police officer. People would descend upon you and bring up their pet subject. The times John had wished he had stayed at home was often, so if possible he would only admit to being in the security business. This sounded so boring the conversation would go elsewhere much to his glee. Luckily as he had been in the RAF as an aircraft engineer, he was capable of holding interesting conversation about engines and similar things. These were guaranteed to bore women to death, but interest their male companion. It was well away from policing, and that was what mattered.

As the years rolled by, and John passed his fiftieth birthday, he began to think of his retirement. According to the rules, a constable has to retire at fifty-five years of age. Those above the rank of inspector can continue until the age of sixty, if there is a vacancy. Unknown to John fate was to intervene as well as the lack of funds for the police allocated from central government.

After being a copper for a few years, it can sometimes be difficult to recognise why you know someone. You know them, but why? Friends and relatives are easy, as are acquaintances, but it is those on the periphery that cause problems. Often they will chat away to you, whilst you are trying to decide, have you arrested them at some time? Or were they a witness? Perhaps the injured party in a crime? Was it a speeding ticket you gave them? Whilst it might be hard on the recipient, most officers will have forgotten any motoring tickets they give out very quickly. You simply cannot be expected to remember one parking ticket from a year ago, when you have given out many, many more since, and dealt with possibly thousands of people. But that recipient will remember you, be certain of that. This was just so one summers day when John popped out from his house to buy the children an ice cream. The attitude of the chap in the ice cream van upset him. He was in fact quite rude, saying that the ice creams were not thirty pounds each. What John had forgotten was, eighteen months before he had given a parking ticket to the very same chap, whose van was parked up on the pavement outside the betting shop in Wing Road. Not only had he got a parking ticket, he had lost his bet. At that time John had been a LBO for that area, and it was his job.

The School Run, and Parents.

One of the contentious things that bounced about the police office, that caused some friction between the patrol officer and local beat officers, and SLOs was just where a schools liaison officer’s job began and theirs finished. There were only five SLOs in the whole county, and well over 200 schools of all types. The patrol officers thought SLOs should deal with all school crimes. If this was implemented, no time would be left to go into schools to talk to children and give lessons. The SLOs primary task was crime prevention, to stop it before it happened. LBOs thought that SLOs should deal with the problems outside their schools, such as pavement parking and the school run. Just how five officers were expected to cover 200 schools, all at 9am and 3.30pm did not seem to matter. Luckily common sense stepped in, and the current agreement was in force. SLOs dealt with crime in schools, committed by school children. And as most of this crime was sorted out by the teaching staff, and needed no action by the police unless serious, things ran smoothly.

But as recruitment had been slashed to a trickle, the LBOs were getting thin on the ground. Some divisions had stopped the scheme, so huge areas did not now have a local bobby. They were needed to keep the patrol sections running. These were the panda car drivers, the front line of policing. It was on the cards that the SLOs were on thin ice, as one day they to, were to go. The lack of LBOs meant no one was dealing with the mad school rush each morning and afternoon. A presence was needed to stop them trying to kill other people’s children. John had to try to be seen outside each of his schools as often as possible, but as he alone had about 25 schools so if he got to attend one a week, it would mean he would only get to each school four of five times a year. The management just did not want to know, it was too difficult for them to understand. Like all management systems, the practicalities often went way over their heads, they just made the decisions. There was a rumour that the Durocoton SLO was to transfer to HQ at Kempstown soon, having successfully got a position on the latest government idea, a drugs education team. If that happened, John might get his schools to look after as well, another thirty odd. Again, the practicalities of attending so many schools each term to give the agreed inputs according to the curriculum would prove impossible. There were only eight hours in a working day, six and a half in a school day, and there was a need to travel between each school.

When John brought this all up with his young sergeant, the comment was they were just excuses. He began to wonder if the idea was to overload the SLOs so it could be said they could not cope, so why not scrap them. This was an old business ploy to get rid of a department.

How ever, John, being conscientious, did try to attend some of his schools at home time. He chose the lowers schools as he decided five to eight year olds were more vulnerable that the older ones. With him he took a book of FPN parking tickets, at a £30 fine a time. It proved to be one of those tasks that was unending. As soon as he gave a ticket to a parent who parked on the zig-zags outside the school, another would take their place. He just stood there and wrote out ticket after ticket. He did not get anywhere near to the blocked pavements where cars had been abandoned whilst a mother ran into school to find her treasure. Afterwards, he found he was giving out lots of tickets for children not wearing seat belts, and he eventually ran out of FPNs. And this was just one school on one day! Thirty tickets issued, and what if they all contested them? It would mean weeks in court, but being normally law abiding people, they paid up. But the word did get about. School secretaries phone school secretaries to warn them of the New Police Action. By the end of the week people were, by and large, not parking on zig-zags outside local schools. Rumour had it hundreds of tickets had been given out and lots of police were about to descend on the school. So it eased up a little for John. But he was amazed at how the whole thing had been allowed to degenerate into chaos, and just how parents could put their children to so much danger. Whilst there was about a twenty million to one chance of being kidnapped by a paedophile, there was a very real risk of one being squashed on the footpath by a 4x4. Currently in 2007, as parking has now been re-allocated to local councils, it is all now back to chaos.

The other large Upper School in the town had originally been in the next county, but in 1966 the two towns that joined at the county boundary, the River Lovat, were merged and put into Lutonshire. That meant the tiny police station in Lynchglade was redundant. It also meant that any dead bodies found in the river could not be shoved over to the other bank any more. To commemorate the fusion of the two towns, they were called Leston-Lynchglade, but only the town council called it thus. All and sundry continued to call each by its own. Whilst Lestone was a very ancient market town, Lynchglade was a Victorian confection. It had sprung up around the railway station that was almost a mile outside Lestone. The village of Springfield had been swallowed by this new town, and the whole area a massive dormitory for the city of London. But it did mean the town had two excellent Upper Schools, that drew in students from a huge area. It also meant that many children were bussed or driven to school, as both also covered large rural areas and distant villages. Opposite this other Upper School was a large Middle School, so the road between them was utter, utter chaos. Double yellow lines and zig-zags did little to help, until John had started to sit up on his little Honda police motorcycle, very visibly, when he had been the LBO for the area, known as ‘Delta Zero Six A’ in those days. The fact he was there, forced the mothers to park their cars in the adjacent side streets. There was a big sand quarry on this road, just out of the town, and very heavy twelve wheel lorries used it often, fully loaded up with wet sand making them well over twenty-five tonnes each. Just as John transferred to his current SLO job, a thirteen year old boy had walked out in front of one of these lorries, from a group of lads waiting on the pavement. The driver did not have a chance, nor did the lad. A full set of wheels went over him; hopefully he never knew what hit him. About fifty children witnessed it.

As a SLO John was supposed to occasionally visit to carry out his task of stopping parents from parking on the pavements. He had now managed to work this extra job into his visits. He simply stood outside the school after his finished his lesson there. It worked, a visible uniform had a positive effect. It also meant he gained a half hour of overtime every visit, but he just wrote this off as too fiddly to record. One morning he arrived to visit the Middle School opposite, and witnessed a very pretty young Asian mother trying to park a huge Mercedes estate car. She was failing miserably. In the car was a tiny little girl, who she was delivering to school. They lived the other side of Lynchglade, and her family ran a very posh old peoples home. John knew them vaguely. Her husband had taken her battered, ancient little Japanese car from her, saying it gave the wrong image, and promptly put her into this very nice, top of the range Merc. Whilst she had learnt to park the tiny car, she just could not cope with this massive thing. She was a very small person herself, and looked lost in the drivers seat. John offered to park it for her, and within minutes had it neatly alongside the kerb, between two other cars. The lady demanded to know how he had done it, so he did it again, showing her how to pull alongside the car already parked, then how to reverse into the gap, putting the rear nearside wheel where he wanted it, the rest of the car just followed. John’s advantage was, he could see the nearside corner of the car, the lady could not even see over the seat. A week later, he noticed a little old battered Japanese car had reappeared in the morning line up, and there was no big Merc.

John’s job title was Schools Liaison Officer, abbreviated to SLO. When he first took up the position he began to get some very odd phone calls. As he had to leave his office and go across the yard to a phone in those days, this became a nuisance. On returning to the office having been out all day at schools, there would be a list of parents on his desk to phone. The phone calls concerned him, because they were from parents who were making complaints about teachers and schools. This was nothing to do with the police he would tell them, where upon they would get very angry and inform him they had been directed to him, to deal with their complaint. After a week of this, and many calls from people from all over the county, not just his town, he contacted his Inspector at Div. HQ. Enquiries were made, and the problem unearthed. There was in place a system whereby if a complaint by a parent was not being dealt with as they wished, they could then contact the Schools Liaison Officer, who would arbitrate. A phone call to the County Education Offices in Luton brought forth the details of their very own SLO! Someone had got the wrong end of the stick, and had put the police SLO details onto the leaflet issued, which was actually the local police office enquiry office number. Both the police and education departments have given their liaison officers the same initials, the SLO. The phone calls for John stopped.

The one crime that John found himself dealing with often, was for teenagers caught in school with cannabis, usually in its resin form. This would be sold off to mates, to be crumbled into tobacco to roll up a cigarette using Rizla papers. On his talks he would warn parents to be on the look out for these cigarette papers, used to make roll ups in their children’s bedrooms. It was a bad sign. No child was ever arrested on school premises, a head teacher would ask John to call, which he would and collect the child and parent from the heads office. This would have all been pre-arranged, the parent would know what was going to happen. Some parents did not inform their son or daughter, so as to let the experience be a real shock and a firm lesson. The ‘arrest’ for possessing a controlled drug would be made in the police car, an unmarked police car, out on the main road as the car left the school premises. This way no one could accuse the police of arresting school students on educational premises. This was only to be done in very exceptional circumstances. This was followed up by a house search, of the youths bedroom, and any drugs paraphernalia seized as evidence, on route to the Div HQ cells. The child did not go into a cell, but into an interview room where they were taped. Most confessed the offence and got a caution, and were never heard of again in similar circumstances. Intelligence was gained about from whom they obtained the drug. This was often another student, usually one who had either been expelled or was suspended, and this was passed to the drugs squad. No one ever saw any of this type of criminal work in the press, it was all kept under covers. One major reason was to give the offender the chance to ‘go straight’ so to speak.

But some parents objected to their ‘child’ being arrested, claiming the poor little imp was to be treated like a common criminal. Well, since the inception of the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act ( PACE) this was correct. Everyone was treated the same, from a Duke to a murderer, and from a parking ticket to a bank robber, the treatment was laid out in the Act along with the prisoners rights. So John would agree with them. Once it was all over, many parents would apologise and thank him for his politeness and firm action. Only one mother made him promise to never tell the father, to which he replied that was up to her, he had done his bit.

The youngest offender he had had to deal with was just five. The little girl had brought daddy’s pills into school to share out with her friends. Luckily a teacher stopped this in its tracks, and phoned for John. The pills proved to be Ecstasy, and Dad had a visit from the Drugs Squad that very day.

The Operation.

When a police job became complex, and would involve a number of days to complete, and it needed some sort of diary that might be required in a court of law, one could set up an ‘operation’. The diary would often become a very important part of the evidence, as well as saving a few faces.

The large Upper School in Lynchglade, with its 1200 pupils, was a gift to anyone who liked designer clothing. The cloakrooms were full of well known and expensive jackets, coats, and trainers. The age group was twelve to eighteen, if one included what was still called the 5th and 6th year, those going for ‘A’ levels and on to University. Every school has its ‘tea-leafs’, those scum who trade off others misfortune. The police term them as ‘pond-life’, and it was very true that when you skimmed off one layer, another rose to take its place.

The head teacher contacted John one day, inviting him in to the school for a chat. John arrived to be shewn into his office. The head of such a large school was really in the managing director class, with heads of departments under him, who were more like the head teachers of a number of smaller schools within the school. There had been thefts of designer clothing from the cloakrooms, could John help in his capacity as the school’s bobby? What John suggested was that he, John, would sit up in a cloak room and do ‘observations’. But this would have to be an official ‘job’ and to do that John would raise an entry on the control room computer terminal at the police office in town. He would log on it when he was carrying out the task, and it would get an ‘operational’ name. He would get hold of a hand radio so he could summons a panda car should he need to, you never know these days, there had been cases of travellers thieving from schools. Schools were a very easy target, and the majority of teenagers insisted they wear these designer clothes. John commented that if he had to wear such rubbish, he would insist that the firm who had put their name on the outside of the item, pay him advertising fees. The makers name should be on a little label inside the neck, as far as John was concerned. And as for these horrible chunky trainers they all wore, what better to make you feet sweat? Because all the schools in the town insisted upon a uniform, children walked to school in their expensive trainers, but carried their black leather sensible shoes in their designer shoulder bags. The shoes were donned in the cloakroom, and the trainers put in the bag, and hung on a hook along with the expensive demin jacket. Again, John’s view on denim was, it was a working mans clothing, after all he used denim overalls to work on his old cars and ancient motorbikes.

John raised the necessary ‘operation’ on the office terminal, having phoned HQ to get a name for it. The names were issued in alphabetical order. He then grabbed a radio, and a spare battery, from the patrol room. He then walked to the school, a good mile and a half distant. He arrived just after all the students had gone in to be ticked off their various registers. Again none took any notice of him as he was always around. He visited the head, who had briefed his heads of departments, and they all unanimously thought it a huge joke that John had raised an official police operation over the matter. John tried to explain that he needed official backing for such things inside a school, that things needed to be recorded for evidence, and that should anyone be arrested then house searches would follow. He had the use of a cleaners room adjacent to the year nine cloak room, this was the one that had been targeted over the last few weeks, though others had had some items stolen.

John could also see out through the window onto the entrance road, that led to the school’s front door, as well as the teacher’s car park. The first day nothing unusual happened. Nor the second. The third day John had to leave to give an input to another school in the afternoon. As Sod’s Law is always in force, it was this Thursday afternoon that he really should have been in that cloakroom. A pair of expensive trainers and a jacket went missing. A child had become suspicious of a lad from year nine, who had excused himself from class to go to the toilet, which was off the cloakrooms. She had been sitting under her coat not feeling very well, whilst a teacher had gone to call a parent to collect her. She was a tiny child, and the coat hid her well. She watched the lad collect a jacket from a hook, which was quite normal, but then he took a pair of trainers from another bag on another hook. By this action she assumed they were not his. He had then gone outside for a few minutes, and had come back in without the items. He could not have gone very far. She said nothing to anyone until she was in her mother’s car on the way home. The mother phoned the head teacher to tell him of the incident, but by then it had gone 3.30pm and all the students had gone or were going home. The real break through was, the little girl knew who the lad was.

The head teacher then phoned the parents of the suspected lad. The mother answered and promised to bring him in herself the Friday morning, with any jacket he had. She was sure it was just a mistake, he must have just collected the wrong one from the hooks. The head played along with this idea.

So, when John arrived to do his stint in the cloakroom, he was quickly whipped into the heads office so that any parent calling would not see him. Everything was explained, but the name of the little girl was kept from John. John had this all added to the operational log via his radio. When the mother arrived with her son, they were shewn into the same office. She saw John sitting there, and looked very uncomfortable. In her hand was the jacket. The owner of the jacket, and the owner of the trainers details had been obtained by John, for losers statements later. The head said very little, inviting John to speak. John stood up, and related the official caution, then arrested the lad for theft. This was one of those very rare occasions that an arrest of a student on educational properties was sanctioned. John had already radioed for a panda car, which arrived after a few minutes. John took the jacket from the mother, and then explained what else was now going to happen. Her son was now under arrest, he had lost his liberty. Both her and him would be taken to their home, and John would search relevant rooms for any further stolen goods. Then both would be transported to the Div HQ as only there could John tape-record an interview with the offender. Depending upon what was said, would depend the outcome. At the house search, John found a number of pairs of trainers, none were the correct size for the lad. No jackets were found. John discovered that the parents were quite old, they already had four daughters, and had had one last attempt at having a son as they approached their mid forties. It had been successful, and the boy had become the apple of his father’s eye, and the baby of all his sisters. But he had been spoilt, and could do no wrong it seemed. Under caution on interview, he denied stealing anything, saying his mates had lent him the trainers. He could not remember who any of them were though. The lad just dug himself a big hole as he lied and lied. He was not bright enough to even remember what he had said ten minutes before. He was bailed for further enquiries over the trainers found in his room.

John did lots of further enquiries. In fact he stitched up this lad really tightly. When in Middle School, he had been suspected of stealing jackets, so had been expelled. The police had not been involved. He had been moved the another Middle School in the town, and a repeat of the theft meant another move. He had been to all three Middle Schools in the town. Teachers at all of them remembered him as not a very nice person, a liar and a thief. He had now gone to an Upper school, and continued his little games. The trainers were laid out in the heads office, and their owners soon traced. Statements were taken from everyone involved, from the head to the cleaner, ( who had on occasions found good quality clothes and trainers hidden in the shrubbery near to cloakrooms.) That was how it was done. Excuse ones self from class, go to the loo, steal something, hide it under a bush, collect it at home time, then sell it on to a mate. If nothing else the head had commented, at least everyone was now putting their names into their property at last.

When the lad returned on his bail conditions some weeks later, to Div HQ, this time he had his father with him, and an expensive brief (a solicitor) from London. John went straight into taping another interview, having written out the first one in full. This was in the time when taped interviews had just began, replacing verbatim hand written ones. But tapes were OK until you had to transcribe them. This had to be done by the officer in the case, no special tape transcribers existed then. It was DIY. John asked the same questions he had the first time, and got a completely different set of answers. The lad had lied to both his father and brief, forgetting that he had been tape recorded in the first interview. John had no trouble at all at tripping the lad up at every turn and bend. The more the boy lied the more distressed he became. In the end it was the brief who very firmly put the boy in his place by telling him off for lying to him, and to his father, and how he had broken his father’s heart. John then related all the previous thefts at the other schools. The boy was ‘bang to rights’ as the saying goes. Had he admitted the offence and shewn sorrow, he might have been given a caution, but as he was obviously such a horrible little toe rag, he was charged with this theft, with five others offences of theft of the trainers and given a date to attend the juvenile court in Leston.

It was after this that John had gone up to the CID Crime Desk, to find that this very same lad already had two burglaries on file awaiting court appearances, as well as a number of other minor ones. The parents had not mentioned any of these pending cases to John, and as they had not been to court yet, they were not on the lad’s criminal record. Not that it mattered, but John was incensed to learn later that his offences had been stuck on as TICs, Taken Into Consideration. This meant he would be tried for the burglaries, the rest were less important. So all John’s hard work to get a detected crime was for nought. The public would be horrified if they only knew how the legal system bargained and swapped things about, and just how little actually gets into a court of law. The boy would plead guilty to a burglary, if the rest were dropped. This is what actually happened.

The ‘operation’ had been would up, everything had been recorded on it, and any police employee could log into the system to admire the fact that SLO’s do in fact do arrests and house searches. The fact the lad had been charged meant the police could claim a detected crime. In this case six in all, when the other sets of trainers were added. John had the pleasure of handing over sealed plastic bags of very smelly trainers to their rightful owners, as they had all been bagged up as exhibits for court. But the head teacher had come in for a bit of a fight. His school governors were not happy over children being arrested inside school, why had he permitted it? A copy of the operation was printed out for him, and he was able to assure his governors that the whole thing had been an official police matter, fully recorded and within the law. They seemed happy with this, and the head was heard to thank John for doing it all by the book. John just grinned, he had been about too long to not follow the book, and he was not going to take any risks as his pension was not far away now.

Crime Prevention.

Whilst it is possible to lead a horse to water, it cannot be forced to drink. This is a fact where crime prevention comes into play. Even today, with thefts of valuables from parked cars common, it is possible to walk down any street you choose, and find cars that are unlocked. Worse, many will have items on display on seats ready for a window to be smashed and grabbed. Teachers are no different from anyone else. John had had to deal with thefts of, and thefts from handbags left in staff rooms, usually on a seat, for anyone to be able to gain access to. These thefts continued even though the teachers took their handbags into class with them, but again the bag would be left in an unlocked cupboard. Children were more often than not, the culprits. What most often pointed to this was what was stolen. Children will take money and sweets, and possibly make up. A proper thief would go for the driver’s licence, bank cards and car keys as well as any cash. John’s most regular trick was to lay a trap, with marked notes or a small alarm inside the bag. Few teachers wanted any official action, the child was dealt with, within the schools own discipline system.

But whilst a teacher is an individual, a whole school is perhaps a bit more complex. One head teacher decided to improve security by having CCTV cameras fitted. He did not take any advice from any crime prevention officer, even though this was free. The cameras were placed on the corners of the buildings, about eight feet from the ground. By the following day they had all been stolen. Had they been put high on poles, they might still be there. It is not known what the insurance company said about it all. The Parent/Teachers Association were certainly not pleased, as it was they who had raised the necessary money for the system.

Another middle school managed to raise the cash for a number of computers and printers. A ground floor room was cleared and the computers set out along the benches under the windows. It all looked very smart, with a printer to every five terminals, and enough terminals for the average class for one to each child. That weekend some white vans visited late at night, windows were removed by taking out the seals around the aluminium framed glass. And all the IT equipment vanished forever. It was decided as an after thought that perhaps a ground floor room had not been a good idea, and placing the equipment by the windows was a no-no for the future. Schools then did not have alarm systems usually. But one Lower School in Lynchglade was switched on, they had their corridor alarmed, and would push all the TVs, video players, and IT equipment which had been installed on trolleys into the corridors at night. During holidays each teacher would take one item home with them. It worked, especially as they took John’s advice to paint in large yellow letters, the schools name on everything, as well as post-coding it all.

When children start school at five, parents will carefully mark all their clothes and equipment with their name. By the time they get to the Upper School, very little has any identification on it at all. Teacher’s jobs would be made much easier if people just put names on things.

One of the Upper Schools had a Tuck Shop. It was opened at break and lunch times, and run by a number of the students, supervised by the staff. One lunch time it failed to open, there had been an error on the list of the duty student, so no one turned up to serve. The teacher has passed by earlier, and had unlocked the door so the student could get access, but then had to go off to their playground duties. A rather large year 9 lad soon became fed up with waiting, so he tried the door. It opened of course. So in he went, opening up the hatch. He then began throwing out drinks and crisps to the waiting queue. This free food was gleefully accepted, and the children tore off to tell others. But an older student came by and stopped the theft, and informed a teacher. Normally this would have been a simple internal matter for the school, but it was decided to make an example of the offenders. John got the job. He took all the relevant names, addresses and phone numbers, and then later that week invited all the offenders and their parents to the police office. He then interviewed them all contemporaneously, ( hand written notes at the time,) as it was never going to go to court. It took all evening to get the story straight, as each child blamed another, and visa-versa. Parents sat in with stony faces. All were given a caution, but not an official one. This is not permitted today as coppers get ticks on lists for government figures. They would all have been arrested and given official cautions. John made sure that the crime report said that the school was dishing out the punishment, this would make it safe to claim another DNP.

Now, if the teacher had waited for the duty student, and not left the door open, the temptation would not have arisen.

In the Classroom.

The whole idea of putting a copper, in a uniform, into a classroom was crime prevention. The oath the officer took upon taking up the office of Constable, began with saying they would protect life and property, then prevent and detect crime. Note that prevention comes before detection. Alas, crime prevention amongst the ranks is not a high priority, mainly because after trying to educate people about it, one found out very quickly they did not want to know. Well, that was until they required the officer’s services. Next time you go shopping in a big shop, especially supermarkets, just note how many handbags and purses you could lift quietly out of a basket unseen. Walk round any car park and look into the cars, the items on display just waiting to be collected will astound you. Just smash a window and run, but do remember to put your hood up or the CCTV might catch you. Just try telling someone they are being foolish by leaving their wallet on the passenger seat, and see what sort of reply you get. So, patrol officers and LBOs soon give up the uphill task. Even car designers assist the crook, central locking unlocks all the doors at once. Standing by the passenger door, and just as the lady driver throws her handbag onto the passenger seat, open the door and grab it. By the time she has realised what has happened, and got out of the car, you will be miles away. Most newspaper shops each morning offer a free selection of BMW, Mercedes, and lesser cars, all with their engines running, keys in the ignition, driver inside the shop. Abandoned property there for the taking. The same goes for paper boys mountain bikes, but you have to be early. Some petrol filling stations offer similar attractions.

So, it was decided to try to get to them younger. Put a copper into the schools. Some one has re-invented this recently, but it was alive and well in the 1970s. Children love stories, and interactive lessons. You have to have your wits about you to make a success of it. There have been officers locally who have given a talk in school, then asked a teacher to step forward to display handcuffing, only to find they have left the handcuff keys back at the ‘nick. ( Well, that is what you tell them, then suddenly ‘find’ them after ten minutes.) As it is usually the head teacher who ends up cuffed, it is all the more fun for the youngsters. Going through the equipment an officers carries amazes them, one is virtually a mobile office, as you have to have at hand all that is required to deal with a parking ticket to a burglary. In Johns case, that also included an umbrella in the old truncheon pocket. If you were out for a long shift on foot, and had a radio and was a long way from the office, carrying a spare fully charged radio battery was another good idea.

Different schools were dealt with in different ways. It was the character of the staff that would dictate how good or bad a school was. The leader of that staff was pivotal, poor management led to poor performance. John would take the terms bookings usually in the first week of the term. That would mean by the end of that week he was booked solid for about three months at a time. Alas, as the other duties crept in to erode his school time, as recruiting reduced and then stopped altogether, this had a serious effect on his availability to go into schools. It was obvious management within the force did not care how much they ruined a set of lessons in a particular school. Teachers would get fed up with only having half of their year visited. The police management told John to double up on the classes, having no idea that this ruined any input he had. It just became a lecture that way, the children just sitting there, not involved. What had started out first as a brilliant job, was eventually just a title meaning he was game for any police duty where no one had turned up. All five SLOs felt the same way. They left one by one, with John eventually having responsibility for ALL schools in the south of the county other than Luton. This was a completely impossible task and thoroughly demoralising.

But, during the brighter times things had been good. On a visit to one of the Upper Schools in the town, John had been visiting all week, and had ploughed his way through eleven classes of year nine students. This last group were some of the brightest, and a nice bunch. He arrived to be met by the teacher, who took him to her classroom, an old Terrapin wooden building out the back of the main one. John commented on the fact that he had spent most of his education in ‘temporary’ buildings because of the post WW2 baby boom. Here we were, in the late 20th century in a fairly new school, and still in temporary huts. Upon entering the room, John was told there would be another teacher in the class, at the back, taking notes. Aha, thought John, pinching my lesson content I suppose. The lesson was about self defence and confidence. It went really well, the class joined in fully and the material fairly stormed about, and lots of learning was absorbed. One bit that brought out laughter from the girls and tears from the boys, was when John told them God was a woman. Any girl who had the confidence to really bring her knee up very hard into the groin of a male, would have no trouble getting away. As he said this he went through the actions of ramming his knee into the air, into an imaginary male groin. Quickly he told the girls to look at the boys. Every single lad had instinctly closed his legs and grasped his crutch with both hands, making a face of acute pain. Even the thought of it was enough to get a reaction. Only a female God would put the testicles on the outside in so vulnerable place. Both the teacher and the lady sitting in also laughed. During the question time, a lot of time was spent on the boys wanting to know why they could not carry a knife for self protection. John quoted the law about no bladed instruments with an edge of over three inches being permitted, unless it was a tool for your job. Eventually he got over the point that if you carried a knife, you would use it. But what if the other party got the knife off you, and used it?

John was invited to the staff room for a cup of tea at break time. He had to carry his own tea bags with him, as to date he had not found a teacher who did not drink coffee. They all admitted they needed the caffeine to cope. Just as the bell was to go for the next lesson the head teacher came into the staff room, and handed John a slip of paper. He then asked for quiet, and declared to everyone John had just gained a high mark in the OFSTED inspection. He got applause and laughter. OFSTED was the governments system of grading teachers, and a school. The lady at the back had been a school inspector. Later John proudly showed this to his supervisors, but none were very impressed by it.

The control of any class was the responsibility of the teacher. John was a guest. In the five years he filled the position of a SLO, in only one class did he have any problems. He had a supply teacher this time, and the class did not have a regular teacher of their own. John could tell they were fed up, and not interested. Half way through the lesson, that was proving to be hard work, two boys began to fight. They really set about each other. The teacher seemed hopeless, he just could not inspire discipline, so John waded in and tore them apart, holding each an arms length away from each other. It was John who frog-marched them to the head’s office as well. Upon returning to the class, he quickly found he had lost them all. They looked terrified of him, and dare not speak. He was glad to leave. This school also had an acting head, and the buildings looked like a scruffy bomb site. It was a Middle School, not normally one of his, he had stood in for another SLO who was on leave. It made him pleased he had such good schools in his own area.

One spring morning, as a class of twelve year olds settled down for their first lesson, the young female teacher turned round to the class from the chalk board ( note it is not called a black board any more,) to come face to face with a pistol being pointed at her. One boy in the front row was holding what looked like a real six shooter, as seen on films of the wild west in the USA. He had not meant her to see it, he was showing off in front of the class, and quickly shoved it back into his shoulder bag that he had between his knees. The teacher, completely unfazed, demanded he hand the item over. The boy panicked, he grabbed his bag and ran out of the classroom. The teacher went to the admin office and told the head, who promptly called the police, but not as a 999 call. There were no units available at all, they were all dealing with injury road accidents, so the control room contacted the police office via the enquiry office telephone. As it happened John picked up the internal phone, which pleased the control room operator, as it was he she wanted. She explained the problem, that there was a boy loose inside a Middle School in the town, with what might be a real gun. John borrowed the only vehicle available, the tatty old CID Ford Escort that no one liked. Because no one liked it, ( it was a feeble diesel model,) it had not run up sufficient mileage to be sold off. He arrived at the school, having found a parking place marked Staff Only, but decided that perhaps he might be forgiven, given the job he was attending.

The head met him, and both went to the suspect’s classroom. John chatted to the children, and found out that the boy was besotted with guns, and had sneaked them into school before. They were all replicas, or real guns that had been modified so they could not fire. The boy’s father was a collector. John phoned HQ to update the job, and to say there was no danger, the helicopter could be stood down, as could the armed units. Of course there was no helicopter or armed units, John was being facetious. As the control room inspector had picked the phone up, John got a mild rebuke, and for once to take things seriously. John asked the Inspector to check if the boy’s home address was one with a firearms licence. As the lad only lived a few yards from the school in Church Avenue, John walked round to see if he was home.

Odd really, when you think how this would have been dealt with today.

The boy was in, and his mother perplexed as to why he had run in from school. John explained everything, and the mother took him to a display cabinet. It housed about a dozen guns, all replicas or de-activated real ones. A pistol that looked like something out of Wyatt Erp was laying untidily in the case, perhaps thrown in, in a hurry. The boy was in his bedroom, refusing to come out. The mother eventually convinced him to come down stairs, and he did so. But when he saw a uniformed police officer he really went off the rails, and ran outside, into the yard, jumped onto the garden wall, from that up onto the single story kitchen roof, and from that up to where it joined the main house wall. It took John some time to talk him down, the boy’s fear was what his father would say and do when he found out his son had been smuggling guns into school.

John left the discipline side of the matter to the father and head teacher to deal with. He informed HQ it was just a schoolboy prank, and not something for the press. It was written off as NFA. Amongst his school mates, he was a bit of a hero for a while.

One visit to another Middle School did get into the newspapers. A delegate of African countries had sent a group of their top educators to Police HQ. The idea was to see just how the UK put coppers into schools. John had been chosen for their ‘practical’ visit, not for any other reason than he had a class on the morning they were available. John warned the head teacher about this visit, and he was very pleased his school had been chosen. The group of Africans arrived, alas in European suits not their countries dress, and filed into the back of the classroom. John went through the lesson on Citizenship as normal, and the class enjoyed it. Then the classroom door opened and in came the photographer for the local newspaper. Pictures were taken, and the following week there was John in full flow in front of a class, watched by a line of dignitaries all smiling.

After the lesson, John left so that the visitors could ask the children their views. John eventually got a nice thank you letter from the Sgt at HQ who had been the group’s chaperone. Good grief, John thought, official praise, how rare.

A Final Story.

As John was often the only copper on the premises at the police office, he would get some odd jobs to deal with, that did not really fit anyone’s job description. One he had to sort out was a request for an identity parade. Such things are for the rank of inspector. But the poor chap ( or chapess) cannot do it alone, so John went out on the streets to find the required number of persons. He had been given descriptions of a fifty year old white female with dyed blonde hair, and a twenty year old white male with short brown hair. Within an hour he had his female line up, by simply walking about the local shops. They would be paid the huge sum of five pounds for a thirty minute task. Getting the young males was another story. John ended up trawling through the local industrial estates to find employees of the right description. He was still two down when he returned, so two young coppers were volunteered to join the line. They did not get paid the fiver, where as the public were.

Finish.

Eventually the problem of manpower became so acute, that almost all the LBOs were now driving panda cars, and John was moved to the Durocoton station in the control room. The SLO scheme was put in abeyance for the time being. It was a sad end to an interesting and inspiring job. The time he had used in the schools was now being eroded by political interference in the education of children. The national curriculum had arrived, and in it there was no space for a uniformed police constable. Not that this mattered, as political correctness had got a real grip on the police force, and lots of very different people were getting into the supervisory ranks. It was time for old fashioned coppers like John to retire.

The End.

Postscript.

Of all the many people that John met throughout his police career, those he thought who deserved the most praise, were the teachers. How they could go back into those classrooms day after day, and deal with other people’s children, was amazing. Good teachers are not trained, they are born to it.