No dolphins here mate ….

First job this morning was an all too familiar shout in Bigtown; “Constable Chaos, can you attend Arkwright Industrial Estate, report of travellers setting up, six caravans and they’ve got a couple of horses roadside”.

As it happens, Mrs Chaos and I have a caravan – maybe the control room thought I could go and swap tips on the best sites to visit in Bognor Regis, or cheapest place to get LPG gas in Devon or something like that. We brought ours about three years ago. It’s not an especially flashy caravan as they go – certainly nothing like those penthouses on wheels our friends in the travelling community roll about in, but it’s fine for our needs – it has a fridge, a cooker, a loo, shower, somewhere to sit and somewhere to sleep.

The thing is though, when we go away in our caravan, we tend to head for the coast. It’s nice there; pleasant; scenic. You can walk along a beach at sunset; grab a pub meal overlooking a beach filled with carefree children splashing in the water, laughing and giggling, burying their dads under massive sand piles while they sleep. If you’re lucky, as you can be in parts of Wales or off the Norfolk coast, you might even see dolphins or seals playing in the water.

We’ve been all over the place in our van – Cornwall, Dorset, Norfolk, Wales, even up into Scotland. We did stay on a site in London once when we were going for a show, but generally it’s the seaside for us. I would never think, for one minute, that given the option of travelling and stopping anywhere in the UK, Arkwright Industrial Estate in Bigtown would be my destination of choice. I’m sure bobbies all over the country must have the same thought about their towns or cities.

I mentioned this in conversation with Mick, the self styled leader of this band of soulless cohorts. He seemed amused by my thoughts but insisted that the coastal life was not for them. Seemingly the toxic smell of industrial pollutants held a far stronger draw to the string-vestedness of the menfolk of their community than the fresh sea breeze, calling of the seagulls and all those fish n chips.

I reckoned, if they weren’t so busy running wild around the industrial park, in and out of the unlocked warehouse doors and grabbing anything they could find to make a sword out of, the numerous young children of the group would have sided with me – after all would your children choose copper pipes over choc ices ????

I also pointed out to Mick and his merry men how they must be amongst the most unlucky sector of the community ever to visit Bigtown – you see whenever a group of travellers grace our fair town with their presence, it is always at the same time as an immediate spike in all sorts of theft, burglary and similar offences. It must be really unfortunate for them to move from town to town, and every time, arrive in a location just as a crime wave hits. I tried to give the group advice on their personal safety and crime prevention whilst they were under our care – after all, their shiny new Range Rovers and 30ft long caravans are very expensive, but again, Mick assured me I had nothing to worry about and that they would be fine.

As is the required way, I asked Mick and his friends how long they would be holidaying in Bigtown to which the answer was the inevitable “we’ll see how it goes”. All the pleasantries out of the way I thanked them for choosing to visit Bigtown, and helping to swell the coffers of our local economy with their undoubtedly high tourist expenditure, then waved my goodbyes and headed back to the police station to update the Duty Inspector as to my newly found knowledge.

As I left, all the little urchins stopped their copper pipe sword fights with the local business employees (who were clearly losing the battle as they were very red in the face) to wave goodbye to me. At least I think it was goodbye they were waving, although from the angle I was sat in the drivers seat of the panda, I could only see two fingers on each of the kids hands – must have been a trick of the light I guess.

Once back at the station I gave my update to the Duty Inspector, and then had to repeat it all over again over the radio so that some else could type it all into the computer. nothing like doing things several times you know.

After giving the boss the basics, I informed him I was going to pop over to the Intelligence Officers office. He looked at me a little strange but then I explained this pattern I had identified. That where a crime wave spiked wherever the caravan dwellers deposited themselves. I reasoned that if we could ‘engage’ with the travellers, and get them to tell us everywhere they would be going for the next three months, we could set up some sort of sting operation – you know, get a load of officers, in plain clothes, in unmarked vehicles, on overtime of course because the shifts are short and too busy to deal, and stake out all the likely targets in the places we knew the travellers would be heading for. That way we’d be in exactly the right spot to catch the offenders red handed – think of the figures we’d mop up.

For reasons I can’t work out however, the Inspector didn’t share my enthusiasm for this plan, and suggested I needed to go and lie down in a dark room for a short while, listening to a CD of whale noises. I don’t think he’ll pass his promotion board this year being negative to good ideas like that you know.

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Clunk Click Every Trip .. please !

The entire Chaos shift have just got back from dealing with yet another very serious, could almost have been fatal, road traffic collision.

Yet again, despite all the advances in vehicle design technology, despite all the efforts of road planning departments to ‘build in’ safe road design, we find ourselves out in the dark, in the rain, scraping broken, bloodied people off the tarmac in a situation that could so easily have been avoided for two seconds effort.

Let’s set aside for a moment, the cost of 8 police officers, six ambulance personnel, two fire engines and the nearest Air Ambulance; the disruption to traffic on one of the main arterial routes around Bigtown and the resulting efforts of goodness knows how many hospital staff; the simple fact is all of this could, for the most part have been avoided, if the two occupants of the only vehicle involved in the this crash had worn their seatbelts.

Both of these people now face a long time in hospital, probably several operations to sort their messed up bodies out and a certain loss of income while they recover and for what ??

I’m old enough to remember the TV adverts from the mid 1970’s telling you to ‘Clunk, Click, Every Trip’. They were simple and to the point (and I’ve put a couple of them below if you feel nostalgic). It’s certainly been the law since before I learnt to drive to wear seat belts, yet so many people just can’t be bothered – then whine like merry hell when we pull them over and give them a ticket.

Maybe we should just round them all up and make them visit the scene of every seat belt related RTC for the next six months – after seeing the carnage and destroyed, mangled bodies for real, maybe then they might see the likely outcome of their foolish activities.

On behalf of all the emergency services, I’d like to appeal to all readers of this post to think …. please …. put that bloomin’ seat belt on …… it takes a couple of seconds and could save you a lifetime of grief. Rant over.

By George, I was right !

“All available units, urgent response to The Royal George, Lower Castle Street, reports of twenty plus fighting, several calls coming in” ……

As police cars light up like Christmas decorations half way across the county, something strikes your tired and weary commentator as strange about this job. Pub fights are nothing new; on the contrary they are ten a penny on weekend nights – but this was a Tuesday, and the Royal George is, well, not a likely venue for World War 3 to be breaking out.

The Royal George on Lower Castle Street is probably best described as an ‘old mans pub’. Go in on any evening and you’ll be tripping over the whippets parked up in the entrance lobby; you’ll be deafened by the sound of the dominoes clattering and flat caps and tweed jackets are the clothing of choice. It’s the home of the Bigtown Pigeon Racing Club, that’s The Royal George.

The George and Dragon on Crown Street in the centre of town is a completely different matter – it’s one of those ‘fun pubs’ where no one that wants to drink proper beer would ever go near, ever. It’s the home of foolish, drunken jobless louts, shots, doubles, stag and hen parties, happy hours that last all day, and our number one trouble spot for fighting and general nuisance.

“Are you sure on the location” I ask the Control Room via my radio. “Yes, yes” come back the reply. I’m still not convinced; the calls are coming through the emergency operators based at Headquarters, who then pass the jobs to the despatchers, who then pass the jobs to us. I’d take a guess many of the call-takers have never heard of Bigtown, never mind set foot in the place. Experience suggests their intricate working knowledge of our dear town’s varied wildlife, sorry I mean nightlife, is somewhat non-existent, and given two similarly name public houses in the same locale, there’s a big space for error unless you know what’s going on.

“Another call coming through” declares the controller over the radio “reports now say thirty fighting,  all Polish males, now mention of weapons, bats and metal bars being used, requesting firearms car and dogs, all units stand by”.

Polish males …. weapons …. at The Royal George ???? not a cat in hells chance. Units are still making towards Bigtown at a rate of knots from far and wide. “Control” I pipe up again “Can you get The George and Dragon in the town centre up on CCTV it’s a much more likely location, I’m not convinced about The Royal George”. “Sorry Chaos, cameras that end of town are out of action – have been all week – workmen cut the cables” came the response.

As if perfectly synchronised, four panda’s descended simultaneously on the car park of The Royal George, lights flashing like an outtake from Close Encounters, and were met with ……. silence; well apart from the now incessant barking of three whippets which we’d woken up.

Having told the control room to divert any units still making our location to the George and Dragon, we chucked ourselves back in our high performance wheelbarrows and headed into town to find the real action. Needless to say, as the first car arrived in the right place, the calls for ‘urgent backup’ and ‘more units’ blasted across the air. For once though, the callers to the police weren’t exaggerating – there were probably thirty Polish guys fighting, and they had smashed up some pub chairs to use as weapons against each other.

It must have taken a good twenty minutes to get things under control; appears it had been a wedding reception gone badly wrong – more so for the eight non-English speaking, heavily intoxicated Polish nationals we now had under arrest, in cuffs and in various positions, mainly flat on the floor with several bobbies holding each one down until the vans could arrive and take them away.

After much explaining to the various custody sergeants and seemingly hours of time on the phone to interpreters at the different cell blocks we had to take our new found friends to; much more paperwork; and much, much more grumbling about not having the correct info in the first place, we eventually got back to Bigtown nick for a well earned cuppa.  By some strange twist of fate, we were the late shift yet such was the mountain of paperwork the one job generated, the night turn had arrived, done their shift and gone home before us !!!!

This fact had not gone un-noticed, and much mention was made of it in the report room in the hope out Inspector may have also still been here (moral support and all that), but none of us were naive enough to really believe he would be. And then our sergeant piped up “By George Chaos, you were right you know”. With that, we all laughed !! In the words of Zebedee, it was time for bed.

I love figures !!

Everyone loves figures ….. apparently.

If you want to get on in this job these days, it’s your figures that are important. It doesn’t matter one little bit if you’re out there day and night locking up baddies and bringing them to justice – if they’re the wrong sort of baddies you may well as not have bothered !!

It really is a case nowadays where you could be saying to someone “I’m sorry Mr Victim, I can see you’ve had your house trashed, everything bar the kitchen sink loaded into your expensive motor car and driven away, but you see, burglaries aren’t on our priority list this month – sorry and all that but it’d be a different matter if little Billy Smith from down the road had put dog poo through your letterbox; anti-social that is, and it’s our number one priority this week !!!”

There are whole departments in the police, swathes of people, seemingly immune to the swashbuckling cutbacks which are being thrust upon us, all dedicated to the ancient artform of crunching those figures.

To be fair, the only figures most of my shift are interested in are those adorning Charlotte, the new transferee on Team 3. Uni educated, ex part time model, black belt in several martial art type things, and now on the shift that takes over from us – brains, beauty and bloody lethal all in one package – makes you sick !!!!

That isn’t a sexist comment by the way before you all start complaining – even the girls on shift would say the same, and Charlotte doesn’t mind – as she’d happily tell you, all the things she did before were to keep her parents happy – she always wanted to be a copper but they did their best to put her off. Thankfully for us they didn’t succeed but then again, Charlotte is more one of the boys than many of the boys at Bigtown nick; she farts, drinks like a bloomin’ fish, watches Top Gear and Police Interceptors, and is never happier than when getting the advantage over some drunken idiot outside the George and Dragon on a Saturday night.

Anyway, back to figures – yesterday, the Duty Inspector graced us with his presence at our morning briefing. You knew something had to be up – I’ve seen agoraphobic hermits come out of their hovels more often than our Inspector leaves his office. We soon found out why he’d come to talk at us – the latest set of divisional figures were out …..

Apparently we’ve done really good on burglaries and car crime – they are both 8% less than forecast for the month. I don’t mean we’ve actually been committing the crimes; and this doesn’t mean we’ve actually been locking up extra burglars and car thieves – but the total number of these offences is 8% less than the big bosses upstairs had forecast there would be !! Just how do they work this out ?? and does the Superintendent go knocking on No-Good-Nigel’s door the first of every month “Ahh Nigel my good fellow, listen here, we can only let you do 13 burglaries this month, and 27 car thefts; it’s the figures you see – be a good chap there and don’t go over will you”.

We were even better on murders you know – they predicted one this month and we had none – not sure who’s the happier; the still living and breathing population of Bigtown or our big cheese in his comfy third floor office. Just let us know if you see a bloke outside your house with a big black coat on and carrying a scythe – we’ll ask him to come back next month.

Then we got round to the personal figures – “PC Roberts” the inspector stated …. firmly …. staring over the end of his spectacles which he’d pushed down to the end of his nose like an angry headmaster … just for effect …. “Your incident attendance and arrest figures are both down considerably this month. Did you know this ?”.

We all looked at Duncan; Duncan looked at us. I’m not sure who smiled first but I do recall Duncan looking at his watch. Duncan Roberts has been in the job almost 18 years, has seen and heard it all go round the block several times. “Something wrong PC Roberts, you need to be somewhere ?” said the Inspector. “No boss” Duncan replied, “just checking it wasn’t April the first”. Everyone let out a giggle.

“Funny it may be to you all” carried on the Inspector “but the Department for Mystery, Magic and Numerical Affairs (they’re not really called that by the way”) has highlighted your figures on their monthly report to the Superintendent. No doubt he’ll be asking me about it at the weekly Inspectors briefing”.

The reason for our merriment was as clear as the reason for Duncan’s failing figures. He was sat there in our briefing, on restricted duties, with one leg in plaster and two cracked ribs – the result of chasing a local miscreant from a burglary in progress into the Primrose Gardens estate and being set upon by a group of the local ‘yoof’, keen to help their thieving comrade make good his escape several weeks ago. Indeed such were Duncan’s injuries, he’d been kept in hospital for several days.

“Sorry boss” Duncan continued “Maybe I should hobble over to their office and give them a personal update. It’s only thirty miles to HQ and I’m not allowed in a police vehicle because I’m injured”.

The sarcasm in Duncan’s comment, which was fairly evident to the majority of us, seemed to skim well above the Inspector’s head. “You have informed the Ministry for Witches, Wizards and Magical Numerics (they’re not really called that either) about your status haven’t you ?” he asked.  “Erm no, as it happens” said Duncan “I didn’t know I had to. You know, the Sarge knows, the while nick knows, Personnel knows, Occupational Health knows, the Super knows because he came to see me in hospital, I didn’t realise I had to tell everyone else …. myself”.

“Write me an internal memo” interrupted the Inspector “I’ll add my comments and forward that on to them. Hopefully they can rejig your figures accordingly, it’s pulling the whole shift down at the moment”. And with that, he got up and started to walk out of the room.

Luckily the Sarge intervened before things got nasty “Leave it Dunc, we’ll sort it after briefing”. And with that, off we went for another fun day, serving the fine public of Bigtown.

Later in the day I dealt with another house burglary. Still not a ‘figures priority’ this month, but I felt all the better for trying to help a genuine victim of crime.

Translator Sweepstake anyone ???

Thanks to a number of circumstances, Police officers throughout the UK spend an inordinate amount of time and money requiring the use of specialist translation services to facilitate communication with people with limited or no English speaking capability.

Be it for dealing with witnesses, suspects, or even a simple traffic stop (not that there is ever anything ‘simple’ in police work any more), officers rely more and more on specialist Interpreters, either on the phone, or at police stations, to get the job done.

Recent figures released under a freedom of Information request showed that British police forces spent £82 MILLION over the last three years obtaining such services; and are currently still spending around £70-75,000 A DAY !!!

At Bigtown nick, we’ve developed a sort of sweepstake game between the shifts to see who can get the furthest away interpreter. It works like this – when you need an interpreter on the phone we call a central number, give them our account code and tell the operator what language we require – the operator then puts us through to the next available translator for that language, who may be anywhere in the world !!

I’ve recently spoken to a Hindi translator in San Fransisco, a Latvian translator in Honolulu and only yesterday, a Polish interpreter in Moscow. I’m not winning the sweepstake though – Natalie on one of the other squads is with a French interpreter ….. in Christchurch, New Zealand !!!

The Ballad of Bonnie and ….. Wayne

“Charlie Mike Four Two, Charlie Mike Four Two, can you make a Grade One please, Eighty Three Primrose Gardens, call from a female stating she’s been assaulted by her partner and he’s still there. I’ll get you some back-up.”

Off we go again; half way across town, making enough whoo whoo noises to wake the good people of Bigtown – yes I know its 8.30 in the morning but Jeremy Kyle doesn’t start for another hour so most of our happy population who haven’t already left for work will not be up yet – trust me.

Don’t get me wrong, domestic violence is a serious matter – something like 9.8 out of every 10 women murdered die at the hands of a current or ex partner and the police take it very, very, very seriously. The occupants of 83 Primrose Gardens, Bonnie and Wayne, do not however fall into that sort of risk category- most of us actually feel kinda sorry for them both. Each brought up in flats on Primrose Gardens by alcoholic / drug addicted single mums; no authority figure in their lives just a string of mum’s boyfriends coming and going; no role model to look up to or emulate; Bonnie pregnant at just gone fifteen and now, here we are, two years on with the pair of them housed by the council (now with two kids) in a one-bed eighth floor flat.

Sorry dear reader, did I not mention before; the delightful, picturesque sounding Primrose Gardens is not what you are imagining; a quaint cul-de-sac of immaculately kept red bricked semi’s and bungalows with a nice trimmed green common lawn to the front; a blaze of coloured flowers adorning every drive and joyous children playing tag amongst the trees. Go on Google Images and search for ‘run down derelict flats’ and if not Primrose Gardens that comes up, it will be something very similar. It’s grey (that’s all the concrete) except where it’s black (that’s the soot from the burned out cars).  It’s the sort of place where the rats wipe their feet as they leave. And we expect people to live in these places and then wonder why they have no self respect or desire to improve themselves.

Big Pete is my backup, he’s covering Littleville today so that outs him a good 6 miles further away than I am. “Charlie Mike Four Two, don’t approach until your backup arrives, male at the address has warnings for firearms, we’re requesting an ARV”. Jesus, somebody save me !!!! When Wayne was eleven, someone rang up to say he was firing a BB Gun at a smashed up car in common area at the base of the flats – and based on that he’s now going to have two 6 foot gorilla’s with MP5 sub machine guns bearing down on him !!!

“Control from Four Two” I quickly interject “ARV won’t be necessary, I’ve known Wayne since he was a nipper, there won’t be a problem”. “Negative” came the reply “Duty Inspector says wait for ARV”.  My personal radio starts beeping, it’s Big Pete calling me by point-to-point, a system that allows two officers to talk directly to each other without the conversation being heard by everyone else. “Captain” he says – that’s what they all call me on the shift (as in Captain Chaos from the Cannonball Run film – too young ??? ohh well) “Who’s the duty today, are they mad ?? Anyway ARV are coming from HQ so by the time they get here we’ll be in, out and have Wayne at his mom’s supping tea”. “I know” I replied “but it’ll be Frosty Jacks, not tea – be there in two minutes see you there”.

Pete arrives only a couple of minutes after me and off we trudge, up eight flights of stairs – you didn’t seriously think the lift would be working did you ?? – gasping as we hauled ourselves through the fire door from the stairwell onto the eighth floor balcony we were met by Bonnie screaming “I WANT HIM DONE I WANT HIM OUT”. “OK Bonnie” I said, “Calm down, what’s happened today”.

As if a switch had turned inside her, Bonnie instantly became as quiet as a mouse “Ohh hello Mr Chaos I didn’t know it was you coming, and you Mr Pete”. “What’s happened Bonnie” I asked in a dutifully concerned manner . “Mr Chaos Wayne’s been horrible to me, he says we’ve got to go on Jezza to see if the kids are his”. There was of course no assault but Bonnie knew exactly what she had to say to get us out double quick. Me and Pete looked at each other in that way that only coppers faced with a Jeremy Kyle incident can. Pete stayed with Bonnie to take down the all-important details; there will be reams of paperwork for this call of course …. in triplicate …. and subsequent emails from one of our ‘specialist departments (for that read people who have escaped the ferris wheel of actually going outside of a police station and working for a living) asking why the ‘offender’ hadn’t been arrested. Meanwhile, more concerned about not getting shot by a gun totting madman, I risked life and limb to venture into the domain of the firearm wielding maniac that the armed police were still on way to deal with.

“PC Chaos, she’s been a bitch to me” said Wayne as I entered the living room “Hi Wayne I said, where’s the bazooka hidden then ?”. “Huh ?” came the puzzled but not unexpected reply. “Just my joke” I said to Wayne. “Control from Four Two, stand down the ARV all in order here no weapons”. “Copy that cheers” came back the voice of one of the ARV guys “we were just loading the car to head over”. I had an issue at this point – me and Pete knew there was little to no chance of an ARV being needed at this job; but just say there was. We’ve been on duty since 07.00 – it’s now 08.45 and our response and firearms cover is still drinking tea some 30 miles away, and hasn’t even put their kit in their car yet, but that was going to have to wait for another day.

A quick chat with Wayne established they had been trying to hatch a plan on how Bonnie and he were going to make themselves a bit of cash on the side. After several no go ideas, Wayne had suggested he would try and get them on the Jeremy Kyle show and do one of those ‘I want a DNA test’ jobs. Apparently Wayne had been told by one of his mates who’d been on that they would get taken by limo from their home to some posh hotel to stay overnight, money to buy clothes to appear on the show in, then a limo ride home.

If I watched the show, I’m sure I would have been disheartened to think it wasn’t real and people made stories up just to get on it …..

Anyway, rules say we can’t leave the two parties in a domestic together just in case they kill each other once we go out the door and Wayne knew the drill “You gonna take me to me mams” he said, which is exactly what we did. Down eight flights of stairs, across a debris and burnt out car scattered paved area and up six flights of stairs in an adjacent tower block and to hear the sweet voice of Wayne’s mum scream at him “WHAT THE F**K HAVE YOU DONE NOW YOU STUPID B*****D”. And that was his mum. What chance does the lad have ?

With that we left, back to Bigtown nick to file a domestic incident report. I had, not for the first time, a sly chuckle to myself when I was relaying the details of Bonnie and Wayne’s two boys names for the report. Can you guess what they are ?? I’ll give you a clue, one starts with ‘J’, the other with ‘K’.

Haven’t You Got Anything Better To Do ?

I don’t think we’d even got the panda’s doors open this time when the dulcet slurrings of yet another drunk uttered (or at least tried to) the immortal line “Haven’t you got anything better to do ?” ……

Well yes actually, we’d just arrived for a night shift; technically we weren’t on duty for another fifteen minutes but here we were, in the middle of LittleVille after a call from Ambulance saying one of their crews had pressed the panic button and were being attacked. The brew I had just made for us to sup while we read the briefing was now sat on what seemed like a distant desk rapidly going cold.

There are, however, few things likely to make your public serving ever efficient supercops more likely to drop that steaming hot mug of sweetness and run out the door quicker than someone saying an ambulance crew was being attacked.

We were on scene in literally one minute to find that the ambo had been called to a ‘car v pedestrian RTC’ which in reality turned out to be one of our latest commentators friends – an outstandingly drunken local idiot – who had fallen over the crack in the paving slab outside the front door of the pub and planted himself onto the bonnet of a perfectly legally parked motor vehicle (obviously the lout’s mum never told him about the crocodiles that live in the cracks and how he needs to avoid them …… or was that just my mum trying to scare me ???)

So what happened when the ever-helpful paramedics try and offer some assistance to the incoherent, unstable, alcoholically comatosed moron ?? one gets punched in the chest for her troubles and the other gets spat at.

At this point let me make something perfectly clear to any members of the non police profession that may be reading this post and need clarification on the subject – if you abuse, attack or otherwise make trouble for ambulance staff, me and my gang will make it our sole purpose in life to make your pathetic existence a misery for as long as we can. – or at least until the local magistrates let you off because it wasn’t your fault and you had a bad upbringing and your mom never brought you a Mr Frosty for Christmas one year.