Whose Street? Our Street!

PC Area in his brand new hi-viz. NOT asleep, despite what his colleagues may say.


So - stories from G20, in no particular order.

A couple of people obviously read internet blogs, or at least the books that follow. I heard two officers (not from my carrier luckily) discussing how they'd try and spot Inspector Gadget.
And MCM.
And ASNT...

In my carrier we ran a competition on the second day for spotting the best bit of graffiti. The only rule was that the graffiti had to be on a Police vehicle. Lots of them had been damaged the day before, and so still had spray paint on.
Our favourite was one of the armoured warthogs with "PIGS" sprayed tastefully below the Police sign on the bonnet. Spot on.

Scary moment when I got hit by something, and looked at my arm to notice that I was bleeding, and bleeding heavily through my boiler suit.
Then a relieved moment as I realised that it was just tomato that the protestors had thrown.

Lots of interesting moments dealing with the less pleasant people, but you've all seen that on TV and probably are bored to death of seeing and hearing about public order contingents charging and being charged, so I'll leave that out.

The best moments by far for me were on the second day, at the Excel centre. More specifically, at the Operation Feeding and Deployment section.

A particular thank you to the level II serial headed by a female Sergeant that had most of my carrier lusting after her, and what appeared to be an all female crew in the carrier.
I of course kept it professional, but there was a lot of excitement from some of the more boisterous members of my team, and mutterings of transfers to the South London Borough where the carrier had come from.

Watching the TSG serials sleeping in the grass, after being on duty for 36 hours and still being kept on. One fella was talking in his sleep as the sun came out from the mist, and it was a genuinely bizarre sight seeing him muttering, surrounding by snoring public order officers lying next to a runway lined with coppers in beat duty helmets.














The view from the 'front line.' I wish I could also describe the smells.


Anyway - down to the important things (after the attractive level II skipper and her carrier obviously). Time to give thanks.

First - to the level three public order officers who helped us out. I'm very aware that you lot did the shitty posts without the praise, and we just got sent round to finish the fights you were in.

Second - To the catering crew at the op feeding centre. Lest anyone forgets, they were doing the same (if not more) hours as us, and getting paid a hell of a lot less than us.
They were also doing a bloody good job of cooking something resembling food, whilst at the same time giving a smile to each copper, albeit sometimes weary. At one point, I accepted a burger from a catering woman and made some joke about the hours, and she replied "fourteen hours and we're staying on till everyone is gone."

Third - to all the non-Met officers that turned up. Sorry for the stickers. And also for the incident with the food fight (that never happened).

Fourth - to the London Fire Brigade. Specifically the Silvertown LFB Station. If anyone knows the lads there, say thanks again for me. The station was pointed out by a couple of level three officers on foot patrol to our carrier, and we (like many that had gone before) made liberal use of their toilets, TV room, warmth and company. They went beyond their obligations and frankly showed us how it should be done.


All this amongst our struggles with the militants. It's not my place as a street monkey to say this, but I will anyway. I think that actually our tactics were sound, and most if not all of us did a bloody good job. I also think that the majority of genuine protestors were at the very most only an annoyance, and frequently friendly, intelligent and often entertaining.
Equally, the small minority that were determined to use force and attack everyone that stood in their way were shameful. They were the reason that the genuine protestors were held back and shepherded about, they were the reason that negative press was given, they were the reason for injuries on both sides, and they were yet another nail in the coffin for legitimate, lawful, peaceful protest.

As a very small example, I spent some time in the impromptu climate camp in the city of london. Despite my appearance in body armour, public order flame proof overalls and assorted kit, I had a good time. I chatted to lots of the people there, and agreed with many points of view. I didn't see criminality there to the extent that I had to take action, and was treated with respect. I was even told a few times that the protestors there were impressed with the Police action.
Some were surprised to learn that actually, coppers were also human and also that some of us weren't too impressed with the idea of our pensions, tax, savings and future earnings being pissed away by the people that were supposed to know how the economy worked.
When the decision was taken to close the climate camp - after over twelve hours - the vast majority left willingly and peacefully. It was (yet again) a small minority that prompted ugly scenes, and left a bad taste.

I was at the front line and saw officers injured, and despicable acts of violence.
But the violent lot were not the 'real' protestors, they were just rent-a-thug mobs. In my opinion, they did almost as much damage to the movements they professed to support as they did to the lines of Police that they attacked.

Magic Tree

I get lots and lots of emails; most are not addressed to me, and even fewer are relevant to me, but it gives me a lovely warm fuzzy feeling inside when I get back to work after a set of rest days to find that people at work love me so much they feel the need to write to me.

Even if most are along the lines of "will all HR staff please note that the door to the office must be locked at 3pm sharp on leaving the office so that the computers are not used by non-HR staff (ie 24hour Police Officers)."

I was on refs and reading through my emails, when I read one from one of our team Sergeants, addressed to all our team. It read something like this:
"At a recent critical incident, the Chief Inspector was disappointed to note that some of our officers were not wearing their hats, and others had put on their hi-viz jacklets without first putting on their ties. He has asked for this to be raised within the team, and it has fallen to me to raise this morale-building point on behalf of the senior management team.
Although I recognise that the incident was a fast moving and dangerous one, and you all had more on your mind, and in fact I was probably a guilty party, please try not to make yourselves a target for senior management.
On a side note, at this incident I noticed that one of our response vehicles had a fetching little decoration of a magic tree hanging from the rear view mirror. I do not want to see this again, or else I personally will be having words.
Thanks all, Sergeant Weary"

Fair point. Cut to Area locking his computer, and making his way to his unit that he had carefully parked in the Chief Supernintendo's parking space (it's OK - it was after 4pm). If a little bird had been sat on the Police Station wall, he would have noticed Area having a casual chat with a Sergeant whilst standing conspicuously in front of his windscreen and trying desperately to attract attention from the rear view mirror, then hurriedly removing an offending (Peach Blossom flavour) magic tree from his car before making his way up to his computer in a reflective frame of mind.

In my defence, these cars are used twenty four hours a day seven days a week. They are eaten in, they are sat in by officers wearing body armour in all weathers, after foot chases, they have drunks and vagrants in and even the occasional dog.

Two days later, another email from Sergeant Weary.
"RE my last email. The point also stands in relation to Traffic Light Air Freshners, Winnie the Pooh air fresheners, or in fact any object hung off the rear view mirror.
That is all."

Huh.

I See Dead People

One of the things I get asked about a lot by people who are sensible enough to have a job where they sleep at night, is dead people and deaths. "Sudden Deaths" as it is known in the trade. I'm usually asked these questions after someone has had their fill of beer and gets curious about bodily details.To the people that ask for a little too much detail, I always offer them a visit to watch a Post Mortem, something I've done more than once and find fascinating.

They always decline the offer.

We call them "Sudden Deaths," which makes it sound glamorous, as far as death can be. And yes, we deal with murders, and suicides, and road accidents and all manner of interesting ways that life ends. But the vast majority of Sudden Deaths that I come across are in homes, elderly people, very ill people, chronic alcoholics. Not glamorous, and most aren't suspicious. However, police are required to attend nearly every death outside a hospital or medical care facility, to check for suspicious circumstances.

In some cases this is easy - if there is a bloodied knife fifteen feet away from the body covered in stab wounds, I'll be thinking it's suspicious.

The problem is we are not medical experts by any definition. We can not pronounce a person dead (hence our notes always read "the apparently lifeless body"), and we can't diagnose diseases, infections and poisoning pre or post death. Again, this is when the wonderful London Ambulance Service come into play. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou boys and girls for pointing out things that we have no idea about or miss on our very cursory inspection of the body.

I don't like the goryness, no one does, but I can cope with it. The smell is pretty appalling, but again I can usually cope, and keep a pack of airwaves chewing gum on me to mask the smell. The strange thing is that I can not stand on-screen blood and gore, and get squeamish watching Holby City or similar. Yet I've checked rotting bodies for ID, attempted resus on an 18 month old baby, sat next to a very dead old man for two hours on his only sofa whilst waiting for undertakers to attend to remove him, checked toddlers and children who have died, and fought with bleeding vomiting messy drunken injured people in A&E whilst hospital staff fiddle and stick various implements in them. Show me an episode of ER and I'll feel faint and sick. I can't work that one out at all.

Of course, the really hard bit is dealing with families. As many other bloggers have mentioned, technically I have failed as a Police Officer if I spend five hours with a newly widowed woman and her children trying to help and comfort them. No detections, no arrests, only one call resulted. But conversely, I think that is when I justify my salary, not stopping middle class students for smoking cannabis in the park on summer's evenings.

These experiences are usually massively draining to officers who deal with them. They are also a huge source of letters of good work in your file. That is obviously the last thing in your mind at a scene, but so many officers have more than one pat on the back sitting in their personal files after dealing with a bereaved family.

I find this more upsetting than anything else, and amazingly humbling; people who have gone through the worst pain possible, who have had their lives shattered by the appearance of a person wearing the blue serge then take the time to write a letter, or visit the police station, or phone a senior officer to thank us for what we've done. It is something that I am still unprepared for every time, and something that I just can not get my head around. It's also something that makes me particularly proud of the job I do, and of the officers I work with. Training can NOT teach you to do this, it is a time when what you need is humanity. After spending a huge amount of time in every shift having to keep a lid on their feelings and trying to be emotionless, impassive observers, Police Officers have to step up and then truly care for someone in a difficult situation - and they do it.