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Hard-knock life
When that female chief inspector told us on our first day at training school that many of us would be injured on duty, I remember my throat constricting and my head giving a little wobble. I was clumsy and knew I could do myself an injury on my own without any help from anyone or anywhere else. I didn’t like violence. I hated confrontation. Was I sure I was in the right job?
Yes. I loved it. All of it. Even when it was bad.
Black and white
I’ve policed many football matches when the Premier League was known as the First Division, and policed various marches and demos, but none so scary as my first, the Wapping dispute in 1986.
Two of the important roles of a police officer are to protect life and protect property. Whenever there are large demonstrations, marches and protests, it’s everybody to the helm. Days off are cancelled, operational tasks rearranged, and whatever his or her regular posting, every officer needs to have a uniform ready for when duty calls.
The blistering, bubbling air was heady, heavy, as the capital prepared. In the bitter night, London waited. The festering pit of strikers, policemen and rubberneckers were gathering and sharp cracks of anticipation were interspersed with tingles of fear. The normally quiet streets of east London were like a boil about to burst.
Tired green battle-buses trawled through the streets as tetchy crowds swarmed on both sides of the metal barriers guarding News International. The cavalry arrived on glossy-coated beasts, many hands high and emblazoned with Metropolitan Police regalia. They incited fervour as they stomped and snorted excitement and fear, while their lord-like riders tried to still the rearing hooves. Fresh manure permeated the air, filling flared nostrils. Discordant horns and hooters joined the cacophony: sounds and smells of conflict.
Quiet chat grew to a low chant: ‘Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs.’
Keeping up the rear, dog-handlers struggled to keep anxious Alsatians in the back of their battered vans until the order for release came. It would, without doubt, come soon. Every animal instinctively sensed distress and unrest. Scurrying rats had long deserted their familiar streets and riotous disturbance chased foxes from urban undergrowth. Howls echoed in the night, as Man became Beast.
Like the last night of carnival, alive and electrifying, agitated tension filled the air as both sides prepared, the big wheel of misfortune turning. Hook-a-duck; hook-a-pig.
Politics had become lost, had nothing to do with the violence that converted convoluted words into an excuse for those wanting, waiting to fight. Genuine strikers, honest police officers and hearty politicians had no place in Wapping on 15 February 1986.
I was but a girl, naive and inexperienced, wearing a uniform tunic and skirt of heavy serge, with thin tights clinging to my legs because there were no trousers for women officers. Not then. My meagre arsenal comprised a handbag, a whistle and a little wooden truncheon, far smaller than those issued to the policemen. My new hard bowler hat had recently replaced the soft black and white peaked caps and I was thankful for that, at least.
Mike Bruce, my sergeant, must have seen my anxiety.
‘We’re the enemy, whether we like it or not. It’s nothing personal,’ he said, squeezing my hand. ‘It was like this up the mines. Just stay close to me, Ash.’
I knew all about the mines. I’d lived in a town bordered by a dozen working pits. In 1984 I’d given 10 per cent of my factory wage to the families of the strikers because that’s what those who were fortunate enough to be working did. The poverty of the proud pitmen, the despair of their conscientious wives, their children’s hungry faces – they flashed back as the baying crowd chanted venom into my face.
‘Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs.’
‘But I’m not their enemy,’ I whispered, fear catching at the back of my throat.
A duty, a job. To serve Queen and Country. I naively never expected to become an object of ridicule, to face such hatred. I only wanted to help people.
‘Oink, oink, oink. Pigs, pigs, pigs.’
Someone shouted, ‘Spit-roast porky-pig!’ and the baying crowd jeered and hollered, thumping the air with lascivious encouragement. A kazoo sounded and a mounted officer danced his skittering horse to the back of the police barricade.
I looked around and saw two other policewomen. That made three of us in a crowd of 400 or more officers. Perhaps there were more hidden in the melee but I couldn’t see them.
Wide-eyed and bewildered, I asked my sergeant, ‘Why do they hate us so much?’
‘We represent authority. We’re the link between them and the powers in charge.’
‘I know that. I’m not without sympathy. I understand. But it’s not our fault.’
‘Don’t matter; they can’t get at Maggie Thatcher so we’re the next best thing. We’re as bad as she is … to them. Maggie’s bootboys. Whether we personally support her or not.’
The atmosphere worsened as the crowds swelled, people pressing against steel barriers that were weakening at the surge of protestors and police officers.
‘Pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs.’
‘Keep your head down when the shit starts flying. Link arms and stay linked,’ Sergeant Bruce shouted above the horde.
The inspector approached, tall and stern, yellow flak jacket standing out against the sea of bodies.
‘They’re out for it tonight, copper’s blood. Remember Tottenham. Look out … and good luck.’ He moved on, passing the unwelcome news along the line. Tottenham. It was only four months earlier that PC Keith Blakelock had been killed. He was at the forefront of every officer’s mind. Barriers rattled, straining at the bit. A firecracker split the air. Cheering resounded in the inky night. Another battle-bus arrived, spilling open another packet of policemen tooled-up in riot gear. A heave forward pressed Sergeant Bruce and I against the metal barriers like we were cattle waiting to be herded into a truck. I was very afraid of being trampled.
A hand flew out, grabbing my hat. Someone pulled me backwards as the Velcro straps beneath my chin ripped open like weak packing tape. I clamped my hand down onto my hat and managed to keep on the only protective cover I had. Mike flung me behind him.
A sparkle of colour lit the night, showering reds and greens in shooting umbrellas of light that extinguished before they could settle on the restless mob. Cordite hung in the air as the fireworks intensified. Loud pops fired like showground rifles. Bangers whizzed and wailed, falling out of the sky and smattering into the crowd. Rockets speared the atmosphere like a dare. The taste of hatred, thick like treacle, clung to the insides of my mouth. Sour. Bitter. There was nothing sweet about this initiation.
Another yellow-coated inspector wound his way into our crowd, jostled among sweating police officers chomping and stamping, every creature farting and belching fear.
‘Gold Command has ordered reinforcements. Rent-a-mob are expected to turn up. Most of the bloody force is out here tonight. Essex and Kent are on standby.
‘Get her to the back of the crowd, Mike, it’s no place for a woman.’ He thumbed in my direction and moved on, spreading ill cheer.
‘OOO, OOO, OOO, oggie, oggie, oggie.’
‘Pigs, pigs, pigs.’
‘Lesbo, lesbo, lesbo.’
Horns, hooters and whistles blew as fireworks continued to shoot. Nails, stones and broken bricks began to fly through the night; a maelstrom of powerful tools mingling with offensive diatribes. Police officers pushed from the rear as the shields, horses and dogs made their way to the front.
‘Okay, Ash, when the shields get here, we’ll move back,’ Mike shouted.
‘Right, sarge.’ I had no intention of moving without him.
‘Pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs, pigs.’
‘I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air …’ struck up a chord from the back of the mob.
‘OOO, OOO, OOO, oggie, oggie, oggie.’
Heat emanated from both sides of the fence. Adrenalin flowed as sardine-packed policemen and strikers filled the streets. A police horse forged a way to the front of the crowd and I felt the animal’s terror. I watched beads of fear roll down the smooth chestnut body of the beast, spittle flying from its mouth as his rider reined him in. The overpowering smell of leather, manure and hatred clung to me.
‘OOO, OOO, OOO.’
The opposing team swelled by a few hundred more and the West Ham signature tune built to a crescendo.
The first petrol bomb fell wide and flames rendered the air orange with licks of fire.
‘OOO, OOO, OOO, oggie, oggie, oggie.’
‘Heads down!’ a voice behind me ordered.
Our team crouched on command as another milk-bottle bomb flew our way. It landed at the forelegs of the stallion. He reared up, grand and foreboding, huge hooves turning as he spun. The metal arch of the horseshoe glinted as the rider was flung to the side, his foot caught in the saddle.
I skidded on fresh manure and rolled into the officer to my right as a hoof skimmed my left shoulder. The beast’s other leg smashed down beside Mike. The poor horse fell onto his forelegs. I saw that the mounted officer had been pulled free from the horse by some officers and was being passed along the crowd like a hot potato, out of reach of the grabbing hands on the other side of the fence. Too hot to handle, he was jostled up into the air and thrown again and again into the back of our crowd.
The battle raged as Mike and I were carried out among the wounded, statistics from the strike. Eight officers were seriously injured, many more hurt. Fifty-eight arrests. Genuine protestors and police officers feeling the pain. Everyone scarred.
Twenty-five years later and 300 miles away, I watch on my television as a fire extinguisher is dropped from a great height onto waiting officers dressed in yellow jackets and black trousers, busy bees scattered across the foyer of a government building. A youth climbs a flagpole and defaces the Union Jack. Hundreds of students gather and protest against the proposed rise in university fees.
People complain about police tactics of kettling the crowd. A posse of schoolgirls guards a police van to stop vandals from ripping off doors and smashing windows.
Some months later a man is shot dead by police. There are lots of questions to answer. Lots of people angry. Rioters who have no idea why they are rioting take to the streets and loot and maim. Senseless violence. Many innocent people hurt.
I’m compelled to watch; I can’t turn it off and can’t turn it over. I’m there. On the streets. Fighting again.
I watch the scenes unfold from the comfort of home. I watch, remembering Wapping; the Poll Tax riots of 1990; the BNP march of 1993. And many others. Nothing is simple, nothing black and white. It might have been many years ago but nothing changes. There are always the police to blame.
Strapped
My first injury of significance was eight months into my probation. By the time it happened, I’d dealt with plenty of abusive, drunk and violent prisoners and I suppose I’d been lulled into a sense of security. When tackling someone who doesn’t want to be arrested, or someone who wants to fight, you rely on your wits, your colleagues and your senses, one or all of which are prone to letting you down.
Female officers were armed with a little wooden stick, a truncheon, that was usually used to smash the windows of houses to which we needed to gain entry because the occupants were either avoiding us, or dead. We didn’t have CS spray, or utility belts with heavy equipment to weigh us down. Nor did we have body armour. All that came later. Women didn’t even wear trousers, mounted branch excepted.
It was a Friday night duty and I was posted with PC Jim McBean. I liked him. We got on well. He was a family man with four years’ service and eight years older than me. He knew everything, everyone, and was what was known as an ‘old sweat’.
It was nearing one o’clock in the morning, our refreshment time, and all the pubs had shut, or were closed having a landlord’s private party, common practice in the East End on a weekend night.
Jim drove slowly past a block of flats on a notorious estate and I glanced into the car park as we passed by. I saw a stationary vehicle facing towards us, blocking the car park entrance. The headlights flicked off as we drove by.
‘Can you go back, Jim? There’s a car there. I don’t know if it’s stalled, or something. Maybe it’s nothing,’ I said.
Jim stopped and reversed back a few yards, pulling up in front of the car park. It was dark with the shadows of the building blocking natural light. The security lamp that was supposed to be lit had been smashed. We got out of the panda car and walked across to the purple Porsche. I heard the engine of the car ticking, cooling down. The driver’s door creaked open and a tall dark-skinned man climbed from the driver’s seat.
Jim called for a PNC check on the vehicle to see if it was reported lost or stolen and to find out who the registered keeper was.
The guy backed away into the car park, towards a stairway.
‘Wait!’ I shouted, rushing to the driver’s door, which he’d left open. The ignition barrel was missing. The car had been hot-wired.
I ran to the stairwell and blocked the suspect from going into the building. He was broad and well over six foot and I felt tiny as he looked down at me. He did that sucking spittle in between his teeth thing.
‘It ain’t what you think,’ he said.
Jim stood behind him.
The guy turned, waving his arms up in the air, as if brushing us away even though we hadn’t touched him. ‘You only stopped me ’cos I’s black.’
‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘We stopped you because we thought there was a problem with the car. That you’d broken down or something. Whose car is it?’
He sucked into his teeth again. ‘My mate’s, man. I jus’ stalled it.’
‘You’ll have the key then?’ Jim asked.
I saw the man’s head coming towards me but I couldn’t do anything, go anywhere, my back against the stairs. He moved fast and smashed his head down onto my shoulder. The pain was like a metal spear shooting down through my chest. I fell to the ground. I know I screamed because I heard it, but it didn’t sound like me. It was a yowling, yelping animal. The pain was sharp, sheer and I’d felt nothing like it before.
Jim grabbed him by his T-shirt, flung him up and then down in one sweeping motion in a swift black-belt judo move. The guy’s head impacted with the tarmac and his left eyebrow split open. Jim pulled the prisoner’s arms up his back and straddled him. I crawled towards them and hurled myself onto my attacker’s legs, tights all tattered, my arm hanging limply.
Jim radioed for urgent assistance. When the cavalry arrived, the man, who gave his name as Colin Abehu, was taken away in the back of a police van. I was carted off to hospital for my shoulder to be set and strapped. It was dislocated and the collarbone smashed.
Abehu had a split eyelid.
The Porsche had been stolen from a financier who lived on the Isle of Dogs. Abehu was charged with theft of a motor vehicle and assault on the police. He admitted nothing and the case went to trial.
The jury found him not guilty on all charges. It was my first time giving evidence at Crown Court. I don’t know why they didn’t find him guilty. It left me with a bitter taste and a deformed collarbone and I didn’t like it at all.
Knee-capped
My next injury was purely down to me being clumsy. I had to make some enquiries in relation to a credit card fraud and PC ‘Garry’ Garraway said he’d give me a lift. Garry was his nickname because police officers are nothing if not unoriginal when it comes to nicknames.
Garry manoeuvred the panda car into a small gap between a row of parked vehicles on Majesty Lane.
‘Cheers, Gazza, I’ll be about an hour, okay?’
‘Yeah, just give us a call on the radio if I’m not here. I shouldn’t be that long.’
I climbed out of the car and slammed the door. I turned towards the pavement. There was a good eight-inch gap between the bonnet of the panda car and the rear of the car parked in front of it. I didn’t look. I didn’t see. I strode on. I didn’t account for the tow bar. Smack! The hard ball of iron slammed straight into my left kneecap. Another sheer ice-sharp pain that I remember along with the scream. I clutched my stomach to stop myself being sick over the police car. In an instant, my knee swelled to three times the normal size.
Garry shook his head as he helped me back into the vehicle. ‘How long have you been back at work, Ash?’ he said.
‘Six weeks,’ I grimaced.
That was the first time I dislocated my left knee.
Fitness test
I’ve always hated running. When I joined the force I managed to run a mile and a half in twelve minutes. Women recruits had to do it in a maximum of thirteen minutes, thirty seconds so I was pleased. But I still hated it.
These days police officers have to run after suspects while laden down with body armour, utility belts, handcuffs, radios, paperwork, CS spray, ASP (extending baton) and other heavy miscellany, so I suppose I should have been grateful I only had a truncheon, handcuffs, radio and a force issue handbag. In plain clothes it was a warrant card, handcuffs and if lucky, a radio.
I couldn’t do it now, I’m not fit at all, but when I was, I caught many of those I chased. But there’s always some you can’t catch.
It was a frosty morning about 4 a.m. when a 999 call came out about a suspect being disturbed burgling an empty house. We ended up chasing a guy through a row of enclosed back gardens. Then we arrived at a six-foot wall. My male colleagues legged it up and over with aplomb. I jumped up on top – and stayed there. The drop on the other side was more than eight foot. I was stuck. I couldn’t move because my skirt was hitched up thigh high, exposing my stocking tops and hindering me. To move I’d have had to pull my skirt up higher and slide one way or the other. It would never have happened if we’d had trousers.
I watched the guys bobbing up and over fences and walls. A gutsy yelp told me they’d caught their man. I sat and pondered my fate, hoping I wouldn’t have to call for help. It was cold and painful and what if I ended up frozen there, on top of someone’s wall?
I had to make a decision. Could I drop down one side? Could I get out of either garden without disturbing the occupants of the house? I couldn’t see clearly as it was dark and I didn’t have my torch because someone had borrowed it and forgotten to put it back. Or nicked it.
I decided to go for the longer drop because although the garden was derelict, I could see a path at the side of the house that might lead onto the street. I flung my handbag down first and, cursing, I pulled my skirt up to waist level. I leant forward and gripped onto the wall, then swung my left leg round to the right. My beautifully polished toecaps scraped the bricks at the same time as the inside of my thigh grazed the top of the frost-embossed wall. Ungainly. Unpleasant. Painful. I swung round and hung by both arms. I closed my eyes and dropped down, hoping I would manage to slide down the wall and miss the prickly bushes.
I managed but I snagged my stockings and gashed both knees. I felt around the cold earth for my handbag, snatched it up and clasped my sore palms together. If only my gloves hadn’t gone missing. I admit my eyes were stinging a little as I tried not to feel sorry for myself and hobbled through the overgrown garden to the path that led to the front of the house. Hurrah! I was on the street. At least nobody had seen me.
The station wasn’t far, so I walked back instead of calling for a lift. I knew they’d be busy with the prisoner. I sneaked into the toilets, tended my bloody knees and the stinging rash on the inside of my thigh, and bemoaned the damage to my shoes. I’d spent ages bulling them up. Tired and emotional, I wept. So much for being a rufty-tufty policewoman.
I cleaned myself up and went to the locker room where I changed my stockings and ran a black polish wipe over my shoes. It would have to do until I got home. I walked into the front office and Sergeant Matthews was by my side.
‘There you are, Ash! Where’ve you been? We’ve been wondering what happened to you.’
‘They nicked the burglar and I was way behind them so I walked back to the nick, sarge. I’ve been in the loo.’
‘Why didn’t you answer your radio? They’re all out looking for you.’
‘I never heard anyone call me,’ I said. When I thought about it, I hadn’t heard anything over the radio for ages. I looked down and it wasn’t on. It must have been knocked off when I climbed down the wall.
‘We had a 999 from a concerned woman. She said someone was sitting on her wall and she thought it was a police officer. A female officer.’ He looked at me, eyes raised.
I looked back, eyes wide, lips schtum.
‘Ash?’
‘Well, I’m here, sarge. Might as well call the troops back,’ I said.
I saw him look at my shoes. Then at my skirt covered in grubby brick dust.
I turned my back and mooched around my in-tray, hoping he wouldn’t press it further.
He didn’t.
He called the lads to tell them I was in the station and the caller must have been confused, a bit of night-time eyes.
In true back-covering protective fashion, he never mentioned it again. And neither did I, until today.
