Handcuffs to Handshakes

Leadership lessonsfrom more than thirty years of handling humans

acknowledgements

In this acknowledgements page, I see the faces of all of the people who have helped me on my journey to where I now sit. To all of them I owe a huge debt of gratitude:

To John, my editor. You were always right but never told me so. You gave me your map and compass for this incredible trip at a time when I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to leave the house.

To David Eade, my high school bully. You triggered a chain of events which I had no idea were linked together until much later in life. (You’ve still got my lunch money by the way)

To Dave, my giant cricketer. You provided the catalyst for this story to be told in the first place. (We’ve reinforced that cell door now)

To Taff, my training officer. You taught me so much when I didn’t even know that I was learning. (Every time I hear Bohemian Rhapsody, I think of Day #1 at Notting Hill)

To John Burbeck, my Inspector at Notting Hill. You saved me from making a mistake many years ago which would have robbed me of this experience of a lifetime and would have left everyone reading this holding blank pages right now.

In addition, I want to thank all of the people that I have met on both sides of the Atlantic who have supported me, taught me, shared with me and who continue both to encourage and give.

Lastly, and most importantly to my family:

To Ian and Jane, my father and stepmother. You let me follow my dream of becoming a police officer in London (a world away from Littlehampton) and you never once lessened your support for me.

To Richard, Peter, Kim and Chris, my siblings. You should all smile knowing that you helped shape me, coach me and encourage me when we were and are together as well as from a distance.

To Colleen, the mother of our two amazing children, Matt and Alex. I so appreciate the bond we have and the times when we continue to laugh together.

To Matt and Alex, my sons. I love you so deeply. You constantly amaze and impress me with your views of the world, your kindness, and your individual drives to be your own unique person. You both inspire me every hour of every day.

Finally to Karen, my fiancé. You truly complete me. You accept me for the person that I am. I love you absolutely.

Thank you.

phil eastwood

contents

acknowledgements

chapter 1The Story’s Start: Cell 8 1

chapter 2 Why I Became a Police Officer: David Eade 22

chapter 3 Notting Hill: Handcuffs Are Useful, But Not Very Often 29

chapter 4 The Hill: Should I Stay Or Should I Go 40

chapter 5

Notting Hill Carnival: A Book and its Cover 43

chapter 6My House is Haunted: The Power of Paraphrase 47

chapter 7The Police Concert: The Power of Empathy 55

chapter 8The Electric Cinema: What’s Really Going on Here? 63

chapter 9All Saint’s Road: Forget the Handshakes, Gimme the Handcuffs! 68

chapter 10Diana’s Wedding: Four Things in Our Lives 83

chapter 11Bramshill Interview Tragedy: And WordsWill Often Hurt Me 90

chapter 12The Miner’s Strike: Treat Me Like a Human Being 97

chapter 13

Welcome to Tooting!: Amaze Yourself and Share Something 103

chapter 14New York 2007: Of David and Daves 115

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The Story’s Start

c H a P t e R o n eThe Story’s Start: Cell 8

I watched on the security camera screen in my office as the largest human being I had yet seen was poured, clumsily, into cell 8. He’d been arrested at a cricket match, and was a member of

one of the recreational league teams playing in the Canada Day tournament at Queen’s Park. The arresting officers struggled with the sheer mass of the man—who, it seemed, could tip the scales at well over three hundred pounds. They had brought him in from the police van and had negotiated what turned out to be an obstacle course of the custody cell area, until finally managing to lock him into his 15’ x 15’ brick home for the night. Luckily, for the team of huffing and puffing officers, the copious amount of alcohol had begun to subdue this Incredible Hulk double.

Dave was Fijian, about thirty years old, and looked like a cross between a biker and a house. He was simply enormous. He had long black hair tied in a pony tail with a red elastic band. What I was told of the story is that a large, white pavilion-style tent had been erected on the boundary line of the cricket pitch. Cold beer was offered for sale within the tent. Dave strode confidently out to take up his position in the centre of the field. His protective gloves were simply huge, and must have been specially ordered from the Land of the Giants, as they dwarfed all of the other pairs that lay around. The same could be said of his leg pads. If this had been the Roman Colosseum, you’d immediately feel sorry for the lions. He carried his three hundred pounds athletically. You got the impression just by looking at him and hearing how he instructed people around him that he had probably never had a single moment of fear in his entire life.

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Handcuffs To Handshakes

Because of his formidable size, when he stood in front of the wicket, the rival team had difficulty coping with him. The opposition essentially relied upon him making a mistake, or hitting the ball in air and one of the fielders catching it cleanly before it hit the grass, if they were to stand any chance of winning the game.

With the sun at just the right angle in the sky—and wearing no sunglasses or visor, Dave failed to judge the speed of a delivery from the other team’s star bowler. He lifted his head too quickly when attacking the ball’s trajectory.

Without that familiar thump on the willow blade of his cricket bat he’d been hearing regularly since occupying the crease, Dave knew that he had been beaten. There was the rattle of the stumps as the ball sailed past his leg and crashed into the three sticks that he’d been successfully protecting for over an hour.

“Owzat!” came the cry as the wooden pieces of the wicket fell rattling to the floor and Dave threw his bat to the ground. He swore at the sun in disgust before marching towards his teammates, who were sitting in the beer tent waiting to console him with a chilled Heineken.

One of these teammates had been brought into the group as a last-minute replacement to make up the numbers and avoid forfeiting the match. He stood up to greet Dave as he approached the white canvas of the awning. George hadn’t met Dave before and wanted to congratulate him on his impressive performance. Dave had scored a total of sixty-six runs, and George offered Dave a full plastic beer mug.

Dave took one look at the player and the beer, and using his cricket bat with the ease of a flyswatter, hit the mug of Heineken into the back of the tent. Dave’s strike got a good portion of the man’s fingers as well. The scream of agony that came could be heard throughout Queen’s Park. Without really knowing why, several people reached for their cell phones and began dialing 911—knowing that at least one, if not more, of the emergency

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The Story’s Start

response agencies was going to be required at the park based on George’s shrieking alone.

Meanwhile, the scene in the tent exploded. Dave was not content with hitting one beer mug, and started going after any others that he could see, regardless of whether or not they were being supported in someone’s hand. The game came to an immediate halt as players from both teams rushed to the scene and Dave struck out randomly with his bat at everything within sight.

Quickly realizing that they were not going to win this battle, everyone soon followed the sensible lead of the man behind the makeshift and temporary bar, and ran for the cover of the nearby trees. Sighs of relief could be heard as the sirens of three police cars, a fire truck and an ambulance announced their arrival in the park and began making their way to where Dave was still lashing out at the furniture with his cricket bat in one hand, and a party-sized mug of beer in his other—from which he continually drank!

Tackling a normal person who is aggressive and drunk is often a job that requires a pair or more of focused and confident police officers. With a person like Dave, the job and risks were compounded. It would require three things from the officers: speed, guile and bravery! But they did it. And without getting hurt. Or if they did, they never showed or admitted it.

However, each time I heard the story of how they had captured Dave, the specific details would be modified slightly or enough until I had to stop listening to the different versions that made their way around the station, realizing that unless you had actually witnessed the officers arresting Dave, you would never quite know what took place.

But he was now my responsibility. My problem. I was the Watch Commander for the weekend; a job description which included maintaining a constant vigil on the occupants of the cells, ensuring they were there for legitimate reasons, and that they were being kept in stable health. I was confident after having listened to the


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statements of the attending officers that the first criterion had been satisfied. He was there so he couldn’t inflict any harm on others. As for the second criterion: Was he breathing? I couldn’t tell from the CCTV screen. From what I could see, the giant seemed asleep in his cell. And likely snoring. Intoxicated prisoners always occupied a huge amount of any Watch Commander’s time. Their behaviour was often extreme. They either slept like babies, or yelled and banged around their rooms and kept their neighbours in adjoining cells on edge. The makings for a long shift.

Employees of the security company contracted to provide our jail guards needed the patience of Job each day they came in to work. They were tasked to remain within the cell block area and tend to the never-ending demands of the prisoners. Some just wanted attention. Some wanted to complain about being falsely arrested. You learned to filter out the majority of the noise over the years and develop internal radar that picked up on the prisoners with legitimate concerns.

My telephone rang. It was the jail guard. He yelled into the receiver and asked me to turn my attention to the monitors. His voice was almost hysterical and reverberated through the handset. The jail guards only contacted the Watch Commander after exhausting every other possibility in dealing with a situation.

I quickly flicked through the cameras and scrolled past each of the cells. None of the occupants were on their cots. Not one. Instead, they all stood motionless next to their cell doors, listening to the commotion echoing outside their concrete world. Each cell was lit up with a low wattage bulb and were all visible through the fish-eye lenses positioned in the upper corners of twenty-foot ceilings. Some of the prisoners were gesturing wildly towards the camera. I couldn’t hear what was going on, but their body language told me what I needed to know. I flicked through the cameras and stopped at cell 8. The sleeping giant was awake.

Fee-fi-fo-fum!

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The Story’s Start

I watched him. He’d pace backwards just enough steps away from the door. He’d ready himself momentarily, taking in a deep breath, then launch his mighty right foot at the door, just below the lock. This type of behaviour itself was not unusual. Most prisoners were upset for being where they were. We didn’t hand out customer comment cards after their stay. The towels weren’t exactly downy soft, nor was the soap lemon-scented, or their microwaved meals of Cordon Blue quality. The mattresses were thin, the wool blankets itchy, and the lights were always on. There was no privacy when you used the toilet. So when prisoners kicked at the door, they were kicking out of frustration and wanting to attract attention.

But my giant, well, he was something else all together. He was kicking the cell door to get out. And he believed he had enough physical strength to do it. So did I! There was enough vibration between the door with each kick to make you think it was a real possibility. Light escaped between his cell door and the wall with each thump. I dropped the receiver in its cradle and sprinted to the cell area. The worst case scenario was the cell door caving in, and that’s what I was anticipating while racing upstairs.

On my way up to the cell block, I passed a young officer assigned to the SWAT team. I said, “I don’t care what you’re working on right now, Pat.” I paused for a breath. “Go get the ARWEN gun, and come up to the cell block. Don’t come in. Just be ready.” The ARWEN gun was designed as a non-lethal use of force, firing plastic or rubber bullets the size of small candles. It was an unusual request for a Staff Sergeant to have an officer bring a weapon capable of delivering a freight-train hit without providing any specific information. Not to mention the fact that weapons of any kind were forbidden within the cell area. That said, I wasn’t particularly convinced it was going to be enough to stop him!

At the cell block door, the jail guard was waiting to open it from the inside. Outside the entrance was a gun-loading station


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where you could safely ensure your sidearm was in the condition you desired it to be. Loaded or unloaded. I unloaded mine. The jail guard let me in. He opened the door and breathed a sigh of relief. The pounding coming from cell 8 was deafening and even terrifying. At the very least, the noise did confirm the locked door was holding. Chris, the jail guard, looked whiter than an Englishman in winter. I instructed him to lock the door behind us, and to wait there in case he needed to permit Pat to enter with the ARWEN gun.

The other prisoners hadn’t stopped yelling. I walked down the corridor lined with numbered cells on both sides. Cell 8 was the last door on the left. The door bowed outward with each boom and then sprung back into place. A part of me wanted to tell everyone to run for the hills. But this was my job and the reason I’d become a police officer. In fact, I thought of an advertising slogan from a Canadian police agency: “No two days alike!” Well, they certainly got that right.

As I approached the door it began to feel like I was standing next to the percussion section during Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, when the kettle drums are sounding out the cannon piece. As much of a Tchaikovsky fan as I was, this couldn’t go on!

I approached the cell door to undo the latched 4” x 6” wicket to see inside, to hopefully begin communicating with him. I reached out to touch the latch, with all the confidence of someone about to pat the head of a dozing cobra.

A flick of the steel latch and the metal wicket fell open with a clang just as the next kick landed against the door. I jumped back. Chris watched from his point at the other end of the cell block corridor. Still the terrified look on his face.

The kicking stopped. Silence.He had gotten someone’s attention. Mine. We both approached

the small hole in the steel door at the same time. The occupants of the other cells had abandoned their chorus of disapproval for complete silence.

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The Story’s Start

“Let me outta here!” he said in his big full voice. The alcohol in his breath was strong enough to make me step back.

“My name is Phil. Can you tell me what happened and how you ended up in here?”

He said, “Well, Phil, let me outta here or you’re dead!” I didn’t know his name at that point. The usual booking

procedure at the station was to obtain personal details, enter them into the record-keeping database, then print out a booking sheet. Our giant’s condition upon his arrival hadn’t allowed for any personal information to have been documented.

“I’m the Watch Commander here tonight. I’m responsible for looking after you while you’re here.”

“Let me out and you won’t have to worry about me anymore!” The suggestion was tempting. I took a deep breath. “You were

pretty out of it when you got here. Do you remember what happened? If I’d just woken up finding myself in a police station without knowing why I was there, I’d be upset, too.”

He paused for a second, then scratched his head. “I was playing cricket in Queen’s Park. We lost all of our matches. Then we hung out in the beer tent.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.“Dave.”“Would you like to know what I was told about why you’re

here, Dave?” I sighed with relief. I had found in dealing with people, if you could get them to

volunteer their name to you, it was the beginning of an opportunity to have a conversation. And now with Dave I felt there was a chance we would all live through the night. I wanted Dave to trust me. I asked him if he needed anything to eat, perhaps some juice to drink. Small victories were important.

“What kind of juice?” Dave asked, almost as an after-thought.“Apple. Orange. One of each if you like.”He agreed.


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And I returned quickly. I handed him two plastic bottles through the opening.

He acknowledged their arrival with a small nod, then asked again in his demanding tone, “Why am I here?!”

I told him his immense size and the alcohol-fueled disagreements he’d had in the beer tent had freaked out a lot of people—many of whom had called the police. He listened. I discerned a little pride in his grey eyes as I described the damage he’d caused and the fear he’d created, on what should have been a pleasant summer evening for all in the suburbs. He asked for details about what had happened to the other members of his team. About the people in the beer tent.

I didn’t know the specifics well enough to answer his questions, but was definitely keen to keep the dialogue going. I asked him to tell me about the matches he’d played on that day, hoping he’d at least remember that. Cricket is one of the most widely-played sports across the globe. I’d grown up playing it at school, and it was important enough that you were allowed out of classes early in order to make the afternoon team practices. Being English, I can also say that cricket is another sport the English take credit for inventing, then go on to be completely useless at!

I asked him about his connection to the game. Where he’d been introduced to it. What his favourite position was. What he thought of the recent changes in the rules in order to further promote the game throughout the world.

Dave, my giant in cell 8, started becoming animated the further he got into his story. His father introduced the sport to him when he was a young boy growing up in Fiji. His size made it inevitable that he became groomed as a batsman—he’d be intimidating to any close-in fielders. The bowlers wouldn’t have a chance in hitting the stumps. Dave would have concealed them completely just by standing in front of the crease.

We were likely speaking a foreign language to Chris and the neighbouring prisoners, who were undoubtedly all listening intently.

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The Story’s Start

But it was beginning to look like we could put the ARWEN gun away. I hadn’t told Dave he’d be staying with us for a while. Until we sorted some things out. Two police officers had continued taking statements from the people present in the beer tent. He could be charged criminally. But it was too soon to get into that.

It had taken some time, but we had reached a point of mutual trust. I promised Dave I would return once I had some more information for him. He seemed satisfied.

“Can I ask you something?” he said as I turned to leave his view.“Of course,” I replied.“When you come back, can you tell me how you got so good at

your job? It’s my turn. I’d like to know your story.”I said I’d be happy to. Chris let out a sigh as I passed him to leave the cell block.

Pat was equally relieved we didn’t need to use the ARWEN gun. It would have undoubtedly been the source of weeks of explanatory paperwork. For both of us.

As a Watch Commander, it was important to ensure a professional service was being delivered to the prisoners as well as to the citizenry of the city. When our civilian staff answered the emergency and non-emergency phone calls into the station, “customer service” were two words we needed to demonstrate knowing the meaning of. Sometimes, when you have a monopoly on delivering a service, the niceties can get lost. It’s easy to adopt an attitude that professionalism doesn’t matter.

I’ve always been of the mindset that every contact with a member of the public—whether they be on the telephone, waiting at the front counter, sitting in their car, standing in their house, or an occupant of a cell—represents an opportunity to make an impression about our police department. The general public usually has little to do with the police. On those rare occasions when they come face-to-face with us, such moments are likely to be remarkable. It’s important to be professional at all times, as most


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people make up their minds about an entire organization based on the slightest of interactions. Little things become large things quickly. There’s only one opportunity to make a first impression. There is only one Police. The public isn’t given a choice. This means that we have to be good all of the time. Indeed a difficult thing to do and live up to.

I went about the multi-tasking inherent in a typical twelve-hour shift. Reviewing and approving investigations. Dealing with the frequently obscure requests from customers at the counter. Broken equipment in a police car. Not enough officers on duty. Traffic lights malfunctioning. And so on.

There were several phone calls to return, and investigative files to review. A thief had gone through a large parking lot on a seemingly random basis. He had smashed side windows and took what valuables he was able to find. It was an amateurish crime which took only seconds to complete. But it was enough to cause much grief and misery for the victims upon returning to their cars. GPS units were often the target of this type of theft.

I returned a call to the owner whose car had been broken into the night of the community cricket match in Queen’s Park. He was one of the few spectators who were not aware of the commotion in the beer tent. But the responding officer made the assumption that this victim was in some way involved in the beer tent melee, and made inappropriate comments alluding to the victim’s choice of friends while taking the report. The inference was made that the car owner got what he deserved.

This, of course, was speculation by the victim. But what seemed crystal clear to me, and certainly what I heard in his voice, was that the service he’d received was less than satisfactory. And now he wanted to tell someone about it. Me.

Having dealt with this situation, I began to think about my early days as a police officer in England. My training officer had given me lots of great advice during those days in London that I’ve

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The Story’s Start

hung onto. Pay attention to the person whom you are listening to. Don’t become distracted. Don’t fake-listen. Don’t interrupt. Don’t think about what you’re going to say next. In essence, just listen as intently as you can. The simpler the concept is, the more apt you are to remember and practice it. The more you practice something, the better you become. People want someone to listen to them. To really listen to them. I’ll always remember Taff Dalling telling me I was given two ears and one mouth, that I should listen twice as much as talking.

Listening effectively takes time, particularly when someone is upset. You at first need to handle the emotion in the situation, before you can move on to the issue behind it. Devoting sixty seconds to this will not be enough!

This got me thinking about how it all started for me, but then my phone rang. It was Chris. He said, “The guy in cell 8 is kicking the door again. He says you were suppose to come back to talk to him.”

I’d lost track of time. It looked like we were back to square one. Or potentially worse. I checked my watch. Just over fifteen minutes had passed. But Dave had no concept of time. It was an easy thing to lose track of. The constant lighting. The white walls. The faint sounds barely audible from the comings and goings in and around the police station. One minute could feel like ten.

I made my way up to the cell area for a second time. Pat looked up from his desk with a should-I-get-the-ARWEN-gun look on his face. You could hear the pounding coming from cell 8.

I said, “It’s okay, Pat. I’ll be fine. He just wants me to tuck him in.” We both laughed. Pat continued his writing. I paced towards

the pounding, louder with each step.Chris opened the cell-block door. The door to cell 8 was still

bowing with each strike of the giant’s foot. But I reached the door with more confidence this time. A certainty in my approach.

“Dave,” I called out. “It’s Phil.”The noise stopped inside the cell.


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“You lied to me! You told me you’d come back!” I opened the metal wicket gate. We could see each other.

It was critical for our communicating. I didn’t want the tone to be misconstrued. We needed to see each other’s faces.

Dave thought hours had passed since I had last left the cell block. I showed him my watch to prove it had only been just over fifteen minutes. But he was skeptical, convinced I had manipulated the hands to show the wrong time.

I told Dave about an incident with Taff Dalling during my time as a London Bobby in Notting Hill. It was during those first weeks when I was fresh on the job. We were in the cafeteria of the police station and Taff reached into his lunch bag and pulled out a Golden Delicious apple. He held it up in front of me.

He said, “A person’s perception is their reality, Phil. The way other folks see the world and the way they experience it will be different from the way you do. We have to accept that as fact. What’s this?” he asked, holding the apple.

“An apple.”“What if you were a worm? What would this be now?”I thought about it. I said, “A home?”“Right. Now if you were a farmer on your orchards, what would

it be now?” Taff raised an eyebrow.“My livelihood?” “Correct again. Now, what if you happened to be Sir Isaac Newton?”“It would be an idea,” I said, grinning.“You see, Phil,” he said, taking the first bite out of the apple, “it

all depends on your situation. Who you are. Your experiences. Your training. Your whole history will determine how you see the world around you. We all view the same things differently. Not right. Not wrong. Just in a different way. That’s why when you ask ten different witnesses about an incident, you won’t get ten completely different stories, but you will have stories with ten differences between them. And that’s okay. As long as you understand the reason why.”

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The Story’s Start

I often used Taff ’s apple analogy when I wanted to make a case to another person that none of our versions of events is ever identical. It has actually helped foster a new level of understanding in several potentially tense situations. Dave was convinced I’d been away from the cells for hours. I needed to be patient with him and realize he was at a disadvantage and frustrated. I tried to normalize his frustration by assuring him I was committed to return on a regular basis while he was in my care, in order to be of support to him as well as provide a visible reminder that someone other than jail guards knew he was in custody. He needed to know that I was paying attention to him.

Dave seemed satisfied with this. I asked him for a favour in return. I explained to him the layout of the police station. The cell area was on the floor above the main entrance to the station. I described my responsibility to the delivery of policing services to the community when on duty. Of course his well-being was a priority. I told him he was important to me. That I would treat him respectfully and fairly. But, I wanted to be treated the same way. If he agreed to stop kicking the door of the cell, I’d continue to return and talk with him.

He stared hard at me for what felt like a long time, trying to evaluate the honesty of what I had just said. Finally, he nodded and moved away from the cell door. He walked over to the concrete bench. It ran the length of two walls. He sat down, put his hands on his knees and glanced at me. “Okay.” His tone had softened. “And take your time. I understand you’re busy down there. Can I get another juice when you come back?”

“No problem, Dave. Thanks for being so reasonable. I’ll see you in a while with a juice. Apple and orange this time?”

Midnight. I decided to go up to the cells again. I checked the cell cameras on my desk monitor to see what each prisoner was doing. Everyone but Dave was resting on their mattress. We had a drunk in cell two. Brought in for impaired driving. He seemed the only one still awake. When I got to the camera in cell 8,


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I could see Dave was awake. He was sitting on the concrete bench which took up two sides of the room. He had a juice box in his hand. He looked at it as he rolled it over and over with his fingers. Much the same way as you see a baseball pitcher spinning the ball around with his hand. He was hunched over and appeared to be staring straight at the floor through the juice box. The cell was painted the same grey colour they use on battleships, with no other tones except for the beige mattress. Even the blanket was made of dark grey wool. Hardly an uplifting colour scheme. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to know your surroundings played a big part in affecting your mood from day to day. Stick even the most positive and optimistic person in any one of our cells, and you’ll soon have them believing the end of the world is just around the corner.

Dave looked sad from where I sat. Everything about the way his body was positioned spoke to me of someone who was deep in a reflective, negative mood. Of course, I had been wrong before, lots of times. But this time I felt pretty confident about what I was seeing.

Let sleeping dogs lie, was an old but suitable adage I had usually abided by. But something in the way Dave sat on his cold concrete bench suggested to my inner voice I needed to go and see how he was doing. I would also be continuing to fulfill that earlier commitment I’d made to him.

Having gone through the safety procedure of locking my sidearm away, the jail guard opened up the cell block door with a surprised look on his face. It was not unusual for the Watch Commander to be in the cell on a frequent basis dealing with particularly difficult or challenging situations, but that usually only occurred when the prisoner was acting up in some way. Or where a complex or unique legal issue had arisen and the prisoners needed more thorough interviewing and the arresting officer was not available. No, this situation was unique. Although Dave had been literally kicking his way out of the cell earlier on, he was quieter now.

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I could read the question written in the guard’s expression. “What the heck are you doing up here disturbing the prisoners when they are asleep and behaving themselves?”

I knocked on the cell door and opened the drop down hatch in the centre of the steel door to reveal to Dave who it was. “Hi Dave,” I said. “I brought you these. I thought you might be hungry.” I held up the juice boxes and a pack of Peak Freans cookies I’d taken from the prisoner food supply located in the office behind where the jail guards sit.

The only acknowledgment he gave me was to look over towards the door. He said, “My life is crap. Look where I am.” He gestured around him at the grey walls of his cell. I had to agree with him in some ways. Regardless of what is going on in a person’s life, for them to end up sitting on a cold bench in a police cell, something serious had to have happened. I told him I didn’t know his story. I didn’t know hardly anything about him other than his personal details and the essential circumstances which had led him to the police station that night.

“What I do know about you is something is going on. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here with me,” I said. Immediately I thought I had confirmed the blindingly obvious and he was now going to think I was a complete idiot. Surprisingly, he held my gaze, with me crouched down on the outside of the door to see through the wide hatch opening.

“Have you ever had anything happen in your life, where you thought you had it all under control and then it goes wrong? I don’t mean in the work you do—I’m sure there are lots of things that go wrong, but I mean in your life, Phil.”

“Of course,” I said. “Very often in fact. I think it happens to many of us very regularly. Come and grab these juices and cookies, Dave.”

Dave rolled himself forward from his sitting position and shuffled dejectedly over to the cell door. Dave had been brought to the police station for a number of reasons. I explained the situation to him.


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Primarily, he had been brought in to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else, but also he was in need of a safe place to sober up. After sobering up, it was going to be someone’s job to tell him about the possible consequences of his actions. In this case it potentially included being charged criminally if the chap whose hand he whacked with the cricket bat wished to have things go that way. The extent of the injury was not yet fully known, but we did know from the x-rays that it wasn’t broken. Dave had also caused a heck of a lot of damage to the beer tent itself. But once again, it would be up to the owner of the tent to assess the damaged property and decide whether or not to get legally involved. If Dave was able to pay for the damage, then perhaps they might be satisfied with that. But that was their call. Not ours. Or even Dave’s. In the meantime all we could do was wait.

Well, Dave waited.It was approaching two in the morning and the regularity of

the phone ringing at the police station was beginning to slow. The night hawks were finally quieting down, the cloak of calm once again settling over the city. The main incident occupying my officers at that moment was an event where a driver had failed to decide in time which exit choice he should make at the north end of the Patullo Bridge, carrying traffic north across the Fraser River and into New Westminster from Surrey. He didn’t decide in time and had simply driven straight onto the grass medium. His all-weather tires didn’t seem suitable enough for the recently watered city lawn! His vehicle was bogged down up to its axles. Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt, but the scene attracted a fair bit of attention from late night passersby. Perhaps because he’d just passed a street sign stating: “New Westminster Welcomes Careful Drivers.”

The driver was unsurprisingly a bit shaken. Most surprisingly, he was entirely sober. He had been given a ride back to the station and sat in our lobby whilst the reporting officer helped reassure him that his car would be well looked after by the towing company.

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The Story’s Start

That he should feel fortunate nobody else was involved. Based on information from the officer who’d been dealing with him, his gloomy mood hadn’t changed at all. It was eventually learned he was preparing to drive the next day to Whistler in order to propose to his girlfriend, who was working there for the summer. The fact that his vehicle was now similar to a Massey Ferguson tractor had put a massive dent in those plans. He was viewing his circumstances as an omen to how successful he might be if he eventually got around to asking her the big question.

However, the young officer was undeterred and proved excellent at alleviating the driver’s frame of mind. He reminded the sullen chap that asking someone to marry you is one of the biggest days of a person’s life. The fact that a little hiccup had taken place should only motivate them even more, not deter them! The officer told me later that he used a boating analogy. No relationship, married or not, he had said to the driver, goes through life without running aground sometime or other. No matter how much they might try to stay clear of sandbanks. Do couples just say: “Well that’s it then?” Or, do they get out and push themselves back into deeper water, reminding themselves to take better care next time?

So, in order to somewhat inspire him, the young officer had taken the time to sit down with the driver and locate a car rental company with the earliest opening time. This turned out to be at the Vancouver airport. The officer drove him to a local bus stop, where the Number 101 went directly from New Westminster to the terminal buildings so that he’d be first in line when the counter opened.

Not bad work at all, I thought.I sorted through the latest batch of reports that had been

submitted by the officers out patrolling the streets of the city. A bored resident had been looking through an old pair of binoculars at the dark murky waters of the Fraser River from his apartment balcony. He was convinced he’d seen someone floating down the river, clinging to a log with their arm outstretched in


18

an attempt to attract someone’s attention. Having decided they were that someone, the phone call came and we launched the police boat and contacted the Coast Guard—who must have been equally bored, since they dispatched their rescue hovercraft.

The Fraser River, at eight hundred and fifty-four miles long, and easily capable of discharging up to ten thousand cubic metres of water per second into the Pacific seaboard, flows quickly at all times of the year. The log maintained a rapid pace within the current and it was only a combination of good fortune and well-rehearsed training that allowed the crew of the police boat to reach the log before it was lost from sight of the eyewitness’s balcony. Fortunately, an awkward looking branch, some two feet long, with an old bird’s nest stuck on the end and sticking vertically from the main limb of the water-logged tree, was all that it turned out to be.

No harm done, except perhaps for the hundreds of residents who live along the riverfront and who were awoken by the seismic activity created by the hovercraft as it tried to beat the police boat up the river to the “drowning man”. I remember spending longer on the phone pacifying irritated inhabitants of the river bank than the entire incident took to play itself out.

Having dealt with a dozen or so annoyed citizens and cursing Sir Alexander Graham Bell for being so inventive, I checked the cameras again to see how our guests in the cells were doing. Once again, everyone was seemingly asleep and beneath their itchy woolen blankets. Except for Dave. He sat on the bench and appeared to be reading a book.

I called Chris on the phone. “What book did you give him, Chris?”

“Ed McBain. The Big Bad City. It’s one of his better 87th Precinct stories,” Chris replied. I was surprised, as Chris had never struck me as much of a reader before. “He said he couldn’t sleep and he wanted to stay awake anyway to talk to you when you had some time.”

“Tell Dave I’ll be up in a little while, Chris. Thanks.”

19

The Story’s Start

My desk phone rang again. It was the owner of the sore hand from the beer tent incident. He was calling from the hospital.

“Looks like only a bruise. Doctor tells me it’ll be back to normal in a day or so.” There wasn’t a shred of anger or annoyance in his voice.

“That’s good news,” I said. “What do you want to do about what happened? Do you want to pursue charges against Dave?”

“I’ve had a chance to talk to the other lads on the team.” He paused. “Dave is nuts about cricket. You know, he’s so passionate for the game. It’s got something to do with his father and his grandfather. He was just upset at himself that he got bowled out. He didn’t mean to hurt me.”

I said, “I’ll need you to come to the station and provide my officer with a statement saying just that, Sir. Dave will be in custody for a while longer.”

“I totally understand, officer.” He said. “I have my girlfriend picking me up from the hospital and we’ll stop by on the way home.”

So that was it, I thought. Dave will be pleased. He’ll be on his way once the statement is taken from the chap with the bruised hand. I smiled to myself, thinking how I’d love to be a fly on the wall when they met up at the next team function.

I decided not to go and tell Dave this news. Based on previous experience I knew that if I had done so, providence would have stepped in and Mr. Bruised Hand might change his mind. And, all of a sudden, I’d be going up to tell Dave he was no longer being freed without charge, and that in fact the opposite was happening. I remembered how we almost needed the ARWEN gun earlier in the shift. I waited for the statement.

The statement arrived on my desk an hour or so later. It was almost dawn now.

I read how the teammate had described he’d been injured at the match in Queen’s Park. How he’d been taken to hospital in an ambulance, and how the police had arrived and arrested Dave


20

and taken him away. He wanted nothing to do with pursuing charges of any kind against him. That was his decision and he was grateful for everyone’s concern and professionalism. He had signed the statement and dated it before leaving to go home.

Right. That was definitely it then. Time to go and see Dave for the last time.

I called Chris to let him know the news and within a minute or two I was upstairs preparing the process of releasing the man who only a few hours before had convinced us that he was about to destroy the cell block—and everyone in it!

Dave was sitting on the concrete bench as I opened up the cell door and stepped inside. It was the first time we didn’t have the steel door between us. I suddenly felt vulnerable again. Before he was able to misread what was going on, I quickly told him that the teammate whose hand he had tried to knock onto Vancouver Island had discovered that it was only bruised. He wasn’t interested in pursuing charges. Dave was free to go now that he had sobered up.

“That’s great, Phil.” Dave said. “Thank you.”As he followed me out of the cell and began stretching his limbs

out in preparation for the outdoors once again, I thought back to what the chap had told me on the telephone from the hospital. I asked Dave, “I’m curious about your father and grandfather, Dave. Were they connected with cricket in some way?”

Dave immediately stopped in the cell corridor and looked at me. I thought for a sudden that I had made a terrible mistake and had misjudged the strength of my connection with him.

“I don’t know where you heard that but you’re right,” he said. “They were both pioneers of the sport in Fiji. No one else knew what the game was about and they, especially my grandfather, were responsible for making the sport what it is today with thousands of Fijians’ playing cricket. I told my grandfather before he passed away that I would continue to encourage Fijians to play. That’s why I’m so passionate about it!” He was deadly serious.

21

The Story’s Start

I absolutely understood why he had been so upset. Not his reaction, of course, but I understood why he would be disappointed. Every time he played the game, he was probably playing in memory of his grandfather. Dave and I shook hands at the door of the station. Then he was gone.


22

c h a p t e r t w oWhy I Became a Police Officer David Eade

I grew up in Littlehampton, a small seaside town on the south coast of England. Londoners know it well as a place of long sandy beaches and colourful deck chairs—not to mention

overweight and acne-faced ice-cream vendors! The River Arun runs into the grey English Channel through the middle of the town, with a current strong enough to challenge any experienced mariner. It seems there was plenty of good reason for the famous lifeboat building company, William Osborne Ltd., to have brought their headquarters into town.

To me though, Littlehampton was just the place where I was born. Where I grew up and went to school. And ultimately, the place I made plans to leave. Away to the big city from where all the buses of pale-looking tourists, bent on getting an away-a-day special sun tan, came all summer long.

I was the second youngest in a family of four boys. Richard, Peter, me and Christopher. There was four years between each of us. We grew up with a completely different set of friends and interests. My mother passed away from Leukemia when I was nine. My father remarried. It was the norm then to leave home at an early age. And we all did.

But looking back on it now, the main reason I left the family nest had to do with one person. The high school bully: David Eade. At the time, though, I placed the blame squarely on the fact that you could roll a bowling ball down the middle of High Street at seven o’clock in the evening and not need to worry about hitting anyone or anything.

In the final months of elementary school, I remember looking in anticipation across the playing fields towards my future high school.

23

Why I Became a Police Officer

The Littlehampton School. Then came the autumn of 1970. So fast. I was certain that Dorothy experienced a similar set of emotions when she saw the Emerald City for the very first time in the Wizard of Oz. My excitement however, would prove to be short-lived.

This is where David Eade enters the story.I met David on my very first day at Littlehampton School.

He occupied a sort of Wal-Mart Greeter position, though of a more cynical variety, at the front gates of the high school. Actually, he had no intention of greeting anyone. No. His purpose was to work out which one of the new kids he was going to pick on first. Alas, not being the brightest bulb in the box, and seemingly unable to make up his mind in time, he picked on everyone.

So there I was. Inspired. At the school gates that first Monday morning with a week’s worth of lunch money in my pocket. But, by the time I got past David Eade, my lunch money had been transferred into his pocket. And I would go hungry.

I wasn’t the only new student to starve. But knowing that didn’t help to make me feel any better. David Eade was practicing the art of robbery, in the legal terms that I am now all too familiar with. But to me back then, at the age of ten, it was David Eade just doing what David Eade did. And doing it very well.

The same transaction, where the lunch money in my pocket ended up in David Eade’s, occurred each Monday. Eventually, I figured out I could leave my house earlier and travel to the far side of the school grounds, and enter the building from his blind side. But, this didn’t change the fact that I still spent the Sundays before hoping and praying that he would not see me. That he would find somebody else. So I could eat! I didn’t know what to do about my predicament. It saddened me for a long time. My older brothers weren’t around to either consult or threaten David Eade; for reasons I have yet to fully understand to this day, both Richard and Peter went to a private boy’s preparatory school several miles away.


24

In the early 1970s, I was drawn to the television shows about policing on the country’s three channels. My favourites were Z-Cars; Softly, Softly Task Force; and Dixon of Dock Green. I soon began to realize the main characters were respected individuals who were never getting pushed around by people standing by school gates. And neither were they getting their lunch money stolen from them! They always seemed to be saying NO to the David Eade types they came across. In fact, by the end of the show, the David Eades were usually in jail. An idea begun to take shape in my head. And it would become the plan that would change my life.

I began telling my friends I was going to join the police force when I left school. Of course, a significant part of my intention with sharing this information was also hoping that David Eade would somehow hear about this determination of mine. That he would be concerned enough about my return in ten years’ time to throw him in jail. Surely, this would get him to at least stop stealing my lunch money. The plan was brilliant!

But that said, I also had dreams of one day playing for England and scoring the winning goal in a World Cup Final. I suppose things could have gone either way.

The more people I told my brilliant plan of one day becoming a police officer, the more real the possibility started seeming. It was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By eighteen years of age, I was a fresh-faced cadet at the Metropolitan Police Training College in Hendon, in North-West London. I was bent on saving people like me from the world inhabited by bullies—mainly by handcuffing them and tossing them in jail. At least, this is what I thought I was going to be doing, but made sure to tone things down during my entrance interview when asked why I wanted to become a police officer.

I said, “I want to help people.” The training at Hendon was nine months long. It was split

into three different stages, each more intensive than the last.

25


New classes began on a bi-weekly basis, and the pressure was on with the start of each course. Each class moved through the training and passed from one phase to the next, with the colour of your epaulettes indicating what stage of the training you were at. As the classes moved closer to graduation—a grand event visible and audible to all every other Friday—you saw the difference in how the cadets strode around campus. Their confidence grew daily.

There are several aspects from those early training days that still remain with me and I remember quite clearly. For instance, I polish shoes to relax. And I find myself rather unnaturally possessive about ironing shirts! I also remember the lead instructor’s opening words during his Day One Welcome to Hendon. He promised that not all of us would make it. And he truly meant it.

Each Monday, with the faculty having spent the weekend marking the previous week’s exams and assessments, we often found a student missing. On a bad day, there might be two empty seats. Sometimes they would show up in a class behind us, but often we would never see them again. The incentive was surely there for me to study hard—the alternatives being a lifetime of counting deck chairs on the beach, or parking tired and shabby tourist buses in the summer.

Life at Hendon was predictable. But stressful. You worked hard. You kept your head down. Sleep became a luxury, as the frequency and significance of the examinations increased. The brief respite created by weekends dashed by, as Friday evenings seemed to turn into Monday mornings, overnight.

At the time of my training, the Metropolitan Police Force had approximately 26,000 police officers. It was responsible for over 700 square miles in and around the capital, and had at that time well over 200 police stations. The Force’s area was divided into Districts. Each was identified with an alphabetical letter and had several police stations. The rule of thumb was that if you lived in London already, every effort was made to post you to a police


26

station within reasonable commuting distance from home. If you didn’t live in London, you were posted wherever was deemed necessary. You ended up living in functional apartment buildings designed to accommodate single police officers. These were called Section Houses, and were dotted all over London.

The lottery wheel was spun when recruits were about two months from graduation. Curious faces craned to glimpse their name on the notice board by the cafeteria, following the dotted line across the page to locate the District letter that they had been assigned.

The next step was to geographically locate that particular District in London. The vast majority of recruits did not come from London at all, and had no real idea where anything was. I numbered myself amongst that group, having only ever been to London a mere handful times before leaving Littlehampton. I was posted to the centrally located B District, and would find out upon graduation if I would end up at the Chelsea, Kensington, or Notting Hill police stations.

Graduation day came with both an immense amount of satisfaction, and an equal amount of concern. In 1978, Notting Hill was synonymous with racial conflict and violent crime. It wasn’t a place where any normal nineteen-year-old from the south coast would or should want to spend a lot of his time.

My grinning parents arrived at the Hendon Police Training College for the pomp and ceremony of the moment. They photographed everything in sight, including their proud son in the uniform of a Metropolitan Police Officer. Then the moment of truth came, and the Commanding Officer of the College placed the warrant card in my outstretched left hand while I saluted him officially with my right. All that practicing in front of the mirror the night before had paid off. It went perfectly. I was about to conquer the world!

The only possible improvement to the day would have been my father remembering to put film in the camera.

During my training, I had become good friends with another recruit from the south coast. His name was Shaun Hall, and he had

27


previously been a jeweler. Shaun lived in Brighton, some seventeen miles from Littlehampton. We had both grown up in the same county of Sussex. We had also drawn B District on the career-posting lottery wheel. It seemed proof positive that we would be each other’s moral support while embarking on our careers together.

There were other similarities that we both shared. We were both supporters of Brighton and Hove Albion, the local professional soccer team. And neither of us wanted to get posted to Notting Hill.

As part of a visualization exercise during the days I had free between graduating from Hendon and needing to turn up at the B District Headquarters, I walked the streets of Chelsea and Kensington. The visualization exercise was my way of trying to guarantee myself a post in those areas. The upmarket Sloane Street, with its Aston Martin showrooms. The quaint Flood Street, with its Prime Ministerial homes. Or even the edgy Australian and gay quarter of London, surrounding the streets of Earls Court. I went nowhere near the drug-dealing nightmare of All Saints Road, or the endless violence of the Lancaster West Estate in Notting Hill.

Shaun was posted to Notting Hill. His words sounded hollow and soulless. By the sound of his voice, you’d have thought he’d just been told he had two days to live. He said he’d give it a month, then resign.

I reacted to his news with two very distinct emotions. The first was quiet elation. I felt even more positive they would not be posting their only two recruits in B District to the same police station. Surely, it was either going to be Kensington or, preferably, Chelsea for me! The other emotion was one of resignation. If by some fluke, some million to one chance, I was actually posted to Notting Hill, then I too would leave. I had joined the police to rid the world of David Eades, one at a time. Not to find myself surrounded by them in Notting Hill.

Shaun and I agreed to meet the next evening at a local pub, following my visit with the District Commander’s office. I felt


28

certain I would be hearing about how terrible his first shift at Notting Hill Police Station was, and that I would be telling him, in suitably muted tones, how looking forward I was to starting at Chelsea Police Station the next day.

My memory of the following day at B District Headquarters is relatively inaccessible. I don’t remember what I wore, the weather, who I met and spoke with, nor the time. I have no recollection whatsoever. The real news of the day, as you may have deduced already, was that Shaun and I met over a chilled Belgian Lager in the pub that evening. We discussed his experience of the first day on the job at Notting Hill Police Station. And how this would help me. Since my first day at Notting Hill would be the next.

29

Notting Hill

c h a p t e r t h r e eNotting Hill Handcuffs Are Useful, But Not Very Often

As mentioned, single police officers not from the London area lived in Section Houses. These were built for the express purpose of cramming as many single rows into

a multi-storey structure as possible. It was pure chance which house you were assigned to live in. Ravenscourt House, as mine was called, was located in Hammersmith. It was a forty-minute bus ride from Notting Hill. The brick building had six levels, and from the outside was entirely inconspicuous as a building housing upwards of one hundred police officers.

Ravenscourt House was surrounded by everything a single nineteen-year-old who found himself living in London for the first time could ever want. Sort of. A movie theatre, a pub, and a coin laundry. Not necessarily in that order. My room was just big enough for a single bed and had a hand basin, a chest of drawers and a small wardrobe. It became my 8’ x 8’ cave. There was a small sash window that I left constantly open for fresh air, despite the noise of traffic and curious pigeons finding their way onto the ledge. Rest was sometimes elusive. I had come from a small seaside town whose version of snarled traffic during rush hour was a senior citizens’ tour bus having trouble negotiating a roundabout because its occupants couldn’t decide between the bingo hall and the beach.

So there I am, about to start my first day at Notting Hill Police Station. Shaun was also there, but on a different platoon from me. He lived at the Chelsea Section House, which meant we would not likely be spending too much time with each other.

I was greeted at the station by Inspector John Burbeck. He was in his early thirties and had a kind face. A friendly, professional tone. He introduced me to his Sergeant, Mick Bone. Mick said,


30

“You’ll learn everything there is to learn in policing if you pay attention to what I do and say.” This would turn out to be far from accurate. In fact, the exact opposite would prove to be the case.

“Taff ” Dalling was assigned to be my first field trainer. Field trainers were experienced police officers who were carefully selected to be mentors for new recruits who’d just graduated. They were there to help us apply nine months of training to the real world. Taff was a large, jovial Welshman who loved rugby, and had a penchant for singing rugby songs with inappropriate choruses.

When I later asked Taff how he came to be my field trainer, he said he had been late for work the day before. Sergeant Bone appointed him to field-train the new guy as punishment. So much for process.

But Taff didn’t mind the assignment at all. We got along well together and I even learned how to swear in Welsh on the first day. He drove a three-wheeled Reliant Robin car. It was made of fiberglass and tipped over regularly when it took sharp curves too quickly. Taff would crawl out, grab a piece of bodywork and flip it back upright again.

Policing at inner-London stations like Notting Hill was done primarily on foot. There were a few police vehicles in the back parking lot, a prisoner transport van, and one Area Car. These vehicles were reserved for officers who earned the right to drive them. In the six years I was to spend at Notting Hill, I never once drove a police car. And I was okay with that. There were other modes of transport police officers could use to get around if they didn’t want to walk to their assigned beat area.

The Notting Hill section of West London was a robustly eclectic part of the city. At the south end of its area was the ritzy and über-expensive Holland Park district, where diplomats and the famous made the neighbourhood their home. Move away from Holland Park into the hustle and bustle of Notting Hill Gate, and the culture of the area just hits you. The Gate, as it is known, is

31

Notting Hill

about as multi-cultured as you could imagine—as if at least two people from every country on the planet were plopped there to live and make their way in the world. Further north, is the start of Portobello Road. A very narrow street with hundreds of antique stores. Each Friday and Saturday the entire area became a Mecca for antique dealers all over the south of England. Booths and stalls stretched as far as the eye could see. I’d never experienced anything like it before. Wall to wall people, all hunting for that genuine one-of-a-kind purchase. Of course, with so many people (many of them tourists) came the accompanying pickpockets. These were sophisticated teams who would work the crowds using clever hand signals and eye contact to communicate to each other until they had identified the most vulnerable-looking victim.

My first day at Notting Hill was a Friday, which, according to Taff would be the perfect introduction to the area since he had arranged for us to be assigned to the Portobello Road Market patrol. We would be looking for pickpockets. I asked Taff what a pickpocket looked like. Taff replied, ‘They look like you. And they look like me. And they look like everyone else.”

That day I realized for the first time what the uniform represented to the general public. I had only previously worn it during training at Hendon, where anyone not wearing a uniform turned heads! But step outside the front door of the police station and suddenly the uniform was on its own. As Taff and I walked side by side in the direction of the Market, I could feel the eyes of the public upon me. I was nervous, wondering what my first “contact” would be. Investigating a stolen car? A break-in to a store? Someone’s home? Whatever it ended up being, I had a feeling it would be something meaningful. Something significant. It was, after all, why I signed up: to make a difference!

I didn’t have long to wait. As Taff and I rounded the very first corner from the station and entered Colville Gardens, a group of lost-looking people stood in a huddle examining a London


32

A—Z Guidebook. So, as Constable #172563, my first conversation with a member of the public had nothing to do with my mission as a police officer, and had everything to do with providing directions to the Notting Hill Gate Underground Station to grateful overseas tourists.

Well, Taff provided them. I just listened and watched. I had no idea where it was either.

Ten minutes later, we arrived at the corner of Pembridge and Portobello Road. It suddenly struck me that I hadn’t stopped talking since we had saved that group of tourists from an afternoon of wandering around, lost. Taff had been strolling along beside me looking around and nodding at appropriate moments as I told him everything about myself and how I ended up as a police officer. I had not asked him anything about himself, or even what his real name was. Every Welshman seemed to adapt the name Taff, but I suddenly felt stupid. And I told him so.

He looked at me, his face lit up by a big grin, and told me not to worry about it. He said that it was an opportunity to demonstrate the less you talk and the more you listen, the more the other person will talk. Often without realizing it. “It works with people who are upset. People who are angry. Or sad. It works with just about everyone a police officer deals with. It’s, without doubt, the single most important lesson in policing.”

Taff went on, pointing at my duty belt where my handcuff pouch was and said, “Learn to deal with people properly, and you’ll hardly ever need those.”

What did he mean by that? How can you be an effective police officer and not use handcuffs? Surely that was the job of a good police officer. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? To arrest and handcuff criminals! My confusion was obvious.

Taff said, “Spend more time being interested in them instead of trying to be interesting to them. If you do this, you’ll have discovered the key to dealing with human beings.”

33

Notting Hill

Fifteen minutes into day one, and a jolly Welshman, who had only been given the job of mentoring me the day before for having slept in, and whose real first name I didn’t even know, had shared with me what would prove to be the most profound lesson I would learn in thirty years of policing. Of course, this is with the wisdom of hindsight. At the time I just continued to look confused. Mainly because I was confused.

Taff Dalling had been a police officer for almost fifteen years. He had grown up in Cardiff, the largest city of Wales, and which sits proudly on the southern coastline of the Severn Estuary. His father had spent his working weeks at Tiger Bay, a local nickname given to the general Cardiff Docks area supposed to conjure up images of the rough nature of the working conditions within the industry at that time. Originally built on the massive exportation of coal from the Welsh mines, the docks evolved over the years until the manual labour was replaced, as it was everywhere else, with massive automated machines. The idea of Taff following in his father’s footsteps seemed foolish as far as prospects were concerned. No matter how much his father wished that it was different.

Growing up, his Saturdays were spent accompanying his father to Cardiff Arms Park, the home of the Cardiff Rugby Club. It was there that he not only fell in love with the sport, but where he also developed an almost religious devotion to the team. While on these Saturday outings, he also met a police officer who persuaded him that to be a police officer was to have the best job in the entire universe. Soon after that meeting, at the age of ten or eleven, Taff knew what he wanted to do.

He moved to London when he was old enough to do so, and his father had difficulty accepting that he couldn’t stay in Cardiff. Taff knew too well that due to the declining economy of the area, the nation’s capital was the place to be. So off he went.

Taff always seemed to be smiling, regardless of the circumstance. All hell could be breaking loose and there was Taff, with his Welsh


34

grin putting the whole thing into perspective. He was overweight and his face held a ruddy appearance. It gave you the impression that he liked his drink, but I had never seen him abuse alcohol of any kind. Taff also had less fashion sense than even the average Englishman at that time—which was poor, even on the best occasion. But no one ever commented negatively, as everybody was just happy to have him around.

Taff never married, but I do recall him going on a weekend shopping trip to Paris and arriving back at work with a story about a beautiful French lady that he had met at the Sacre Coeur Basilica, and with whom he was convinced would end his bachelor status. At the next social get-together our Relief had at The Ladbroke Arms, a gorgeous dark-haired woman strode confidently in through the front door. She paused for a moment, smiled, then went straight over to Taff, who was sitting next to me. She delivered a lingering kiss to his Welsh lips before they both broke away and he introduced Josette to his stunned colleagues.

There’s another evening I remember quite clearly, when Taff was trying to teach me the raunchy lyrics to a popular rugby song. His lesson had been conducted whilst we were sitting in the corner of an all-night coffee shop. I shifted my weight at one point only to discover that I had been sitting on the microphone of my portable radio and the words and melody of Taff ’s song had been broadcast over the entire police radio system!

I have nothing but fond memories of Taff, who told me early on that the job of being a police officer was a great one, if you could just learn how to “handle the humans!”

Taff asked if I’d like a cup of tea. “Of course,” I replied. “Where shall we go?”“That building right behind you,” Taff said, pointing over my

shoulder. “Come on. Let’s see if Freddie has the pot on.” With that, Taff strode across Pembridge Road and went straight

up a short flight of steps and pushed open a deep blue front door.

35

Notting Hill

He turned and waved at me to follow him. I waited for a few cars to pass and then walked over. Walking up the steps to where Taff was patiently waiting for me, I noticed small stenciled lettering on the window next to the front door: QUEEN FAN CLUB INTERNATIONAL. My head was still trying to process what I had read when I found myself standing next to Taff in the middle of a plushly-furnished office.

Taff and I were invited to sit on one of two large green velvet couches that occupied the front room of the ground floor office space. I fought with myself to be professional about the situation, though an overwhelming part of me was thinking, Freddie Mercury!

“Phil, I’d like you to meet Freddie.”Freddie said, “How about some tea?” It didn’t appear he was asking

anyone in particular. Rather, it was as though he was announcing what was going to occur.

He was dressed casually. Red sweater and jeans. None of the public flamboyance. But it was him! And it was definitely his voice. No question about that. I had in fact recently seen one of the very few interviews he gave on a BBC program. It was, without doubt, the real Freddie Mercury. I was silent as Taff and he swapped catch-up pleasantries, as if they’d been friends for years. Freddie asked how Cardiff was doing, as the Cardiff Rugby team was Taff ’s main passion in life. I sat mute on the couch, listening to them talk. I looked around at the framed awards that covered an entire wall to my left. There was one in the centre that caught my eye and I got up to have a closer look. It was a framed gold record for Bohemian Rhapsody selling a million copies.

I pointed at the framed disc and said, “My favourite song of all time.”

“Well, you’ll be pleased to know,” said Freddie, “that I wrote that sitting on the couch you were just on, and over at my home on Holland Road. So it’s an original Notting Hill song.”

“You live on Holland Road? Is that why you’re office is here?”


36

I asked, still a little surprised to find the headquarters of one of the world’s biggest bands right under our noses on Pembridge Road, a five minute walk from the police station.

“It just seemed to be the perfect place.”Tea arrived and was brought over on a tray by a staff member.

Freddie turned and picked up a cup which he passed to me. “It’s the best Indian tea you’ll ever taste, Phil. Welcome to Notting Hill.”

As I sipped what was probably my most memorable cup of tea that I will ever drink, I browsed through the other framed discs on the wall. Taff told Freddie he should consider moving the entire collection of framed discs to a less conspicuous place, where they might not be so visible from the street.

I wandered awkwardly around the room. There was a black Yamaha grand piano in the opposite corner from the couches, with a ratty looking piano stool tucked underneath the closed keyboard. Freddie was widely known not only as a gifted singer, but was equally talented as a pianist.

The rest of the visit whirled by and we were soon saying our goodbyes. I shook Freddie’s hand and thanked him for the tea. He told me to come back whenever I liked, that the door was usually open although he and the other members of the band were not always going to be there to say hello.

I took him up on the offer a couple of times during my time at Notting Hill Police Station. But on each occasion, none of the band members were there and eventually they moved their offices away.

After finishing a cup of tea, Taff and I said our good-byes and headed back to Portobello Road.

Needless to say, whenever I hear Queen, I’m always transported back to that morning.

The Market was in full swing. Most of the shopkeepers and stall owners had been open and in place since early morning. It was a challenge making our way through such a packed and narrow street. The smells of international cuisine wafted through the air, and the

37

Notting Hill

sound from any number of street buskers found its way through the noise of thousands of enthusiastic shoppers to give you the sense that you were in a United Nations reality experience—not a routine stroll through the back streets of Notting Hill in London’s W.11 district. I was amazed by it all.

I walked beside Taff as best as I was able to and began to scan the crowd for pickpockets, or at the very least, someone who was doing something seemingly suspicious. This was another aspect of being a police officer that became second nature; you needed to look at people through suspicious lenses. If you saw nothing out of the ordinary, you’d move quickly on to the next person. You became increasingly faster at this process until you were able to scan people in a few seconds and were able to spot the slightest thing you sensed wasn’t right. It boiled down to the old adage that you will see what you are looking for. But you didn’t develop these skills on day one!

Taff grabbed my arm and said, “That guy over there, the one in the brown jacket. He’s casing that antique jewellery case!”

I looked to where Taff was indicating, but all I saw was a tall gentleman in his late twenties who seemed to be paying attention to some rings which were part of a larger jewellery display at one of the vendor’s stalls. He was well groomed and the brown leather jacket he wore looked expensive. He seemed the casual tourist, shopping.

Taff yelled, “He’s grabbed one! After him, Phil!”The shopper started into a run, shoving aside stationary

members of the crowd. I still hadn’t seen what had gotten Taff so excited, but believed he was right. I threw my helmet at Taff and sprinted off in a pursuit of the man, who I really hoped was a thief.

With my crowd-clearing uniform and adrenalin pumping— a nineteen-year-old constable on day one of his career—even an Olympic sprinter would have had a hard time getting away from me. But there were a couple of minor points which, in hindsight, would have helped. It would have been a reassurance for me to have


38

been more confident that a crime had actually been committed. And, secondly, it would have been equally helpful to know where the hell I was running!

After a few hundred yards of chase, either he tripped or I tackled him (I don’t quite remember which), and it was all over. Or so I thought. My belief being that when the bad guys were caught by the good guys, the bad guys just accepted it as their fate. They wouldn’t try to escape once apprehended. But this one did. And so would many others. As I picked myself up and began reaching for my handcuffs, telling him that he was under arrest, he punched me square in the face, and took off again. Stunned, I tried to focus through the pain surging through my head, and began jogging towards the portion of the crowd where I had last seen him. But he was gone and I was angry.

My portable radio crackled into life on my shoulder. It was Taff ’s Welsh lilt. “Got him, Phil. He’s over here with me.”

I looked around and saw the thief ran back the way he had come, towards the jewellery stand, and straight into Taff. Taff had him in an arm lock. A broad grin on his face. He held up his left hand and spread open his fingers. In the middle of his palm was the ring. The thief was complaining about a pain in his arm. Time for handcuffs. Within a few minutes, the prisoner’s van had arrived and Taff and I sat next to the thief—his elegance all but vanished. We bumped and jolted our way back to the police station.

In the prisoner-booking area Taff explained the situation to Sergeant Bone. I realized Taff and the sergeant were staring. Not at me, but at my face. I put my hand up to examine and felt a layer of caked blood. Everywhere. I made my way to a mirror in the fingerprint room and looked at my reflection. It looked as if someone held up a bag of red dye and burst it in front of my face. I returned to a Cheshire cat smile on Sergeant Bone’s face. “Welcome to Notting Hill,” he said.

Later that evening I sat on the top deck of the 237 bus, riding towards my Section House bed. It had been quite the first day. Wise words from my Welsh partner that I knew, even then,

39

Notting Hill

I would hang onto for many years to come. An unsuccessful foot chase. Sort of. An arrest of a thief with the ring returned to its grateful owner. A painful nose. A bloody face. Oh, and sharing a cup of tea with the Freddie Mercury.


40

c h a p t e r f o u rThe HillShould I Stay Or Should I Go

A month passed. Shaun resigned and returned to Brighton. His first month on the job hadn’t gone so well. I felt lucky to have Taff. I was sad to see Shaun leave. But he was at

peace with his decision and seemed content. Taff ’s three-wheeler car tipped over too fast and injured his

leg. He was off work for a while, so I was shuffled around between other officers. All of which were keen and eager to mould me into versions of themselves. There was no routine, it seemed. Each officer had their own way of dealing with situations. It was up to the recruit to select the good, reject the bad, and forget the ugly. All of which I tried to do. I was growing as a police officer. Maturing. I was looking forward to completing my field training time. To finally working alone.

A constant feature of those first weeks at Notting Hill was that the majority of the officers I accompanied on the beat dealt firmly with everyone they encountered. My belief was that it was too firmly. Even helpful witnesses and victims received harshly-toned language from the officers. To the point where I felt certain people were left with a bad taste in their mouth, and probably regretted contacting the police in the first place.

The suspects, when arrested, and awaiting for the transport van, invariably asked which police station they were being taken to. When told, they’d always try to alter their destination. A few subtle enquiries later and I began to wrestle internally with the fact that prisoners taken to Notting Hill Police Station, “The Hill” as it was known, were often punched by officers for no other reason than to send a clear message to the criminal fraternity as to who was in charge.

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The Hill

I felt alone in London. If this was the case with the treatment of prisoners—even though I had yet to witness such treatment myself, it seemed only a matter of time before I would be caught up in such behaviour. As a witness, or worse, a participant. Perhaps this is what had happened to Shaun, for he had left the force without an entirely convincing reason to me, other than having been posted to Notting Hill.

I struggled with whether it was fact or fiction. My heart told me it had to be a legend, based on trying to strike fear into a would-be criminal. In my head, however, I was not so convinced. I remembered Sergeant Bone’s response to seeing my bloodied face and bruised ego, as though I had no choice but to “get used to it”. He never once suggested the thief should have been additionally charged with assaulting a police officer. This left me with the suspicion that the officers had other ways of settling scores.

Although my own personal reasons for joining the police force could be traced back to wanting to deal with bullies, I had no intention of becoming one because of being a police officer. This issue began to weigh heavily on me. And to the point that I started to think Shaun had perhaps gotten it right: get out while you still can!

So, what would become of me if I stayed? I obviously didn’t fit in. We’d all be better off if I left. Once I’d started to rationalize things in this manner, I came to the conclusion the only safe thing for me to do would be to resign. To get the heck out of that awful place called Notting Hill—despite the fact that this nineteen-year-old constable had based everything on rumour, innuendo, and conjecture. And, of course, a nose that was still tender to the touch.

The next day I knocked assertively on Inspector Burbeck’s office door. I was holding my letter of resignation (for which there was even a form). The meeting was brief. And the complete opposite of how I’d planned it the night before at the Section House in Hammersmith.

The Inspector read my letter thoroughly, though exhibiting far less concern for the contents of it than I had hoped for.


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After finishing, he looked up at me. He held my gaze and tore the letter in two, dropping the pieces ceremoniously in the waste bin beside his desk. I was stunned, but said nothing.

He said, “Phil, I’ve watched you since you arrived here. You are just what Notting Hill needs. Don’t give up on us so easily. Give us six months. If, after that time, you still feel the same way, then come back and I will reluctantly endorse your request. But not until you’ve given us six months.”

I left his office. But with a completely renewed belief in my purpose for becoming a police officer. And what my mission was all about. I never did go back after that day to resign. And consider that meeting, brief as it was, to be the most significant of my entire policing career.

43

Notting Hill Carnival

c h a p t e r f i v eNotting Hill CarnivalA Book and its Cover

The Notting Hill Carnival took place each August-long weekend. It was a huge spectacle, a celebration of Caribbean culture, and it dropped right onto the streets

of West London. The Carnival had the reputation for being the single largest public event in Europe, and each year the organizers strained to find more room for the one million plus people who crammed into the geographical boundaries of the area, as well as time to meet all the new requests for participation.

Although I’ve never been to either, I’m relatively certain the festival in Rio de Janeiro and the parades along Bourbon Street in New Orleans are similar in sights, sounds, and smells to the August weekend in Notting Hill, with the parading of bands and costumes through its crowded neighbourhoods.

The entire area underwent a complete transformation in the days leading up to the Carnival. The most noticeable was that just about every shop window became hidden behind protective plywood!

Notting Hill Carnival had two very different personalities. By day, you saw magnificent steel bands on top of large flat trailers being towed slowly along the parade route. There were hundreds of dancers dressed in a kaleidoscope of colourful outfits. When the final band passed, and their dancers had completed their circuits, a lull would fall onto the area. The families, who’d been lining the streets in crowds several ranks deep, began drifting towards the underground stations and bus stops to find their way home. Street vendors packed their remaining goods, locked their carts, and pushed them away—all the while nervously glancing behind them. It seemed once the music had gone, and the afternoon sunshine turned to dusk, an uneasy quiet took over.


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Eventually, people would begin arriving at random locations on the residential streets. They would set up weatherproof industrial-sized sound systems. Large cables were plugged into nearby power sources, and unsafe mixes of plugs and wires crossed each other and were run to the nearest outlet.

Flick the switch and cover your ears! It’s hard to do justice to the overall experience as you walked

through the neighbourhood. Moving from one concert to another. Hoping your ear drums wouldn’t suddenly pop. And then there were the night revelers, who worked on consuming as much Red Stripe beer as was possible in six hours. Until, inevitably, havoc would reign. Particularly in the evening hours, when the alcohol and marijuana-fuelled partying began to heat up the atmosphere. Especially in the Notting Hill of the late 70s and early 80s.

I’d been at Notting Hill for four months when much of the locker room banter focused on what each officer’s role was going to be during that weekend festival. Thousands of police officers would be utilized to ensure the largest public order event in Europe would be a relatively peaceful one. Most of the officers would be out of sight, sitting in buses in Hyde Park, waiting for the word to be deployed should things get out of hand.

So, by the time my first Carnival experience arrived I was out on my own. Free of the crowding I’d felt when working alongside my field trainers. However, when they needed officers by the busload, you didn’t have the opportunity to be on your own. Neither, as it turned out, if you were keen to live a long life. The crowds were beyond belief in terms of their size. You didn’t want to be alone, in uniform or otherwise, if the energy turned ugly.

I was assigned to join several squads of officers waiting in an elementary school, rented to the police for the weekend. It was strategically located in the heart of Notting Hill, and within running distance from any potential problem. There were one hundred of us in uniform. Waiting. All around the school, we heard

45

the steady bass tones from the sound systems. Each party seeming to try to outdo the other. I sat in the school gym wondering what it was like outside and what the streets I patrolled each day had been transformed into. We were all nervous, and poorly outfitted—compared to the well-equipped public order teams that police agencies have at their disposal these days.

Sergeant Mick Bone was assigned as our team leader that particular day. He was usually a well-groomed, focused man. His greased hair carefully combed to one side. Eyes darting from side to side, scanning his surroundings. But that day, he sat slumped in his chair and stared at the gym-wall bars. Disheveled. An absent look on his face. He was never the easiest man to get to know. The most specific thing he had ever said to me personally was, “Welcome to Notting Hill.” This was on my first day on the job with a bloody face. Bone was aloof and relatively unapproachable to the young constables.

But on that day at the school I felt sorry for him. His behaviour was different. He didn’t strike you as a man who was particularly ready to lead you into battle. I stood up and looked at Sergeant Bone. He was still staring at the varnished wooden bars.

I remembered something Taff had mentioned about approaching a person you’d like to speak with. Be neutral and non-judgmental. Always mention the facts. Not feelings. The person will often open up and talk about their feelings, anyway. So I walked towards him. My heart in my mouth.

“Hi Sergeant.” I swallowed, and sat down next to him. “Do the wall bars remind you of something? I noticed you’ve been staring at them for a while.”

He turned. Slowly. Then looked at me. My heart thumped. I felt the eyes of my colleagues watching from across the gym. Probably taking bets on how long I had to live.

“Yes they do, Phil. My son had a heart condition. He died in gym class at a school just like this one.”

Notting Hill Carnival


46

I was stunned. First, because I had no idea about his son. And second, this was the first time he had spoken to me using my name. In fact, I hadn’t been sure up until that point that he even knew my name.

That one simple comment about the wall bars was the key to getting him to start talking. Over the next hour, he told me he was an only child. About his parents, and how they’d left him on his own at a young age. He learned to be independent. Had taken to police work as a means of survival. It provided structure and security. Police work replaced his parents in that role.

Sergeant Bone had sworn never to allow the same thing to happen to his own children. He became an over-protective father, with a need to control. But he had no control over his son’s death. And he had blamed himself. Something no one at the police station knew. He’d hidden behind this impenetrable wall. Hearing him tell his story was incredibly moving. You saw the relief in his eyes. The weight lifting a little. I listened.

We weren’t deployed that evening. In fact, 1978 turned out to be one of the safest on record. I was tremendously affected by the conversation with Sergeant Bone. Our relationship changed after that day.

Perhaps a little of him changed as well.

47

My House is Haunted

c h a p t e r s i xMy House is HauntedThe Power of Paraphrase

Ever since the days of Jack the Ripper, Merry Olde England has had a special reputation when it comes to infamous murderers. This has provided more than a few terrific movies

and books, as well as interesting walking tours for tourists looking to get a feel for the places where it all happened. Myself included. I’d been on a Ripper walking tour of East London during one of my first days off after being posted to Notting Hill.

When I got back to work I was keen to tell Taff all that I’d learned about this mysterious man behind the Whitechapel murders in 1888. Taff, who was now back to work following his accident, seemed interested enough and listened to me as we took to the streets on our way to a series of calls assigned to us for that day.

One of the important things for field-training officers to include in the litany of other responsibilities is to allow the junior officers opportunity to learn their way round streets. This was crucial, and also one of the reasons that one of my most valuable possessions was my trusty London A-Z map book.

Taff told me our first call was to a vandalism complaint underneath The Westway, on St Mark’s Road. I was to lead Taff there without his help or input with regards to directions. I’ve always felt that I have a pretty good sense of direction. Having a map to refer to would surely make things relatively easy.

The St Mark’s Road graffiti call turned out to be a bit of a wild-goose chase. The person who had originally called the police had become unavailable, and the wall underneath the Westway, an elevated highway leading north-west out of Central London, had so much graffiti on it already that it was quite impossible to even know where to start. The good news was that I hadn’t made


48

any mistakes getting us there. I walked the most direct route possible, which I knew impressed Taff. It reflected poorly on the training officer if there was a new recruit who didn’t know their way around and asked people over the radio for directions.

We began walking south, back down St Mark’s Road towards a little cafe I knew was just around the corner on Lancaster Road. It also happened to be a place where they sold incredible cinnamon buns. With the loud humming of the cars and trucks whizzing over us on the Westway, Taff suddenly put his arm out and told me to stop. “Look over there,” he said, pointing to his left at a narrow little street of coach houses side by side. “Do you see that sign?”

Of course I could see the sign. “Ruston Mews,” I said. “What about it?”

Taff looked at me, and in his most serious voice said, “Did you ever hear of the street named Rillington Place?”

“Rillington Place?” I said. “Of course I have! There were several murders committed there. Weren’t there?”

“Yes there were. Christie was the man’s name. John Christie. And after the case was over and he was hanged, they decided to rename the street because of it being so famous around the world as a horrible place.” Taff seemed to be putting on an Oscar-worthy performance. “Do you know what they renamed the street?” His gaze alternated between looking at me, then looking at the street sign he had asked me to look at.

“Really?” I asked. “This is Rillington Place? The Rillington Place?”“The very same,” confirmed Taff. “They demolished the old

terraced houses just after they made a movie about it and put these ones up in their place. But it’s still creepy to think that John Christie lured those women to their deaths down the very street where we are standing right now.”

“How many people did he kill?” I asked, suddenly aware that we had our very own Jack The Ripper right here in Notting Hill.

“Seven in all. Probably more, but that’s all they found.

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My House is Haunted

He killed his wife, Beryl, too.”“How long ago was this?”“Mid 40s to the early part of 50. And no, I was not on the job at

that time. I’m older than you, but not that old!” We both laughed. “He buried them in the house and in the garden. That’s probably why they tore the whole lot down in the end. Start again. Erase the memory. New street name. Try to forget it ever happened.”

I had no idea about any of this. There had been the movie about the murders which had come out a few years earlier. I had not seen it, but Richard Attenborough had starred as Christie.

“He lived at Number 10. Come on, let’s go have a look.” And with that, Taff started off down Ruston Mews.

I wondered, while trailing him down the narrow cul-de-sac, how many people living in the houses actually knew what had taken place there. They may have been new buildings, but there was still a peculiar feeling in me as I wandered along to meet up with Taff—who had now stopped and was looking at the front door of one of the homes on the left hand side of the street.

“This is where it all took place, Phil.” He pointed towards the house. “Number 10 Rillington Place.”

We stood there in silence for a moment and then it dawned on me how strange it must have looked. Two uniformed police officers standing beside each other in a quiet dead-end street. With one off the officers pointing directly at a house in front of them!

Just then, the unimaginable happened.The front door of the house Taff was pointing at swung open

and a nervous looking woman in her late fifties put her head out and asked, “Is everything alright officers?”

Now what do we say?Taff didn’t hesitate at all. “I was just showing our new officer

here some of the local features that we have in the Notting Hill area.These houses are so neatly put together that I was just pointing that out to Phil here.”


50

“I haven’t lived here that long,” she said. “When I saw the pair of you, I thought something was going on that I should know about.”

“No need to worry, Madam,” Taff reassured her.I was concerned that we’d have to get into the house’s particular

history with the woman. But it seemed like we had avoided it. I relaxed a little. That is, until Taff opened his mouth again.

“Did you ever hear of a man named Christie?” He asked her.I couldn’t believe it! Here was a man so gifted at communicating

with people, on the very verge of stirring something that I was fairly certain would be distressful at best, and downright traumatic at worst, for the woman to hear. Why Taff, why?

“Is that the man who killed his wife and several other women?” the lady asked. “That’s very nasty business! I heard that it happened in this part of London.”

Leave it at that Taff, I said in my head. She doesn’t need to know the exact coordinates! But Taff was on a roll and wanted to share what a fountain of information he could be.

“You’re indeed correct, Madam!” he said. “To be precise, it happened in this exact part of London Town.” And with that, he pointed again at the lady’s front door which was still wide open.

All of the blood drained from the woman’s face. I thought she might faint, her face completely white as it was. She started to shake a little. We were close enough that I darted my hand out and took a gentle hold of her arm to reassure her.

“Are you okay?” I asked.It took her some time before she could reply. “It all makes sense

now,” she stammered, looking over her shoulder at the interior of her home.

“What does?” asked Taff.“The noises I hear at night, sometimes. I’ve called it in several

times to your lot. Your guys have been here searching the house for intruders, but each time, nothing! But I know for a fact that I haven’t been imagining it or making it up.”

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My House is Haunted

“What sort of noises do you hear?” I asked as gently as I could. She shook my grip away and began to look and sound steadier.

“Crying mainly. A woman crying. It’s always loudest in the kitchen area, but I never hear it when the police are here. It always makes me think that I’ve gone mad! Did he really live here in Ruston Mews?” She asked, seeming to hope that Taff had made a mistake or perhaps was simply playing an awful trick on her.

“Right here!” Taff confirmed. “It wasn’t called Ruston Mews then. It was called Rillington Place!”

That did it for the woman. It was the address that struck the chord of recognition. Just like the Prime Minister’s house, 10 Downing Street. You might be forgiven from time to time for not remembering the name of the person living there, but the address is always remembered. So, it was with Christie. Most people had a vague idea of who he was, but the street address where it all happened was known throughout the nation.

What a mess I thought to myself !Why would Taff do such a thing? Upsetting this perfectly

normal woman who had just popped out of her front door to say hello to the policemen patrolling along her street. What on earth was he thinking?

I decided to jump in with one of Taff ’s own suggestions regarding the need to take control of a conversation that is going off the rails.

The Paraphrase!I hadn’t been part of the conversation to this point. I had been busy

trying not to shake my head while looking for some sense behind what Taff was doing. But I needed to act to end all the unnecessary distress he was creating. When you paraphrase, it allows you to do a great many positive things at the same time, but most importantly, it creates the opportunity to stop the other person in their tracks. But in this case, the person that I needed to stop was Taff!

“Excuse me,” I said. This got both the lady’s attention and Taff ’s straight away. “I’m having a hard time following what’s going on here.”


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They were both looking at me: I had created the gap in their conversation just as planned. Excellent!

“I just want to make sure I understand what is being said. Are you telling us, Taff, that one of these streets around here used to be called Rillington Place, before they tore it down and built these lovely homes? And also, that you believe John Christie used to live around here, too?”

I accompanied my words with sweeping arm movements to try to make the details applicable to a broader area, rather than just the specific spot we were standing on. I also tried to emphasize that the area had undergone a complete makeover from its previous life, and thereby put considerable distance between the past and the present.

I was hoping that by placing specific emphasis on some of the words that Taff would get the hint he was in very dangerous territory giving his history lesson to a woman whom he’d only just met and who was living on top of the spot where a total of seven bodies were discovered in one of the country’s worst mass murders.

Also, by jumping in with my initial statement, Phil was now in control of things. I was talking. They were listening.

I looked directly at Taff as I spoke, and eventually a faint look of acknowledgement came over his face. As if to say: Oh. I get it.

I carried on, knowing that I had the floor, and that Taff didn’t look like he was preparing to respond immediately. “I’m sure you’re correct, Taff. Things probably did happen round here. They happen in any area if you look closely enough. But I’m equally certain that some terrific things happen around here as well.”

Taff was nodding in agreement with me now, and I realized that the penny had dropped. He was finally on my side, trying to mitigate any trauma he might have caused the nice lady.

“You’re right, Phil. In fact, the winning float in this year’s Notting Hill Carnival parade was from St Mark’s Road! The folks round here spent weeks getting it ready. It looked spectacular!” Taff was animated now as he went on to describe the “amazing” colours

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My House is Haunted

the community had used in the float’s decoration and design. And, despite the fact that it had been left outside (it was so large that there was no indoor facility large enough to hold it) the float hadn’t been damaged or vandalized before the parade. “There’s a real sense of community in this area right here,” said Taff, as he pointed up and down the street to emphasize his point. “You’re very lucky to be living here, Madam.”

Taff sounded totally sincere with his comments and I could see that the lady’s nervousness had all but gone now, and a genuine sense of relief had appeared on her face, as the blood returned.

“My name’s Taff and this is Phil,” he said to her as he pulled out a business card from his tunic pocket and handed it to her. “We have to be off now, but if there is anything that we can do for you, you let me know. The number for the station is under my name.”

What a nice and totally professional touch, I thought, as the lady thanked us. We shook her hand before heading back to the cul-de-sac entrance.

We waited until we had rounded the corner onto St Mark’s Road before either of us spoke. “Thanks for saving me back there, Phil,” he said. “Let’s get that cup of tea.”

We stepped into the corner cafe at the point where St Mark’s Road takes a turn and turns into Lancaster Road. We sat.

“I still think there might be a problem if she decides to complain,” I told Taff. “But you did win a lot of points with those last comments. Nice touch.”

“We’ll see,” said Taff. “I think she’ll be okay. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just got all wrapped up in the story. I couldn’t stop for some reason!”

“Well, it’s a good job you taught me how useful paraphrasing could be. It’s an awesome tool! Being able to step into someone else’s conversation and take control of it without offending anyone is key to its success.”


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We sat there, in silence for a few moments, sipping our tea and having our cinnamon buns, both of us reflecting on the previous half hour. It had taught us both something valuable.

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The Police Concert

c h a p t e r s e v e nThe Police ConcertThe Power of Empathy

The Police had arranged to stage two live back-to-back concerts in the West London suburb of Hammersmith. It was on a Saturday. December 18th, 1979. It was during a time when the band was at the height of their popularity, and when the lead singer’s name, Sting, was synonymous with headlines. They were in the middle of a World Tour. The first concert was to be held in the Hammersmith Odeon, a world class Art Deco concert hall built in 1932, and capable of holding five thousand fans. It was a premier location for concerts. The Beatles performed thirty-eight shows over twenty-one nights there in 1965. The second location was going to be the Hammersmith Palais, a beautiful and unique dance club built in 1910, and a place where musicians of all genres wanted to perform at least once. It had a unique revolving stage which, when combined with its original purpose as a dance hall, allowed for an incredibly intimate experience for both musicians and concert-goers.

The record company the Police were signed to had rented the Hammersmith Palais for an invitation-only VIP concert. The band was going to travel the half mile or so between the Hammersmith Odeon and the Hammersmith Palais sitting on top of a military armoured personnel carrier—complete with caterpillar tracks and a gun turret.

The real Police—that would be me and several hundred colleagues—were tasked with ensuring a problem-free journey during the estimated twenty minutes it would take for the military vehicle to make the trip. Our job was to line the route on both sides of the road in order to ensure that the screaming, mostly female, teenagers did not attack any of the three band members as they moved from one venue to the other. I had, on many


56

occasions, dealt with football hooligans before, as well as a wide range of people demonstrating and protesting one thing or another (the peace rallies often ending up being the most violent for some reason) but I was yet to experience a scene like the one I found when the police transport van dropped us off at the front door of the Hammersmith Police Station.

The station was only a few doors down from the Hammersmith Palais, on Shepherds Bush Road. The sheer number of fans kept you from being able to see the front doors of the building, only thirty feet from where we stood. The fans seemed mostly around fourteen years old and all waited on the sidewalk behind the crowd-control barriers. There was a sea of Police Tshirts, even though it was December. They carried homemade signs, each one professing their undying devotion. I struggled to make sense of it all, especially since the arrival of the group wasn’t going to happen before ten o’clock that evening. December evening temperatures in London grew colder as the evening wore on.

My particular assignment that evening was to stand on the edge of Shepherds Bush Road, at the point where the personnel carrier would turn sharply to its left from the roadway and head towards the Palais’ side entrance. There was a large steel access door that would open to allow the vehicle inside. My duty, and that of my fellow police officers, would be to ensure the fans stayed behind the railings at the turn point so the band could make their way to the entrance without any unexpected circumstances—any delay and the crowd would seize the opportunity and storm the barriers; a big problem for everyone.

We were told to be at our specific location by nine o’clock, when the police traffic units would start closing down the required streets for the band’s sprint from the Odeon to the Palais. This would give us sufficient time before they arrived to get to know our section of the crowd. This was always a good thing to do, as I had found that crowds were more inclined to abide by ever stricter

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The Police Concert

enforcement of the “crowd rules” the closer we got to the time when compliance would not be a choice for them.

All who were standing around where I was posted were in great spirits. There was a portable boom-box playing the band’s new album, Regatta de Blanc. The entire crowd up and down that stretch of the road tried to outdo each other as they belted out the chorus to Walking on the Moon. It was fun to observe, whilst we waited for what would be a most unusual spectacle.

As ten o’clock approached, more police officers arrived. The crowd sensed the big moment was almost upon them. Over my portable radio I could hear the Incident Commander start to provide status reports regarding the band’s progress towards our section, once they had emerged from the Hammersmith Odeon and were on top of their extraordinary taxi. I’m not certain how the personnel carrier arrived at the Odeon venue in the first place, but it became immediately obvious to everyone that when the band members were sitting aloft and the vehicle began rolling towards us, that the caterpillar tracks were digging fiercely into the surface asphalt of the street and leaving trail of damaged road behind it.

The crowd of teenage girls near to me also heard the commentary of progress emanating from my radio and the energy in the crowd grew to fever pitch. The personnel carrier wasn’t even in sight yet! The boom-box volume was cranked up to counter the crowd’s noise, and they responded with singing that would have rivaled any professional choir!

In any crowd-control assignment, the police are not there to get front row seats to the main event. Their task is to watch the faces in the crowd. Who is angry? Who is upset? Who could be a threat here? So, when the armoured personnel carrier finally came into view at the point where Shepherds Bush Road met Hammersmith Broadway, I turned to begin once again studying the excited faces in front of me. “Watch out! You’ve got a runner, Phil!” came the cry from my friend Steve White, who was stationed a few yards from where I was.


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I immediately spun round to see him pointing towards the road behind me.

I saw her straight away. You couldn’t miss her. She had waited until I was surveying a different part of the crowd and then vaulted the railing while I was turned away from her. She was the teenager getting onto her back to lie down in the middle of the street—right in front of where the caterpillar tracks were going to be in about a minute, judging by the speed that they were moving towards us.

I dashed the few yards to where she was lying down on her back with her arms folded tightly across her chest. Now, you will have seen those images of five or six police officers literally carrying protesters from situations where they don’t want to be removed from. It looks messy and you might think: How come it takes so many police officers to carry one person away? Well, I can tell you from personal experience that if a person is not willing to move, then you need help. And lots of it. That sort of help takes time to arrange, and time, was something I did not have here.

“What are you doing?!” I asked.“I love Sting! And I want him to save me! I’m not moving!”The carrier, with its bright halogen headlights, cut into the

back of my eyes when I glanced up to look at it. It was about two hundred yards from us now. We were directly in its path and it showed no sign of changing course.

I could see the figures of three people sitting right on top of the vehicle waving enthusiastically to the cheering and screaming crowd. That’s where everyone’s attention would be, not the human speed bump in front of the deadly caterpillar tracks—now some hundred and fifty yards away!

“What’s your name?”“Stacy.”“Stacy? Well, I don’t think we are going to be seen in time

by whoever is driving the tank! How about we get back to the sidewalk? I think we’re going to get seriously hurt here!”

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The Police Concert

“You go,” Stacy said, “I’m staying here. Sting will stop the tank and come down and rescue me! I love him!”

“And what if he doesn’t stop the tank?” I asked. “What is your Plan B, Stacy?”

“Then I will die and then wait for him in heaven!”“You’ve certainly got it figured out. But I heard on my radio

about all of the damage that the caterpillar tracks are doing to the street surface behind the tank. It’s ugly, you know. It is ripping the road to shreds!” I was trying to describe the reality of what was about to happen to her if she did not move.

“I don’t care, if he doesn’t love me I might as well be dead anyway.”

“Stacy, my name is Phil.” Always use first names, Taff had told me. It makes any and every situation more personable.

“I really don’t want you to get hurt here. Obviously you are very excited about being here, but to lie in front of that tank? Is it really worth it? Will you look back and say to yourself “Thank goodness I decided to do that!?” What would your family and friends say if they knew you were doing this?”

Stacy remained flat on the tarmac.She was wearing a black t-shirt with “The Police” stenciled on

the front. She looked up at me with a little resentment and, I thought,

a little fear in her eyes.One hundred yards! Bright headlights from the tank

everywhere now.In my mind, I was about to yell for help from Steve and the

others and drag her out of there but if she resented the move and escaped she would most certainly go under the tracks! But we could avoid all of that if she just got up on her own.

The metal tracks hitting the tarmac were making a noise that you knew was causing serious damage to everything it rolled over. Does an armoured personnel carrier have a horn I wondered?


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Apparently not! Seventy-five yards!“Stacy, I’ve never been in your position but you’re obviously

upset. Why don’t I put you in touch with some people who can talk to you about what’s going on? No pressure. Just call when you want to. They helped me.”

My suggestion was based on a place that Taff had taken me to in Notting Hill. Portobello Mornings never turned anyone away who wanted to talk about things going on in their lives. They were non-profit and had a reputation for delivering on their tag line of “We’re here for you. Come on in.” Left to patrol on my own, I found myself drawn back there following my initial visit with Taff and over a good cup of strong African coffee, found myself sharing with the group my misgivings about being posted to Notting Hill in the first place. I left feeling better about a whole lot more than where my career had started.

Stacy kept looking up at me. “Really? You?”“We all do from time to time Stacy. It’s just part of being

human.”She held my gaze for a moment.“Hurry Stacy!” I could feel the ground shaking beneath us now.

Fifty yards!Stacy lifted one arm towards me. “Okay. You’re on!”With one move, the speed of which surprised even me,

I caught her arm, gripped tight with my fingers locked around her wrist and leant back, dragging her upright in a complete arc. In order to make sure that there was sufficient momentum built up that we both ended up next to the safety of the crowd control barrier, I kept pulling her even when she was up on her feet. I didn’t want her changing her mind and suddenly “falling” in front of the personnel carrier. If she had, she’d be dead in an instant. The crowd’s focus remained on the three figures waving energetically

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at the fans from their military limousine. I doubt that anyone even saw what had happened.

The momentum of my pulling back so fast had me tripping on the edge of the curb before I managed to grab onto the top of the railing with my free hand. The jolt of that trip went right through me and I felt my Bobby helmet immediately shift on my head and begin to slip. I certainly wasn’t going to let go of Stacy. So with no free hands, all I could do was let it slip from my head and bounce on the ground.

They are not made for bouncing.It hit the tarmac and rolled right into the path of the nearest

caterpillar track and disappeared underneath. The wafer thin helmet that spat out after the entire length of the tank track had finished with it was absolutely destroyed.

Once the carrier had made its turn and disappeared in through the truck entrance of the Palais, the crowd started dispersing quickly. The show was over for them. I had let go of Stacy’s wrist and she struggled getting back over the barrier. She stood against the barrier, looking at me, as I bent down and collected my crushed Bobby’s helmet.

“Thank you,” Stacy said. “Sorry if that gets you into trouble.” She pointed at the black pancake that I held in my hand.

“No worries,” I called back. “In fact, let me give you the details of Portobello Mornings, that place I told you about in Notting Hill. It really is a good place to talk.” I wrote the details on the back of a piece of paper that I had and handed it to her. She took it and then I stretched out my other hand and said, “You may as well take this too,” and gave her my flattened helmet, “at least it will remind you of what happened here this evening!” We both laughed.

She said, “I’ll give these people a try. Thank you.” And then she was gone, melting away into the departing crowd and heading for the tube station.

It was a few weeks later when I passed by Portobello Mornings.


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I decided to pop in to say hello. My crushed helmet was mounted on the wall of their office. Apparently, it was donated by a grateful young girl who had had a life-changing experience one evening, which had brought her there to talk about things. Life was better for her now.

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The Electric Cinema

c h a p t e r e i g h tThe Electric CinemaWhat’s Really Going on Here?

On Saturday April 11th, 1981 events in the South London neighbourhood of Brixton reached a boiling point and largescale violent clashes broke out between the community’s

significant Jamaican population and the police. Tensions had been high for a while in the area, and an incident involving one police officer and one youth became the ignition switch for rioting. The destruction was widespread.

Over 100 vehicles were set on fire, including 56 police cars. 150 buildings were damaged to the point that 32 of them needed to be torn down, due to safety concerns—after having been set on fire as well. Over 40 members of the public and 280 police officers were injured. 82 people were arrested on what became known as Bloody Saturday. News of these events permeated every conversation in the capital and around the country. Many police officers, including me, were summoned into work in the event that we were needed to be deployed to assist in stabilizing things in Brixton.

The community of Notting Hill had also been a hotbed for racial unrest since the 1960s. The neighbourhood was referred to in many circles as being the North London equivalent of Brixton, located south of the Thames. In order to ensure we didn’t pick up on the disorder going on in Brixton, we were all assigned to very specific foot-beat areas in and around the Portobello Road area. We were also partnered with another officer for safety reasons and asked to go out and monitor the mood of the community.

I was paired with an officer called Simon Thomas. He was a friendly man whom I’d worked with previously, and whom I felt was even-tempered and made safe and rational decisions. I felt confident being with him in the event that we would get into difficulties,


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whilst taking the temperature of the neighbourhood. It was early evening, and because of rumoured wide-scale

looting in South London, many businesses and stores were closing early. They drew their shutters and screens to protect their windows. They removed all merchandise from eyesight.

Simon and I walked north on Portobello Road, and crossed over Blenheim Crescent. The Duke of Wellington Pub, on the north-west corner was bringing in all of the patio furniture and winding down for the day. An English pub closing early on a Saturday was by any standard means unheard of. It seemed that the world must be ending!

I noticed a man and woman standing outside the ticket window of the Electric Cinema, a few businesses north of the pub. This was the very first purpose-built movie theatre to open in Britain. It had a grand exterior, and originally featured brick with terra cotta facings, iconic pilasters with a tower, and dome of galvanized zinc.

It was clear, even from our distance, that he was upset about something. He stood very close to the window and was yelling at someone on the inside. He gestured wildly with his arms as the woman standing next to him behaved in the exact opposite way. She was hardly moving and said nothing.

Simon and I continued towards them. The lady noticed the two of us walking in their direction. She pointed us out to the gesturing and yelling male. He turned quickly and ran to us in relief. He told us that the Electric Cinema manager had decided to close early due to the disturbances in Brixton. Chances were Portobello Road might mimic Railton Road; the main street where buildings were on fire, cars were being torched, and people were getting hurt.

He’d brought his girlfriend to see the late evening showing of Chariots of Fire. The pair had travelled quite some distance to see the movie at the Electric Cinema. I said the movie was in wide release and certain to be playing in every movie theatre in the country. But this didn’t alter his mood in any way.

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The Electric Cinema

Simon stayed with the couple while I talked with the person in charge at the Electric Cinema. The night manager was inside the ticket window, and allowed me to enter the theatre lobby, in order for him and me to talk without the panes of glass in the way. He explained his reasons for closing early. The riots. The fires. He’d sent everyone home. The projectionist. The ticket salesperson. The concierge. He was in the process of boarding up the window at the front when the couple had arrived and immediately the male had become aggressive and belligerent.

The manager insisted that the male’s reaction was out of proportion to the situation. And since all of his staff had gone home, he couldn’t remain open even if he had wanted to. The manager was also concerned about to what level the male would take things, particularly since he had informed him that he was on his own.

Simon was chatting to the couple a few yards away, as I spoke to the manager. This separation gave everyone involved a much needed moment to let the heat out of the situation. A proven tactic in diffusing a situation is putting distance between them. Often, if not always, people engrossed in a confrontation are rarely able to suddenly back away and allow the voice of reason—which is usually around somewhere, in.

Eventually the tension eased. I asked for the manager’s patience. I walked over to Simon and the couple with the intention of providing them with a little insight into the reasons behind the manager’s decision to close the cinema. The male stepped towards me, away from his girlfriend. Simon stood on the other sidewalk.

“I don’t want my girlfriend to hear this,” he said to me, as he closed the distance between the two of us. “I need to tell you why this is so important.”

Simon had started after him, presumably fearing he was about to do something unwise. In fact, the same thought had crossed my mind, but when I heard him speak to me, I immediately knew there was something else going on. In any confrontation the trick,


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invariably, is giving people the opportunity to find out what that something is. I motioned to Simon to stay where he was for a moment. I met the man at the halfway point and we moved against the wall of a business, just a door down from the Electric Cinema. I said, “What’s really going on here? Why are you so upset? I want to know.”

He said that he’d been planning this trip to the theatre for weeks. It was his girlfriend’s birthday and was the night he’d intended on asking her to marry him. The Chariots of Fire movie had opened a month or so earlier and both had fallen in love with the film. They talked regularly about the characters that were based on the athletic journey two British sprinters took on their way to the 1924 Olympics in Paris.

His intention was to sit on the sofa seats in the back row of the theatre; a unique feature at some UK movie theatres. Then, as the first frames of the movie hit the screen, the one where the track athletes are running along the beach during the pre-Olympic training camp, with the powerful soundtrack from Vangelis playing in the background, he was going to take a knee, produce the engagement ring he’d carefully stashed in his pocket, and ask his girlfriend if she would be his wife. They spent their first date at the Electric Cinema, and to have their favourite movie showing there, the stars were aligned, as far as he was concerned.

I’d learned through Taff that when you allow or create the opportunity for someone to tell you what is really going on, you’ll often discover it is completely different from what you had first thought. This is done by acknowledging and validating the person’s feelings. It’s no wonder the chap was upset! That said, I expressed that he didn’t have the right to direct his frustration and aggression towards the manager in the manner that he had. It would only make matters worse. Armed with this incredible plan, and with a promise from the chap that he would be calm, I decided to reintroduce him to the manager. Being a born

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The Electric Cinema

optimist, and trying to believe everyone wants an opportunity to help someone else, I wanted the manager to hear the man’s plan for himself.

Simon looked at me as if I’d gone mad. I asked him to carry on talking to the girlfriend, while I went back to the Electric Cinema to pull my best Henry Kissinger.

The manager opened the front door so that the romantic and I could step inside, removing ourselves from the noise of the bustling street. The man explained his predicament and the manager had the same reaction as me. In short, he was moved.

His response was incredible and he quickly got on the phone to his projectionist, who had probably just gotten home, and asked him to return to work for one “special showing”. You could tell the manager saw this as one of those moments when for virtually very little effort you can have a significant impact on someone else’s life.

The new plan was hatched!The trick would be to somehow convince the girlfriend that

her boyfriend and the manager had reached an understanding, had settled their differences, and as a sign of good faith, the manager would run the movie anyway. I’m not sure what was said in order to convince her that it had all been a huge misunderstanding, but the two eventually walked into the cinema together, his hand on her shoulder.

Simon and I were soon on our way to continue our Portobello Road patrols. A few days later, a letter arrived at the police station. It was from the man at the theatre, whose name was Roger, thanking us.


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c h a p t e r n i n eAll Saint’s RoadForget the Handshakes, Gimme the Handcuffs!

T hat same night when Brixton was burning in South London, was to be home to the single most frightening moment of my thirty-year police career. Every officer in Notting

Hill felt certain it was just a matter of time before the tension the community felt spilled over into random acts of violence.

Our superiors decided to safeguard us as much as possible, after hearing reports of officers being attacked by groups of youths feeling invincible because of the raging battles against the public face of law and order. We were divided into groups and assigned into Public Order vans. We were to patrol the community and look for signs of trouble.

All together there were five of us in the van, with Charlie Summerhayes behind the wheel that Saturday night in 1981. We patrolled the Notting Hill neighbourhoods. All of the policing I’d experienced up until that point had been on foot. It allowed you time to look around and notice things you’d miss when driving by in a patrol car. And there was also that constant opportunity to stop and talk to folks on the street. It was the way policing was done in London. In the eight years I spent with the force, I never once sat behind the steering wheel of a police car; to be driven around in a van with a group of my colleagues was a treat indeed, albeit a peculiar experience I was in no way accustomed to.

The van was a rented van, with plastic curved bench-style seating. It permitted you to slide around, whether you wanted to or not. We were on edge, with updates coming over our police radios about how the crowds in Brixton were building minute by minute. There was radio chatter about Molotov cocktails being used against the lines of police officers. The Molotovs were glass

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All Saint’s Road

milk bottles filled with gasoline and a rag stuffed in through the bottle neck. The rag was lit before becoming fully soaked with gasoline, then tossed towards anything—or anyone—they wanted to turn into a ball of flames.

The centre of tension in the Notting Hill area had traditionally been located in All Saints Road. It was once famous in the policing world as the one hundred-yard-long street where you needed at least two officers present twenty-four hours a day, mostly as a way to curb the constant drug dealing.

Marijuana was the drug of choice and was as common as cigarettes. The fact that it happened to be illegal seemed a mere annoyance. The sentences at Marylebone Magistrate’s Court reflected how common the problem was. You were likely to spend more time in jail and receive a heavier fine if you were to be found drunk in public. With no real deterrent, the dealers disappeared into houses and businesses—though definitely not into the Help Wanted ads of the classified section!

It was well after eleven at night, when any normal member of the public was at home watching BBC’s Match of the Day. Anyone walking the streets, whether alone or in a group, became the subject of more than a casual glance from the officers inside the patrol van. The looks we received back were equally suspicious. A sure indication things were not well in The Hill. We were hoping we’d have a quiet evening, but I could feel the tension building. Both inside our vehicle and outside, as our patrols took us increasingly towards the centre of the maelstrom.

We hadn’t been sent out alone. There were probably half a dozen other vans, identical to ours, with the same instructions provided to the occupants: patrol and report what you find.

We had also heard that riot shield teams were being called in to deal with the expected problems in our area of London. That should have provided us with some level of comfort, but those teams would only be deployed once trouble was located.


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It was up to us to find that trouble in the first place. And find it we did.I was sitting in the front passenger seat, with Charlie driving

alongside me. We drove slowly east, along Westbourne Park Road, the group of people ahead of us growing. They wandered occasionally along the sidewalks, a definitive purpose to their stride. Almost all of them were moving east. The sidewalk was no longer large enough. They were moving between the parked cars at the side of the road, as they pushed out into the street. I could see a few of the parked cars moving slightly, being bumped into recklessly and deliberately.

Soon there were so many people that the traffic on the road came to a stop ahead of us. Something was going to happen. You could feel it.

And I just knew it. Since the traffic ahead of us had been stopped, we had a

decision to make. Do we sit in the van and hope the crowd will dissipate? Or, do we get out and start our patrols on foot? We could also turn off the street and try to get onto a parallel road to continue our assignment.

Charlie was on the van’s radio informing our dispatch of exactly what was happening. We heard back from two other patrolling vans in our immediate area that they too were being hampered by the swelling numbers of people appearing out of nowhere. They seemed to be moving towards the street about two hundred yards ahead of us. All Saints Road.

With the crowd building in energy, and as more and more parked cars began rocking backwards and forwards, it seemed only a matter of time before the cars lined up in traffic became the next targets. And there was no telling what they might do if they got to the van driven by a police officer, and with police inside. The obvious choice was to get away from the situation we had found ourselves in. Charlie cranked the steering wheel over to the right and bumped his way bit by bit in a ninety degree turn.

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All Saint’s Road

He found a slim gap in the crowd of people in the intersection, and floored the pedal!

The van lurched forward and we were gone and into the relative sanctuary of Talbot Road, a short and much narrower street to the south of Westbourne Park Road. Not being one of the obvious thoroughfares on the way to All Saints, the street was quieter and we found a spot between a couple of parked cars and pulled the van in to review the growing situation happening around us. It was a good thing the van was rented and had no markings anywhere that it was full of policemen. I had been at football matches and weekly demonstrations and protests enough times to get a sense of where things would head.

Charlie radioed in our new position to the dispatch centre. I knew that somewhere in an Operations Room, somewhere deep within New Scotland Yard, a logistics officer was plotting our updated location on a big map of London and seeing how we correlated with every other unit that was in the area.

The Metropolitan Police was renowned for its ability to gather excellent intelligence from within fringe and radical political groups of all stripes and colours through the work of officers in the Special Branch unit. Word came over the radio that an undercover SB officer had observed milk crates full of Molotov cocktails being unloaded from a van which had just pulled up in All Saints Road. In the van we all looked at one another with equally concerned and relatively fearful faces over the obvious escalation of the situation. What had happened in Brixton, with reports of vehicles on fire and ambulance loads of police officers being carted off to emergency rooms, left us simultaneously believing the same was about to happen there, to us.

I thought back to the incident at the Electric Cinema earlier in the evening. It was a surreal experience, and I truly believed for a moment that I was in the heart of a movie on some screen somewhere. How could we go from a romantic moment in a


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private screening of Chariots of Fire, to hearing that petrol bombs were just around the corner from where we sat in a van? I shook my head, trying to equate the two events. None of it made sense. I even wondered whether or not the Electric Cinema would still be standing in the morning if they started torching buildings. 191 Portobello Road wasn’t far from where we sat.

A command was given out from the Operations Room for all of the roving patrol vans to stop where they were, unless in imminent danger, and to report their locations one by one so that everyone could be accounted for. They also wanted to know how many officers were in each van and whether they had riot equipment on board with them. We all sat and quietly listened to the radio as each of the vans, just like ours, reported in.

I plotted where they were in my mind as I visualized a street map of Notting Hill. My throat went dry as I realized that we were the closest van to All Saints Road. By a long shot! We also happened to be the worst equipped with the least number of officers. Not good news. I decided to keep this to myself and not share this knowledge with the others, but I suspected they were probably thinking the exact same thing.

At that moment I made a mental note to myself to sign up for riot-shield training. At least next time I’d have my own personal riot gear with me, which was only issued after you had taken the training.

Presumably, having found out now where each of the roving patrol vans were, and realizing that none of them were well-equipped for the impending situation, the voice from the Operations Room announced that the Riot Teams, who had until now been on standby in Hyde Park, were being deployed to our area.

As we sat and listened to the instructions being given over the radio to the riot teams, I noticed that some of the people making their way in the direction of All Saints Road were now running, some with an obvious sense of urgency. Those who walked past the

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All Saint’s Road

van glanced inside, but the tinted windows kept visibility limited—save the front window, from which Charlie and I were visible. I asked myself, “What the heck are we doing here? How long are we going to stay?”

The answer to the second question came instantly when the radio crackled into life again.

“They’ve turned a car over at All Saints and Westbourne Park.” The voice was professional enough but you could still sense the stress behind it.

It had been a common practice of rioting crowds in Britain to turn over vehicles that they found nearby to use as improvised barriers behind which they could then stand and launch items at the police with relative protection. This was the first sign that the pot on the Notting Hill stove was about to boil over.

“Riot Teams currently northbound on Pembridge Villas,” came an anonymous voice over the radio. Behind the steady and authoritative tone, we could hear the wailing of multiple police sirens, which provided some comfort to the vulnerable feeling creeping around in my stomach right then. The down side was that they were still a few minutes away from our location, and a couple more minutes before they would actually be deployed onto the streets.

Through the open windows of the van we could certainly hear the crowd, with only a few people drifting by every so often. But we weren’t able to see the monster which was obviously just round the corner. That next road was Clydesdale Street. It was a short strip of road about one hundred yards long and led from Talbot Road back to Westbourne Park Road to our north. All Saints Road, where the improvised barrier was now in place, joined Westbourne Park Road a few yards to the east of that point.

This would hopefully be the target of the Riot Teams when they arrived, whose tactics would focus on dispersing the crowd and quickly arresting the troublemakers, whom the undercover


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Special Branch officer would currently be working on identifying.“The Molotovs are now right behind the blue Vauxhall they

overturned at All Saints and Westbourne Park.” It was the same voice that had given the original information about the petrol bombs. This whole evening was obviously not a spur of the moment thing at all. There was serious organization that had gone into this. It had been planned. The question was: “What was next? How far would they go?”

The dark interior of the van was suddenly lit up by a bright flash of light which came from behind us.

“Bravo-Hotel-Two-Four. We’re right behind you on Talbot. Bravo-Hotel-Two-Five.”

We all spun around to look through the rear windows of the van and saw an identical rental van to ours dimming its headlights to sit in the same quiet envelope of space. Waiting just like we were.

“Ten Four. Thanks for being here with us,” acknowledged Charlie on our radio. He was voicing the sentiments of everyone in the van.

Okay, I thought, there are more of us now. I didn’t know exactly how many officers there were in Bravo-Hotel-Two-Four behind us, but even if it was five or six, that would give us a dozen or so in the event that we were deployed to do something. Safety in numbers. Less vulnerable. Better chance of going home in the morning.

I felt certain that I could hear the sirens in the distance now. Police sirens, with that familiar two-tone wailing sound. The Calvary was arriving!

But we never saw them. The sirens all seemed to stop at the same time, as if someone had found the power cord in the wall and pulled the plug out.

“Riot Teams being deployed at Westbourne Park and Powis Terrace.” It was the Operations Room voice. “Bravo-Hotel-Two-Four and Two-Five, stand by for deployment on Clydesdale.”

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All Saint’s Road

Both Charlie and the other driver of the van behind us acknowledged the instructions. The moment was arriving fast and we readied ourselves inside the vehicle.

Charlie looked around at the faces in the van with him. “Ready lads?” We all nodded. “How ‘bout I move you up to the

corner?” He pointed through the windshield to the point where Talbot Road curled around to the left and Clydesdale Street began. It was likely two-hundred yards up the street from where we were now.

More nods.No one seemed in any hurry to leave the relative sanctuary of

the vehicle. But our job was to keep the peace and preserve public order, and that’s what we were there to do, and was exactly why we were being ordered to do what we were about to do.

We discussed amongst ourselves the likely tactics of the Riot Teams in the next few minutes and the consequences for us. What was going to happen was that the Riot Teams would be deployed and line up across the entire width of Westbourne Park Road across from Powis Terrace, which was some two hundred yards to the east of All Saints Road. The view from the crowd’s perspective would resemble an entire wall of clear riot shields, positioned in groups of three, which would, at the given signal, begin moving towards them.

The officers, in full riot-protective gear, complete with serious full-face helmets, would be crouched down behind the shields, which were 4’ 10” high, and slowly the entire barrier would begin moving west down the street, the speed and spacing being controlled by the officers standing behind the team holding the shields. It was critical to maintain the uniformity of the shield-team lines, since if any one team got too far ahead of the others, they might well become the obvious target for the entire crowd’s aggression, which could manifest itself in brick and stone throwing with the serious possibility of petrol bombs being added to the mix since they had been seen already being prepared.


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The hoped-for reaction of the crowd to this slow-moving wall should be dispersal, and that is where we came in. Our job was to deploy across the width of Clydesdale Street, so that as the crowds ran away from the advancing Riot Teams, with their arrest squads right behind, and ran into the available side streets of Powis Gardens, St Luke’s Mews and Basing Street, they would get separated from each other. When that happened, the energy created by large groups being together would start to dissipate. Eventually this would result in calm returning to the area as people found themselves in smaller clusters and therefore less able to behave like idiots and avoid arrest, since smaller groups were much easier to deal with and not as volatile as crowds. At least this was the theory of the day in 1981.

Charlie had pulled the van out of our hiding spot in the shadows of the other parked cars along Talbot Road and we began slowly making our way towards where Clydesdale Street began on our left. I remember glancing in the side-view mirror and being grateful at seeing that Bravo-Hotel-Two-Five had followed our lead and was right behind us. Safety in numbers, Phil.

“Everyone got their helmets, sticks and gloves?” Charlie asked. It wasn’t necessary, really, since each of us was clutching the only pieces of protective equipment we had: our traditional Bobby helmets, which to the designer’s credit, did actually protect our heads reasonably well (provided you were struck from a vertical angle); our black leather gloves with a wool blend lining, once again giving the wearer the impression that they were thicker and therefore afforded more protection than they actually did—and also actually seemed to encourage overheating (Sweat became another problem); and our trusty hickory-made truncheons, another unique accoutrement for the English Bobby. Did we feel safe and secure as a result of all this stuff?

I don’t think so. Not in the least!“Good luck, lads!” Charlie said again. “I’ll wait back on

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All Saint’s Road

Portobello Road in case you need me.” He had stopped the van right on the corner of Clydesdale Street. The side doors of the van opened simultaneously and we poured out, all of our eyes on the far end of the street where it met with Westbourne Park Road.

The scene was surreal in many ways. The intersection at the far end of the street was completely covered with people, most of whom were looking east, away to our right from where we were, towards the flickering of blue lights, which although were out sight, were bouncing off the sides of buildings that we could see on the far side of Westbourne Park Road. Presumably, the shield teams had arrived on the street in front of the crowd and the revolving blue lights on top of their transport vans would be positioned behind them in readiness for housing the results of the arrest teams’ efforts.

Nobody noticed us at all, as our vans, now empty, turned and left the way we had come, leaving a group of ten of us standing across the street at the far end from where the action was obviously going on.

Although not the widest street in the area, I still felt that ten police officers strung out in a line across the width of Clydesdale Street looked pathetic, particularly if the bulk of the crowd, as it was being pushed back by the Riot Teams, was to use our particular street as their escape route.

I wish it had been me that came up with the suggestion that we add to our accessories with garbage can lids, but it wasn’t. However, as soon as someone said, “Let’s grab dustbin lids!” it immediately made so much sense to each of us. We each dispersed to search the front areas of the houses which lined both sides of the road, and everyone was soon back in position in our makeshift human barrier – but this time armed with the added protection of aluminum garbage can lids in one hand whilst holding our truncheons in the other.

Even from this distance I could hear glass breaking, along with the yelling and jeers that comes from angry crowds. There was also


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the distinctive sound of a bottle breaking, followed by a whoosh, and the reflection of shooting flames adding to the blue lights on the walls of the buildings along Westbourne Park Road.

“Molotovs!!” someone yelled out.Completely unnecessary. We all knew what they were and

what it meant.It was confirmed again over our portable radios seconds

later. Someone from behind the upturned Vauxhall barrier had thrown the first petrol bomb towards the approaching Riot Team. Fortunately, the strength of the throw had not matched the distance required, and it had fallen short of its target. It hit the ground and ignited into flames, creating an obstacle around which the closest shield teams had to maneuver.

In an effort to get to All Saints Road before any more weapons could be lit and thrown, the order had been given to move the shield teams westbound along Westbourne Park Road —closing the distance as quickly but as safely as possible, over the obstacle course of debris that probably would be littering the street at this point.

And then it happened.A wall of people ran into Clydesdale Street from Westbourne

Park Road in front of us. They charged away from the advancing shield teams which we still couldn’t see yet, and came around the corner, some one hundred yards ahead of us, and began tearing towards us at what appeared to be a million miles an hour! Who knows how many there were, but it looked like thousands. There were ten of us.

What on earth were we supposed to do? We started banging our metal garbage can “shields” with our truncheons in an effort to show the fast approaching mob that we were a force to be reckoned with. What a laugh that was!

My heart felt as though it was beating twice as loud as the banging noise I made on the lid with my stick!

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I was staring straight ahead at the mob.A mob angry and probably frightened at the same time?

Many of them wore scarves over their mouths and noses. For two reasons. To keep smoke out of their lungs and in order not to be easily recognized. There were so many of them! Running down the centre of the street, between the parked cars, along the sidewalk—wherever they could in order to escape the shield teams which had probably arrived at All Saints Road. But we had no way of seeing this because of the swarm of people in front of us.

I can honestly say that as I stood there in the middle of Clydesdale Street, watching the tsunami of people bearing down on us, I felt that we might die there that evening. How could we possibly survive? I could see the flames far behind them, more cars on fire now, and I could see a hail of stones and larger pieces of bricks and bottles being thrown across the road on Westbourne Park Road, which would undoubtedly happen to us very shortly once the bulk of the mob saw the hapless officers strung out in front of the group, running.

We had no full-length shields or full-face riot helmets. All we had were Mrs. Smith’s dustbin lid and a piece of hickory stick in our hands. Yes, we were as good as dead!

During my initial training at Hendon Police College, I had been taught that when humans find themselves in stressful and threatening situations, they develop “tunnel vision” and “tunnel hearing”. These are the terms given to account for why people (in our case, police officers) are able to explain some aspects of high-stress incidents but are practically blind to other obvious aspects of the same situation. It is a natural human reaction to many things, where you focus your attention on one thing and tend not to see those right next to it. This is exacerbated in those high stress moments, which people may find themselves in from time to time.

Taff, during my early training with him, had mentioned that this “tunnel vision” and “tunnel hearing” occurred, but it wasn’t


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until this moment, standing in Clydesdale Street at around midnight on Saturday, 11th April 1981, that I experienced it for the first time myself.

After staring at the wall of angry people bearing down on us, thinking about the type of eulogy that would likely be read at our funerals, I felt Martin tug my tunic sleeve to get my attention.

“Out of the way, Phil! Horses!” He yelled it as if he’d been yelling it for some time but I hadn’t heard him until then.

Horses? What horses?I snapped out of the place where I had been and turned to

see something that took a moment or two to compute in my confused head.

Behind us, was an entire Mounted Branch Division of officers, on board the largest horses that I had seen in my entire life!

I’d had riding lessons when I was growing up in Sussex, and had managed to stay relatively clear of them since that time. I’d forgotten how big they were. Holy smokes! These were massive, plus they were all kitted out for crowd control with protective visors over their heads and eyes. They were going to war!

It took me a millisecond to realize that I was in the way, so having worked out what was going on, I jumped to the side as an entire line of horses, together with their mounts formed up in roughly the same location as the pathetic line of police officers armed with garbage-can lids had been just moments earlier.

The effect on the mob moving rapidly down Clydesdale Street was instantaneous. They went from a run, to a jog, to completely stationary in a flash as they thought about their next move. The wall they were facing now looked impenetrable! I just hoped that no one threw anything towards the horses. To be honest, I was glad to be behind them and be alive, a state that up until a minute or so earlier, I wasn’t at all sure I was going to stay in.

Despite the crazy energy of that evening in Notting Hill and the violence that was obviously present, very few people were hurt

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as a result of the sporadic skirmishes that continued long into the night and into the early part of Sunday morning.

The Mounted Branch officers had turned up at precisely the right time and the crowd, despite their heightened and aggressive nature, had all thought better of using Clydesdale Street as their escape route. They melted away into the night and the events on All Saints Road fizzled out.

The fire department turned out behind the Riot Team and dealt with the crates of Molotov cocktails that fortunately, apart from the first one, had never been used.

Although I was never able to look at that street again without having flashbacks to that night, I was grateful that my colleagues and I got to go home safely the next morning.

Brixton had not been so lucky, with property damage in the millions, many people hurt—including well over two hundred police officers, and a weekend of street rioting that the country had never seen before or since.

I met up with Taff sometime after that weekend. I wanted to tell him how I had most definitely had a “tunnel” experience (apparently the impending arrival of the Mounted Branch Division had been widely broadcast over the portable radios but I had never heard it. If I had, I would have gladly dived out of their way sooner than I did). Taff listened with interest and commented how glad he was that I hadn’t been hurt—apparently it wouldn’t have looked good on his record—and he reminded me of the critical importance of being aware of your surroundings at all times. By doing so, you allow yourself to notice things that might be pretty important to see and hear.

“Like the entire cast from the Charge of the Light Brigade coming up behind me?” I suggested only half jokingly.

“Yes,” said Taff. “Remember, eyes and ears wide open all the time, Phil!”

Although I never used my handcuffs that night in Notting Hill, it certainly wasn’t a place where handshakes were going to work.


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There is, after all, a time and place for everything, I reminded myself.

Public order training for the police became extremely sophisticated, growing in its professionalism by leaps and bounds following the events of that weekend. After 150 burned-out buildings had been torn down for safety reasons. After more than 280 police officers had began healing, and returned to work, a commission of inquiry was struck by the government of the day to answer the question, “What the heck happened?” Lord Scarman, a retired Central Criminal Court Judge, was appointed to oversee the inquiry. Six months later, the Scarman Report was published and changed the face of public-order training and education throughout the nation.

Following Lord Scarman’s Report, we would all be training for this sort of thing. It would also ensure that we never again had a “Thin Blue Line” standing across a street holding garbage can lids and a stick as protection! However, the future didn’t help us on that night.

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Diana’s Wedding

c h a p t e r t e nDiana’s WeddingFour Things in Our Lives

W hat would prove to be one of the happiest days of my policing career occurred on Wednesday July 29th, 1981. Prince Charles was marrying Lady Diana Spencer at

St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the crowds were extremely pleasant and smiling—a welcome change from my usual experience of policing crowds, where lots of angry and frustrated people made up the vast majority.

The logistics of the day must have been mind-boggling to those who were in charge. An estimated two million spectators lined the streets, from Buckingham Palace to the Cathedral. Most had arrived days earlier and camped out to reserve a favourable viewing space. Two of the world’s most famous Royals would be passing by, and you didn’t want to be peering over anyone.

We were told four thousand police officers would be on duty. Along with twenty-five hundred military personnel. It was a world event and we would all be wearing our best uniforms. The creases on the trousers were to be sharp. Boots polished enough so you could see your reflection. Both tasks were reminiscent of Hendon Police College. Before the start of the educational cycle, an inspection parade was held outside on the drill square. There were shortcuts you picked up from the more seasoned recruits on how to press the creases into your tunic sleeves, and the front and rear of your trouser legs that the inspection team would quickly nod their approval. However, in order to get the tips of your leather patrol boots into a condition of reflection took time. Lots of time. Kiwi polish, cotton wool, saliva. And more time. All of this was meant to instill a sense of pride in the uniform and develop a staunch level of discipline.

But by July 29th, 1981, having left the police college three years earlier, my inspection-worthy uniform habits were way behind me.


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As they were with every one of my colleagues who were assigned to police the Royal Wedding that summer day. The result was four thousand officers who went to work with four thousand versions of what their best uniform should look like. Some amazing. Some not.

The wedding was scheduled for noon on a day the weather forecasters had got right: blazing-hot sunshine. With so many people to look out for, those succumbing to the heat might well present the most common challenge during the event. Our main priority was to be on the lookout for anyone causing problems. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) had been launching attacks on mainland England for several years and the fear of attack during the wedding, an event which would be watched by over seven hundred and fifty million people, was real.

We had strict instructions to “keep your eyes open” for anything suspicious in the crowd. I went to work that day with a strange mixture of excitement and nervousness. I was fortunate to be stationed on The Mall. A spot just east of Clarence House. I carefully monitored a section of the crowd in perfect view of the wedding participants.

Prince Charles and the rest of the Royal family would leave Buckingham Palace, just west of The Mall, and travel down the road past my location on their way to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Minutes later, Lady Diana, along with her entourage, would emerge from Clarence House, turn left onto The Mall, and drive the same route at a disciplined pace. She’d be fashionably late behind Prince Charles, but would arrive at the church on time.

I loved Central London and consider myself lucky to have been posted to Cannon Row Police Station as a Cadet, just prior to heading to Hendon Police College, at eighteen and a half years old. Cannon Row Station was tucked down a side road, a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. I was paired up with a Constable Pete, who turned out to be a history buff. A good thing, because Central London from Cannon Row Station, was all about history.

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One of the interesting things he taught me, and which had enormous significance to me on that day, was that Lord Nelson’s statue, standing proudly atop of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, faced west for a reason. He’s looking towards Admiralty Arch, which stands on one corner of Trafalgar Square and is the building guarding the east end of The Mall.

Walking through the arch and onto The Mall with Buckingham Palace a mile away in the distance, Pete told me to look up at the lampposts erected on either side of the street. They looked Victorian in design. Appropriate for this part of the city, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“Look at the very top, Phil. What do you see?” Pete asked.I peered again, and this time, by standing back a bit, I saw there

was a metal outline of a ship on the tip of the lamp post. Nelson’s Navy. Every single ship that was at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Pete told me, was placed atop of the lamp posts. All the way down The Mall. That is what he’s looking at from atop of his column in Trafalgar Square. “Pretty cool, huh?” Pete winked.

As we patrolled down the street towards the Palace, I confirmed every single lamp post supported a different ship. The full fleet of English Battleships that was present on that October day in 1805, when the French were defeated.

Police officers lined the route of the processions that would occur later that day, as the various dignitaries and royal guests travelled the length of The Mall. At the point where I was stationed, the crowd behind the metal barriers must have been twenty people deep, and everyone wearing something red, white or blue; the colours of the Union Jack. There were smiles, cameras. Everyone was happy to be part of the experience. Something to tell the kids and grandkids.

We stood on the other side of the crowd-control railings and observed them from the other side of the street. Several pairs of other officers patrolled within the crowd. As it grew closer to the time when the wedding procession appeared, the crowd had


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become densely massed and movement through the throng of people became almost impossible.

Church music could be heard above the noise of the crowd. Large banks of loudspeakers had been placed all the way down The Mall, so spectators along the route would hear everything going on inside the Cathedral, getting a sense of the grand event being held three miles away. With a sea of happy, smiling people in front of me, and no sign of an urban terrorist anywhere, I had begun thinking my day would be more about enjoying the experience, than I initially thought.

I noticed an elderly man amongst the people at the rear of the crowd, some twenty feet away. He had snow-white hair, weather-beaten skin, and looked like he’d spent some years at sea. He stood staring at me. As if he were about to cry. There were about fifty people sardined together between us. Everyone was being jolted slightly as people tried to adjust their line of sight, in time for the big event, not too far away. The man seemed, of all things, lonely. It’s what his demeanour told me. He looked sad, solitary and confused. Then he was gone.

I strained to see any sign of him. But there were too many people. Something about him made me uncomfortable. I mentioned him to the officer posted to a spot several feet away from me and asked him if he’d seen the man. He had not. To him, the old man was just another face stuck at the back of the crowd, waiting to see the Prince drive by on his way to get married.

I rescanned the faces in front of me and eventually spotted the white hair of the man I’d just seen. He was much closer now Again, he looked directly at me with those same sullen eyes. I hurried up to the metal barrier in front of me, never taking my eyes off of his. I pointed at him, and then indicated with my hand he should move towards me. He nodded and began to inch his way forward to where I stood. The crowd in front of me was curious as to why I pointed towards them and a few turned their heads to

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see what was going on. A couple moved to the side to ease the way. A short time later he was against the railing standing in front of me. He’d been crying.

I was entirely curious about his emotional state, but equally cognizant that the future King of England would be passing along The Mall shortly. I needed to have my attention focused on the event and everybody else.

“Thank you,” he said to the people who had allowed him to pass through, and who were now curious about this man being summoned to the front of the line by a fresh-faced police officer. I could only imagine how those folks who had been camped at the railings for two days felt! But, nobody said a word. Though I’m certain they truly wanted to.

I said, “You look very unhappy amongst all of this excitement, if you don’t mind me saying so.” I waited for a few moments. Several people in the crowd looked on. The man looked at me as if trying to decide whether to tell me his story. I stared straight at him, motioning for him to begin speaking.

He told me he’d spent his entire adult career in the British Navy. He served his country for forty-five years. He rose through the ranks until his retirement. He’d survived battles including the Second World War. I noticed a small pin on his lapel and asked him if this was connected to his Naval Service. He told me it was the Military Cross. I’m not a brilliant historian, but I knew that for anyone to be awarded the Military Cross, you had to have been involved in something significant while serving your country. The audience around us listened intently.

The interesting thing was you instantly believed the man. This was not some delusional chap who had lost the rest of his group on their day out from the institution. He was being honest and authentic with me.

“Now it’s my turn to say thank you,” I said. “But I still don’t understand the sadness. On this day, of all days.”


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His family had lineage within the British Navy dating back to the time of Admiral Horatio Nelson. He said a distant relative had died in the Battle of Trafalgar aboard the HMS Mars. He pointed up. I turned and looked up as well, realizing instantly we were standing ten feet from one of the lamp standards lining The Mall. The plaque fifteen feet above us on the lamp post read: HMS Mars, 1805. Above the plaque was the metal silhouette of a battleship.

“Every time I come to London, I come here.” He said. “The place is important to me. When I tried to find a spot to stand nearby, I was shoved away by some younger people telling me I didn’t belong. They said my Royal Family had died a long time ago.”

It shocked me, as it did those listening around him. A man who had put his life on the line, his entire life, as had his family for generations before him. He’d come to that particular spot in order to connect with his heritage. His history. His reason for being who he was. I glanced at my watch. Prince Charles would have left the Palace, and was soon to be passing my location. I needed to be alert. My anxious demeanour was obvious to those standing nearby.

A lady with a Union Jack-patterned umbrella on her head had been standing next to the elderly man as he described his story. She overheard everything and spoke up and told a couple of people standing at the barrier, as far as she was concerned, he deserved her spot more than she did. He was welcome to stand right at the barrier, and get an unobstructed view of the procession. I heard on my radio it had emerged from the gates of Buckingham Palace. The police and military personnel should ready themselves.

The elderly man gleamed and shed a few tears of joy. The cheering had begun to build within the crowd. Flags waved

enthusiastically. The convoy was just one mile away to the west. The glistening limousines, all sporting royal standards, had begun making their way along The Mall. The police officers who lined this route were tasked with watching the crowd, just as they did at any big event. They were not there to gawk at the procession of vehicles

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or their occupants. Their job was to make sure no one did anything stupid, dangerous or criminal. This meant facing away from the show!

Between the lines of police and the wedding party in their smart vehicles, was a line of military personnel. The military division was stationed where I was. They were incredibly smart-looking household guards. Red tunics, huge black fur headdresses, and parade square boots polished to perfect sheen. They were there to protect the route, and faced towards the procession. Each snapped sharply to attention as the Royals drew close. A disciplined wave, perfected from years of practice. When the Prince’s line of vehicles passed, the cheering and waving of flags quietened. An air of expectation came over the crowd. The next event was the appearance of Lady Diana.

I looked at the elderly man standing on the other side of the barrier. His face said it all. Whatever had occurred earlier was behind him now. It was now his turn to beckon me towards him. Since the Prince had passed and was well on his way to St. Paul’s, I had a few minutes to spare.

“Why did you pull me out of the crowd, officer?” He continued, “What was it you saw?”

I repeated something Taff had taught me. That all human beings desire the same four things in their lives. To be valuable. To be capable. To be important. To be understood.

Taff had told me during one of our foot-beats together that when you dealt with an upset person, at least one of these desires was not being met, if not more. What we see is the result of that pain. My job as a police officer was to show sufficient empathy to the person, and find out what was wrong. Allowing a person to talk about it might be enough to help them through it.

I told the man when I saw his eyes, standing at the back of the crowd, I knew something was wrong.

The man smiled at me.


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c h a p t e r e l e v e nBramshill Interview TragedyAnd Words Will Often Hurt Me

Bramshill Police College was a traditional English home nestled in a beautiful estate in the south county of Hampshire The setting was peaceful and forested, designed to provide

a calm atmosphere for higher learning to take place. Indeed, perfect for the brightest stars and intellectual minds in the British policing world to grow and develop into the executive ranks of their respective organizations around the country.

Or so I’ve been told. I never made it there. Bramshill possessed a mystical quality, the sort of quality

that prevented you from feeling you had a complete career as an aspiring supervisor with the police unless you had been there. One day Inspector John Burbeck gladly signed the promotional request form I placed on his desk. If you had designs on being promoted within the police force, you put your name forward to the Inspector requesting that he approve of your being given the opportunity to take the first promotional exam to the rank of Sergeant.

Within a few weeks, I was heading back to North-West London, to Hendon Police Training College; it had been selected to host the Sergeant’s examination. I had studied my heart out and had spent every spare moment I had in my local library, tucked away in the cloister-like atmosphere of the reference section. I was determined to prove once and for all my so-so school report cards—with teachers’ comments like, “could do better if he applied himself,” had no relevance to the twenty-two year old professional I’d become.

It paid off. I wrote the exam with the same apprehension as my fellow officers and passed with sufficient ease. I’d achieved 92%, and was ecstatic. I was notified I’d be placed in the top ten percent of those officers who were successful in the exam. I had a chance at

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a Bramshill entrance interview! I was recommended for the next stage by the senior ranking officer at the police station. In my case it was to be Chief Superintendant Kelly, who quickly announced to me he’d gladly complete the letter of recommendation. I mailed the letter, and sat back hoping the stars were aligned in my favour. Two stages down. One to go.

A couple of weeks later, an official letter arrived in my mailbox. It was written on New Scotland Yard letterhead, requesting the pleasure of my company to participate in the Bramshill Police College selection process. Apart from the date, time, and location within the headquarters building of the Metropolitan Police Service, no other details were provided. Everyone I spoke to about the interview process had a different memory of their experience. Not much help at all. All that was clear was I’d be participating in three interviews. Each presided over by a different senior officer. One of the three interviews would prove to be an experience I would never forget.

The day came for the interview and I remember quite clearly how paranoid I was about my appearance. I wanted to look so professionally perfect that I wouldn’t even have to open my mouth and the response from the interviewers would be a big thumbs up.

Not wanting to travel down to New Scotland Yard in my uniform (with its razor-like creases and highly-polished boots) on a crowded and sweaty underground train, I packed everything carefully into a duffle bag and made my way down to Central London. I’d never been inside either of the Twin Headquarters Towers before, but I remember feeling slightly intimidated. These structures, located just down from the Houses of Parliament, represented the very core of the organization I was devoted to. I went up to the security officers guarding the front entrance and explained what I was doing there.

The precise sequence of events from that point is muddled. Except for the fact I found out quickly that there was no specific place for me to change from the civilian clothes I had worn for the journey into my uniform.


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The men’s washroom was located down the corridor from the interview room and became my impromptu locker room. I managed to change, despite the various people wandering in and out using the facilities. I at last took my place alongside the other candidates seated on stiff metal chairs in the corridor. I knew that I was the odd man out. The six other officers who were there all looked like they had just come out of the box marked Brand New Police Officers. How did they look so good? I’d worked hard the previous evening ensuring everything was just so, but I no longer felt so confident that I could rely on my professional appearance. I now needed to actually say something during the interviews in order to secure my place on the train to Bramshill!

A female police Inspector appeared and provided all of us with the essential details of how the interview sequence would go. There were three different interview rooms, numbered Interview Room #1, #2, and #3. When our name was called, we were to enter the first interview room by knocking, then await permission to enter. Once that interview was completed, we were to exit, wait five minutes, then repeat the requesting process for Interview Room #2, and #3, until we’d completed the sequence.

In each of the rooms, we would find a lone interviewer. Each was to be a senior officer, but only one from the Police Force. The other two would be from different Armed Forces. On this particular day, the Air Force and Navy were the ones represented. They were looking for leadership qualities, not whether or not you could handcuff someone.

Looking back at that scene now, I can see they were right. At the time, it only served to increase my tension regarding the next hour. Time dragged as we waited on the chairs in the corridor. I felt as though I was waiting to see the principal after getting caught doing something naughty at school. Eventually, it was my time to enter #1. I wandered over feeling less confident about the upcoming experience. The order of the interviewers was the Police, the Navy, and then the Air Force. I don’t remember

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the specific questions asked by the first two interviewers. I do remember when I entered the third room, shook hands (using the most confident handshake technique I’d practiced on the door knob of my bedroom for hours) with a senior citizen-looking, uniform-wearing Officer. I had this weird fatalistic feeling. The previous two interviewers had copies of my Police Service record on their desks, making reference to them occasionally to clarify a question with me. On the desk of this aging fighter pilot, there was nothing. The table was completely bare.

I sat down upon his invitation on the lone chair with a bright red cushioned seat. He asked my name and how long I’d been a police officer. I remember thinking if he’d have had a copy of my life in front of him, he may not have needed to ask such inane questions. He then asked his third and final question.

“What high school did you attend, Constable Eastwood?”I told him I went to the local one in Littlehampton, believing

he was just making small talk before asking some challenging problem solving situations, where I’d need to demonstrate my integrity, my flexibility, my trustworthiness, my work ethic, and decision-making ability. But no, he just looked at me, and after what seemed like the longest pause, said to me, “Thank you. That will be all Constable Eastwood.”

At first, I couldn’t quite believe what my head was telling me this meant. He had asked what school I’d attended and then said nothing. Why? Because it wasn’t either a school he recognized or had attended himself ? Perhaps it was because it was the local secondary school, and not some fancy private school, whose fees would make most parents head for the nearest cliff? It seemed he had all but closed the door on this chapter of my life.

“Is that it, Sir?” I asked, not wanting to come to terms with what had happened.

“I’ve told you already. That will be all.” He was dismissing me. I left without saluting him, as I had done following my previous


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interviews. My head was reeling. I’d heard rumblings about the Old Boys Network. How to get ahead in some organizations depended on your last name. Who you were related to was connected to how far your upward journey would go. I hadn’t imagined in my wildest dreams that it would take the form of a senior Air Force official sitting alone in Interview Room #3, and affect me so significantly. I returned to the washroom to get changed into my civilian travel clothes without stopping to chat to the line of eager and nervous candidates, still waiting in the corridor.

I was stunned. I don’t remember the return journey to my flat in Chiswick, but I do remember the consequence of that interview.

I never did get to go to Bramshill. I never got to participate in the accelerated promotional system it would have afforded me for the duration of my career with the Metropolitan Police Service. I certainly never forgot how insignificant I felt as I left that room with the bright red seat cushion.

It was an incredible experience for me in many ways, although some of the benefits of having failed the interview were not apparent until I was older and wiser. One of the outcomes was I learned to understand it wasn’t the Air Force Officer’s intention to make me feel insignificant. But that was the impact it had on me. He had, with these never to be forgotten words, “That will be all,” changed the course of my career, and the immediate effect on me was one of worthlessness and failure.

I was cast back to the report cards I’d received in the high school he likely didn’t approve of, suggesting more application to studies would have proved beneficial. The impact is everything, regardless of how intentional the person is with their words or actions.

I also learned you can only control so much in your life. There are always going to be circumstances where just when you feel you’ve done everything to ensure success, something occurs that you have no way of preparing for. And it bumps you off course. The test in life is how you respond to those bumps. How I responded to the

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‘red cushion’ bump was telling myself it was their loss and I’d use it as a learning experience for the future.

Attitude is everything and how you see the world is critical. It’s the classic half-full or half-empty analogy—I have since learned about Asset-Based Thinking and Deficit-Based Thinking, which are terms given to how your head can control your destiny; whether you see the world as a place full of problems or whether you see it as a place full of challenging opportunities. I left New Scotland Yard that day full of Deficit-Based thoughts, and had no idea what to do next.

I called Taff.We sat on my couch in the living room. I told Taff about the

experience earlier in the day. He was pragmatic about the whole thing, reminding me I’d still be promoted to Sergeant and would continue enjoying the benefit of his company until it happened. That was worth much more (in his humble opinion) than any missed opportunity to play leadership games at Bramshill, with a bunch of spoiled kids who went to the fancy private schools because their daddy could afford it.

He was right. I returned to Notting Hill a much better officer for the experience of sitting on that red cushion in room #3—as well as sharing a Belgian beer in my flat with Taff later the same day. My biggest lesson came many years later, when I first heard the word Genshai. Such an unusual word, which has its roots in the Hindu vocabulary and means no one should deliberately treat a person in such a manner that they feel like a lesser person, particularly if that person is themselves. That’s what I experienced in those few minutes: Genshai.

I made a commitment I would treat others, and myself, respectfully, so that I would never be the reason for anyone to feel dismissed or insignificant. My words and actions would always reflect that commitment.

Following the death of Andrea Adams, who was bullied whilst working for the BBC a number of years ago, a foundation was


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established to build on the positive work she started. The Andrea Adams Trust was the driving force behind new legislation in England called the Dignity at Work Bill. It mandates employers to pay attention to and assist their employees in maintaining healthy relationships in their workplaces.

The corporate logo of the Trust plays on the adage of “Stick And Stones May Break My Bones” and adds, “And Words Will Often Hurt Me.” It highlights to us all that regardless of our intentions, we are responsible for the impact words and actions have on someone else.

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The Miner’s Strike

c h a p t e r t w e l v eThe Miner’s StrikeTreat Me Like a Human Being

On March 12, 1984 a miner’s strike was called by Arthur Scargill. He was the president of the National Union of Miners. He’d been battling the National Coal Board,

led by Ian McGregor. McGregor was planning to close twenty older and inefficient coal mines throughout the country. Many communities in the north of England and Scotland were dependent on the mines. The specter of massive disruption loomed large. The government’s attempt to put a heavily subsidized and nationalized industry back into the profit column would also result in the loss of 20,000 jobs.

The strike lasted almost a year. It divided hard working and very blue collar neighbourhoods. Some workers made the difficult choice to continue working in order to put food on the table, whereas the strikers received a low strike pay from the union funds. This pitted neighbour against neighbour. Sometimes even family members against each other. The conflict raged for a year, until March of 1985.

Striking pickets appeared at different collieries each day, trying to “peacefully” encourage their neighbours to join them in the strike, making a case for solidarity against the government. But it was just a matter of time before these peaceful persuasions would turn to violence and the police were called in. Lots of police. From all around the country. It was a strange time and something I had never imagined I would be involved in when I set out on my quest to deal with the David Eade’s of the world.

On the week I was assigned to head north for picket duty, I packed the largest Holdall I could find, and got myself to the police station at around ten o’clock in the morning. I packed my uniforms and boarded the coach waiting outside. Each police


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station was supplying approximately ten police officers each week. There were over 250 police stations located in the Metropolitan Police’s area.

The coach I got into went on to collect more B District officers before it headed to Hendon Police College. Once at Hendon, the coaches began lining up on the vast tarmac surface of the drill and parade square. You can’t imagine the sight as the coaches pulled into line, one by one. Each filled with police officers waiting expectantly to see what the upcoming week would bring.

When the last coach arrived and the logistics officers had ticked off our names from a list on their clipboards, the signal was given for the escort motorcycles and cars to take up their positions at the front and rear of the convoy. We slowly pulled out of the college grounds. A massive snaking line of coaches, perhaps as many as thirty, headed towards the motorway entrance. The curious faces of the police recruits watched from their accommodation buildings, as we turned out of the gates to go north. The same scene would be played out each and every Sunday for the duration of the strike.

Help wasn’t just sent from the Metropolitan Police. Many County Forces arrived as well, with coaches of uniformed officers arriving from the other large urban centres. We were housed in large military bases that were able to accommodate the massive numbers of personnel. I imagined an ariel view of the country would look quiet peculiar each Sunday afternoon, as the large strings of coaches began their journeys from all points of the nation’s compass and started threading their way towards the single destination: Yorkshire.

The accommodations were, to say the least, rudimentary. But it was the four a.m. wakeup call that irritated the officers the most. The morning shift at the coal mines in the area I was assigned began at six. Any trouble at the gates would occur prior to this time. Our job was to be kitted up and on the coaches by five. We waited in great long lines for the information about which colliery the pickets were targeting that day. We headed towards

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the same one hoping we’d have more police officers than pickets, which allowed us to provide a cover of safety for the miners who weren’t on strike to get in through the gates and go to work. It was a tough predicament for both parties. And you felt for them.

Each day was different. On many occasions, the pickets never turned up anywhere and we were left twiddling our thumbs, exercising patience and trying to understand the importance of reasons why we were there. On other days, however, it was literally a war. You had lines of police officers, often equipped with riot shields, positioned along the entry roads of the mine and building a human wall between the picketers and their friends, neighbours and family members who had made the difficult decision to go to work every day. The reverse scenario played itself out again at two o’clock in the afternoon when the morning shift of workers, who’d successfully been escorted into work, were finished their work day and the afternoon shift arrived. Violence didn’t occur every time the police and pickets met at the same location. But the atmosphere was always tense. My experience in the ten different weeks I helped with the miner’s strike, was that there were fewer problems in the afternoon for some reason. I still can’t figure out why that was. There was daylight in the afternoon whereas the six a.m. shift started in darkness, especially during the winter months.

As the situation developed through the year, the violence on the picket lines occupied the television news headlines so often that it no longer even seemed newsworthy. Most days, the authority granted to the police in order to prevent a possible breach of the peace at the colliery, was expanded. This allowed the police to stop cars they believed contained striking miners and search them for weapons—which had started showing up during the clashes with the police. They had taken to throwing steel ball bearings at police officers. Or would lay them down on the road in front of the mounted officers to disrupt the advancing police lines. Police horses were added to the riot shield teams as the violence grew, and were


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one of the singularly most useful resources in controlling crowds. They towered above everyone. To great effect.

One particular day, my group of officers was stationed quite a distance from a mine. There had been clashes earlier in the day when the gates had opened and the miners waiting to work had squeezed through the ranks of officers holding the picketers back. Our job had been to stop vehicles on a stretch of road and find out who was in the cars. To ask where they were going. If there was enough suspicion, a search of the occupants and the vehicle would be conducted.

We stood on the road at the police check point we’d established. We checked the cars, which were obediently pulling in to talk to us. There was one particular chap driving alone in his car. He was middle-aged, and looked like an entirely average member of the public. But as soon as I leaned down at the driver’s window to talk to him, I noticed the beads of perspiration on his forehead. And he wouldn’t look me in the eye, as he held onto his steering wheel with a death grip. I never claimed to be the greatest detective in the world, especially at that stage in my career, but it was obvious something was off. I told him to pull the car out of the line up at the checkpoint, wanting to ask him a few more questions.

He answered all of my questions politely. He was a miner who had joined the strike at the beginning, with hope that the sheer number of people who weren’t at work would force the National Coal Board to reconsider its plan of closing the twenty mines it had announced initially. As the strike dragged on, though, his family had begun to suffer the effects of the reduced income. As indeed was the case with thousands of other striking miners’ families.

He told me he was on his way to another strike meeting at a nearby civic centre. But I was still curious about his nervousness. He was far from being at ease, maintaining his tight grip on the wheel. His sweaty forehead. I told him I’d like to perform a cursory search of his car, and asked him to please step out of the vehicle.

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He was reluctant. I asked several times. Finally, he got out of the car and waited.

I opened the glove compartment. Inside was a large metal slingshot and a dozen one-inch diameter steel ball bearings. He watched me intently. I held up the professional-grade sling shot in one hand, the ball bearings with the other.

He had tears in his eyes. He said, “Can I talk to you? You need to know why they’re in there.”

I closed the car door. We walked a short distance away for some privacy, as there were other officers and vehicle occupants at the check point. I don’t remember the man’s name. But I do remember what he desperately wanted to tell me. He was a normal, hard-working miner who had found he was doing things during the strike he wouldn’t have dreamt of doing in a million years. Normally. But things were not normal.

He was driving to a union meeting and had spent the previous evening building the sling shot. He said he didn’t like who he’d become. He wasn’t spending time with his family, and when he was with them, he’d be short tempered and impatient. Finally, he admitted the weapon was for use against the police horses—even though he believed he wasn’t capable of such a thing.

I had no choice but to arrest him. But I didn’t handcuff him. When we were in the back of the police van, heading to the local police station, he repeated how he had no idea how his life had gotten to this point. He almost seemed grateful for having been apprehended. His life had become a roller-coaster ride. He looked at me as we bumped our way along twisting country lanes. He said, “Thanks for not telling me you understand how I feel. And thanks for treating me like a human being.” His eyes misted.

The television images of the clashes between picketers and police played in my head. Put both sides in military uniforms and it would have looked like any war movie you care to mention. And not northern England in 1984! What a crazy episode of our


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lives we were living right then. I told him my field trainer had always reminded me police tend to meet people at low points in their lives, and to tell them we understood how they felt, would not only sound, but would also be insincere.

He extended his hand for a handshake.

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Welcome to Tooting!

c h a p t e r t h i r t e e nWelcome to Tooting!Amaze Yourself and Share Something

In the spring of 1984 I received the news I’d been hoping for. I was to be promoted to the rank of Sergeant! I was beside myself. I wasn’t even twenty-four years old. I couldn’t wait to

get on the phone with my father. At that time there were over 27,000 police officers in the

Metropolitan Police Service. Several hundred constables were promoted to Sergeant every year. I imagine it was because of this that the announcement did not come with a full-scale military pageant, complete with marching bands and ceremonial drill teams exercising precise maneuvers in my honour.

Instead, my name appeared on a line on a page in the internal notices, circulated each week throughout the organization, listing the promotions and other changes to personnel and working locations. At least I managed to be on the first page!

Beside my name was the announcement that I was being transferred to Tooting, in South London. It was a police station also housing the headquarter offices for W District.

Saying goodbye to Notting Hill was a surprisingly sad thing for me to have done. It’s where I learned so much. The experience was certain to be with me forever. I’d experienced incredible growth there, not only as a police officer, but also as a person.

But I was interested and excited to be entering a new phase of my career—though not particularly looking forward to the scrutiny and cynicism of those I would be supervising because of my age. Or lack thereof.

There was one event that seemed to be the turning point, where the cynicism I’d been sensing, ended. As usual, it had nothing to do with police work. Rather—and unsurprisingly,


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it had everything to do with treating people with respect and listening to what they were saying.

As in every police station in London, Tooting was run on a schedule using four different shifts. They were called Reliefs: A, B, C and D. Sergeant Eastwood, fresh out of the promotional box, was assigned to C Relief. Immediately, I was wished good luck in a way that made me wonder whether anybody expected to ever see me again.

“What’s wrong with C Relief ?” I asked. The responses were usually of the non-committal-shrug variety. Along with a very transparent and insincere, “Oh...nothing. Nothing at all.”

But it didn’t take long to find out why people were hesitant in their congratulations regarding C Relief. In the dispatch centre, the two employees, Mike and Heather, rarely spoke despite spending a twelve-hour shift next to one another. Apart from specific communication connected with ensuring accurate details of emergency calls our police officers were being sent to were passed on, the pair of them said nothing to each other. As it turned out, it had been that way for quite some time.

I couldn’t understand it. How could two people who worked so closely with one another, have such an apparent barrier between them?

I asked my Inspector about this rather ugly situation. He said, “We’ve tried to deal with it, but that’s just the way they want it. Believe me!”

Dispatchers are critical cogs in the wheel of police work. If something is to go wrong with the communication in the centre, when wrong or incomplete information is given to the officers, people can get hurt. Perhaps seriously, and in some situations, unnecessarily.

“But does anyone know why they won’t talk to each other?” I asked.

“We never get that far,” was the reply. “They both refused to talk about it. It’s got something to do with Mike’s portable

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radios—that much we do know. But beyond that? It’s a brick wall of silence!”

I had noticed that when Mike came to work in the dispatch he would routinely go to the officer who signed out portable radios to the constables and sign two out for himself. He’d then bring them down to the dispatch centre. No other dispatcher on any of the other Reliefs would do this as far as I knew.

The portable radios were placed beside his Tooting Police radio console, with their frequencies tuned to the neighbouring police stations’ channels. Wandsworth to our north. Croydon to our south.

When I was in the station and at the office, I could clearly hear the calls being dispatched throughout our adjacent areas over the portable units that Mike had brought in, as well as our Tooting related calls, dispatched via the main desk mounted radio in front of him. What was it about these additional radios that created this monastery-like mood of silence? It was the sort of atmosphere you could figuratively cut with a knife when you were around them.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the freshness of my arrival at Tooting might just have created an unexpected opportunity. I could use my limited exposure to Tooting as a reason to have a conversation and to ask a question or two. But I knew the longer I waited to ask those questions, the more difficult it would be to use the excuse of me just having arrived to use it. The moment presented itself.

Mike had taken a day off. This moved Heather up to Mike’s position as dispatcher. A part-time staff member was brought in to fill Heather’s usual position, answering routine telephone enquiries and emergency calls, as well as a number of ancillary tasks.

After the usual pleasantries at the start of the shift, I said to Heather, “It’s good to see you sitting in the top seat.” I was referring to the police dispatcher’s chair. I continued, “And somewhat puzzling at the same time. The spot where Mike places his radios is empty.”


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The moment of truth had arrived. I waited for the response.“Do you know why he does that, Phil?” Heather asked me.“What do you mean...do what?” “Brings in those two portable radios to the dispatch centre.” “No, I don’t actually. Although I have wondered. Particularly since

no one else seems to do that on any of the Reliefs that I’ve seen.”Heather looked directly at me, staring into my eyes—as if

summoning up the courage to say something. “It’s his way of telling me I’m incompetent. Just to let me know that he is better than me.”

“What? I don’t understand at all, Heather.” I countered. “Firstly, I know that you’re not incompetent. Quite the opposite actually! Secondly, I don’t make the connection between that and the two radios at all. Has he said this to you?”

“Are you kidding me? Oh no. He’s too smart for that, but I know that’s what he means. Guaranteed!”

“Forgive me, but I still don’t make the connection. Sorry, Heather.”

“Don’t you see? By bringing the radios in here so he can listen to Wandsworth and Croydon calls, he is telling me how good he is as a dispatcher and how much more than me he can do at the same time. That’s my point!”

Heather was clearly upset by the whole episode. Explaining it to me had brought the entire issue into sharp focus for her.

I said, “Have you thought about asking him why he does it? You never know, there might be an entirely different reason. One that has nothing to do with you at all.”

“No, that is the reason. I don’t need to ask him about it,” she said, firmly. A defiant tone in her voice. She turned away from the conversation to focus on the dispatch console, even though nothing requiring her attention was happening at that precise moment.

End of story, Phil, I thought.But that can’t be right. That can’t be the reason! There must be

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another explanation. That couldn’t possibly be the reason that the two of them barely spoke to each other. It didn’t make sense to me. I decided to press one more time. Damn the torpedoes!

“Heather?” I said to her back. “What if I asked Mike if he was willing to sit down with you and me and talk about why he brings the radios in here? I have a funny feeling that he doesn’t understand the impact this behaviour has on you. Would you listen to him? And then he would have a chance to hear how you feel. You never know, we might learn something about each other. What do you think?”

“Only if you’re there,” Heather said, without turning.“That’s brilliant,” I said. “Thank you, Heather.”I didn’t go further, since even this step seemed a significant

one. I just asked her that if between that day and whenever I could get our meeting arranged, she changed her mind, to let me know as quickly as she could. Heather agreed.

This was a positive step forward for Heather, I thought. She had essentially told me she was making a judgement call about Mike’s motives based purely on the impact he was having on her. This, of course, is what many people do, all of the time. Usually, they find out they’ve been totally wrong. The only way to clarify their assumptions and perhaps relieve some of the tension existing between the pair of them is to do two things: ask the one person what they meant by their actions, and tell the other person how their behaviour has impacted them. Not easy tasks by any stretch, but absolutely crucial if the situation is to be resolved effectively. This was what I was hoping to do if able to get them together for a chat.

I had started thinking, in those early days of being a Sergeant, how a great deal of the motives behind our actions is below the water level and can’t be seen. Our behaviour is but the tip of the iceberg, yet it’s this very behaviour that people interpret for themselves and discern meaning from.


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Having got Heather to the point where she was at least prepared to have a conversation with Mike—albeit with me around and in the right circumstances, the next hurdle was to get Mike to the same table to discuss a topic that no one in his eight years of service had ever brought up before. I wasn’t too certain about how I was going to do that without putting him on the defensive.

When Mike returned to work a day later, I decided to make the move with an entirely neutral approach. I said, “I’ve been noticing how you like to bring in a couple of extra radios to the dispatch centre, Mike.”

“Yes I do. I’ve been doing it for years.”“I only noticed,” I went on, “because I’ve had an opportunity to

work on some of the other Reliefs and none of their dispatchers use any other portables. Even when Heather took over for you the other day I noticed that she didn’t have any extra radios, either.”

“I just like to know what’s going on across the border of Tooting. It gives us the heads-up should we need to react quickly. At the very least it’s advance notice that something is coming our way!”

I couldn’t argue with his logic. He was certainly right about how helpful it was to have some advance notice of someone or something coming into our area from the neighbouring jurisdictions. When that did occur, we’d receive a frantic phone call which would be passed onto the dispatcher. It was actually a process that wasted valuable time. Unfortunately, what Mike didn’t see was the impact his behaviour was having on Heather, who had interpreted it to mean something entirely negative.

“Does Heather know why you bring these two additional radios with you when you dispatch?” I asked.

“She must,” he replied. “I’ve been doing it for years. Way before you came here, Phil. She would have said something if it bothered her, wouldn’t she?”

“I’m not so sure she does know, Mike. And you also have more seniority. I know that I’d be hesitant to bring up an issue like that

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to someone if I was in a similar predicament.”“I don’t know. I still think that she would have brought it up

before, Phil.”“Maybe you’ve discussed it at one of those team meetings

you’ve had?”“We never have those. We don’t need to. We work together all

year round.”“But you hardly speak to each other,” I blurted out. “I’ve seen

the pair of you sit there and work the telephones and radios, but hardly utter a word to the other person outside of that.” I let the fact that I had noticed this rest with him for a short while. You could tell that he was thinking about this last point carefully. “Well, if you’ve never had a chance to get together and chat away from work, how about we start doing that? At least it would be a chance for me to get to know you two, and you to know me.”

Mike turned this over in his mind as well. “Well, I suppose there’s no down side,” he said, after what felt like the world’s longest pause. “When do you want to get together?”

The conversation stalled at that point. I hadn’t thought of where or how this meeting would take place. But in the end we decided at a place where most of England’s greatest mysteries have been solved: the local pub.

In our case, it was The Railway Bell, a neighbourhood pub just down the street from the police station on Mitcham Road. It would be quiet enough in there for us to sit down and talk. We were on dayshift that week and agreed to meet up inside The Bell.

It’s peculiar, but when you see people outside of the environment that they are so familiar to you in, they appear like an entirely new person. So was the case with both Heather and Mike, neither of whom resembled the pair of coworkers back at the police station giving each other the silent treatment for twelve hours a day!

We ordered ciders from the barman and found the quietest spot in the bar, far away from the one-armed bandits, dart boards


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and snooker tables. We opened with the usual. Families. Kids. Pets. Holiday questions. They were all reliable for this sort of get-together. Then there was a pause in the conversation, before I mentioned how much I appreciated the fact that we’d made it possible to come and get to know one another a little better. I asked Mike and Heather whether either of them had heard about The Johari Window.

Neither had.“Well,” I explained, “It was developed by a pair of American

psychologists as a way of describing the process of interaction between people.” I grabbed a cardboard beer coaster and flipped it over to its plain white side. Perfect. Mike handed me a pen. I began to draw. I explained as I drew, about the four-paned window. Each pane represented a different aspect of our interaction with people around us. The panes were titled: Open, Blind, Hidden and Unknown. I said I’d use myself to show them how effective the Johari Window was in understanding things about relationships between people. “The Open Window,” I said, “represents things I know about myself and that you also know about me. Like my name. The Blind Window is where there are things that you know about me, but which I do not know. This could be as simple as a piece of food in my teeth after a meal. I haven’t noticed it, but it’s very clear to you.”

Mike said, “It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t understand how you can use it to understand a relationship between different people.”

“It’s a different way of looking at folks, that’s all,” I said. “Why don’t I complete the window? Hopefully you’ll see why it’s so clever.”

“Okay,” said Mike.“So, the third pane is the Hidden Window. This is something

I know about myself, but is something that you do not know. For instance, I absolutely love to watch Formula 1 racing on the telly. But it’s something that I have never told anyone at Tooting, so there is no way you’d know about that part of me.”

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This was the point in the discussion about the window which I wanted to use to broach the idea of Mike and his radios. But I needed to complete my description first.

“Don’t tell me, Phil,” Heather said. “The Unknown Window is stuff that you don’t know about yourself and neither do we. Is that it?”

“That’s it, exactly! And the sort of things we are talking about here might be how I would react in situations that I’ve never been in before. For example, I have never touched a handgun, let alone fire one, so I have no idea whether I would be comfortable learning how to shoot or whether I would be completely useless at it. Do you see what I mean?” I pointed at the squares I had drawn on the beer mat.

“I do,” said Mike, “But how does it help? That bit I don’t get at all.”

“Well, the idea is that the more information about ourselves we can move from the Hidden Window and into the Open Window, the more we are able to understand each other because of what is known. Here’s an example. There was a call once that I went to when I was in Notting Hill. A Cocker Spaniel had been struck by a car. It was lying helpless in the middle of the road, yelping in pain. Just the day before, my parents had called me at work to tell me the first dog that we had in the family was put down because it too had wandered out into the street by my parents’ home and been hit. I was devastated. I loved that dog so much. His name was Whiskey and he was a Cocker Spaniel. A beautiful gold colour. But I never told anyone about it. Had I done so, there’d be a chance I would not have been sent on that call the next day, or if I had talked about it, I might have been able to handle it better. I was a wreck. I was so upset.”

Heather said, “So the idea is that the more we talk to each other about ourselves the better it is. More stuff in the Open Window? Is that it?”

“Yes!” I said. “For instance, I know I’m new here, but I’ve noticed that the two of you don’t talk too much to each other.


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You talk about the police calls that you receive, Heather, and that you then dispatch, Mike. But nothing in between. What’s that about? I’m curious because it is something that I have not seen before. I’ve only got Notting Hill to compare it to, but there everyone spoke all the time, and I mean ALL THE TIME.” I laughed to try to make the comment not sound too heavy for them to tackle. It didn’t work.

“It’s his bloody portable radios, isn’t it?” said Heather. “He’s always implying: Look how much harder I’m working than you, Heather! That’s what’s behind it! That’s why I don’t talk to him.”

Mike’s face turned instantly ashen. “What did you say? I never have said that to you, Heather!” he protested. “Nor implied such a thing!”

“You’ve never actually said it out loud, but that’s what you mean when you bring those radios in every day. That’s the message I’m getting from you, Mike. Loud and clear!”

This little fireside chat in the corner of The Railway Bell pub had a lot more volume to it than I had hoped. I had the sense that we were becoming the object of attention from the other patrons. This, I did not want. I feared one of them, or perhaps even both, might get up and just walk out at some point.

Mike was still staring at Heather and I got the distinct impression that he was weighing something in his mind. I didn’t have long to wait for confirmation.

“Heather?” Mike said, deadly serious now and much quieter in tone and volume. “I’ll tell you why I have two extra portables, but I’d prefer it to be kept just between us here if that’s okay?”

Heather looked at Mike with a new expression on her face. No longer upset but more of a quizzical look and certainly one that hadn’t been there moments before. I went from fearing the total demise of the plan, to having some hope that things might actually work out. I wanted to secretly cross my fingers. I was secretly smiling, for I had got them into a social setting after work,

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had gone over the benefits of moving stuff from the Hidden Window to the Open Window, and now, Mike was about to explain to Heather what he had told me previously about knowing what was going on outside of Tooting’s borders. Heather would understand, and perhaps afterwards they might even continue getting to know each other at work by actually talking. YES!

Then the bomb went off!Mike dropped his head and stared at his feet, holding his cider

in both hands. “When I was growing up, my dad was never around. He spent very little time with my brother and I. So, when he was there, I would do everything that I could think of to get his attention. I would study like crazy at school to get the best marks. Around the house I would clean stuff even when it didn’t need cleaning. Even his car. All of this, without being asked. Just to get his attention. Just a little bit. That’s all I wanted. For him to notice me!”

Now it was me staring. I couldn’t believe my ears. This was NOT the story I was expecting. Not at all. Heather was equally fixed on Mike’s words. Mike didn’t look up. His eyes were fixed on the floor.

Mike continued, “So I did everything to excess. Not competitive with anyone else, but just wanting him to notice Mike. His son. What it comes down to is that I’m obsessive about doing things over the top. I’m sorry you thought I was trying to say something about you, Heather. That’s not what it is about at all.”

I didn’t know what to say. Heather and I just sat there, allowing the significance of Mike’s explanation to sink in. He had certainly brought stuff from the Hidden Window into the Open Window!

Heather apologized to Mike. Then, didn’t stop apologizing to Mike the rest of the time that we were at the pub. Mike seemed to tell her a hundred times that it was alright. How was she supposed to know about the relationship chasm between him and his father?

After that evening at the pub I never again noticed any long silence between them at the dispatch centre. And everyone on


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C Relief noticed as well. This seemed to improve things dramatically for all of us. Including morale. Someone had asked Heather about the change. She put them off, but did say that I had done something which had helped her and Mike get along. At last.

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New York 2007

c h a p t e r f o u r t e e nNew York 2007Of David and Daves

My partner, Karen, and I traveled to New York City for Martin Luther King Day in January of 2007. My parents were also on their way there from England. The choir my

step-mother had sung in for several years had been specifically selected and invited for a special performance of the Karl Jenkins choral piece, The Armed Man. It was a tribute to peace at Carnegie Hall. Since none of us had ever been to New York, what better excuse to get together for a few days in the geographical centre of both of our homes.

Karen and I arrived a day earlier than my parents and stayed at an impressive hotel called The Muse, just steps from Times Square, on West 46th Avenue. I loved everything about New York. Even the horse-drawn carriage ride around three square miles of Central Park in sub-zero temperatures, with a guide who refused to talk to us, and a carriage in desperate need of some oil, as my teeth chattered for the entire thirty minutes. Yes, I enjoyed it all.

We decided to have our first lunch in Connelly’s Irish Pub, on West 45th Street. As we sat down at our table, I noticed that every television was tuned to one event: David Beckham’s announcement that he had signed on to play for the LA Galaxy soccer team. $250 million for five years. It had everyone’s attention.

So much interest was being focused towards the television sets on the wall, that I almost missed hearing someone behind me mentioning the words “New Westminster”. Almost. I instantly dismissed the David Beckham story, which I was happy to do, and focused my attention on the conversation that was happening directly behind me. Between two men who had just sat down.

Then, it hit me. I couldn’t believe it. It was unmistakable. It was Dave the Giant’s voice. From cell 8!


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I think I might have gone a little pale. I listened. He was finishing telling his friend about a significant chain of events from the previous few years. They had led to his arrest for nearly breaking some poor guy’s hand in two with his cricket bat. Then, and this part just took the wind out of me, I overheard him say he’d met a police officer who had showed him a great deal of personal respect—despite the fact that he had apparently tried to destroy the police station.

It was too much for me to not to say something. I leaned across the table to Karen and asked her to take a quick glance at the table behind me to confirm that one of the men was indeed the largest human being that she had ever seen. Seeing her eyes enlarge as soon as she leaned slightly to one side in order to peek, I knew that I’d been right.

I cleared my throat and tried to be as casual as I could, though failed pathetically, as I turned round and tapped the enormous left shoulder of Dave who sat with his back to me. “Welcome to New York, Dave!” I said, grinning from ear to ear like some daft Cheshire Cat.

“Phil!” he cried out. “What the heck are you doing here?” He hadn’t changed a bit. Was exactly as I had remembered him.

Karen and I quickly changed tables and moved to join Dave and his friend, Peter. It was an entirely surreal experience. Over lunch, we shared the story of how we met four thousand miles away in British Columbia, when I thought Dave was going to kill everyone in sight. And he did too!

But Dave was quick to point out that that night in the cells had a profound impact on his life. He had apparently left the police station that morning in July with a desire to understand more about the benefits of being able to communicate effectively with people. It’s something he had always struggled with. He had always relied on his presence to get a point across and to get along with others. He became eager to learn more. To become a better person.

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New York 2007

It turned out that because Dave often treated others, even those close to him, disrespectfully, people basically avoided him. He had realized this as he sat in his cell. He made up his mind that when he got out he would to do something about it. And he did.

It occurred to me, after I shook Dave’s hand outside Connolly’s Irish Pub, and said my goodbyes, that my life had come full circle; I had become a police officer in order to handcuff David Eade, a bully who stood at the school gates in Littlehampton, and thirty years later I meet the other Dave, whose hand I was able to shake in New York, and whose life had changed after realizing he didn’t need to be a bully.

My professional life dealing with humans has been full of brilliant stories and meaningful lessons.....all about the benefits of turning handcuffs into handshakes.

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Handcuffs to Handshakes is the story about growing up.It is the story of growing as a police officer, as a communicator

and most importantly as an individual.What started as a chance meeting in New York slowly developed

into the realization that several significant moments in my life were all tied together.

It was rather like looking into a box of puzzle pieces that seemingly would never connect to each other. When you spend the time to sit and look at them carefully however, a picture in your head of what they look like together emerges. Then you turn over the cover picture of the box and you suddenly realize why each piece is important to the others.

That is what Handcuffs to Handshakes is like.It is a series of lessons and laughs which make perfect sense

now that they are together.It also forms the foundation of a dynamic education program.

The program is designed to provide the tools and validation why handling humans appropriately and effectively is so important for every one of us.

No one is born with the ability to communicate well with other people. We need a little help sometimes.

For more information, contact Phil at: www.fioregroup.org

Handcuffs to Handshakes

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