Part 2
At Chiswick, The Thief Taker
We returned from living on the kibbutz to live with my mother in her 13th floor London council Bray Towers flat in Adelaide Road near Swiss Cottage, that was 100 yards or so from a block of police accomodation flats on the other side of Adelaide Road. Bray Tower had been constructed with the same outer cladding as Grenfell Tower had been. I sent off my application to re-join the police and we thought that since I had only been out of the police force for about 10 months, we had returned to London in December 1983, then almost certainly a few days later I’d have my police uniform back on and I would be patrolling the streets of London again, how wrong I was! After applying to re-join, I heard nothing and I made repeated telephone calls and wrote letters to the recruiting office, all to no avail. I was kept waiting for 7 solid months before I eventually got a letter with a date to re-join the police and I was dumbfounded that so much time had elapsed and had been wasted and it just didn’t make sense as to why?
I was sent to Hendon Police College to re-take the police entrance exam which I again passed but I had also to undertake a new part of the entrance exam which was to run a set distance around the sports track at Hendon in a set time. I mean, I was no spring chicken by then and I’m sure that even an 18 or 19 year old wouldn’t have found it so easy! Even though I had passed the written entrance exam I then failed the run around the sports track in the allotted time. I was heartbroken and frustrated at the same time for here was I, an excellent and experienced officer with an exemplary record who had been out of the police force for just a few months being made to go through the same procedure as a new applicant, it just didn’t make sense to me but it just made me more determined. A few weeks later I was given a second chance to re-take the timed run around the sports track, and so in the weeks prior to that I would go out every evening and run, run, run around the streets in north London! A few weeks later, I re-took the timed run test at the sports track at Hendon Police College, and this time I passed and a short while later I received a letter informing me that I was being given a new posting to Chiswick Police Station in West London and that I wasn’t being reposted to Battersea Police Station, which I was happy about!
Chiswick Police Station
Chiswick W4 in West London is a lovely part of London within a short travelling distance of Central London. It is a fairly affluent district with just one or two council estates here and there but with really very little trouble at all. At Chiswick I found that I had plenty of time to concentrate on a different aspect of policing, that of catching criminals which I became expert at! Some of my fellow officers weren’t really interested in arresting people as it meant lots of extra work, particularly paperwork, so that suited me and I had an unwritten agreement with some of these fellow officers that they would concentrate their working day on the more routine and mundane aspects of police work, reporting crime and traffic accidents etc., and I would therefore be free to roam the streets of Chiswick and also the sports fields where I made many arrests, searching for criminals. We were allocated a Police provided flat in Syon Lane, Isleworth, which was about 20 minutes drive from work and the block was opposite to Sky T.V.’s H.Q. and their studio’s. We lived on the first floor at No. 134 and one day Golan, who was about 4 years old decided that he was Superman and he tried to fly from the balcony dressed in his Superman cape, luckily the only damage he suffered was a twisted ankle in the fall onto the grass! Golan would play with some of the children in the block, one of whom was a son of a guy on my police shift, unfortunately the boy developed a brain haemorrhage and died, which was very sad.
The Thief Taker
Most of my work came from stopping motor vehicles as Chiswick High Road was the main arterial road to and from Central London, and also in Dukes Meadows which were sports fields that abutted onto the river Thames and where lovers would go for trysts in their cars, but also where youngsters would go to smoke and sometimes deal drugs. Back then there wasn’t such a liberal attitude to drugs as there is now in England. Most of my drug arrests resulted with a caution, which meant that the offender was given a second chance (not to get caught again) and a warning. It meant that they didn’t have to go to court and they didn’t get a criminal record for their drug offence, which was fair enough, and it also meant that I had less paperwork to complete. I had my fair share of big arrests too. There was one guy I remember that on 27/12/1991 I had passed him while I was driving my marked police car in Chiswick High Road, and as I drove past him he turned his back to me which was somewhat suspicious. I drove around Chiwick Roundabout and circled back driving down Chiswick High Road towards him again, and as I approached him from the opposite direction he again turned and he started walking away. I drove up to him and got out of my police car and started to speak to him, and I noticed that his right hand was in his jacket pocket and that he seemed to be holding something large in that pocket, it could have either be a weapon or who knows what? Upon questioning him some more he indicated a nearby car which he said was his & though and behold in the open ashtray I saw something that appeared to be smoked reefers and I therefore had reason to search him and his car! I told him I was going to search him and his car for drugs and I got him to take his hand out of his pocket, and in his hand he held a large bag of a white powder which he admitted was cocaine, I can’t remember exactly how much cocaine there was but it was worth about 3,500 pounds then, more than for ‘personal use’. It turned out that he had been paid to deliver the cocaine to a customer who was supposed to drive up to him at that junction in Chiswick High Road and collect it from him, and I had obviously ruined their plans! He was arrested by me and was charged with possession with intent to supply and at Crown Court I believe that he just got a large fine and not a prison sentence as I understood that he cooperated with the C.I.D. in their investigations. Another good arrest was when I stopped a car opposite to Chiswick Police Station one night and the guy had a few acid tablets (LSD) on him. The night duty C.I.D. couldn’t be bothered and they asked me to deal with it, and so I took a couple of other uniformed officers with me and we took him to his home in nearby Ealing, in West London to search his room with his mother present. When we opened his bedroom cupboard a plastic shopping bag full of smaller packets of mixed pills fell out, this guy was obviously a dealer, in fact he dealt at clubs and discotheques in Central London. When I took him back to Chiswick Police Station with the haul of drugs, the C.I.D. were suddenly much more interested this time! My other ‘good arrest’ that I will discuss later, was when I disarmed a man holding a loaded gun, but I was okay as I had my tin police whistle to blow and my wooden truncheon to fight off the bullets if necessary!
Below is an example of my purely crime arrests for a 2 week working period from 18.11.1991 to 5.12.1991
I would say to any police officer whether old or new, that crime is happening all around you, often in front of your eyes and it’s just up to you if you want to detect and arrest the offenders or not!
I’ll never forget one day when one of our Sergeants told me that he wanted to come out on patrol with me in my panda. He was a nice chap, not young in years but seemed to mostly spend his day as Custody Officer, so maybe he just wanted a bit of fresh air, but I must have left him with his head spinning! I drove down a part of Chiswick where there is only one road in and out of a block of streets with the A4 running by but with no vehicle access to it. As I’m driving into this area a car comes in the opposite direction with ‘4 up’, all white teenagers in their teens and I didn’t recognize them or their car, and looking in my rear view mirror as we passed them, the 2 rear seat passengers were looking around out of the back window to see where we were going. I let them get out of sight around the corner and I said to the Sergeant ‘hold on’ as I swung our panda around and went after them, and he seemed somewhat shocked and asked ‘what was happening’. I caught their car up, stopped them and told my Sergeant, ‘They’re up to no good’. I got out and went up to the drivers door and turned around and the Sergeant was still sitting in the panda’s passenger seat! I gestered him to come out and he stood next to me. Bear in mind that there are 4 persons in this car with 4 windows from where they could throw anything and I felt somewhat embarrassed that I had to tell my Sergeant to go to the other side of the front of the car and watch the other occupants in case they threw anything out of the windows or tried to make a run for it! I looked inside the car and they had the usual half-smoked reefers lying on the cars central consul, and so I got the driver to step out and I had a few words with him and he then picked up pieces of Hash from the passengers floor well and admiited that they had come to this quiet part of Chiswick to smoke drugs and then they tried to find their way onto the A4 but there was no way out from where they were. After a few more words from me the driver then decided that he ‘was having it’, that all the drugs were his, and so I then got the others out of the car one by one and searched them. I thought I’d get the Sergeant involved a bit as I don’t think that he understood what was going on and I asked him to take all their details and do PNC checks on them. I then put the driver in the back of my panda and he gave me his car keys and I gave them to one of his friends who had a license and was insured to drive the car and they then drove behind us to Chiswick Police Station to wait for their friend, all without my Sergeant saying a word as I think he was trying to work out what had just happend over the last 15 minutes! The driver was processed, I think we cautioned him for possession and then they all went on their way. This Sergeant never did ask to come out on patrol with me again!
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