Awards
We had a new Sergeant come to work on our relief, and he was an okay kind of guy who went out of his way to show that he was ‘free thinking’ and was not racially prejudice in any way. Although he wasn’t what I would call an active thief taker, he was one of the fashionably growing tide of police officers who had joined the police to climb through the ranks as quickly as possible by passing exams and showing that he was good with the pen and in fact he achieved his objected and became a senior ranking officer. He was often the Custody Officer on duty when I brought prisoners into the custody suite, and as a new Sergeant on the relief he had to learn the duties involved with being a Custody Officer, a task no-one really liked doing for it was mostly a boring repetitive job although it did afford him the chance to study for his Inspectors exam, usually in peace and quite, which, although having only recently been promoted to the rank of Sergeant, he was determined to take and pass as soon as possible. So he somewhat became intrigued by the number of good quality prisoners that I would regularly bring in to his Custody Suite and, seemingly intent on getting himself noticed with the higher ranking officers ‘upstairs’, he agreed to write a report recommending me for a commendation for my hard work and high number of arrests that I was effecting on a regular basis. He said he’d write and submit the report and I gave him some background information, including my traffic offences and my arrest record for 1991 that included 164 mostly crime arrests. I didn’t hear anything more until I received notification that I was going to receive an Assistant Commissioner’s Commendation for Dedication and Professionalism.
It was a proud moment for me and my family when we went to the Metropolitan Sports and Social Club at Imber Court to collect my award, a large framed certificate from the Deputy-Assistant Commissioner, but it was tainted when a fellow Chiswick officer, the officer that frequently referred to me as a ‘Yid’ who was sitting in front of me, turned around and said to me while I was sitting next to my wife and son, and with a big smirk on his face, ‘Hymie, what are you doing here, it’s just for us brave boys’, and from then on the intensity and frequency of the racial abuse from him and other ‘fellow’ officers accelerated unabated. In the photo from the awards ceremony at Imber Court below, you can see how thin I had became, losing over 5 stone in a relatively short period of time as a result of the racial abuse that was being directed towards me. In the subsequent industrial tribunal case, supervisory officers gave evidence and admitted that were aware of the racial taunts directed at me but they did nothing to stop them, and that they seemed to think it was ‘okay’! Well it wasn’t ‘okay’! There are a number of ways that one as a victim, could deal with these racist attacks, for instance when you are sitting in a crowded police staff canteen surrounded by 20-30 Christian and Catholic officers of all ranks, as well as civilian members of staff, and your fellow officer sitting opposite you at the canteen table picks up a rasher of bacon and waves it in front of your face saying loudly for all to hear in a heavy Jewish accent, ‘‘Oh come on my boy have some bacon’, with much loud laughter coming from those in the canteen including supervisory officers, you can either cry or react angrily, or walk out of the canteen, which would cause even more laughter, or you could punch him in the face, which would mean almost certain dismissal from the police service, or you could pretend that it didn’t affect you and then everything would quieten down again. I chose to deal with the racial abuse by the last method because since everyone at Chiswick knew what was going on, there was no-one there that I could complain to and expect that things would change. I would later complain to an outside agency, the Commission For Racial Equality to start the ball rolling.
My Police Commendation for Dedication and Professionalism
I had previously received another award, a letter congratulating me upon a suggestion I had made to improve the police service by installing brooms in all police vehicles so that debris from road traffic accidents could be cleared up before further damage is caused by the debris, for which I received a cheque for £100 from the DAC at an awards ceremony on 13 June 1991.
In July 1985 I had received a letter of Commendation from the Commander of SO11 for my assistance in cases involving my use as a Hebrew Interpreter and obviously I had been ‘positively Vetted’ in order to work at their New Scotland Yard offices. In January 1987 I had received a letter of Commendation from the Fire Service in assisting with other officers in attempting to rescue a baby from a burning house on 6 December 1986, and we each took turns in trying to enter the burning house but were beaten back by the flames and the smoke and luckily the fire brigade arrived shortly afterwards and with breathing apparates managed to rescue the baby from the burning house and we rushed the baby to the West Middlesex Hospital where she was treated for breathing difficulties.
In January 1988 I had received a letter of commendation from the Commander at SO11 following my work for them at New Scotland Yard as a Hebrew interpreter that resulted in the seizure of 6 kilos of cocaine (then a record) and the arrest of a number of people at the scene. A month later, after I had returned to Chiswick as a uniformed officer, I received a DAC’s award for ‘Bravery’ in disarming an armed man. This followed a call to a block of flats in Chiswick on 11 July 1987 which had a round plastic walled communal swimming pool in the garden. Some of the young residents were making a lot of noise as they frolicked, and one of the elder residents, who it turned out was the former bodyguard of the late King Hussein of Jordan, decided that it was disturbing him and he went down to by the communal pool and started waving his loaded gun around telling them to be quiet or he would shoot them! I arrived on the scene and then went up to the informants flat, the suspect suddenly emerged in the hallway from his room, and he then pulled his jacket aside to reveal a semi-automatic gun in its holster that he started to take out threatening to shoot (us, I presume). Of course when you are facing a person with a loaded gun you are at their mercy and have little idea what their intentions are or what the next step might be. Two other officers had then arrived and they ran behind me as we rushed the suspect and I grabbed the gun from him, it must have been about the only time that I have held a gun, and I then arrested him. Luckily no shots were fired and no-one was injured and anyway, I must have felt confident because I could always have blown my tin whistle or waved my truncheon around to ward off the bullets! He was charged with possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life and without a certificate and eventually at court the charges were watered down to threatening behaviour and he was bound over for a year, I suspect because of his elderly age.
In 1992 I had also received a nice letter from the Crown Prosecution Service congratulating me on my high professional level of presentation in completing and submitting the necessary C.P.S. court paperwork following my arrests. This was in direct contradiction to what my relief inspector had written in my annual apraisal. I don’t want to go into the ins and outs of police officers that are Freemasons or members of the Catholic Guide, but for two years running this inspector ticked all the right boxes on my annual appraisal report but then wrote snidey remarks on the next page. One remark was that ‘although I had made many arrests, I often left the paperwork incomplete’. Now this was in direct contradiction to what the Crown Prosection Service would write in their commendation letter to my Chief Superintendent praising me for the high level of completed paperwork used in my arrests! And my Chief Superintendent would write following the snidey remarks of my inspector, that he didn’t agree with the inspectors assertions. And then, in the following annual appraisal report the inspector wrote his opinion that, ‘in spite of effecting a high number of arrests, I often was not tidily dressed and my trousers weren’t adequetly pressed’! Petty or what! In fact after you have got in and out of your police car dozens of times a day, or have had to chase suspects over garden fences or along grass verges, chances are that your uniform won’t look as neat or as tidy as when you stood on parade earlier, or as neat and tidy if you sat in your office all day writing reports, and once again my Chief Superintendent disagreed in writing with his opinion, but to write these comments on a written record of your annual performance report is not only snidey or petty, it beggars the question that if his comments were accurate then why during the previous year did he not ever mention these concerns to me?
Police Courses
From September 1989 to February 1990 I served as a plain clothes officer on Chiswick’s Crime Squad. I found that they worked at a slower pace to what I had become used to and although working long hours and being paid overtime might seem important, I had joined the police to work every minute that I could and I decided after consultation with my wife that we prefered that I came home after an 8 hour shift and not remain at work till all hours, which might have suited a young or a divorced officer, but wasn’t conducive with a happily married man with small children and so I left and returned to uniform duties.
I had been running an officially registered police informant for some time, which is somewhat unusual for a uniformed officer as they are usually associated with providing C.I.D. officers with information, but we got on well and although he didn’t provide information on big criminals, the bits and pieces of information that he provided resulted in a number of drug related arrests. I actually got on well with most of the people that I arrested or came into contact with in the course of my police duties as I talked to them and most people in language that they could relate to. .
With my official police informant being a minor criminal himself, it was always useful to find out the ‘trends’ in crimes that he could tell me about, and what I can tell you is what I had already gathered from my many arrests, that is that most offences committed are fuelled by drugs, even ‘soft drugs’ such as Cannabis, either under the influence of the drug or by the need to acquire them, and we’re talking about the late 80’s and early 90’s when such things weren’t talked about, and quite frankly the assumption that smoking cannabis doesn’t lead to harder drugs is a false belief as in many cases I know a number of local criminals that started on Cannabis and soon were onto the ‘harder stuff’, and most of the crimes against property including burglaries and theft from motor vehicles as well as shop lifting were fuelled by the need to buy drugs, and look at the streets of London today and see the impact that the delegalization of Cannabis is having on society!
This was a police operation I organized for a raid on a local mini-cab office on 17 January 1992, where I had been informed drugs were being dealt from, my mistake, I meant that the Sergeant organized it all according to the attached letter, with every bit of information that I provided down to our method of using the element of surprise to carry out the raid and in obtaining the necessary search warrants.
In the midst of all that was going on I had decided to take my Police Sergeants OSPRE exam and in March 1992 I had passed Part 1 and then Part 2 of the exam.
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