Foot Patrol

I prefered to patrol in a panda car or in a police van as I was able to effect more stops, but patroling on foot also gave me the chance to find things I couldn’t see whilst mobile.

Chiswick High Road was usually one long line of stop-start slow-moving traffic driving towards Hammersmith and Central London during most of the day and thus gave me the opportunity to hunt for offenders in motor vehicles whilst on foot patrol. The easiest reason for stopping a vehicle was if the car’s road fund licence, that was displayed on the bottom of the windscreen was out of date or was missing. The usual excuse was, ‘I just bought the car’, or, ‘it’s in the post’. An expired or no road fund licence was a possible indicator of no insurance or Test Certificate and sometimes no drivers licence, or of the driver being disqualified from driving.

I was always on the look-out for persons acting suspiciously, and with a sound knowledge of your powers and the law there was no reason not to stop and question someone you felt was up to no good. I mean sometimes things happen right in front of your very eyes that you don’t believe are happening! I had come out of the front door to Chiswick Police Station having been posted to foot duty at about 9.30 am one Saturday morning after having just finished my breakfast, when I saw two scruffily dressed men in their late teens hanging around outside the electric showroom opposite. They appeared to be a bit drunk but I carried on watching as they walked into the showroom, one of them picked up a large cardboard box that was in the shops’ window display area, they both heaved it onto one of their shoulders and then they walked quickly out of the store, and then once outside they both started to run or stagger down busy Chiswick High Road, with one of them balancing this heavy box on his shoulders! I caught up with them and stopped them and found that the box contained a brand new microwave oven which they’d just stolen from the shop window display and the shops assistants hadn’t even noticed their actions! I then marched them both across the road into the Custody Suite of Chiswick Police Station to be processed!

I remember stopping a teenager driving a mini with no road fund licence, and I used the ‘do you remember your name’ quiz. I would ask him his name, address and date of birth at the start of questioning him writing it down, and then would ask himhis name, address and date of birth again a few minutes later as I was writing the HO/RT/! Sometimes you get that feeling, or sixth sense that he is not being honest with you, of course he had no proof of identity on him. As I’m writing the HO/RT/1, lo and behold he forgot which name he had previously given me and he started to give me a different name. The car he was driving had no registered keeper and also had a ‘police interest report’ on the cars registration plate number stating the name of the person who was believed to be driving the car. I then tried the find the engine and chasis numbers but they had both been filed off. I then opened the car’s glove box and about 20 HO/RT/1 previously issued forms fell out. He had obviously been stopped numerous times by police that had issued HO/RT/1’s to the false particulars that he became expert in giving in order to fool the police and to evade justice, and they had let him go. I arrested him on suspicion of T.D.A. and, inquiries after finding out his real name revealed that he was wanted at various police stations for driving offences and at Chiswick he was charged with driving offences and he was kept in custody to appear at Brentford Magistrates Court the following morning. The Stolen Car Squad later determined that the car he was driving was put together from parts of numerous cars, some previously reported as stolen, and that the car was a death trap and should never have been on the road and luckily, as far as was known, he wasn’t involved in an accident causing injuries to other road users as he had no insurance to compensate them for any injuries that they might have sustained. Another angle to view these offenders and their offences from, is that if I was convicted of any of these driving offences I could well have lost my job.

 

 

 

 

What I found both sad and extremely frustrating during my police career, was that some of the officers who wore police uniforms that I had worked with, just weren’t interested or preferred not to see the things happening around them, and they wanted just to complete their 8 hour day at ‘work’ without incident and go home, as one less day took them closer to their retirement pension. How sad I thought! What peeved me alot is when I had made arrests, usually from cars where the evidence of offences such as drug use, was so evident and right in front of you that even a 5 year old child could see it if he wanted to and if he cared to look. After I had searched and arrested offenders in cars they would sometimes tell me that they had been stopped a few minutes earlier by police who had just let them go after asking them a few standard questions and without noticing what was right in front of their noses if they had cared to have looked, and that they had been given a HO/RT/1 to produce their drivers documents including the test certificate and insurance. The drivers most probably couldn’t believe their luck at how stupid those police officers had been, it was totally unprofessional and was another example of an police officer just going through the motions, if you’re going to do a job or stop a car, do it properly.

 

Another arrest while on foot patrol was again in Chiswick High Road where I noticed a car pull up and stop on yellow lines outside of the local Job Centre. I told the driver that he couldn’t stop where he had stopped, but he ignored me and got out of his car and went into the Job Centre from where he emerged some 15 minutes later. I asked for his details as I also noticed that the car’s road fund licence had expired. I stood in front of his car writing the car’s registration number down, but he just walked past me, got into his car, turned the engine on, reversed and then started to drive at me albeit at a slow speed in an attempt to get me to move out of the way of his car. I called for the assistance of other officers who arrived quickly and got him out of the car after the front bumper had hit me in the shins causing slight bruising. I arrested him and he was taken to Chiswick where he was charged and at court he was jailed for 3 months for assaulting me and he was disqualified from driving for a year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another offence that a number of police officers have been dismissed from the Metroplitan Police for is drink driving. I certainly wasn’t the most popular person whenever I brought a drink driver into the custody suite. In fact I remember at Battersea, that the custody officer who had been busted as a C.I.D. officer and sent back to work in uniform (for reason unknown), berated me one time when I had brought him a drink driver, saying to me ‘why don’t you bring me crime arrests instead of these drink drivers’? Well, he didn’t know what he was initiating as a few years later I would try to comply with his wishes when I was stationed at Chiswick a few years later in 1991, arresting criminals on sight campaign that netted me 164 arrests! I wouldn’t say that many C.I.D. officers drank to excess but I remember one night when we had a called from I.R. (information Room at New Scotland Yard) when I was driving the police van, of a car swerving all over the road coming from Hammersmith towards Chiswick. I saw this car coming towards me and the car then stopped at traffic lights in Chiswick High Road, and I then drove and positioned the police van blocking the car from progressing, at which point the driver got out and ran down Chiswick Lane. He was apprehended by other units who told me that he was a C.I.D. officer from a local station and that he had failed the breath test. I never found out what happend to him, but a short while later we did get a new Sergeant on the relief who so we understand had been busted from the C.I.D. at a local station for ‘drink related’ problems, and he hated uniform work, particularly dealing as a Custody Officer with drink driving offences, I wonder!