It was a couple years back, at which time my Special Constabulary career was in limbo between being a Probationer, and thus being expected to know nothing and make the tea, and being a Tutor, and thus being expected to know everything and drink said tea. It was a normal night shift covering our town centre, something i’ve done hundreds of times. The story below is, in my opinion, a mildly more interesting one than usual.
“Any unit that can make Comet Street please, there’s a fight going on.”
As it happens we’re driving past Comet Street as the shout is put on the radio.
“Yeah, er, from Victor 2, we just passed Comet Street and there’s no fight going on.”
Victor 2 is us (Victor because this evening we’re a Van unit, clever eh? Someone in some spurious department you’ve never heard of at headquarters actually gets paid to come up with these callsigns).
“Yeah sorry sarge, but there’s another girl just called in saying she’s fighting on Comet Street too, can you swing around and take a look?”
“Yeah, roger”
I tell the radio operator to mark that we’ve arrived. They can see on their newest-technology, night-vision CCTV monitor that we’ve arrived, but everything has to be done properly, can’t be trusting just any old camera now can you. I jump out as i’m closest to the door, and see the usual group of people queuing for the two nightclubs in our town. On the pavement opposite a girl and her friends wave me over, so I head on there. I notice the rest of the team have gone across the road to the door supervisors* at the clubs, who also seem to need us. I make a ‘dynamic risk assessment’ (this is something all bobbies get half a day or more training for. In essence, it’s looking at something and deciding whether to approach with caution or leg it), and decide that this is just a group of teenage girls, one with her top ripped open and all on show, so there’s probably no impending attack on me. I approach the one with the top ripped, she’s crying and shouting. I tell her to calm down.
“Blooming heck, I’m really gonna give her six of the best when I see her. What an old witch!” She actually said something different, but it makes me queasy to repeat it – you get the jist.
“Now come on, there’s no need to be like that – just come over here next to the police van where it’s quiet, and tell me what’s happened?”
I spend the next ten minutes standing behind the van, trying to listen to the girl and her friends explain to me – all at once. The general idea, I think, is this girl is 16. She’s ever so terribly drunk after getting quite easily into the nightclub. She’s recently been going out with the ex-husband of a 40 year old female, whom tonight upon seeing her shouted at her, and pulled her top open. Classy. By about 5 minutes in I note a taxi further down the street pick up a woman who’s also crying, and some of her friends. 5 minutes later i’m told this is(was) our suspect. Ah, darn and blast it.
Now, this shouldn’t be an issue you would think. I’ve taken the victims details, and she’s given me the suspects details, and after a bit more crying and a bit more shouting agreed to come in to the station the following day to make a proper, sober account of the assault. It’s looking like something easily dealt with… thus far. I tell her it’ll get dealt with. And as far as I know, it will, it just won’t be me doing it. I try and explain that while I am working now, at 2AM, I probably won’t be later, at 9AM. Job done, I can now go and police the rest of the drunken population that will still be inhabiting our town centre for hours to come. Oh no I can’t.
My colleagues return and explain there’s been a handbag nicked from the nightclub, and they can’t review the cctv footage until morning. I nearly don’t have the heart to tell the Sergeant the bad news, but I have to.
“Sarge, I was just speaking to one of the girls that rang in. She’s been assaulted, got all the details but the suspect’s gone home, and there’s no other witnesses. Back to the nick, crime it, handover file?”
“You got it mate, we’ll drop you off now.”
An hour and a half later i’m finished, and getting back into the van, who have since dealt with a real fight, and got to go on foot patrol in the town. I, on the other hand, had to record the aforementioned assault as a crime by phoning our control room staff and spending 25 minutes relaying all the details, which they put onto the computer. Then I have to make a handover report to give all these details to the officer who picks it up in the morning – relaying all the details again onto the computer. Then writing a statement to say I wasn’t lying and this victim did actually report this crime to me, including all the details, onto the computer (in a slightly different format because statements are a national-standard form, which is rare). Then update the control room, all the details… one last time onto the computer. Lastly I then have to write an entry in my pocket notebook, noting all the details… just in case everything goes balls-up on the computers and we need a hard copy. So that’s 4 copies of this information in minorly different formats on the computer system, and a hard copy just in case. Why on earth in this technology revolution we live in, can one of the tens of thousands of police IT employees nationally not come up with a system where all this can be put onto one system, where it’s able to be replicated as many times as you like, and even printed in hard-copy “just in case”? Answers on a postcard.
That’s 1hr 45mins on this one incident so far. With no suspect arrested, no witness statements, no investigation able to take place until the underage-drunk victim sloshed out of her head gives a second, sober report in the morning. And i’m not even going to be the officer that deals with it in full. And do I think this person will ever see justice done for someone assaulting her? Or even that she’ll remember/be bothered to come into the nick in the morning?
* = When I first joined the police service (at which point I called it the police force), I called people that served as security at pubs and clubs bouncers. I was soon told this was far too aggressive and they should be referred to as Door Staff. Since the incident in this post happened, I have been further informed that Door Staff is too casual a term and lacks responsibility, and we should now refer to them as Door Supervisors. I should imagine within a couple more years they will be simply known as bouncers again, due to the inflatable lifejacket-style vests they’ll be wearing under new NuLabour laws as protection from naughty drunk people, that will allow them to simply ‘bounce’ persons from their doors. There may or may not be cynicism in that last sentence.
