PC Newman's Busy Nightshift

Thu, 29 July 2010 Courtesy of: Police Oracle

PC Bill Newman is a young student officer who shares his experiences of being new to the job with Police Oracle readers on a weekly basis

Sometimes, working as a police officer can be dull. Mind-numbingly dull. So dull in fact, that I get home and feel oddly tired from having done nothing all day. Yet sometimes and admittedly it is just on occasions, a great shift crops up out of nowhere.

It was one of the good shifts that took place recently that left me thinking what a strange job policing is. I dealt with a huge variety of incidents, none of which would have been possible in any other walk of life and for the short amount of time I was dealing with them, I briefly entered into the lives of the people involved and caught a fleeting snapshot of their world.

The night shift began relatively quietly and having spotted two very young looking lads sat at a bus stop smoking, we pulled over to have a chat.

“How old are you?” I asked.

The lad started back at me, apparently unable to lie quick enough.

“13,” he replied, hanging his head.

“I’ll have that cigarette then,” I said, taking the partially smoked fag and destroying it on the ground in front of him.

“And I’ll have the rest of the packet,” my colleague told the other lad when he learned he was allegedly 16-years-old. “I suspect you’re going to give them to him and anyway you have to be 18 to buy these now.”

With that we sped off to another call to reports of two men having sex in a public place. The local CCTV had a perfect view apparently but we initially had difficulty finding them. When we did, I was relieved to see that the two sheepish looking people were actually in fact a male and a female with short hair. Just a few feet above them was a huge camera.

“If you’re going to do it, don’t do it right underneath that,” I said pointing above their heads. Their faces fell and they looked stunned as they looked up and saw the camera moving like a huge eye, flicking from me to them.

“I’m so embarrassed,” the girl stammered. “I’m so sorry,” she kept repeating. I could still see the camera moving at the corner of my eye as it looked at the sorry picture. I realised the humiliation was punishment enough and warned them to move out of the area, scared that I would be unable to hold the laughter in for any longer.

We raced off again to another call, this time a 12-year-old girl was in tears terrified that somebody was in her house. Arriving first on scene I knocked on the door and it was opened by the girl and her 19-year-old babysitter, both looking petrified.

Together with my colleague we searched the house which was a small mansion and found no evidence of any burglars. It was a joy to deal with decent people for once and I found myself wondering why I had never had a babysitter like the one I was talking to; my colleague amusingly shared the same thought. We waited for her parents to return before racing off to call where there were suspected burglars escaping a social club and running across the sports ground in a bid to escape.

Eager to cut them off we drove to the other side of the park and found ourselves by the entrance to a wood on an industrial estate. In the pitch black we made our way through on foot, my ears straining for the noises of any footsteps or voices. Suddenly I heard a huge splashing noise nearby and flicked my torch on in fright, only to find the suspect was a duck we had frightened. After stumbling around the wood for quarter of an hour and only just avoiding the huge pond, we retreated back to the car and drove away.

As we were doing so, I noticed a front door to a factory ajar. We pulled over and opened the door to check it was just staff who had been working inside. All of the lights were on but it seemed nobody was about. I turned a corner and came face-to-face with a huge factory floor covered in robotic arms and machinery all working by themselves.

Feeling as though I was on the set of a James Bond film, I started to feel uneasy. We went upstairs, through all of the offices but found no one.

We went to an adjacent factory and found their doors were open also. There were staff inside but it took a while to attract their attention with all of the noise from the machinery. We discovered the door had been left open accidentally and it was all innocent, but all the time we had been walking around the factory we could have emptied it of computers and electrical equipment. It is a strange feeling walking around a building when the owner or occupier doesn’t know you’re in there and you turn every corner with an odd feeling in your stomach as you wait to see what you could come face-to-face with. I returned to the car to find my colleague standing by the vehicle. I could see that he was smoking and he had an odd smirk on his face.

“Pity to waste ‘em,” he said, holding the packet he had confiscated earlier in the evening.

As we started leaving the industrial estate, a pursuit of a stolen motorcycle came out over the radio. I turned up the volume and my heart began pounding as I realised it was nearby. We shot off in the direction at high speed, eager to become a part of the chase and my adrenaline began surging around my body as we sped down a narrow road past a no entry sign. I gripped my seat hoping we wouldn’t hit any oncoming traffic and was almost relieved when the only thing that was hit was my head, against the roof of the car as we hit speed humps at 60mph. The chase was called off minutes later however as the rider had gone across a common and we had no helicopter to help find them.

It was coming to the end of the shift when we were called to assist our colleagues who were dealing with a woman who had gone berserk. She was 37-years-old and renting a room from an elderly couple who also lived in the house when suddenly one night she had started smashing up the place. When we arrived the landlady was hanging out of a bedroom window pleading to get a ladder so she could escape; she claimed the tenant could have a knife and she was terrified she would be attacked.

Once we gained entry to the property, the female came towards the door. Her eyes were wide open and she never blinked once, instead just staring at my colleague and emitting an unusual screaming sound.

She had suffered from no previous mental health issues; something had just snapped in her brain that night and she had gone crazy. I was stood there when she stopped screaming and decided to strip off naked.

I had the urge to laugh; not because it was funny – she was obviously ill – but because it was the final call of a strange night and the absurdity of the situation gave me the urge to chuckle. She glared at my colleague who carried her out to the awaiting ambulance and she became as rigid as a board. She was sectioned and as they put her into the ambulance she continued staring, her eyes wide open. I felt a chilly shiver down my spine and moved out of sight of her to prevent her from looking at me.

I tried to comprehend how a normal person with a normal job could suddenly just become so sick, so fast, with no previous history of mental health problems. I thought about it a bit more, until I realised the sun was rising which meant my bed was calling. Rest time now – until the sun sets and it begins all over again.