Confessions of an Undercover Cop

Bounty hunting

After a couple of years working in the heart of London, I was beginning to think it was time to move on. I loved it very much but six years into my career, with experience of two very busy districts, it was time for the next challenge. It was almost Christmas and each day was hectic with shoppers, partygoers and tourists, with an added dash of criminals looking for rich pickings. It was a great place to work with a vibrant atmosphere, sparkling Christmas lights and the ambience of good will to all men. It would be a shame to leave my uniformed colleagues but uniform street patrol wasn’t something I wanted to do forever. I didn’t have time to think too deeply but having made the decision, I decided to see what the New Year would bring in 1992. January was always a good time for change.

With three and half days left of the year, the prisoner count stood at 9,800. The superintendent returned to work after his jolly Christmas break in festive spirits and good humour. He laid down a challenge. The person who brought in the ten thousandth prisoner of the year would receive a decent bottle of Scotch. He was confident that 200 prisoners wouldn’t pass through the doors between then and the chimes of Big Ben bringing in New Year.

Everyone wanted that bottle. How far it would go on a shift of perhaps twenty or thirty officers, or an office full of CID detectives, was a moot point, but it was a sharp tactic to get everyone working over the usual lull between the festive bank holidays.

CID scoured the crime books for outstanding arrests and warrants. Street Crime Units were extra vigilant in arresting street entertainers, those selling knock off perfume and other goods on the crowded pavements, plus the prostitutes and rent boys. The crime squads worked hard at the pickpockets and van-draggers (people who steal from the back of delivery vans) and drug dealers. Each uniform shift cleaned up Soho, arresting vagrants and druggies, and fought over calls for shoplifters, breach of the peace and other miscellaneous fights and disturbances. A three-day initiative on drink driving was implemented around Mayfair and St James. More cars than usual were pulled up for minor offences because you never knew when a regular stop would lead to something more. Between now and the end of the year everyone was working hard. Instead of warnings and cautions and let-offs, we operated a zero-tolerance approach.

You could say the period between Christmas and New Year that year was one of the most productive ever recorded in the West End. The prisoner count crept up. By the time my shift came on night duty on 29 December it was 9,852.

There was no way we’d be able to arrest more than a dozen miscreants between us because there were only six of us on the streets that night. With the usual calls to deal with, unless there was a big incident, even a dozen would be pushing it.

When we came back on duty the following night, the station had been busy and the count stood at 9,966. We knew the early-turn relief would nab that bottle if we didn’t, so in our parade briefing we devised a plan of action. We needed thirty-four prisoners booked into custody. We had ten officers on duty. The area car was double crewed and could deal with the 999 calls and anything else they could fit in. The two vans could lose their escort, which gave us six-foot soldiers. We prayed nothing major was going to happen. If it did, we’d be done for, and and those bandits on the other shifts would get the booty.

Come mid-shift the world would have settled down and that’s when our plan would kick in.

By 2 a.m. we were up to 9,972. Everyone agreed to forfeit their refreshment breaks and get back out there until we were done.

The drunks, vagrants, beggars and other assorted street people were rounded up and brought into the station in the back of the van, six at a time. We each took a prisoner, booked them into custody, gave them a caution, and released them back onto the streets, only to be found loitering or drunk again. Then the next six were brought in, processed and chucked out. Word soon travelled the itinerant community and we even had a couple of youngsters turn up at the front desk asking if they could help out and be arrested because it was ever so cold out there and they could do with a warm place to stay.

We obliged a sleeping vagrant who was particularly grumpy about being woken up in his comfy doorway. We agreed to give Wilf a bed for the night and breakfast in the morning in return for his cooperation. Everyone was happy.

Poor Archie Meehan, riddled with lice and addled with alcohol, was given three cautions that night, but he embraced it. He wanted to be the 10,000th prisoner and we gave him the privilege at 5.30 a.m. He raised his arm and said he was going down in history. It was one of his proudest moments, he said. I’m sure someone must have slipped him his favourite tipple as a reward.

Of course, rumours reigned about who the arresting officer was. I was never sure, not exactly, and I can’t lay claim to it being myself, but I was there and took my part along with the best of them.

It was never about the bottle of Scotch. It was about other things altogether. It was one of the best of times and that night the street people did us proud. In the true spirit of working together, it was sublime. And a great way to round up the year.

Nondescript

I’d always wanted to work in plain clothes, to do detective work, to investigate crime. Perhaps it was too many Enid Blyton books as a child and too many detective novels growing up, but the idea of covert surveillance fascinated me.

I did a short secondment on an elite team, the crème de la crème of undercover units. The girl did good. I learned new techniques, discovered many methods of surveillance, more than I knew existed, and how to read street maps upside down. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I received a recommendation and a heads-up when the next vacancies came around.

Craig Baker, the sergeant in charge of the undercover unit, said that I would do. I was good for surveillance. They needed more women on his team and I was perfect, nondescript, unmemorable, perhaps a tad too tall but I could mingle in a crowd, blend into a sea of faces without encouraging a second glance.

Charming. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or insulted but it didn’t matter. I got the job.

Wheel clampers notorious

When you’re due to move stations or into another role, you ideally clear up your current and outstanding cases. You also need to keep out of trouble. It’s not unusual to be posted as station officer, or gaoler, or be given some other inside position during the weeks before you move on.

I was due to go off and work incognito, so the sergeant posted me to the clamp van. I hated working the clamp van. If you want to go to Traffic or had an interest in motors, then it might be a good posting, but for those like me who preferred dealing with crime and with people, it was loathsome.

As a probationer I did my quota of traffic offences. I reported people for driving in a bus lane, for doing red lights (which I agree is very wrong), for parking on a zebra crossing and for driving a car in a dangerous condition. I did what I had to do as directed by my performance indicators. Once out of my probation, if I presented my sergeant with a traffic process book, once he had picked himself up off the floor, he knew the offence must have been something bad.

Speed kills, yes it does, but I much prefer nicking those involved with a different kind of speed. Therefore, to be posted to the clamp van was my worst nightmare. Not only did it mean getting to work for 9 a.m. and travelling during rush hour, but it also meant I’d have to upset at least thirty people a day, which I hated doing. And I went home smelling of man-van, metal and oil.

The local council ran the clamping department. It had been agreed at a high level that each clamp van should be manned by a trained clamp person (a clamper) and a police officer who had to write the tickets. I can’t remember exactly how much it cost the driver to have the clamp removed but the total cost of ticket and clamp was very expensive. The clampers were council workers not trained in people skills. Nor did they have the vetting police officers had. Some of them were great guys (there were no women clampers) but others were like bulldogs, or gorillas. Neanderthals. And I had a thirty-day posting with them.

The sergeant warned me not to put holiday leave in. ‘Just do it, Ash. And keep out of trouble.’

‘Me, sarge? I don’t know what you mean.’ Like a truculent child, I knew exactly what he meant. Keep my eyes and ears focused on the job. No running off after someone, no nabbing shoplifters who just happened to run out of a shop and into my path, no being sidetracked …

‘If you see anything, or get involved in anything, call for assistance for someone else to deal with it. You’re not getting out of clamping,’ he warned.

Clamps were huge things, all fangled metal and heavy, and I hated them. The objective was thirty a day but sometimes you did a few less, sometimes more. If you consistently did less, you’d get a bollocking. I tried to make sure I did what I had to do, but I didn’t like it.

There was an art to fixing a clamp and some of the clampers had it down to nth seconds. They had a competition to see who did it the fastest. The officer posted with them had to write out the ticket as quickly as possible, slap it onto the car windscreen and then leg it. It pleased me to be posted with a fast clamper. I hated lingering. Once the clamp was on, the only way for it to come off was for the driver to pay the fine and then the de-clamping van would turn up and take it off. We couldn’t. Or at least that’s what they always told me.

If the driver of the car appeared before we left there was often a showdown. I had sympathy but, ultimately, they shouldn’t have parked there. And they should have looked out for the clamping van. We took a lot of verbal abuse. Sometimes it was physical.

Like all cities, parking in London is very difficult and very expensive. If you find a space it’s easy to overrun your meter by a few minutes. Some people took liberties and constantly parked where they shouldn’t and they deserved to be clamped. Some folk, usually the yuppies, would deal with it as an occupational hazard. If they got clamped early in the day, they wouldn’t phone up and pay the fine until much later. They’d treat it as a parking cost and put it on expenses.

If a vehicle was parked in such a way as to cause an obstruction, we would call the towing lorry who would turn up and cart the offending vehicle off somewhere deep in south London. I had less sympathy with them. It was difficult enough to drive in London, especially driving emergency vehicles through the packed streets. If you caused an obstruction, you were fair game to be towed. A few people reported their car as stolen only to discover it had been towed off. A sharp and harsh lesson.

Some clampers took great delight in finding expensive top-of-the-range cars to clamp, and those with exclusive private registrations. If they nabbed someone famous they’d lord about it for ever. The same with fancy cars. I hated being posted with that type of clamper. We’d spend most of the time in Mayfair and the posh streets of Westminster looking for the best and biggest cars. It drove me mad and those shifts were the longest.

Every clamp van had an hour for lunch. Police officers’ breaks were constantly interrupted; you always had to be ready to drop-and-go in an instant and you frequently didn’t get a break. It was different on the clamp van. They always had a full hour. You’d either get 12–1 or 1–2 for lunch, varying it to fit in with the second van. Except for Fridays.

Every Friday lunchtime the clamp van would travel to Lambeth, pull up outside a grotty little pub and park alongside the clamp vans of other local authorities, builders’ vans and other assorted lunchtime drinkers. I suspect some CID from nearby police stations may have imbibed too, back in the day when lunchtime drinking was almost a convention.

I’d buy a takeaway coffee from the tiny café opposite the pub and sit in the clamp van with my sandwich, bag of crisps and an apple while my clamper would enjoy his hour with colleagues. I’d read the tabloid newspaper bought by the clamper that morning and I’d skip over the pages of bare-breasted ladies. I’d get ahead on the paperwork while he’d be in the pub watching the strippers.

I hated my time clamping and was so glad when I never, ever had to do it again.

Willy warmers

It’s cold on night duty. Freezing on occasion. I suggest thermals. Or thick tights. But being cold was not the reason I was knitting at four in the morning when posted as station officer.

I was station officer because I was biding my time, waiting for my posting to Surveillance and trying to keep out of trouble. I’d already had a month on the dreaded clamp van and now it was my turn on the front desk. This included fielding the drunks, redirecting the lost, and taking reports from those wishing to make complaints of thefts or lost property. After midnight it usually fell quiet.

My case files were up to date and the correspondence in my tray had been dealt with, as much as it can ever be. I’d read the daily bulletins and made regular cups of tea for the custody office and CAD room, the hub of the station where all messages were received and allocated, hence Computer Aided Despatch. I’d checked the missing persons binder and the lost dogs, of which there were none; the kennels were empty. My thumbs had been twiddled until they were sore.

As night duty was a week long, it became boring. By Wednesday I decided to take in some knitting. If I followed the pattern, I found it was one of the few craft-like things I could do without winding myself into a knot. I was knitting baby clothes for a friend of mine who was pregnant. Little mittens, socks and baby cardigans are small, easy to do and quick to make, an ideal filler during the night once the city had settled down.

At 2.30 a.m. a call came out about a disturbance in the upstairs room of an exclusive restaurant in the St James area. It was a private party that had ended with a family at war – drunken, argumentative and causing a breach of the peace. Five men and one woman were arrested. The rest of the party turned up at the front desk, irate, drunk and demanding solicitors. They insisted their loved ones had to be released, now, this instant.

My attempts at calming them down failed. The sergeant in the CAD room heard the raucous carry-on and came to my assistance. Two of them ended up arrested for causing a disturbance and swearing at the sergeant and me. One of the remaining crowd tried to reason that his family had been falsely arrested. I listened, nodded and asked him to take a seat while I made tea and coffee for them while they waited for news. Feeling generous, I threw half a packet of digestives onto the tray too.

By 4 a.m., those in the cells were sleeping, as were some of the rabble loitering in the lobby.

One of the arresting officers, Joe Fenelli, stopped by the front office for a coffee and a chat. I was busy – knit one, purl one, knit one, knit two together – working on the sleeve of a baby cardi.

‘That’s them settled down,’ he said. ‘All over a bit of posh totty.’

I laughed.

‘What you knitting, Ash? Willy warmers?’ he asked, pulling a thread of wool.

‘Hey, get off!’ I tugged it back. ‘Yeah, I got white, lemon and baby blue,’ I joked, knit knitting away.

The following morning some of the prisoners went to court for breach of the peace and the others were kicked out, sheepish and hungover.

A couple of weeks later I was issued with a Regulation 9, a form 163, that the Complaints Department (now Professional Standards) issue to give notice that someone has made a complaint about you. Everyone on duty when the Hooray Henrys were arrested was served with a 163. The whole shift had been subject to complaints from the wealthy and influential family. The allegations comprised a variety of things including unlawful arrest, insubordination and abuse of force. Mine was for ‘performance of duty’ issues.

It was alleged that while on duty I was knitting willy warmers, neglecting my post when I should have been conscientious and diligent. What nonsense. I couldn’t believe it. And to think I’d been kept inside the station to keep me out of trouble!

An independent panel was convened to interview every one of us.

‘Officer, why were you knitting at five a.m. in the morning?’ said the chap on the left.

‘It was four o’clock, sir. And I took my knitting to work because it was very quiet and nothing much was happening.’

‘During work time, officer? Surely there was some paperwork you could do? We’re always hearing about how much paperwork there is these days.’

I confidently told him, ‘All my paperwork was up to date, sir.’

He looked surprised.

The woman on the panel looked down her nose at me and said, ‘What exactly were you knitting, miss?’

I hated being called ‘Miss’.

‘Baby clothes, ma’am. For a friend. One of my colleagues, PC Fenelli, joked I was knitting willy warmers but I wasn’t, it was a baby cardigan.’

The older man on the panel woke up and said, ‘Willy warmers? What are they?’

No one answered.

I filled the uncomfortable silence by adding, ‘I was knitting the sleeve of a baby cardigan, sir. It can become tiring on night duty when you’re posted to the front desk. Nothing much happens past two in the morning during the week but we still have to man the front office. I hadn’t had a refreshment break and you can’t really expect to be relieved for an hour by another officer when it’s so quiet indoors and they are busy out on the streets. I sat and ate my sandwiches and did some knitting at my desk during what would have been my break.’

That must absolve me, surely?

I was wrong.

The lady of the bench glared at me. ‘Could you not read law books? You don’t know it all, officer. There are plenty of updates and changes in policy and law to become familiar with, I am sure.’

My quiet protestations of, ‘But that would well and truly put me to sleep!’ were ignored.

They had me.

I was given words of advice and told that in future I should read Blackstone’s police manuals during the nights when I was bored.

And to think, I’d given that family our last packet of biscuits. That’s gratitude. It put me off knitting, too. I never did finish those willy warmers.

Cut!

A few days after the willy warmers’ incident I was back on day shift and still station officer. I made the tea and coffee, checked my handover files and offered to do some typing for one of the dyslexic blokes on shift who was bogged down with his paperwork. I liked to do a good turn and as a quick typist it earned me a few favours in the bag.

I hoisted the manual typewriter onto the counter and swept to one side the bundles of flyers and vouchers that littered the front desk. These comprised the usual advice leaflets for those who find themselves homeless, for domestic violence victims, plus some small street maps and handouts for new restaurants and fancy cafés that enticed customers with generous discounts in return for reviews. Theatres did the same to fill seats at preview shows. A pair of tickets for a West End show cost just a pound. It wasn’t a gratuity because these offers were given to all offices, hotels and shops around the West End and were meant for all to enjoy the perks, police and public alike.

A flyer for Vidal Sassoon salon in Mayfair fluttered down to the floor. I picked it up. ‘Models Wanted. Free haircuts.’ It sounded perfect as I was thinking I could do with a new style for the new job. I phoned and booked my free cut for Thursday, 3.30 p.m., after the early shift finished.

Thursday was uneventful on the front desk and I arrived keen and eager at the hairdresser’s. I signed the consent form, rather chuffed to be having my hair cut at a place I would never usually be able to afford. I skimmed the small print and sat down, unconcerned. It’s only hair, right? It grows back.

My hair was shoulder-length with layers of rotten half curls, hanging limp at the ends. It was time to shed the remnants of a shaggy perm. I needed a new look. Being out of uniform meant no more pinning it up beneath a police hat and it could fly free.

Hairdressers from all over the world came to Vidal Sassoon to be trained and to learn new techniques. A male hairdresser from Chicago was assigned to me, under the guidance of Gideon, his tutor.

‘Perfect!’ said Gideon. ‘And you’ve agreed the terms? That we can do whatever we like? And take pictures to use in advertising if we so wish?’

‘Oh yes, I’m quite looking forward to it,’ I smiled.

He didn’t smile back. ‘As long as you’re prepared. There’s no going back. And no suing us.’

‘Absolutely,’ I nodded, a tad too trusting.

The two men tugged and pulled my hair and entered a technical discussion that was beyond my ken. I started to feel a bit concerned as they discussed how my hair needed treatment to gain back lustre.

I glanced to my left and saw a beautiful girl in her early twenties with long blonde hair and symmetrical features. She could have been a model. Might have been a model. A real one. I felt a tingling creeping up the back of my neck when I saw her hairdresser take a razor to her head. She was being scalped! It was only then it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be given a conventional cut. Oh dear. Could I take my leave?

When I came back from an intense conditioning treatment, my pretty neighbour was all-over bald. I could have cried for her. I couldn’t understand why she was smiling. Maybe she wanted a total change. Maybe she had been given a modelling job, or was an actress that needed a bald head for the part? Maybe she had cancer and wanted it cut off before it fell out?

I felt uncomfortable as I glanced away and out of the window. I noticed two of my uniformed colleagues talking to a motorist who did not look happy. I shrank further down in my chair, hoping they wouldn’t glance in and see me.

A rumpus erupted outside and the suspect ended up with his arms behind his back, handcuffed.

My hairdresser picked up his scissors and watched the commotion. ‘I see cops are the same on both sides of the pond, honey,’ he drawled.

‘Mmm.’

‘Too many innocent motorists getting popped when these guys should be out catching real criminals,’ he said, chopping a wedge from my hair.

‘Mmm!’ I didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

‘At least your cops don’t have guns, like ours.’ Chop. Chop.

‘No, that’s a good thing,’ I agreed, glad of something positive to say.

‘You’d think they’d have better things to do than hassle people parking for too long. Not as if he’s an armed robber, is it?’ Chop. Snip. Hack.

I bit the inside of my lip. Who knew what they were arresting him for? He might have committed murder for all we knew.

‘Who would do a job like that? Sick in the head if you ask me.’

I didn’t ask him but maybe I was sick in the head – for agreeing to be a patsy for a hairdresser from a fancy salon.

‘So honey, what is it you do?’ he asked.

Wide-eyed and impotent, I looked back at him from the mirror in front of me. I tried not to notice my depleting locks. ‘Oh, I work in an office. Just around the corner. Boring, nothing exciting,’ I spurted out, coward-like and quivering.

‘Let’s see if we can liven up your life a little then, yeah? I think a streak of purple at the front with a long fringe hanging to the side. Short at the back.’