Page Thirty Seven - The Old Dog (Copcast #152)

It is true to say that most of us become a little complacent about the work we do and the things we deal with. As we become more familiar with them it’s easy to forget how difficult others may find tasks that we take for granted.

George had just arrived back in the rear yard of the police station having collected a stray dog that had been roaming the streets nearby. He’d had little trouble getting the dog into the caged section of the van although this may in part have been because it was raining and the van was warm and dry. Standing at the rear of the van with his hand on the handle of the cage door he was reassessing the dog, in particular the size of its teeth, which it seemed keen to display in an angry snarl aimed at George.

“Best get the experts,” grinned George as he grabbed the radio and asked the Control Room to put a call in for the Dog Section to attend. Fifteen minutes later, and just before breakfast, the dog van arrived and two burly dog handlers emerged from it.

“What’s up here ladies, are you having trouble getting a little pooch out of your van and over to the kennel?” one of them laughed. George smiled and said “He’s a bit of a handful and I haven’t got a lead let alone one of those nice poles with the noose other end like you guys carry in your vans.”

“Rubbish, it’s only a dog and even my old mum could get him out of there,” said the dog handler, “You just need to know how to handle them, don’t let him think you’re afraid of him and he’ll be as good as gold. Have you never seen the Dog Whisperer?” He produced an ordinary leather collar and lead and opened the rear door of the van. George made himself comfortable, leaning against the side of a car he folded his arms and watched with a smile.

The bull terrier inside the van threw itself noisily at the fortunately still closed inner cage door. It snarled and barked viciously at the dog handler as it attempted to tear its way through the cage mesh. The dog handler stepped back hastily, almost tripping over the lead. He stood staring at the dog for a few seconds, his mouth opening and closing silently before finally turning back to his own van, mumbling “I think I’ll go get the pole for this one.”

Returning a minute later with a noose on the end of a long pole, the dog handler and his colleague eventually snared the dog and managed to get it out of the back of the van. The dog promptly dragged the dog handler across the yard as it attempted to latch its teeth into any one of the police officers that had turned out to watch the display of canine control. The dog was eventually secured in the kennel to a round of applause and the dog handlers slipped quietly back into their van, apparently planning to find another canteen to have their breakfast. They left behind them a yard filled with laughter from the officers on George’s team. George had tears rolling down his cheeks and he held his sides as he laughed with the rest of them, happy that for once it wasn’t him that was cause of everyone’s amusement.

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Page Thirty Five - Escaped Prisoner (Copcast #150)

The rear yard at George’s police station is not only the parking area for all the police vehicles but is also the entrance to the Custody Offices so the whole place is surrounded by a twenty foot high wall topped with razor wire and only accessible through an electric gate operated from the Control Room. Because of the security, George and his team tend to relax once they reach the yard.

One Night Duty recently saw George driving the van with a new probationer as his operator. They had just collected a young man on behalf of the crew of the dog van after they arrested him for being drunk and possibly having assaulted another man. Having arrived in the rear yard, and realising there was a fairly long queue of prisoners waiting ahead of them, the dog van crew asked George and his operator to watch their prisoner for them while they dealt with some of the initial paperwork.

They also told George that their prisoner seemed to be behaving himself now and that he could be allowed to sit in the rear of the caged van with the door open, with handcuffs still on, to get some air. George raised an eyebrow in surprise but did as he was asked, but he did settle back and lean against the back door of the van to keep watch on the prisoner.

Suddenly the young man dived out of the van past George, jumped onto a car parked by the back wall ran onto its roof then dived headfirst over the wall. George stared dumbly for a second, he had never seen anything like it, before grabbing his radio and calling for all available units to help him find the running man.

George was furious with himself and was relieved to hear that the Air Support Unit was nearby and able to help in the search. It wasn’t too long before they spotted the prisoner’s hiding place on the infra-red cameras and directed the searching units in. The man had found a nice dark goods loading bay to hide in so the dog van deployed their dog to find him. Once cornered the man still refused to co-operate until he was blinded by the CS spray that was used on him. He was led to the railings that everyone had climbed over to reach the loading bay and then realised the gates were locked. During a brief discussion about how they were going to guide the prisoner over the railings, the young man took matters into his own hands. Despite being cuffed and blinded by CS he managed to vault the railings, landing perfectly on his feet at the back of the waiting van.

George shook his head in grudging awe, while the dog van crew struggled to get their dog back over the railings again. George turned to his operator and said “I guess that’s two things to remember, don’t ever underestimate anyone and don’t take security for granted, even at the nick.” He also promised silently to get back down to the gym very, very soon.

 

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Page Twenty Two - Mack the Dog (Copcast #137)

It was late on a Friday night when George and a couple of his colleagues were in the custody office looking pleased with themselves while George’s latest probationer was booking in his prisoner. The man had been seen looking suspicious on a street corner near the centre of town late in the evening, hanging around near a couple of clubs and acting furtively. The two units had approached him from opposite directions thinking he was either looking to follow and rob drunken revellers as they left the clubs or possibly looking to sell drugs to them.

Sure enough, when they turned him over and went through his pockets they found a dozen or so wraps of an off-white powdery crystalline substance that led the officers to believe that the man was in possession of drugs with the intent to supply them – in other words, they’d found themselves a street dealer.

Given the circumstances it didn’t take George long to persuade Inspector Brigstock to authorise a Section 18 PACE search of the prisoner’s home to find further drugs or anything connected to the distribution of drugs. George and the others gathered in the canteen for a few minutes to go over their plan for the search. “I know what’ll be a good idea” said George, “Let’s see if there’s a drugs dog available to give us a hand”.

Now this may seem a little obvious but in reality, finding an available drugs dog is a bit like finding rocking-horse droppings, there aren’t many of them. The dogs also tend to be rather overworked as well which cause problems with their effectiveness, but it was worth a shot anyway.

They were in luck, the Control Room told them they’d managed to get Kilo Nine assigned to them and they would meet them at the address.

George and his colleagues arrived at the address at the same time as Kilo Nine, the dog van. After the introductions had been made and the plan of action gone over a final time, they let themselves into the flat led by the dog handler Doug and his drug search dog, a spaniel called Mack.

Mack was a blur of activity, in and out of cupboards and cubbyholes, poking his snout in almost every nook and cranny imaginable. George turned to Doug and said “That’s one seriously enthusiastic dog you’ve got there, how come we haven’t had you out with us before?” Doug looked a little uncomfortable as he hesitated a moment before replying “Well yes, he is enthusiastic and while he’s concentrating on the job there isn’t a better dog. The trouble is that Mack’s a little easily distracted, if he sees something shiny he’ll be off and you won’t get him back for ages. I reckon we’ve overworked him and he’s probably snorted too many drugs.”

At that moment, as if to prove Doug’s point, Mack accidentally knocked the stereo, switching it on and filling the room a pounding dance track. Mack suddenly stopped and stared at the television standing near the window before throwing himself at it and attempting to perform a sex act on it while howling at the ceiling.

The occupier of the flat was apparently in the middle of redecorating and there were a number of large cans of paint around the room. Mack suddenly began racing around the room in a frenzy, knocking over a couple of the paint cans and spilling their contents on the floor which he immediately started rolling around him, turning his coat a pretty shade of lilac.

Finally he dashed off towards the bathroom and shoved his head down the toilet and began to drink he water noisily from the bowl. Doug was blushing furiously by now, obviously intensely embarrassed by being shown up so badly by his dog and he turned to George as he moved forward to clip Mack’s lead back on his collar, “Do you see what I mean? It’s at times like these that I’m really tempted to just pull that flush on him.”

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Page Twenty - The FM Button (Copcast #135)

In the UK, police personal radios have a little orange button. It sits on top far, far away from the working end of the radio, the keypad. The purpose of this button is to get help pronto, on blues and twos from wherever and whomever possible. Hold the button down for a few seconds and everyone in your division is alerted to your peril by a loud intermittent bleeping noise that cuts in over all transmissions.

Everyone can hear you, whether its screams of fear or shouts of ‘Get back!’, normally followed by various expletives. In training you are taught to shout ‘location location location’ but no-one ever does. In essence this is the modern day equivalent of the police whistle and is, fortunately, rarely used. Most of the time they are accidental activations; normally CID officers leaning on it whilst stretching for their coffee cup or over zealous PCSO’s who are following someone ‘of interest’.

The noise from the activation immediately grabs your attention and there is usually a slight pause before the officer calls up to say sorry for leaning on it. George has happily been to precious few real activations, probably only about ten in his entire career, although as you may remember he has had cause to use the little orange button himself.

Not everybody is entirely comfortable with the whole ‘FM’ button thing, recently for example George was in the station half monitoring radio traffic, half trying to complete a court file. He was with his skipper talking about almost anything but work when all of a sudden they heard the words “10-9 officer assistance”. It was spoken fairly quietly, the officer a little out of breath but sounding calm and no orange button activation. The radio traffic fell silent as dozens of police officers listened intently. Was this a joke, had they misheard the transmission? No, ‘10-9’ is what hey used before they had the new radios and you had to literally shout to get assistance and not rely on technology. The caller was a dog unit and he was in trouble.

George and the skipper stared at each other for a micro second then bolted towards the door where they saw a great sight, at least half a dozen response cars with lights activated all scrambling to get out of the rear yard. They jumped in a station van at the rear of the convoy and headed towards the last known location of the dog unit and arrived within a few minutes to find a house completely surrounded by at least twenty police officers. George went to the front of the house for no reason other than that the back garden was full of coppers and he felt like a spare part. He saw a man trying to fight about five officers in the hallway.

He lost and was dragged out, handcuffed and limb strapped. He certainly wasn’t very happy, there was a lot of confusion and an awful lot of blood. George took an arm and helped place the struggling prisoner into his waiting caged van destined for the hospital.

It became clear that the dog handler had stopped this chap following reports of a domestic incident at the address. As the dog handler started to check him out, the suspect made off on foot and the officer gave chase but lost him in some foliage around the corner. The suspect then jumped on the police officer from the foliage and started to pummel him to make good his escape. The dog handler used the only thing he had in his reach to defend himself, his ASP Baton and used the handle of the baton to strike the suspect over the head several times causing a three inch cut on top of his head. Hence all the blood.

The suspect then ran off, that’s when the dog handler called for assistance and the world and his brother turned out for him which must have been very reassuring.

With the suspect safely restrained everyone returned to the police station as the suspect was at hospital getting treatment for the head injury with three of the biggest, meanest officers to guard him.

A while later there was another call for assistance and George drove the van back to the hospital where he found the prisoner had decided he hadn't had enough fighting for one day and started to play up whilst being sutured. He had to be further restrained by the officers at scene during which the head wound was inadvertently reopened. More blood.

Thankfully the dog handler had only received minor injuries, his stab vest taking the brunt of the punches. If he'd deployed his dog things might have been very different but, as so often happens in this job, events happened so quickly he never had a chance to. Afterwards he openly admitted to forgetting his radio even had the orange ‘FM’ button but fortunately he had the presence of mind to say where he was immediately prior to the assault. A valuable lesson learned that day for everybody.

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