Page 212 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

pieces of an enquiry someone else had begun. There were officers, often
longer in service in uniform and CID who chose only to deal with jobs that fell
into their lap, but this wasn’t my preferred activity. Whilst I did what I was
‘given’ too, wherever time permitted, I aimed to be pro-active not merely
reactive.

As such, I would later find myself drawn to officers with the same pro-active
work ethic.

October 1985

For the time being, as the new kid on the block, I settled in to being the aide
and as if to ease me in gently, John Woolam handed me my first CID
interview, a bread and butter job where a young woman found a pension
book and foolishly tried to draw cash on it. In such cases, it isn’t always
necessary to arrest the person, and the matter is dealt with by way of an
interview under caution. I asked the questions and John made a record by
way of a contemporaneous defendant statement. Where an offence was
minor, (attempting to obtain property by deception), and the person had
little or no prior criminal antecedents, rather than charge the offender, there
was an alternative known as ‘reporting for process’, whereby a file was
prepared and submitted to the Detective Chief Inspector for a decision
whether to prosecute or caution. This young woman received a caution, one
less clogging up the judicial court system.

This type of incident was second nature to me, having become experienced
at such interviews in my uniform years. So, one down, many more to come.

And many more did come, more fraud cases that is, theft of giro’s. pension
books seemed to be rife at that time in Erdington, so we always had
something to do, although I was looking forward to getting my teeth into
something a little more serious.
The teenagers in certain parts of the patch seemed to enjoy knocking seven
bells out of each other, so assaults and woundings made life a little more
interesting, especially on the run up to Christmas when the scrapping season
really started.

Family loyalty was often in short supply as I discovered when I arrested a lad
for ‘Kiting’ which is cheque theft and encashment. The complainant was his
mother and he just never seemed to find his moral compass, repeatedly
stealing her cheques and leaving her to foot he bill. Needless to say this was
one who definitely got charged and put before the courts.

December 1985

More petty thefts and minor assaults filled my days and I yearned for some Page212
excitement.