Page 213 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

I would watch with envy, the burglary quad lads Nigel, Dave, Derek and Terry
bringing prisoner after prisoner in for house and commercial property break-
ins as well as the occasional car theft. They were dressed in jeans and casual
shirts and it was clear to everyone they were loving every minute.

The squad also did the obligatory prison visits, interviewing offenders serving
custodial sentences. A Home Office facility existed where prisoners could
admit unsolved offences similar to those for which they had been sentenced.
This way, the prisoner knew he had a clean slate when his sentence was over
and his admissions increased the divisional detection rate. These were a
favoured detection method by senior officers who basked in the glory of
increased detections to their bosses at Force headquarters. More of this later,
but suffice to say, at ground level we preferred detection by catching villains
in the act, putting them off the street to what was in effect an administrative
way of making the division look better at detection than it was.

Avoiding a clique mentality is a challenge for supervisors in the police and
there was evidence of this in the CID at Erdington. Comments born out of
jealousy from experienced Detectives let them down in my view. Jealous of
the freedom the squad guys had in what they wore and the way they
operated were made which I felt did nothing to inspire respect. One of my
favourite latin sayings from our training was ‘res ipsa loquitur’ loosely
translated as ‘the facts speak for themselves. The superb results of Nigel,
Dave, Derek and Terry were a constant embarrassment to the rest of the
office and should have earned them praise rather than envy.

Fortunately, as he ‘junior’ I could stand clear of the nonsense.
Occasionally, I was called upon by a squad member to help out. Mid-way
into December, Terry Cleaver, knowing me from our uniform time together
had watched my progress and was keen to push me forward. He’d received
information that the house of a single pregnant mother had been broken into
and all her Christmas presents stolen from under the tree including two posh
vases. A local kid we knew was named, I’ll refer to him as Popeye. We
snatched a set of CID car keys and made our way to the kids house. Terry
approached from the front and I made my way around the back and could
see clearly into the rear garden. As I waited, I couldn’t believe my luck as a
lad came out of the back door clutching two crystal cut glass vases. Not
spotting me, I saw him drop the vases into the garden fish pond! Terry
appeared at my side and together we opened the back gate and detained
our boy. As it turned out this lad was Popeye’s brother and he said it was
Popeye who had done the job. Our man, in dumping the vases was later
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charged with handling stolen goods. Not exactly organised crime, but
catching someone in the act of disposal is exciting to say the least.