I had just attended a stabbing incident that had gone terribly awry. We had been forced to shut down a road and call in the cavalry to help secure evidence. It had been a bloody intensive couple of hours and I was exhausted. The area was crawling with people: a couple of PCSOs55 were stopping people from crossing the police line on the pavement, a load of SOCOs56 were doing their thing gathering evidence, the traffic lads were directing traffic, and I was just standing by the side of the road, shattered, not much good to anyone.
I surveyed the scene. A patch of blood on the road. Blue flashing lights everywhere, interspersed with the odd flashbulb going off as the SOCOs took photos.
When somebody has been stabbed, the CPS57 will usually try to push for an ‘attempted murder’ conviction. In this case, since the victim was still in intensive care in the hospital, we didn’t know whether he was going to make it – if he died, it would be a murder charge (if and when we found whoever did this). Needless to say, if we want to try to make a murder charge stick, we need to make sure that we get every little shred of evidence we can find – every scrap of fabric, everything an assailant may have dropped, and analyse every drop of blood we can find. As such, the SOCOs get the scene to themselves for however long they want, and the road will remain closed for as long as they want.
To a bystander, the scene must have looked like utter chaos, but to me it was different. Indeed, I felt Zen-like: there was nothing I could do at that moment. The victim was no longer considered to be in critical condition. I was about four hours into overtime pay, and everything was ‘okay’.
As always, it was just when I thought everything was going so well that it happened: I heard a lot of shouting and the familiar sound of someone trying to calm somebody else down. Since I didn’t have anything better to do, I walked over to see what was going on.
A man was standing half out of his car: one foot in the footwell of the vehicle, one on the road. He was leaning over his car door, shouting loudly at a PCSO.
‘Fuck you – you don’t have any power over me. I’m running late, and I demand to be told what the fuck is going on here?’
‘Please calm down, sir, there has been an assault, and we are trying to find out—’
‘I don’t give a fuck about your fucking assault. There’s not even an ambulance here anymore! When are you going to open the fucking road? I’m running late!’
The man spotted me as I was about a car-length away.
‘Ah! Finally someone with some fucking authority,’ he said, before turning to the PCSO: ‘Jog on, douchebag.’
‘Mate, what’s the problem?’ I asked him.
‘I’m not your fucking mate,’ he said.
Now, I’m not actually a big fan of swearing. There’s a time and a place, and the scene of the stabbing of a teenager is neither.
‘Hey, pipe down. I’m not swearing at you, there’s no reason for you to swear at me,’ I said, already tired of the guy.
‘That prick,’ the man said, nodding at the PCSO, ‘is trying to stop me from getting to my dinner reservation. I’m already half an hour late. Can I leave the keys for my car with you? I’ll walk to Upper Street and get a cab.’
‘Umm, no, you cannot leave your keys with me, and I really don’t appreciate you talking to my colleague like that,’ I said to him.
It’s no secret that PCSOs and police officers occasionally don’t see eye to eye, but I’m generally a big fan of them. This one in particular I knew quite well: he’s smart, hard-working, and became a PCSO as a stepping stone to becoming a police officer. He’s definitely one of the good guys.
‘You have no fucking idea who I am, do you? I know your inspector, you know!’
‘I don’t really care who you know,’ I said. ‘We’ve had a stabbing, and a fifteen-year-old boy might be dying as you stand here insulting me. Show some respect.’
With that, the man stepped fully out of his car. He closed the door and squared up to me.
‘What did you say to me?’ he said.
‘I told you to show some respect. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. The only thing I know is that ever since I set eyes on you, you’ve done nothing but insult my colleague and myself. A kid might be dying, and in order to have a chance of convicting the culprit, we have to do a proper investigation. If that means that we have to keep the road shut for an hour, so be it. In fact, I don’t care if we have to keep the road closed for a month; you’re not getting through before anyone else. There’s an officer over there directing traffic, so you should be through in about twenty minutes at the most.’
‘That’s unacceptable. I need to get through now. Why don’t I just park over there,’ he said, and pointed at a bicycle path on the other side of a flower bed.
By now, I was through being patient with him.
‘It’s a twenty-minute wait. You can wait for twenty minutes. Call the restaurant, explain what happened, I’m sure they will understand. If you drive through that flower bed,’ I said, pointing towards the area he indicated he would drive through, ‘I’ll do you for careless driving and criminal damage.’
I turned around to talk to the PCSO for a second, but the man placed a hand on my shoulder, and turned me around forcibly, so I was facing him again.
‘Get. Your. Hands. Off. Me,’ I said.
He withdrew quickly, but was still too close for comfort.
‘Get in your car, shut up and stop causing a scene.’
‘You fucking dickholes are all the same,’ he muttered, just loud enough for me and the PCSO to hear.
‘Excuse me? What was that? You have exactly three seconds to get your arse back in your car, before I arrest you for a breach of the peace,’ I said, and to demonstrate I meant it I took my handcuffs out of their holder.
The cars in front of his started to move. He stared at me for several long seconds; it looked briefly as if he was going to pull back and take a swing at me. Or perhaps I was wishing that he would take a punch at me, because by now I was itching to arrest him.
I leaned forward, my nose nearly touching his.
‘Three …’ I said.
‘Two …’ I made a clicking sound with my handcuffs.
‘One …’
‘Fuck you,’ the man finally said, and climbed into his car. As he drove off, he very nearly ran over my foot. The PCSO had run his number plate through CAD58 and PNC59, but it had come back clean.
I turned to him: ‘You okay?’
He nodded and shrugged.
‘What a cock,’ he observed.
It was my turn to nod. We walked back to the crime scene together.