The Brave Blue Line by Dick Kirby

Author:Dick Kirby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wharncliffe
Published: 2011-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

The bravery of Police Constable 365 ‘J’ John Henry Barrett was never in question. His National Service had been spent with the Royal Military Police, serving mainly in Gibraltar, before he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1956. Most of his service had been spent at Leyton, and Barrett was married with two young children, a girl and a boy. His first commendation came within eighteen months of joining; whilst on holiday with his wife in Clacton, he went to the aid of a police constable who was being attacked. He was commended again in 1964 for vigilance and ability when carrying out two arrests and the following year he was commended for another arrest off-duty: a man had left a stolen car with false plates outside the house of Barrett’s mother-in-law in Clapton, to be used in a robbery the following day. Now, five weeks later, Barrett was about to become involved in another incident oddly reminiscent of the case for which he had just been commended, involving a stolen car with false number plates parked outside a house.

After an hour of waiting, Barrett saw a man – John Michael Stannard, aged twenty-three – emerge from a nearby house and make his way towards the Mini. A fitter’s mate, Stannard had a busy sideline; not only had he stolen the Mini, he had also stolen two other cars – a Humber and a Morris – as well as an outboard motor and navigational equipment valued at £900 from a yacht moored in the River Hamble, Southampton.

As Stannard inserted a key into the lock on the driver’s door, so Barrett ran over to the car; but by now, due to the distance involved, Stannard was in the driver’s seat and had started the engine. Barrett showed his warrant card and shouted that he was a police officer, but Stannard put the car in gear and drove straight at him. To avoid being run down, Barrett dived on to the bonnet of the car and hung on to the rain channels on either side of its roof. Stannard accelerated away, and for the next five minutes, at speeds of 30 mph, did his best to dislodge Barrett, who was shouting at him to stop; Stannard swerved from side to side across the road, braking sharply then accelerating fiercely, and on two occasions crashed into parked cars. He banged Barrett’s fingers through his open window to try to break his grip, shouting, “Get off or be knocked off!”

There was never any question of Barrett drawing his truncheon to smash the windscreen; with the lunatic way in which Stannard was driving, it was all he could do to retain his grip on the car. Had Stannard succeeded in breaking his hold on the car, Barrett would have slid off underneath the wheels, with undoubtedly fatal consequences.

Astonished early-morning pedestrians turned and gaped as this ride of death was enacted through the side-streets of Leytonstone, and Barrett shouted out to them to call the police; as he told me forty-five years later, “I think at least one of them must have done.

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