Prisoners, Property and Prostitutes by Tom Ratcliffe

Author:Tom Ratcliffe [Ratcliffe, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848769014
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

While the landlord had been correct in not accepting money for the drink provided, drinking on duty was normally forbidden under pretty well any circumstances according to the discipline rules. Fortunately these rules were enforced by senior officers, most of whom had drunk so much on duty throughout their careers that unless one’s intoxication was blatant or resulted in an uncoverable mishap, it meant drinking on duty was a way of life for some rather than a luxury. The only limiting factor was one’s own judgement and conscience. The ‘quiet night’ incident was exceptional for me, and even as a passenger in a Police vehicle I thought it generally unprofessional – I would be unhappy to be a member of the public and have an intoxicated Policeman turn up at my house – but it did happen on occasion and never seemed to raise any concerns among those who had such a visit. (On the other hand, the public expect to see a human face to policing, to err is human, and therefore I allowed myself to err occasionally, just to show how human I was.) There was only one occasion I can recall of actually driving a Police car while ‘under the influence’. It was a Christmas Day and I was on a late shift. Like most Christmas Days it was quiet, the shops were shut so there were no shoplifters, and even the more low-life families managed to raise enough Christmas cheer to avoid falling out to an extent where they felt in need of our services. My Cockney colleague Paul and I were enjoying being paid double time to do virtually no work, but after several hours we were finding time was dragging. We had ‘done’ our respective patches by driving round for an hour or two, done a bit of paperwork back at the nick, but boredom soon set in as the often-wished for opportunity to catch up uninterrupted on paperwork lost its charm. Paul then had a very charitable and pleasant suggestion, to go and do the rounds of the old folks’ homes. To be elderly and institutionalised seems unfair. To have lived through numerous Christmas celebrations and end up with no true family to celebrate it with is a sad way to be in, so Paul reasoned that any visit must be better than none.

As we were nominally covering separate beats we drove a car each to the home nearest to the Police Station, and Paul burst into the day room like an infusion of true cheer, talking non-stop, cracking jokes and bringing smiles to some quite unseasonably glum faces. He didn’t even seem to pause for breath as he went from resident to resident. I trailed in his wake, but the whole atmosphere soon became one of cheer, and sure enough after a few minutes someone uttered the magic words – ‘would either of you like a sherry?’

The very predictable answer – in short ‘Yes please’ – was arrived at via comments of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.