Who'd Be a Copper? by Jonathan Nicholas

Author:Jonathan Nicholas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784628963
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

INSIDE AND OUT

In 1988 my section needed someone to operate the control room computers. I was volunteered for the training by my inspector on the basis that I kept a very neat pocket book. This was typical police logic. I knew absolutely nothing about computers. As with any training course it was Monday to Friday office hours, so it was great to live a normal life for two weeks and be at home during weekends with everyone else. The usual Sunday night blues don’t normally happen when working round-the-clock shifts. Sunday nights, with the prospect of another working week ahead, could actually fall on any day of the week.

After almost four years of working rotating round-the-clock shifts it became clear there were some advantages to shift work. Days off in the week meant there were few traffic jams and the shops were always quiet. If you’ve ever worked shifts you will understand this. The down side balances the good points though. On a 4/12 shift unless you keep yourself busy during the day it could seem as though you were simply waiting to go to work, and this is worse on a Friday when the rest of the country finishes for the weekend.

The PNC was the first computer I’d ever used, if you don’t include playing Donkey Kong. I was very impressed with it, as I had been at training school, but now more so since I understood its capabilities. In around four seconds the PNC could search twenty million vehicle records and tell you who the owner was and where the vehicle lived. I was astonished. There were also millions of names on the system, and of course it was a nationwide database. There were other functions of the PNC but by today’s standards it was a very basic system. It was more advanced than Nottinghamshire’s own criminal record system, the CRS. This system had a maximum capacity of fifty convictions on any one record. When I was first trained in its use it was extremely rare to find anyone with so many convictions. Sadly as the 1980s progressed it became increasingly common to see records with far more than this. Today criminals have convictions numbering in the hundreds. You have to ask yourself, how does someone accrue so many? Surely common sense would suggest the offender is not learning anything from the criminal justice system? Nottinghamshire’s own CRS system was eventually scrapped. I suspect it couldn’t cope with the amount of offending.

Later the same year I submitted a request to be married, complying with police regulations. My prospective wife and her family were then checked for suitability to marry a police officer. Luckily I was granted permission. I’m not sure what would have happened if it had been refused.

As soon as I returned from my computer course I began working in the control room at Radford Road. At first it was just the occasional shift, but then it was for weeks and eventually several months. This carried on for the next few years, working inside and then outside, then back inside again.

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