 |
 |
After 5 years on the beat, he became one of his Division’s responses to incidents involving guns. There weren’t many in those days and he’d carried a revolver on just two occasions. The only time he took the weapon out of the holster was to put it back in the station gun safe.
Later, he was posted to a specialist unit. It provided house to house enquiry teams for major crimes: murders, rapes, serious assaults and teams to search through dustbins and rubbish tips; grubby excrement littered alleyways, woodland and open spaces. He’d escorted dangerous prisoners and nuclear loads, been part of armed containment teams and, ahead of VIP visits, he’d searched for bombs. The unit was the Force’s first responder to any incident involving large scale public disorder, a term much preferred by the Police hierarchy in place of the word riot which, once declared, made the Force liable under the Riot Damages Act to pay compensation for any damage to businesses caused by failure to efficiently quell the disturbance. The unit’s riot tactics were consequently innovative and very ‘robust’.
Performing both uniform and plain clothes crime patrols and unencumbered by routine calls for Police involvement, it concentrated on locating and outwitting car thieves, burglars, muggers, robbers, drug dealers, pickpockets and ‘ram’ raiders. Such people were cunning and resourceful, but not cunning enough to evade the attention of the circling shark that was an OSD patrol. That needed a criminal genius and they were few and far between. Unloved by the local criminal ‘fraternity’ they were relentless and successful; without fear or favour.
Promoted to Sergeant, he was sent to the suburbs, responsible for supervising street patrols. It was there one evening, the ‘chance’ encounter that led to his becoming an SFO.
The training was intensive. Becoming proficient in numerous weapons, raiding techniques, methods of entry and rescuing hostages, he joined another specialist unit. This one had two distinct groups. The Snipers, seldom seen by the public due to their predilection for dressing as the occasional tree, bush or lump of grass; and the Entry Teams, who were the ‘glamour boys’; black-clad, balaclavered, bristling with weapons. Nicks bought a pair of shades.
On a ‘call-out’ system for live operations, whether performing normal duties, training or resting, permanently attached to a pager and forbidden alcohol, the effects of the call-out system were any time, any day, no matter what they were doing. If the pager said ‘job on’, they went. Jobs could last from several hours to twenty-four.
No aspect of personal life was safe from interruption and the job wasn’t quite as attractive as his recruiter or the ‘posters’ made out; a ‘stakeout’ in the back of a van with eight other guys who’d all been on a curry ‘fest’ the night before was nowhere near as pleasant as it sounded.