The Wrestler Within (Warning – profanity)

This was my offering for my latest assignment for A215, which was based on ‘life writing’. I scored 77%, which I was pleased with, but that is a fairly big drop from my previous score. Never mind, onwards, and hopefully upwards!

I did really enjoy writing this one, and the memories it brought back. I miss my days as a Special, especially the great people I trained and worked with, so I shall ‘dedicate’ this piece to them.

The Wrestler Within

(Warning – Profanity)

 

I asked myself the usual questions as I was being driven to the main police station in the centre of Gloucester from my own little ‘nick’. Why could I never remember how to use the radio? Would I get on with the person I was partnered with? Would they think I was ‘just’ a Special, and a useless ‘newbie’ into the bargain?

A year later I would discover the reason for my difficulties with the radio and my nerves. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a condition which, among other things, affects cognitive and memory functions, and also causes anxiety.

Back then, I still felt able to do my job, and had decided some days before that I would do a ‘Streetsafe’ shift instead of just an ordinary shift on my home ‘patch’. It was my way of forcing myself to face the things I worried about – volunteer cheerfully and panic about it later.

Streetsafe is an initiative run by Gloucestershire Constabulary, to attempt to tackle crime before it occurs and defuse situations that might escalate without intervention. They are weekend shifts which are almost guaranteed to be eventful and interesting!

I saw one or two familiar faces while sitting in the briefing room, including the Sergeant who ran part of our Officer Safety Training. ‘Hands up – who hasn’t done a Streetsafe shift before?’ he asked, and I felt all eyes on me as I raised mine.

I ended up being paired with an experienced PC I’d never seen before; a stocky and strong-looking man in his 40s, whom I shall call Mike. We were to go out in one of the vans, which we were both pleased about, as it was a chilly night, and neither of us really liked the idea of standing in the street for the 4 hours that Streetsafe would ‘officially’ run for.

We had a few minor incidents to deal with right from the start, but it wasn’t until much later   that we had the main drama of the night.

We had a report of a man who had collapsed in the street. Paramedics arrived soon after us, and it didn’t take long to work out that the young man was very drunk, and possibly under the influence of drugs, too. At first he was just slumped and unresponsive, but soon began to come round and start verbally abusing everyone and fighting off all attempts at assistance. The ‘c word’ was used with increasing frequency as he tried to make everyone leave him alone. His friend insisted he had only been drinking, and hadn’t taken any drugs, but rather tellingly, as the situation worsened, he disappeared.

We were joined by a ‘veteran’ Sergeant, who was very jolly towards everyone, except this young man. ‘Get up and stop making an arse of yourself,’ he had said, and then ‘if you don’t stop pissing around you’ll be in the cells for the night!’ But the man wouldn’t or couldn’t take his advice, and it was decided he needed to go to A&E, particularly after vomiting all over himself. The paramedics were understandably reluctant to have the man in the ambulance, even with an officer present, so in the end we hauled him into the back of the van, where he just lay on the floor, and took him to the hospital ourselves. The Sergeant followed us in his car.

That short trip seemed to ages, as I spent the whole journey looking around to make sure he was still breathing and not vomiting or having a seizure or anything dangerous like that. When we got there, the real fun began.

At first it seemed as if we could leave him in the care of the hospital and soon go on our merry way, back to the crammed and chaotic streets of Gloucester at kicking-out time. We were standing outside the A&E entrance having a sly cigarette, enjoying a moment of peace. Suddenly the doctors were calling us in, because the man was again fighting everyone and they were unable to do anything with him.

We rushed back in, and within seconds there were six of us trying to hold this skinny lad down on the trolley. He had absolutely no clue what he was doing. He was barely conscious, but the strength of him was extraordinary.

I ended up with his left leg. A damp, smelly left leg, with vomit and now urine on it. It was hard to ignore the stench; the sharp acid sensation hitting the back of my throat and forcing me to breathe through my mouth. I was wearing my big ‘high-vis’ jacket which was waterproof, and I had protective latex gloves on, too, so I wasn’t worried about touching it.

I was, however, worried about the grip I had on him. The bars on the side of the trolley were raised, and for some reason I had one arm over the top bar, and one arm underneath. With the strength of this man thrashing about, the arm under the bar was in very real danger of being snapped against it. I dared not let go until I knew it was safe (for the others) for me to do so. When I had changed position, I discovered that both arms over the bar gave me a less effective hold, so I literally jumped onto the trolley and laid my upper body weight on his leg, my feet off the floor. It worked – that leg was going nowhere!

The hospital staff couldn’t do a thing with him. They couldn’t even get a sample of blood to find out what had turned him into this raving madman. When he eventually became more awake and alert, he calmed down somewhat, and it was decided that he wasn’t in any danger. But the doctors refused to keep him at the hospital, so he again became ours to deal with.

The man was unceremoniously dumped in the back of the van by sliding him – mattress and all – off the trolley. The mattress was then pulled back out, and as the cage door was slammed shut on him, he looked nothing like the man whom it had taken six people to hold. He lay there on the floor, curled up, filthy, and pathetic.

The Sergeant decided that if we took him back to the cells, he would most likely be sent back to the hospital by the Custody Sergeant, and we would be back at square one again. So in a rather unorthodox, but quite inspired move, he phoned the man’s parents. They would meet us around the corner from the police station and he would hand over responsibility for him to them.

While we waited for them to arrive, Mike and I had to hide behind the open van doors so the Sergeant wouldn’t see us trying to stifle our giggles. Now the man was alert enough to understand what was going on, the Sergeant got right into his face and yelled, ‘I’m arresting you for behaving like a fucking twat!’ He then gave the man the biggest lecture I have ever heard an officer dish out. It went on for several minutes, with the lad not daring to speak, but just sitting on the edge of the van floor looking at his shoes. It was the funniest arrest I ever witnessed. Shortly afterwards he de-arrested the man and told him (still yelling) that he’d be at his house first thing on Monday morning to issue him with an £80 Fixed Penalty Notice for disorderly behaviour while drunk in a public place.

When the parents arrived, we were told he was normally a nice, quiet lad who had never been in trouble and had never done anything like this before. But it didn’t stop him calling the Sergeant a ‘c**t’ as I was helping him with his seat belt in the back of his parents’ little hatchback, while he shivered under several blankets, holding a bucket on his lap.

‘Shut up, before you find yourself in a cell after all,’ I said.

In the end I couldn’t help feeling sorry for all three of them. Whatever the young man had taken to make him so ill and behave in that manner, I was certain he would not be taking it again.

As the sun came up, I realised that we were four-and-a-half hours over shift, and my 3-year-old son would soon be awake. I looked back on the night’s events with a sense of pride in how I had coped. The Sergeant and Mike both praised my actions, and there was nothing I wanted more than to be appreciated by my colleagues, when I constantly feared letting them down when it mattered. I may have suffered from anxiety, but it hadn’t stopped me from being a good copper that night.

I had another little giggle to myself as I updated my notebook before booking off duty. Our tutor in training had drummed into us the importance of writing down word-for-word everything that is said by everyone involved in an incident. So I had to write ‘Sergeant – then said “I’m arresting you for behaving like a fucking twat!’