Police

Police
In August, on the way to the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final I pulled into a petrol station and drove off without paying. I realised my mistake half way down the motorway and returned to the garage to pay my debt. Some weeks later I received a call from a police officer saying the issue was dealt with and warned me to pay more attention. One evening two community police came to the door of a house I was visiting to ask for my number to give to a police officer who is following enquiries in to another crime. She rang me and I must attend the police station to clear up some issues.
I have never been what I regard as a criminal. Since giving up drugs I have written about my drug use which was illegal. Using illegal drugs is a victimless crime but not something I am either proud nor ashamed of. In Portugal, since the legalisation of all drugs alongside a drive to reposition drug abuse as a health issue, the country has seen a vast drop in drug use and drug related crime. The world is gradually realising that the war on drugs was a stupid mistake and that viewing drug use as a health rather than a legal issue is better for the users, the public and the governments purse. Since becoming clean I haven't broken any laws bar my one petrol station error. I incorporated a petrol theft in one of my pieces of fiction, inspired by my error. In my fiction I have also met Jesus, travelled deep in to the future and met up with a subterranian army led by a creature that grew from the still born twin of Elvis Presley. My call up either relates to my petrol station mistake or my fiction.
My last meeting with the police followed an altercation with a man who jealousy I had inspired over a girl. He smashed my headlight as I sat in my van. When I got out of my van he had moved into a position where a group of old ladies were waiting outside a chemist. He proceeded to spit in my face then said, 'we should have it out man to man.'
Having been spat at and had my van damaged I lost my temper and gave him a good hiding. I realise this was stupid. If someone slaps your cheek you should offer them your other cheek. This was Jesus' advice, with which I agree and ought to have followed. It was a set up. The guy gathered the names and addresses of the old ladies who hadn't witnessed the whole situation and went straight to the police station. Happily, the police saw my side and let me off with a warning. Here, in later life, I have experienced good policing.
I have, however, been the victim of poor policing. For a while, an over enthusiastic community policeman had it in for me. He was one of the two who came to my friends door the other week. In a single month he found me delivering some heavy furniture to a house with a single yellow line outside. I had my warning lights on and was only parked there for delivery as a part of my then job. He made me move a hundred yards from the house from where I then had to continue my delivery. He saw me taking out of date food from marks and Spencer's bins and gave me a long lecture. He found my van parked up in a parking spot and asked me to move it as he believed a fire engine might struggle to pass. On measuring the space I demonstrated he was wrong. He still made me move it. Another time he caught me carrying an air rifle home from my van. He would pass me often and wave with a nasty smile on his face. Police harassment, to my mind.
In the mid eighties I moved to a cottage in Cornwall where we were visited fifteen times in one year provoking us to write a formal letter of complaint. Sat in a cafe I was publicly embarrassed as police came in and asked me to come with them. They put my girlfriend in the cells for four hours whilst they drove me back to our cottage which they searched. They questioned me about a robbery in a town I had never been to for a couple of hours before it became clear I was innocent. On Christmas Eve I had just got up and was splitting wood for the fire when police arrived. A tree had been stolen from a nearby garden. I offered to take the officer to the woods from where I had got mine. We passed the stump of the neighbours tree. I pointed out this was a spruce whilst our Christmas tree was a larch. Once I had shown him the tree stump from where I got mine we returned to the cottage. My friends had bedecked his car with tinsel and holly. After our letter of complaint the harassment ceased.
My earliest meetings with police were less comical. At fourteen I went to a concert, Rory Gallagher the Irish blues guitarist. I was tripping on mushrooms when I was grabbed from behind and dragged roughly to the wall which I had to put my hands on whilst they kicked my feet apart. A friend had rolled a joint. They took us to millgarth police station where I was strip searched. They wore plastic gloves to poke about in my anus. Fourteen. What kid hides drugs up his arse? That comes close to paedophile rape in my book. They sliced up my jeans with a Stanley knife blade and kicked me out in the middle of leeds without charge and a five mile walk home.
The following year, aged fifteen, I was pulled over walking up to Stonehenge festival site. The cowardly police weren't allowed in site but picked off the young, old, female and weak outside the site. They drove me back to Amesbury police station where again I was strip searched. That's twice, in different parts of the country, before turning sixteen. Any notion that the first time was a one off. A single rogue copper vanished. From then on I knew and understood police. There purpose may seem to be upholding the law yet these experiences showed me that they were breaking laws to exert power for powers sake.
Aged twenty one, walking home from a nightclub in chapeltown. A van of police pulled over. Two questioned me while one paced up and down. A burglary had taken place, so they reckoned, with someone fitting my description as the suspect. Chapeltown is a West Indian area mainly. Too scared to beat up a black man they beat me up, in their van, away from prying eyes, then sent me on my way.
I understand rationally that not all police are bad. But my gut instinct, my intuitive reaction is fear that their cowardly, bullying tactics over ride any good cops that try to stay in the gang. Given a chance they kill people like me. They fear the strange, the odd, the peculiar and uphold the ordinary, the mundane, the simply understood. Preserving the status quo is only good where the status quo is good. Attacking the unusual is their prerogative.
So we'll see what happens this evening. I imagine they'll try pin something on me. They protect the rich, preserve the strong, service their lords.


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