The Factory Next Door

Cannabis factories are everywhere. Literally everywhere. This has been shown in the last couple of weeks with a discovery of a cannabis factory in Legoland (Legoland for Christ's sake!) and another in an abandoned nuclear bunker.

Obviously it wasn't a new attraction that Legoland were trialing, it was a remote outhouse on their land, but it was there all the same.

More often than not, however, cannabis factories are found in normal suburban homes. Tending to be more prevalent in either council, housing association or privately rented houses which have been acquired using fake or stolen identities. Sometimes the details of the vulnerable are used to acquire the properties. The electricity will be bypassed to hide the excessive usage. Usually in a rather dangerous manner I might add. These properties are very much in demand by regular families at a time where housing is at such a great shortage in London. Instead they are used to grow cannabis.

Criminal gangs are said to make about £250,000 from each of the small suburban factories a year. And they have plenty of them. It is accepted that one by one they will be discovered, so new ones are constantly popping up to make up for any loss. Due to the high profits made, the loss of a single harvest and all the equipment involved is insignificant.

I've discovered many of these myself. Normally the door is forced and you will hear a frantic scurry from inside. Upon entry you will find a rear window open and a poor fellow darting away across the rear gardens. Occasionally you find these people asleep or simply waiting for police in amongst the plants. These guys are not the criminal masterminds. They are usually vulnerable people, or persons whom have entered the country illegally. In return for a place to stay and a pitiful wage they are paid to take care of the plants by the gangs.

Occasionally somebody will set up a mini cannabis factory in their own residence in order to supplement their income or feed their own habit. Twice (TWICE!) I have attended addresses where the occupant has wished to make some sort of allegation. They have called police to their home themselves! A quick whiff inside and an experienced copper knows exactly what is behind one of those shut bedroom doors. So twice I have been called by somebody to help them with something only to end up arresting them for cultivating cannabis. As I hinted at earlier, these people are not always criminal masterminds.

I've spoken before about the problems with relatively harmless drugs such as cannabis being illegal. These factories are everywhere, and even in the most surprising of places (for example Legoland). They are filling the coffers of criminal gangs with millions and millions of pounds every year and I hasten to guess that their profits aren't being donated to Cancer Research.

For every cannabis factory police find and shut down, another two pop up. So, the question remains, are you living next door to a factory?

Anonymous Bobby

Anonymous Bobby and the Zombies

Police officers regularly kick peoples' doors in only to find them deceased inside. Sometimes they have been dead for a long time. I have detailed a few stories around this before.

But people aren't always as dead as you think they are.

Once, I was working with my colleague Ben when we attended such a call. Social Services had not seen their client for a few days and were concerned, there was no reply at her address and her neighbours hadn't seen her. (Note: It was Friday, rather than wait around to find out the result, social services just called the police, therefore passing on the responsibility, and went home).

Cue Anonymous Bobby and Ben. A few sharp kicks later and her front door lies in pieces on her floor. A putrid stench emanates from every room. It certainly smells like death in this flat.

I turn a corner and next to a fireplace, beside her bed, is the body of an old lady. Lying motionless, face down. It looks like she fell out of bed and died. She is utterly motionless. We begin the procedure we have gone through a thousand times. Suddenly a loud and sharp inhalation of breath from the female on the floor. Ben and I both fly 6 feet across the room in shock.

I'm always concerned that the Zombie apocalypse is just around the corner. Walk the streets of London at 5am on a Sunday morning and you will see what I mean. It's closer then you think! At that moment, when what we were convinced was a corpse came back to life, I thought the moment had finally come. Tasers went back into holsters and we calmed ourselves, knowing we would live to see another day.

The lady was alive but had been lying in her own juices for 3 days. We rendered her first aid and she survived and made a full recovery.

I expect the real zombie apocalypse any day now.

Anonymous Bobby

A Question of Morailty

We, as an organisation, don't always get it right. A lot of the time I see decisions made with all the best intentions, but decisions that are morally or practically wrong. Often these decisions have been made through no malice, and often due to a willingness to please the public.

An example of this was one winter a few years ago. I was working central in London and had been tasked by senior officers to escort a council team around London who were looking for the unattended possessions, mainly bedding, of the homeless and were disposing of them.

A police escort was deemed necessary to quell any resistance that these poor homeless people may put up.

Now this task was approved by senior officers, but I believe it is quite clearly wrong. To collect the few blankets and items that bring warmth to the most vulnerable is an awful action to sanction. During a particularly harsh winter night the loss of such items, unexpectedly, could even lead to death.

I have been unfortunate enough to find a deceased homeless person down an alley during one of our harsh London winters. It isn't pleasant, and it shouldn't happen. I'll never forget the look of his frozen corpse, clutching a Thermos. So, to go and remove blankets and such items where they have been stashed for the night time was an inconceivable mission.

The decision to take these immoral actions were probably prompted and authorised due to a select, noisy, selection of the public who found the sight of the homeless repulsive. In an attempt to please these inconsiderate people, morality had been forgotten and an attempt to merely sweep the most vulnerable in our society away had commenced.

This is an example of us getting something wrong. We should be helping, not hindering, our most vulnerable people. It is, however, also an example of making the wrong decisions for no other reason than blindly attempting to please the most vocal citizens.

Suffice to say, and rather inexplicably, I didn't manage to find ANY blankets or possessions of the homeless that day. Not one shred of material.

Anonymous Bobby

You Can't Save Them All

We've all seen the movies where somebody is dragged from the sea, or found collapsed, and our hero gets straight down and starts doing CPR. Shortly afterwards the poor suffering victim will splutter back to life and thank their new found hero.

I've had some success when it comes to CPR and lives have been saved. But it is not how the movies or television depict it.

Effective compressions on a person's chest are likely to break the ribs. One is required to compress about a third of the way into the person's torso. Imagine feeling the ribs crack beneath your hands as you push down. Then with each compression you can feel the broken bones inside the chest cavity.

I have been reliably informed by a doctor that CPR does not actually bring anybody back to life, it merely keeps the body alive. Compressions keep the blood moving around the body and therefore supplying it with oxygen, and rescue breaths into the victim's mouth keeps oxygen in the blood.

So you never actually bring someone back to life with CPR, you merely keep them alive.

It's not a glamorous task either. I would like to flatter myself by telling you stories of a poor, dying damsel in distress, images of me ripping my shirt open to reveal a six pack glistening in the sun while I run towards her in slow motion, before kneeling to bring her back to life with a few sensual compressions and a lingering kiss/rescue breath.

You'll be glad to know that the story I shall share is much more realistic, and a lot more gory.

A homeless man had jumped from a hostel window, falling from the second floor to the street below. As he had jumped his head had moved backwards and he descended as if lying flat on his back in bed. He landed this way and did not move. His head was flat on the pavement.

A fall from the second floor is most survivable. It is generally accepted that a fall from the 4th floor or higher will ultimately guarantee death. However, if you hit your head you could die from falling from a standing position.

Anyway, I was the first to reach this man. His facial expression told me he was dead. But there were onlookers. As I knelt beside him I started to see a grayish, clear liquid seep from the back of his head. I began chest compressions. Police officers are told that even if they know a person is dead, try CPR, their family may be looking on and just need to see someone trying to save their loved ones. Equally the public report feeling helpless and seeing somebody take action reassures them. Apparently.

That didn't matter though, I thought I had a good chance of saving this man.

CPR is a curious task. You become completely enveloped by the rhythm and strength of what you are doing. Making sure you do 30 compressions to 2 breaths (luckily I had a mask to help deliver the rescue breaths). I have always found that I become somewhat detached from my environment when conducting CPR. And that is how I found myself that day. It wasn't until I felt myself being dragged away by a paramedic concerned that I had completely lost the plot that I snapped back to reality.

The paramedic told me the male was gone. He turned the body slightly and I saw the man's brains dripping from the back of his head, which had taken the full force of the impact with the pavement.

I was covered in juices and blood. But, you can't save them all.

Anonymous Bobby

Police Jargon 1

Police officers have their own language. Abbreviations, anagrams, police slang and jargon form a completely new language. I have, in the past, had full conversations with other officers in front of a suspect regarding their offence whereby they would think we were just talking gobbledy-gook. Below I shall outline some of this jargon for the purposes of clarity in this ongoing blog.

R5 - This originates from a method of reporting back a radio signal. If someone is speaking on the radio they can be deemed to be between R1 and R5. If somebody is R1 they have poor signal and are unreadable on the radio. R5 would mean they are loud and clear. It is still used on the radio in London today. It has also spread to everyday conversation. For example:

Officer 1 (We shall call him John): *Stood in the street and notices a particularly attractive young lady walk past*
Officer 2 (We shall call him Boris): * Fails to notice said female*
John: 'Boris look....' *Gives a nod toward the female in question*
Boris: *Following the direction of John's nod and noticing the female* 'Ah. You're R5 mate'. *Nods in approval*

A crude yet poignant example of R5's entry into everyday police language.

A Body - Now this does not mean what you would imagine. If an officer 'has a body' it merely means that they have arrested somebody and are currently dealing with the matter. This can also be referred to as 'One in the bin' (a person in custody) or 'a body in the bin'.

RTC - A Road Traffic Collision, formerly known as an RTA (Road Traffic Accident). These incidents were, and I'm sure you'll agree crucially, changed to RTC's rather than RTA's as an RTA would imply that the matter was an accident whereby this assumption can not legitimately be made without investigation, therefore the term RTC was born. Somebody probably got promoted for noticing that oversight. Quite right too.

Foxtrot Oscar - Simply 'Fuck Off'.

Batshit Crazy - A delicate term referring to someone of poor mental health. Also used for this purpose, the term 'wibble'.

Slag - Not the traditional definition. In fact the term 'slag' has a completely different meaning in police language to its everyday use. In police language 'slag' means anything that is 'no-good' and 'crime ridden'. For example a person can be slag. He would not be a slag. He's just slag. An address can be slag. Or slaggy. Example:

John: "See that bloke over there?"
Boris: "Yeah, he looks well slaggy". (indicating that he looks like a wrong 'un)
John: "He is. I nicked him last week. Proper slag".
Boris: "Isn't he from 14A Anonymous Drive?"
John: "Yeah"
Boris: "We're always going there, it's such a slaggy address".

Not a typical conversation between two officers, but you get the idea.

EAB - The small blue booklet normally filled out after an arrest or used to take a statement from a victim/witness.

Trap 1 - Trap 1 or 2 and so forth is a system to refer to which toilet cubicle an officer is in. Example:

John: "Where's Inspector Anonymous?"
Boris: "He's in Trap 1."
John: "Did you see Trap 2 earlier? It looked like somebody had spontaneously combusted in there".

B-1-N - The bin. Example of use:

John: "Where did you put that statement from earlier?"
Boris: "I filed it under B-1-N." (Meaning he put it in the bin).

L-O-B - Load of bollocks.

Skip - a car. Usually in disrepair. Also used for this purpose, the term 'shed'.

"On Me" or to frantically tapping the top of one's head - 'On Me' simply means come to me. If a person, or persons, is too far away to hear you but they can see you, you would simply repeatedly tap the top of your head with your hand until they comply and come to you.

IC7 - The IC code refers to a person's ethnicity and officially goes from IC1-6. IC7 is unofficial and refers to a person with ginger hair.

A Cluster Fuck - Meaning all hell has broken loose and nobody is really in any form of control. Example:

John: "What happened at that arrest earlier, it sounded crazy on the radio?"
Boris: "It was a complete Cluster Fuck mate".

I shall divulge more jargon to you another time. I hope you have enjoyed these revelations. Save the blog to your favourites, follow me on Twitter @anonbobbyblog and tell you're friends and family. For now, I'm off to Trap 1.

Anonymous Bobby

The Swinging Man

Several years back a typical shift was coming to an end. I was in a patrol car with my good friend, and colleague, David. We were both weary as the calls had not stopped coming in that day, in fact we were slowly heading back to 'The Ranch' (the police station) to type up the day's reports. We were moments away from turning into 'The Yard' when the radio came to life.

"I graded call to Anonymous Park, a member of the public says he can see a man hanging from the climbing frame".

We were around the corner.

Now, these types of calls are strange. It was daylight. It was in London, where there were a lot of people about and in 99% of cases like this that member of the public would be mistaken in some way or another. An I graded call, by the way, is the highest rating a call can receive, giving a response unit a maximum of 14 minutes to get to the scene.

We needed no more than 3 minutes. This was not one of those occasions in the 99%. This was the 1%. The silhouette of a man hanging from the climbing frame swung gently in the breeze in the dimming light of an Autumnal day in London. David and I drove straight into the park. Nobody else was around, except a lone dog walker stood glumly by the swinging man. This was our informant.

David had fetched our first aid kit from the boot of the car and unzipped it, turned it upside down and dumped its entire contents onto the floor rather than search around inside it. Meanwhile, I took hold of the swinging man's waist and tried to support his weight as best as I could. He was still warm-ish. It is worth noting that an adult male's body, completely limp, is an incredibly heavy item and this male weighed in excess of 85KG. David produced a pair of tough-cut scissors from the mess of first aid items on the floor, climbed onto the climbing frame and began attempting to cut away at the ligature. After a few seconds I felt the males full weight fall onto me and we fell to the floor together, I did my best to stop either of our heads hitting the ground too roughly.

David and I were both experienced officers and so while we were transmitting the relevant information to our colleagues, and requesting an ambulance, we lay the man out and I immediately got on his chest and started compressions whilst David placed a face mask over the man's face and routinely blew two breaths into his lungs between my 30 compressions.

There was no sign of life from the male as a paramedic arrived. We continued with the CPR as he did his checks. He told us there was no pulse. Nonetheless we continued as more and more paramedics flooded that little park. David and I would occasionally swap over as chest compressions become tiring very quickly. For about 10 minutes we continued like this whilst various healthcare professionals drilled into the male, injected him, and did various other things to him that I did not understand.

Suddenly, the paramedic who seemed to be running his team's side of the show said "I've got a pulse". I felt a strange sense of careful optimism for him. Quickly he was scooped onto a bed and we hurried him to the nearest hospital.

We stayed with him (as is policy) and it wasn't long before a doctor approached David and I and told us that we had saved the man's life. He remained on life support for a number of months before dying. So I guess we didn't save his life after all.

I remember needing a whiskey or two when I got in that night. It takes time to turn your brain off when you have experienced something like that. You feel it, touch it, make decisions during it, smell it, taste it and live it. It becomes a part of your own story and remains in your psyche. This story is one of hundreds that I wish to share with you on this blog. I don't recount these things to boast, or tell you all what a hero I am. I'm nothing of the sort as you will learn as these pages pass. I want you to understand that policing is a complex and difficult matter which takes its toll on those who are consistently out there in situations such as the one I have outlined above. It is not a remarkable story. It is a tragedy and one that is played out all over London, everyday, over and over again. This blog is for the regular participants in that tragedy, the police officers.

Anonymous Bobby

Ask a Police Officer

Hello World, I'm Anonymous Bobby.

I'm a serving, front line police officer in London, UK where I have worked for a little under a decade. I work in response policing, meaning that I am out on the streets in a patrol car responding to your 999 emergency calls.

I have plenty to tell you. I've Tasered people. I've performed CPR on people (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). I've chased hardened criminals through the streets of London. I've arrested people for most offences from attempted murder down to burglary. I've carefully led a boy who had been abused through the reporting process. I've hugged your loved ones as they cried. I've been in car chases. I've met death so often that he and I are like old friends. I've talked people off the edge of a bridge, I've watched others jump. I've stood toe to toe with maniacs with knives. I've seen you at your best, more often at your worst. This is a cruel and dark world and I want to share it with you.

Why am I anonymous? Because I want to be honest with you. There are some hard truths about policing, and human beings in general, that I want to speak about on this blog and I fear that those within the Metropolitan Police will be displeased about me doing so. The police in England are all about transparency, so an experienced frontline officer should be free to share his thoughts and experiences without censorship. A blog such as this is rare as everyday police officers are everyday people, with families and commitments. One wrong word against 'The Job' (this is how officers refer to their occupation) could be your last as a police officer. Officers are warned repeatedly against Facebook, Twitter and all social media. What is it we are scared of people finding out? The thing is, I don't care anymore. The UK would be a better place if the public could see the world through the eyes of the men and women who police their streets.

So come with me. I'll take you through my day to day life as a police officer. I'll reminisce on the last decade and recount the stories and people that have stuck with me. I'll address, frankly, the controversies that surround policing in the UK.

Some names and minor details may be altered in order to try and maintain both my own and others' anonymity but I will keep this blog as factually correct and honest as I can, despite how difficult to swallow some truths may be.

Welcome. Buckle up. It's a stormy world out there when you're on the frontline.

Anonymous Bobby