The Man Who Cut His Nose Off To Spite His Face

People do bizarre and unexplicable things.

There was a man who was wanted by police. He knew police were looking for him and so he took a knife and stabbed himself. Whether or not he intended to die I do not know. How he thought this would help if he did not intend to die, is also beyond me. Sadly, in this case it appears that he would have been better off if he had died.

His injuries were extensive and he suffered a stroke moments after self harming.

The stroke was catastrophic and he was left unable to communicate and was left, for want of a better word, a vegetable. He was only a young man and he had drawn his life to a partially premature end. Doctors would later predict that the man would not recover to his former self.

It's hard to understand how or why a person may take such drastic action. The offence for which he was wanted was relatively minor and he had not suffered any serious mental health problems prior to the incident. His family were left to pick up the pieces for the rest of his life because of one ridiculous and emotional outburst.

As a police officer I find myself regularly surrounded by such tragedy. It is most difficult to rationalise people's actions in one's mind. It is also difficult to explain to people the effect being around such events has on me. What am I supposed to tell my wife when I get home after each shift? I, like most police officers with 'non-job' wives, simply say nothing.

Anonymous Bobby

Taser Taser!!!

Disclaimer: Some details have been changed to render this incident difficult to recognise in order to protect the anonymity of all involved.

Officers on response teams started to carry Taser a few years ago after an officer in Harrow suffered horrific injuries in an attack by a man with a knife. When the Commissioner (Sir Bernard Hogan Howe) visited that officer in hospital he asked him "What could have prevented your injuries?" the officer replied "a Taser". To the Commissioner's credit, Taser was soon available to a limited number of response team officers, of which I was one.

People often ask if I've Tasered anybody. My answer is now "a couple of people".

The first time I Tasered someone it was a man in his house, he could be heard by neighbours to be smashing items of furniture in his home. We arrived and he came to the front window of the house, looking out onto the street. He could be seen with a large kitchen knife in each hand. His eyes were wild and daring and he was shouting incoherently. It was clear to my colleague and I that he was suffering a mental health crisis. After failed negotiations through his window with him we had to force entry into his house with an enforcer. As the door flew open my colleague and I feared for our safety. The male had not dropped the knives and had now disappeared deeper into the house. We had to force entry when we did as the male was intimating that he would cut his own throat with the knives. The door flew open and we stood in the doorway with our Tasers drawn. A couple of other officers were behind us, they did not have Tasers. As we slowly edged our way through his hallway the male burst out of a door on our right and charged at us. I shot him but it had no effect as the two probes were too close together.

A Taser fires two 'probes' attached to wires. These probes have hooks on the end which hook into clothes or skin. An electric current is then passed between these two probes through the person's body, disabling them. If the two probes are too close together when they hit a person, the current only passes through a small part of their body. Ideally, you want your probes in two separate muscle groups. That would completely incapacitate anybody.

My shot was enough to shock the male and he ran into his bedroom, with my colleague and I in hot pursuit. The male still had the knives in his hands as I took aim again and this time got an effective probe placement on the male. He was restrained and nobody was significantly injured.

Taser is a controversial issue. Having carried one for a while I have seen the good it has done and the injuries and harm it has prevented to so many people. The Metropolitan Police get a lot wrong. As we go through this blog together you'll come to see how I believe The Met get MOST things wrong. But, the training around Taser is simply world class. An outspoken member of Amnesty International was seen on television to be criticising police use of Taser, so the Taser trainers invited him along to witness the quality of training and policies and procedures around its use. He did a complete U-turn in days.

The male I Tasered was clearly suffering a serious mental health issue but had shown both violence towards himself with the knives, and to us by charging at us with the knives. A situation which could have led to serious injuries to many people was resolved without any serious harm to anyone. All because that officer from Harrow said "a Taser" and, more importantly, Sir Hogan Howe listened.

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