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

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 10 Year Old and his Teacher

People often ask "What is the worst thing you have ever dealt with?"

Officers around the World will recognise that question, and also the numb blankness that follows as you try and recall a stand out incident. I still don't know the answer, but one incident that jumps to my mind is the case of the 10 year old boy and his assistant teacher.

The boy's father had noticed a change in his son's behaviour. Something wasn't right and when he questioned him further the boy soon revealed that an assistant teacher at his school had been molesting him for the past few months. The father, stricken with grief and not knowing what to do, took the boy to hospital. He explained what his son had told him and the hospital called the police. I arrived with my colleague Ben to deal with them.

As response officers we only deal with the initial investigation. We would take a brief initial account from the boy and allow for the collection of forensic evidence. We would also be responsible for the initial counselling of the boy and his father, along with hospital staff.

The boy was clearly damaged. He was distraught and felt ashamed. He was upset. His father was inconsolable. We had a hard job on our hands.

We got the account of the incident from him, the details of which I will spare you. The assistant teacher had allegedly been anally raping the boy for months. Doctors confirmed that the boy had suffered some trauma in the suggested area.

I had to take the boy into a room and seize his clothes. It must have been very difficult for him to be alone with a stranger, albeit a police officer, having experienced what he had allegedly experienced. It was difficult to console him and I felt a duty to somewhat restore his faith in adults as best I could.

The teacher was arrested (I wasn't allowed anywhere near him for forensic reasons, which was probably for the best). We delivered the boy and his family to the appropriate specialists having spent 8 hours with them.

An incident like that stays with you for a while. It's not like reading about it in the paper or seeing it on television. You are there. You see it, smell it, interact with it, influence it, and live it. It becomes a part of you and once you have experienced something like that poor boy up close, a part of you changes forever. 

I never found out what the outcome of the incident was. I didn't want to know and I still don't. This incident was many, many years ago now but I still occasionally see Ben (my colleague that day). He did follow up on the incident and whenever I see him he asks me "Do you want to know what happened with the 10 year old and the teacher yet?". My answer is always "No". I know enough already.

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

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