In this episode Ken and I chat with a special constable from the UK. Sooooo many questions!! This was a really fun interview and Bill had some really great stories! He describes to us responding to the 2017 Manchester Arena Bombing that occurred right after a Ariana Grande concert. Be warned these stories are INTENSE!
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this is things police see first Annacomes with your host Steve goldhey guys welcome to the podcast in thisepisode I have my good friend Ken Roybalwith me Ken from hello from policebackground net that’s meyes that’s Ken for all your backgroundneeds Ken today we have one I’ve beenI’ve been excited for an interview likethis for a while because this is agentleman that works across the pond asthey say over in England he is a specialconstable special constable yes areserve officer in the United States Ithink as far as I can tell it seems likeit’s like a reserved position he’s ayounger guy he’s got some stories hesays so um yeah I’ve just got a bunch ofquestions for him about you yeah I’mexcitedyeah become on a Bobby a Bobby come onRobert peels boys James Bond oh come onthis could be great yes very veryexcited he wants to use a pseudonym sohe doesn’t want his name out there hisname is very it’s a very unique name soI kind understand he we’re gonna callhim we’re to call him bill we could gowith Bobby but it’s a little too on thenose I think mister hand alright okaynow Ken I will do through the magic ofTechnology I will add someone to ourcall who’s all the way across theAtlantic Ocean all right that’s what I’mgoing to attempt to do this is one timethe first time we ever did this itworked really seamlessly in every timesince it’s been a problem but and uh andalso the other thing about England it’sthe third largest audience for thepodcast so it goes US Canada in Englandso there’s actually aa I’ve had a lot ofcontact with with Bobby’s over the lastcouple months and this is the first timesomeone’s actually been willing to comeon a lot of the more I try to come on orthey don’t think they they’reintimidated I don’t know what it is butthey they like the show but thethey always have a friend they want torefer and then I never hear from anybodyso I mean I don’t think they’re afraidto talk speak out because I know for afact there’s stand-up comics over therethat are that are bobbies and like theirwhole routine is making fun ofmanagement so I think I think they saywhat they want but I just want to addthat because this is uh this is thisadds to my excitement okay here we gobill are you theregood eveningyes I can hear you my man how you doingover there I’m not so bad thank you verymuch it’s quite chilly over here thewall I believe is yesterday where youare how’s the love it here in SouthernCalifornia it’s good it’s about 60degrees not too bad we’re also on withKen retired LAPD Ken is in the PacificNorthwest hey Bill what’s happening goodevening Kenny man we’re about 50 degreesout here I mean wash yeah good so whatI’m pursuing you talking firing heartsas well I don’t know this gun firing Ialmost saw seus yeah I’m wearing asweater that that’s universal languageso it’s I’m not wearing a jacket I’mwearing a sweater but I’m inside so sowe’re doing okay out here bill we’regonna have to um there’s gonnadefinitely gonna be a little delay andthey just come for the distance of theconstable we’ll do our best with um witheverybody chiming in here so if there’ssome if we talk over each other orwhatever no worriesso bill you contacted the show and we’rewilling to come on as the first Englishpolice officer which is very exciting tous and you you held the you hold theposition or held the position as aspecial constable correct okay can youexplain to us what a special constabledoes in England because here we know wehave special officers as well usuallythey’re part-time or they’re sometimesso long yeah the equivalent I can thinkof is a reserve deputy so you’re avolunteer with you you’re sworn in butyou just get paid a basic expenseallowance you’re not you’re not salariedokay so that you kind of work as neededthat’s what yes that’s what I used to doI did that for about a year and thenthey were offering paid work and I wasjust coming to the end of my studies soyeah changed house basically okay andwhat does the job you’re doing now aCommunity Support Officer is full-timepaid but not sworn in member ofuniformed police staff so predominantlyI do neighborhood policing or communitypolicing you know depending where youare what you call it and a lot of fullcontrol okay so you’re out there in thecommunity and is that is the goal to gofully sworn are you happy in the whereyou are oh I get asked this class a lotbecause the length of time that I’vebeen a community officer is quiteunusual it’s kind of expensive that youwould change change roles if I changeroles I have to start again on a payscale so the thing that bothers me themost is how much I’m relievedit’s all about lives so happy momentsare puppies out okay very goodken did you have any questions up frontI’m just kind of curious the year it’s apolice officer position that you’re innow it is but it’s not comfortable so Ihave limited powers of arrest but I getinvolved in if if you nearby and there’sa chrome comes out you go to it that’snice they work but it’s not a swornposition and it’s not a special coercionno it’s not no I don’t have these fullpowers and privileges of a constableas is to use the physiology but it’s howI describe it – it was a role that wascreatives about 2003and they wanted to bridge the gapbetween the police and the communitiesthat’s primarily what it was there to dookay then you can act in the supportrole when a constable needs you ifthere’s a call going on nearby you’reyou’re free to respond to that yes Idon’t know anybody that wouldn’t respondto a call near virus it’s expensive okaythis is very interesting is there isthere is it a stepping stone to anotherjob within the police department whereyou would you would go to a differentposition from there or is that prettymuch it for that position it can be astepping stone it depends which policeforce you work for for some let’s sayyou wanted to be comfortable they wouldmake you do a full recruitmentapplication process from scratch allthose they would have a shortenedprocess because you’ve already passedthe medical you’ve already passed yourfitness test you’ve done your writtenexams so those are those three examplesare gave you there I had to do the samefor a constables as what I’ve done formy role billsorry we’re hearing you two questions wejust don’t know anything about it’sreally interesting okay so also I’mcurious to be a special constable whatkind of trainings required or involvedthem for that is that like anabbreviated police academy or do youhave to go through the full training ofa constable you don’t do the full 20 21weeks my force does it varies from forceto force how long do you do your initialtraining for special constables becauseyou’re volunteers it’s mostly weekendsso you’ll do so my force will travel upto London on a Friday evening you’ll doSutton Sunday and then shuttle homeSunday evening and you do I think it’s16 weekends it takes quite some time todo it because they don’t get you comingback each weekend they have to have gapsbecause the recognise the fact that youyou need to have a a farmer life and asocial life okay so that that’s kind ofon-the-job training then you don’t go tolike an official academy so many weeksin a row oh no no you do go to thetraining school to do those weekendsokay so that’s a lot like here in in theStates a lot of a lot of a lot of thestates offer the intermittent Academyyou can go weekends for six months oryou can go nights for three months so itsounds it sounds pretty similar yeah andon the LAPD and I believe this is stillthe same is if you’re going to be a lineofficer work in the field I think that’snine months part time and it’s sixmonths if you’re just going to be areserve officer working in the stationan exhilarating but it’s all part time Iwant to say it’s on the weekends orsomething like that too so it takeslonger but it’s a full Academy forinstance if you’re a line officercarrying a gun with LAPD and you’rereserved you go through the wholeAcademy but it’s it’s a long long timeand you know what’s worse if you want togo from part-time to full-time they makeyou do the full time academy all overagain in the UK with those going fromcapacity to PC or from special constableto PC having shortened training schoolbecause they recognize the fact that thePublic Order Act hasn’t changed changedyou’ve already trained in the offensesof the Public Order Act so why do youneed to do the classroom time again youknow the computer system hasn’t changedyou’ve already been trained how to usethe computer system so why do you needto to have that sort of classroom termagainst it if they’re experimentingdifferent forces with lucky whole weeksoff training program that’s too logicalfor California that’s that’s asking wellyou say we’re entering that we’reentering the realms of logic and commonsense you know it translatesinternationally that somebody somewheresits bowl top rats in an office hang ona minute the usecommonsense here let’s go I’ve gottastop this you know let’s do it my way myBilly I’m sorry bill I have a questionfor you the year you’re mentioning thedifferent forces out there in the UnitedStates each city each county state theyhave different police agencies and isthat the way it is because I for somereason I always thought it was ScotlandYard and it’s the National Police ororganization is that not the case nothat’s not the case there are somenational police forces I belong to oneof them but most territorial policingyou’re dead today occurrence as in if ifa crime happens at your house or in thestreet usually you’ll be on thejurisdiction of the local force thereGeographic but there is some specialismsthat have done regionally between thedifferent forces but predominantly wedid today policing is done by a localgeographic force now if memory serves mecorrectly there’s something like 5,000plus law enforcement agencies in the USAwe have 43 main police forces – aboutthree national police forces there’salso what I would call our very poorcheap equivalents at the FBI which isthe National Crime Agency we have thoseas well but if you go north of theborder into Scotland there’s only aboutfive different agencies working therebecause they’re trying a nationalpolicing model of their at the moment sowhat is Scotland Yard Scotland Yard isthe name of their headquarters of theMetropolitan Police so that’s the Londonah the main London police force OhinterestingI think where I get this from is thatevery time I’ve seen a police show or amovie or something where they show thethe British police they all wear theexact same uniform as far as I couldsell and in the United States there’sdifferent badges different uniforms andyou can tell they’re differentjurisdictions but I’ve never been ableto discern if a police officer in inBritain was from a differentIrish you could now if you were towander around the country you woulddefinitely see variations in the uniformbecause some forces still got thetraditional custodian helmets and thebowler hats the ladies with flat caps ifyou’re going out of the vehicles otherforces now they’re using a like a bumpcap like a baseball cap because it’scheaper to replace and to issue if yougo into Scotland they don’t at the halfthey’ve never had the custodian commentsif almost like the flat ass would beblack and whites what’s called the sillyTom tartan or around the nation you’vegot my image in your heads there but inall the different force different forceshave their own different breasts that’sinteresting yeah it’s very cool the Iknow over here I noticed a lot of Chiefsoffices having a Bobby helmet or hat iskind of like a it’s kind of like a thinglike all the Chiefs want to have one ofthose so they’re kind of prized overhere yeah Oharen t it yeah I’m actually Mourning maychange hands I ask anymore though yeahmy um my wife’s cousin actually is partof the Garda I think that’s the Irishpolice rightthat’s the Republic of Ireland place youhad the guy – and I wear that’s commandodid you what that actually stands for noidea okay does the word police doesn’tappear in the Republic of Ireland itactually stands for guardian of thepeaceoh I like that yeah it’s only asessentially when the Irish yet for foodfor their regions they’ve declaredindependence and they decided theywanted a sort of clean break the Britishmodel now let me ask you something umquestion I always wanted to ask is uhwhen and/or who carries guns over therein the police forcewhen will they do that or do they havespecial teams that do that we have twotypes of well three types of firearmsoff Syriayou you ordinary one for one of a betterdescription is an authorised firearmsofficer an AFO they would they’re outthere patrolling then work shifts theywill probably go to the same briefingsas the unarmed officers at the start ofthe start of a shift and they will go tofirearms or calls that require specialtactics and they will assist unarmedofficers so for example they do a lot oftraining courses so they’ll assisttraffic patrols with pursuits and hardstops if there’s a call goes out on theway of your channel that will needwhat’s called method of entry which isthe big red key little lock cell doorseverywhere or a lock snapping kidsthey’re all trained to do that so theywill consist those sorts of taskingsdoes that cause any kind of ripplethrough in morale in morale like somesome guys are armed some are and you putyou’re doing the same job kind ofbecause everybody’s out there with theirwith their ass in the wind you know inthe public well in Scotland you say thatthey have you’ve got a great mind theyhave a devolved government in inScotland so they don’t get all theirdirection from our Westminstergovernments and but in in Scotlandthere’s an instruction that firearmsofficers do not go to cause that do notrequire firearms because apparentlythat’s one of the probably lots of theminteresting very interesting all rightbrother are you ready to to get into astory just one other thing I would haveactually there is one other thing Iwould add data to that question justasked in Northern Ireland it’s routinefor cops to be on t it’s that all Ohinterestingand that’s basically because it’s thethe history in the political situationover there mm-hmmI would figure in London I mean thatplace has been bombed a thousand times Ifigured they would uh at least armed allthe regular metropolitan officers downthere but theresisting well they also have they havea big cadre of AFOswhich is supplemented by sort of policeforces that well three really you’ve gotthe British Transport Police have thefirearms it’s the routine we’re helpingthe local police out in London the Cityof London police and now this is whereit gets a bit obscure because the Cityof London and London are two differentthings the City of London is only ascore a mile and it has its own policeforce call City from the police the restof the Greater London area is policed bythe Metropolitan voice sounding more andmore like America just way too militantsees yeah this but it’s because it’sfunded differently if you swear in withthe City of London policeyou don’t swear an oath to the crown youswear an oath to the corporation of theCity of London it’s almost a privatepolice force in terms of how its fundedbut it’s very well funded very wellequips hey Steve again I got a couplequestions for build that now they’re onthis subject I don’t know if you want tomove on or notno go for it bill might I just out ofcuriosity I’m gonna throw all this stuffout there and then you just answerwhatever you want knowing that there’sbeen a couple of high-profile incidentsin in in London and I don’t know how faryou are from there just trying to getyour take on it where the bridge knifingattack the the concert bomb bombing andthere’s been some other incidents andwhat what’s to your take or is there ageneral take from the from the Britishpolice as far as American policing whatdo you guys think about how we policeand all our guns and all that kind ofstuff you have an opinion on that I dowell let’s say now we are 17 minutesinto the call and we’re talking aboutguns podcast interview where for anAmerican thing and I tagged him in itthe me he said I look at man and the IIsaid how long do you think it’ll bebefore they start asking questions aboutit won’t be long people not a questionthough sorry go on pleaseanother thing I wanted to add on to thatis it true that there are like dropboxes were in London where you can dropoff your knives they don’t do that allthe way around the year they do it whenwe’re having what they call an amnestyand I’ll see I’ll tell you what thepress don’t tell you about it is ourlist is if they’re having a knifesurrender amnesty all our guns rememberundersteer we have those as wellsometimes it’s usually the start of acampaign where they start targetingpeople that they’ve got intelligenceabout for those kind of crimes does thatmake sense yeah so they go there givingyou the opportunity to be up front tohand you stuff in because when your doggoes in they find that you’ve got stuffon you’ve been involved in crimes andthey’re looking for the the weapon thatwas involved they can sort of do it asan atom a prosecution file but when wedid have an amnesty and he didn’t handit in then so as you can see he’s alet’s say an organized criminal or he’ssomebody that’s a habitual criminal thatuses these kind of weapons so I know Iunderstand why you guys might think it’sa bit bonkers but they usually it’s it’sthe pre mood to a campaign we’reactually using intelligence-ledtargeting to go after suspects inoffenders that they believe have beeninvolved in things does that once yeahand I’m just curious what kind of knivespeople are surrendering because thisdefinitely use kitchen utensils whichwere knives things like that so a knifeis a knife when you want to hurtsomebody right very true in this countryto buy a knife you have to be 18 yearsold and we have what’s called a think 25challenged policy for ID so if you lookunder 25 and this is the storessometimes they have think 21 or if youlook under 25 they will ask you for IDto prove that you’re over 18 now Iunderstand to an outsider that mightsound a little bit strange but whatthey’re doing there is they’re trying tointroducea sort of a line in the sand so that ifyou’re doing something in anger you’vegot an opportunity to think twice aboutwhat doing that said I have a mouthfulkitchen you know I’m kitchen drawer fullof knives if I have somehow went off offmy head and decided I was going to goout and Hurst anyway there’s not a lotthat’s going to stop you from doing thatbut going back to what you were sayingabout firearms what really annoys mewhen there’s always this debate aboutshould we routinely armed police on theBritish mainlandthere’s always comments from peoplesaying no because we don’t want theseand you’ll have to forgive me I’mquoting here and this may come across asoffensive to someone you’re listening tosome on that side of the Atlantic but wedon’t want the American style of shootfirst and ask questions later butCowboys the book removes these are allthe phrases that you use what reallyannoys me is they don’t compare us tolet’s say Australia or France or Canadaor Germany or Spain they don’t compareus to those routinely armed policeforces they look for an extreme exampleand then try and say what we don’t wantthat and that really frustrates me nowI’m kind of on the fence about the wholeroutine army debate there are pros andcons to it and I think I have an insideyou sort of take on looking around andsaying well yeah I can see why thatwould be a good idea that in thosecircumstances or we have had it whereour firearms officers have left theirsidearm in the toilet in a public placeyou know we’ve had it I mean there wasquite a famous example in the localpolice force in where I live somebodyput this sidearm on the roof of a cardrove off and somebody who lived nearthe police station found it in the road[Music]that kind of stuff happens on everyPolice Forest I mean that happens overhere to what we call kake offensesso if you do certain things you have tobuy the rest of your shift cakes orawesomesauce treats like mine and yeahthat i think i think leaving a sidearmon the roof of the car we remember thepublic finding it and handed it in atthe front deskthat’s probably i think that’s a threetier wedding cake that’s pretty badthey probably take your gun away if youyou know if that happened I would thinknot necessarily at the moment becausethey you know a prime minister agowanted to uplift the number of firearmsoffices in the country and they wereactually desperate because there werepeople applying you know they wereputting in for the for the role thereporting of the transfer but the rightkind of people were were possibly waypast on the courses so they werestruggling to get the numbers that’sinteresting it’s so I mean so differentover there and over in America too isnot I mean you guys I’m sure look at usand your media does the same thing ourmedia does and it’s takes antidotalthings that happen and they just stampyou with that you know like we’recowboys and we’re shooting everybody upwhenever they don’t report the news theysell newspapers right I was just sayinglike the sensation America is very umit’s just a I don’t you’ve been here butit’s huge and it’s it’s like differentcountries in different parts of it likethe self Southeast is much differentthan the Northwest and the Northeast ismuch deeper than the Southwest it’s itcould be several different countries youknow so the all the statistics andshootings and all that stuff variesgreatly from all over how gigantic thisplace is after you’ve heard of a chapcalled detective Ken need from the LasVegas metropolitan Policehe had a big hand in the Las Vegasshooting a couple of years ago andturn to the best again everyone is Johnno I’m not either um he does speakingguests speaking through theInternational Police Association and Iwent to see him although it was overhere and I was quite having I knew thatwas vary from state to state in the inthe US but I was quite surprised when hetold us how much of the stuff that shewould have so it was well all of it wascompletely legal to have and somebodycould go out and buy the same stufftomorrownot not ringing any alarm bells but Iunderstand what you’re saying about howdifferent it is geographically from sortof one end of your country to the otherthere I mean he used a phrase that andstuck in my mind he said that Nevada waswhat they consider a frontier state interms of its attitude to gun control andself-defense and ones like that and Iliked that phraseology at the frontierstate it can be stuck in my heart yeahit’s kind of its kind of the way it isit’s kind of theirs they’re kind of likeit’s kind of like the Wild West thereand then if you go to Massachusetts it’sa lot it’s I mean there you can ownfirearms there but even our laws arewritten back from Old English so it’slike our laws refer to constables andpeacekeepers and sheriffs and stuff likeyou guys you know cuz we got all thatfrom you guys and they kind of had toretrofit it with police officer and allthese other words you know yeah did hestill have an offense called breach ofthe peace then in Massachusetts yeahyeah that’s one of our old we start thatover here today it’s been watered down alot of council votes and we still havean offense called breach of the peaceand yeah I can imagine that you wouldhave inherited sort of some of thatterminology in while here well you knowthat the term felon actually does comefor Britain oh really yeah we got rid ofit for some reason we used to havefelons and misdemeanors but we now interms of the offenses look I think youstill lose the place felony yeah aserious offense what we call that anindictable offense nowit would go to Crown Court rather than amagistrate’s court the local court andand then the alternative to amisdemeanor is a summary offence whichmeans that you will get summons to thelocal court you don’t necessarily haveto be arrested important function callthey’ll just tell me when to be thereyou don’t turn off the little wine forus you know yeah Fallon this is yes aBritish term that and I only learnedthat recently just looking through ahistory book and final one can I think Istepped down a little bit before you hada questionbut I can’t remember I didn’t reallyanswer the question that you’re askingto be fair about sorry I’ve gone off ona tangent here but said intuitive doesit concern me yes I went to one of thoseterrorist attacks and a bullet pointsinto one of my answers to questions isbased on that do I think that I couldget shot is probably the question thatyou’re too polite suit to us yes I hopeit will either hit my ballistic vest orit will be a quick and you know I don’twant to suffer it’s not I’m saying youknow I know that might sound verydefeatist but I’ve never been shot Ihave been I’ve been assaulted severaltimes and I got to a martial arts classso you know I’m used to getting knockedand bruises in life even getting slammedinto the floor but no if I’m gonna getshot I just hope it’s a quick yeah wellyou know the reason I with you tonightyou ask is not so much for as as adebate on firearms or you knowconversation about for firearms is is mymy take is is from the United States toto Britain we hear the different storiesand in the United States if you hear anews story about there’s been a shootoutand the cops were in this firefight withbad guys and you know cops were killedand and bad guys were killed most thetime it’s the bad guys that that getkilled but when we hear about stuff thathappens in Great Britainmost the timethe news picks up that it’s some kind ofterrorist attack which is not superforeign to us but for the most partAmerican police officers don’t deal withterrorist attacks but in Great Britainyou’ve got bombs maybe or or things likethat and so we take we take the debateabout fire firearms it’s a protectionthing against the bad guys and I didn’tknow how you guys how you viewed Americaversus Great Britain and the differentchallenges that we have with regard tocriminals do the same criminalsit’s just that yours are better accessedif I want there are people you know wehave had police officers shot dead inthis country the the the the primeexample the our key thing cockles thatit was a constable called David Loflandwho was shot at close range sorry hedidn’t die and I do apologize that’s I’musing her example here but he wasblinded shot in the face with a shotgunand blinded you know what we have hadyeah we’ve had we’ve had police officersshot and killed and to be fair criminalsthat one my big fear is not being shotit’s being run over it’s being worn downwith a car they’ve all been hit by trainbecause that’s the person it’s anenormous force that I work for so I Ialways have my head on a swivel if younot remain in that respect sir I’m dawnI really do not want to get bit androlled down by a car and we have a verypeculiar policy towards pursuits most ofthe police forces over here when itcomes to car chases but it seems to bechanging a bit now because we had aproblem in London with criminals onmopeds on motorbikes and they’ve now gotthis policy what’s called tacticalcontact which is basically hitting withthe car not cut off and knock them offthe bike if you believe never been ohyeah I mean you’re laughing but that’sthat’s the way it’s gone now you knowthat’s always good but I mean thethe whole thing about how we police overhere we police with consent whereas youguys are law enforcement and that reallycomes out of the history of your countryyou know you didn’t you didn’t like whatwas going on and you turn around andsaid well we’re not happy about this andarm yourselves you know the guy from LasVegas that was telling about he said youknow where our second amendment camefrom don’t yet and you know there’squite a lot of people in the room ohabsolutely the back said well I justcame from out of the you know arevolution when we turned to turn theEmpire out and I thought you dare sayit’s awful you know and there was a youknow we have like a gallows human thepolice as I’m sure you do over therethere was another voice in the back ofthe room he said well you should payyour bloody taxis them and you know andsomebody else said don’t don’t don’tdon’t good tea in the water[Laughter]we were very kind and polite to thischap we were very grateful foods to comeon there come talk to us about thatthat’s it sort of the horror really whathappened I kind of have a like aromantic idea of the bobbies cuz becausethe guys were there don’t have guns Ialways imagined and I think there’s someevidence to back this up that they’re umthey’re kind of like hard asses aretough you know their their foot patrolthey got a they got a stick there’s abar brawl whatever they go in they fightit’s kind of I don’t mind it you know Iwould prefer to have a gun if I’m asworn police officer but there’ssomething kind of cool about just like atough guy with the you know alead-filled stick just kicking ass Ithink once upon a time it used tocommand respect definitely used tocommand the response force there isn’tthat respect we used to be no way I meanthe thing is though you’ve got to you’vegot to read between the lines onceappointed to have some of my colleagueswho are retired or about to retire whenthey started you could probably slap anoffender about andno there would be no complaint no onewould film its on a mobile phone youknow if they raise the hands here youcould give them a bloody good shootingnow you couldn’t you know you supposedto get smacked about and then stilltreat me with kid gloves when it comesto actually restraining their arrestingthem so I think yes the walks once thatimage but now it’s I think it’s it’sfaded it’s bill you’re very similarbubble you there used to be a TV therewas to be a TV show called Dixon of dockgreen and people always say like oh thisis changing now they’re against wellthey’re going out with tasers and it’snot like the old days the Dixon of dockgreen style policing and I always sortof comments on that and I will say firstof all Dixon of dock green was a TV showit was fiction but and secondly whathappens to Dixon in the last episodeDixon of dock green he was shot dead sowhat was your context there you know Imean that’s funny yeah we when we when Istarted in in in police work way backwhen we use the term for if you’re gonnaget in a fight it’s called a Donnybrookyeah well sir a Donnybrook yeah aDonnybrook what apparently it’s it comesfrom from Australia and it this means anuprising you know and Weezy for fightsbut I always knew that was not anAmerican term originally so but inAmerica if you’re gonna in a fight yougot in a Donnybrook and so there westill we took some of your stuff youknow you guys Australia interchangeablebut another shrimp on the barbie I’mglad we got the weather because I caston the heat but yeah we’re completelyinterchangeable in fact if you put twoyou know an Australian cock and aBritish cock next to each other there’dbe no difference at all you wouldn’t youa friend who’s gone out to Australia andhe’s gone into Western Australia StatePolice and the difference is there theyare what they do community policing theydo the same way as what we do whatwhat’s left of our community policingthey still do it the same way but interms of when things are going wrong andwhat have you you know I said it’stotally different the way that we handlesituations it sounds like a bit of anadventure in Western Australia I have afriend from England and he um last timehe was here he said you know you youreally other trying to travel more andlike Tim you don’t understand we don’tthis country is huge and like you can goto five countries in the weekend youknow over there you can like do somereally awesome you can see fivedifferent cultures you can gobackpacking all this stuff but here isjust not that easyI’ve got friends in the US and throughthe martial arts association and everythree years we have an internationalgovernment and I went over to Canada afew years ago and I liked what I saw inCanada I was very impressed and Iremember sitting down talking to theguys and the girls from there the US andthey said you know they were saying likethey said it was like like a nice ruralcommunity back home was hardly describeCanada and I sort of chuckled and Ithought well okay fair enough if that’show you later but the the people fromthe US that I meet over here I wouldalways say you know you’ve got to getout of trouble you can’t stand you’re onyou dog you can’t say that yourcountry’s great until you’ve been toothers and see what’s actually going onthere I would always say and I try andtravel as much as I can for that reasonjust to see the world yeah I’m gonna flyaround everywhere and then come backhere and go I knew it this place is thebest those through your British defensementally-illhealth is international you know I meanif that’s what you want to believe mateyou’ve got bill man we are we are 40minutes in here we’ve not asked you asingle more story question it’s almostanother interview isn’t it yeah youreyes yeah because I want to ask you whatit was like when you did police inAustralia oh no I didn’t police inAustralia was Apollo 9 I know that was athat was a poorly made joke you have togo with your sister laughing oh I’msorry I do apologize I know it’s aw theywent over my head there I’m gonna flushmy head down the toilet give it life Igot the jokes but with the delay I know[Laughter]hey Steve you did we could you thinkthrow some questions in there because Ithink Bill’s got some stories I’d beinterested in hearing about I’m ready togo babybill tell us about the the first thingyou responded to that um really got yourblood going give me a little adrenalinedump okay so my in the police a lot useany recollections from I used to work insecurity to Chapelle not use any lawsbut my first bluelight call as we callit the first blue light room so I havethink I’m superb second shift I wasworking with I think you’d call themfield training officers over your sideof water we call them tutors okay I wasworking on my shooter and the call camein that a resident who’s back gardenoverlooks the railway line at the mainline so it were talking 125 mile an hourtravel trains on this part of the mainline as seen kids in school uniformthey’ve climbed over a railway accessgate they’re going up to the vehicleaccess for likely engineers that so theycan get to the railway lines with me todo maintenance and they’re picking upstalls you have what’s called ballaststones that are on the track that therails iran and the caller believes thatthey’re about to start throwing stonesat passing trainso we’re getting the car and my tutorsays to me oh the Sat Navs broken soyou’re going to have to navigate withthe A to Z to the MacBook a sat-nav is Ithink we call them GPS is the UnitedStates you have a lot of device butterms are attached to the data the mapin device they said oh it’s brokenyou’ll have to use the eh-2-zed so okayright fair enoughit took sit at me fires up the Blues andtwos and we are off so it just says thename of the streets the road you go intothe index you’ll find the name of theroad and then it gives you a page numberand a grid reference so I find the pageand I mean the grid reference barelymind you know we’re turning corners ontwo wheelsyou know we’re screeching away acrosstown here sure and I find the drag gridand I’m looking in it and I can’t findthis stream and these are only an inchby inch squares and I’m looking atthinking where is it where is it so Ilook in the next square to the right solook in the square to the left I look inthis three squares of Bothwell up in theSwiss words below and he’s saying I knowroughly which part of town it is we’reheading that way but you’re going tohave to give me some directions now andI said I’m really sorry but I can’t findthe street and he said okay and he pullsover and turns the lights and signs offand I’m just right there oh ohI need to text the book our hands hegoes to the index at the back of thebook finds the street name page gridreference goes back but the thing is hisfinger is on exactly the same part ofthe same page that I was looking at andhe said this is wrong and he then walkson the next page and he said they’ve putthe wrong page number in the index and Iwas like oh okay then I’ve got away withthat then that was an incredible dodgeanyway so then we fires up the lightsand the sounds again and I’m navigatingthen we get there and we have in theBritish Transport Police on the vehiclekeys we have what’s called a number 16key and that’s reallyzucchini opens the padlocks for the lineside access gate so you can get from thepublic highway on to the autonomicprofits so he opens that I’m walking onthis sort of access lanes got towardsthe tracks and I said to him thenshouldn’t we be calling the railwayauthority and getting them to slow thetrains down because word lineside nowand you know burning mine up I’ve notlaunched into finish my trainingStormare we have to do track safetytraining on top of the local policeforces have to do it’s like a four-daycourse I think and if sadhana will beokay we’ll be fine don’t worry all solodogs oh yeah proper salty I mean he washe was an ex-military man he was anex-military policeman there and franklyhe knew his stuff and and you know hewas definitely the right guy to be atutor so we go Lions side and train goesflying pastures so definitely over 100miles an hourSteve and have you ever been stoodwithin a few feet of a train going pastyou over a hundred miles an hourno I’ve been the only thing I’ve hadclose to that and it’s not that powerfulwas um the commuter train here in LA Iwas out of the car it wants in one ofthe neighborhoods and the train goes 70to 80 and I was a good distance awayfrom it and I could feel it and I wasthat stuck in my mind when it happened Isaid wow there’s a lot of force therebut that was the only go like 70 yeahbut it yeah you have to hang on to yourhat let’s pray that way and if you stillclose enough the turbulence will knockyou off your face towards the Train sothat was my first broom I call and Irealized right there and then shooter orgods I don’t care next time I’m comingline side I’m bringing the signal eruptfrom the railway Authority and I’mfollowing the safety because I it it istense when you when you’re on thosefella lines and lots of trains agoambassadorit is tense anyway I think as it turnsout it was very searching no trace wegot back in the car when Batsonhost and we’d gone back to the postbecause Manta Tudor had some paperworkthey need to continue doing and plus itwas one of my first few shifts with himso he must got a chapel here and findout what you like I mean I aren’t youtwo new colleagues now so I couldtotally understand what the conversationis about what is trying to do trying togauge me that’s oddly and then get anemail from our station clerk it says oldmrs. such-and-such at such a place asColville he saw you and went after hewas the person that called for thepolice because he saw the kids landsideor and he’s called just to say thank youvery much for coming outyou’ll miss them by just a few minutesand but he was very impressed by thesmartness of you uniforms and howpromptly turned out I was just a littlelaughing on far this time that has beena stare at us from his back bedroomwindow he could have shouted intosomething and said the gun you’realright anyway that’s that was my firstblue like alright but your uniform lookgood that’s important that’s the mostimportantly all shiny and brand newstraight out of the pack but then when Istarted we used to wear shirts andclip-on ties so it would have been Ipride myself it would have beeninoculated and the creases you couldhave shaved through the creases let’spoint out right now as you’re lookinggood if you lose your life is longyou’re looking good that’s other mattersabsolutely yeah your standards you knowif it’s all going wrong at least atleast you’ve got your hats on that’s onegood-looking dead customer that’s rightindeed yes mark he looks smart Stevesmart that’s right alright bill can youtell us about the strangest or mostbizarre thing you dealt with yeah thatwas as I’m sure you can imagine being inthe transport was we go to the railwayfatalities you know where people havebeen struck by trains and we went towarm it wasn’t actually our area it wasone of our sub posts but it sounded likeit was going to be a big job so we wentto assist and nearly died on the waythere on the blue light room that wasnotinteresting the guy who was driving usthere was mea sergeant one of the best sergeantsthat I ever had he was an extra on theroom and he was as tough as old bootsleather you know one of those sort ofproper like hard guys not I mean who ifit came to an exchange of punches he wasgonna win every day of the week anywayso we’ve got the guy who’s driving theconduct of the sergeant’s sat next tohim and I’m sat in the back of the vanand the receipts face to the rear andthen you’ve got the prisoner cage butthe seats face so that the idea is thatif you’ve got a prisoner in the cagesomebody can monitor the condition orwhatever while you take it into other tocustody off to the hospital and be howwe’re driving up these country lanes andthe traffic just just wouldn’t get outof the way the you know there was like arow of these vehicles it just would notpull over or slow down so we get on thetaken in the country lanes in Englandare kind of famous for being kind ofrickety and dangerous correct narrow ohyeah yeah absolutely going above thespeed limits are there for a reason onthose country lines because they are ifyou don’t know them you know they can bedaftperhaps you know they are they give methey’re pretty intense flying around thecorners if you particularly if it’sblind corners and dominant I mean ifyou’re doing 60 miles an hour of acountry lane and then a tractorsomewhere is over a gate you know that’spretty tense but we were driving up thiscountry lane and this traffic will justwouldn’t get out of the way anyway itmanages to overtake a couple of cars andthen there’s what’s called a skip lorryso it’s a truck and that transportsdo you want to be when I say skip doesthat make sense to you I don’t know it’slike in it’s it’s larger than have beenthen a rubbish bin there is a lorry atruck right Laurie is a truck that’scorrect yes sorry I’ve got to get I’vegotta get the vernacular right here nobut skip is like it’s like for buildersrubble so you how come I go to sites andHolmes drops it off like a dumpster adumpster yeah if I can open top dumpsterokay yeah that’s yeah that’s the word Iwas looking for and I couldn’t quite getright my head so this skip worried andwe managed to overtake it and the guywho’s driving says bloody hell whydidn’t he stop why didn’t he stop I’llmake him stop and then he slams thebrake on and this Loren he slams hisbrake on I’m sat in the back facing thislorry as its wheels lock and it skidstwo horses and I’ve got Jesus what thehell are you doing this lorry is comingat me and I was like Jesus Mary andJosephyou know I’m trimming the door it wasyeah it was close let’s put it that wayand then he just just puts his foot downand takes off the sergeant ex-royalmarine he’s laughing his head off hethinks it’s hilarious I’m deciding theback checking me pants thinking gee I’vegot my arms my arms are here my legs arethere I’ve still got my shoes on youknow anyway we get up to when we get upto this remote place accesses for thelines for the rail lines and the localpolice are there they some of the moreremote places with the local police tendto be to see these places one of thethings I will say though is that thelocal police forces there’s only onethat I’m aware of that does track safetytraining so if you could probablyimagine these local cops they arewalking all over the railway lines theydon’t know they don’t know if a stopsbeing put on the trains you know this isa hundred and twenty five mile an hoursection of the railway lines as well sowe’re sort of politely as we’re walkingup saying can you just go off yeah Getgone stand over there yeah you know getout the wayanyway and we find the impact point andmy colleague from the sub Post wherethis actually was their geographicalarea he’s already got the body bag wehave in the back of our vehicles two bigorange rucksacks and the like medicsrucksacksand one will be a heavy-duty first-aidkit and you’rethere is the fatality kit so he’s gotthat open and some unpacking things isput in what we call table cross on whichare like very heavy-duty rubber glovesthat go to your elbow sure and he’s sortof saying that we need to find out whatthe classification is need the firstaccount off the drivergive me the knot and I’ll start bookingthe body parcel so we carry on walkingand the impact point of the train was abounce I’d say about three quarters of amile before the Train it managed to stopprobably a little bit more than that itbecause it was no more than a mile soyou know we’re jumping on all the tracksto get up to the Train and we get upthere there’s a cluster of the localpolice and the train drivers got thedoor open and he sort of sat there washaving his hands as I’m sure you canimagine the offence that something likethis will have on the train driver andwe make it they have them in camp radiophones now it’s only very recently we’vegotten so we’re making R in our controlroom to give a first account to thecontrol room so they can get it on thelog and the senior officer can lookthrough it and decide you know is thisan explained fatality and unexplainedfatality is a really suspiciouscircumstances or is it industrialaccident that sort of classificationprocess anyway we go and we hope we havea look at the front of the train and onthe front of the Train there’s this likethat tournament panel you open thispanel and it slides in words and you canget what’s called the coupling out andthat’s to hook two trains together okaynot I mean yep so this coupling panel acorner of it is broken off and thisclaret splattered on the front there’sblood splattered on the front of it somy colleague this the sergeant’s thatwe’ve got other colleagues are alreadypicking up the bottle pass for the backdown there down the track open the bodybag my colleague the sergeant opens itall and he looks in this is here look atthis and all these intestines are instraps around the coupling so I saidright I’ll go get us some garlic onceI’ve gone get as a bagso what I did is I went and got a largeevidence bag clear plastic evidence bikebut it’s about handles so I go and getthis bag I get an old cake round paperbag and another one of these clearplastic everything’s back for thehandles so we go up to the front of theback up tackle back back to the front ofthe Train and put the gauntlet gloves onand he’s pulling the intestines out ofthe cooling housing and he’s passing itto me and I’m just gently putting themin the back you know like winding themaround just sort if there’s a little I’mtrying not to get blood on me oh gosh isit like slippery like you know I kind oflike up grabbing an eel or something soI’ve been told before I build a magicianno go ahead go ahead please no no I wasgonna say I’ve never been to a traincrash before human versus train but Kenhas told me before that the does aperson just explode I mean thatbasically what happens right and quiteintact but no this this one was a thiswas a bad description and exploded werepassed all over the place and you wereabout to describe a magician pullingribbons out of us leaves this articleand at me and we’re both mouths and eachof their partner you know and it justkeeps going on and on and I’m looking atthis back and I’m thinking we’re gonnafill this back here well am I gonna geta bigger back than this I don’t have toget another bunny back in politic anywaywe keep pulling it and it’s just goingon and on and then it sort of snags andit gives it a little yank and a hog butit’s not coming out mmm and then he sortof like two-handedpulls and again it just stretched andthen sort of snapped back a bit and hewasn’t coming out so a Cydia get all ofthis so we both getwe said right we call on three one twowe pull out the end of this intestine itfalls onto the tracks and wrapped aroundthe end of the intestine was a perfectlyintact set of kids I have never eatensteak and kidney pie since honestly Ihave never eaten since I can’t look atkidneys in a butcher shop window it’syeah it’s something that you rememberand I mean we bagged all this stuff whatI put it in you know we get it in aclear plastic bag we’ll put it in thebrown old paid bag which doesn’t havehandles and then put it in another clearplastic Evans Bible do that handlesbecause we’ve now got to walk up theside of the train to get to the bottombag where the bulk of the stuff is beingassembledwe’re walking past all the windows ofthe train machine so we don’t wantpassengers to see this plastic bag ofguts with a set of kidneys on the top init I mean it’s probably distressingenough for people on the trains it isanyway we’d get to the young what you dois when you get to in it when you havework what what is this sort of explodedcatalysis you then open even put aperson in the body bag and then you doan internship right as we got ahead havewe got two arms we’ve got the hands havewe got some legs have we got you know dowe have most of the password we need tokeep looking anywayand we’re looking and somebody sayswe’re missing a thought so we’re missinga fault I said a foot of what you had nono no no I’ve got mess around then we’remissing a thought soccer game right sowe’re looking around in the grass andyou know there’s birds come in you knowassemble it in the trees nearby and it’snot uncommon for you to look up and finda fox running off with a big piece offlashy something like that so we’relooking around anyway can’t find it andI said well it wasn’t in the couplinghousings we’d better have a lookunderneath the train because sometimes abumpy part will bounce around under thetrain after impactand it will actually come to rest onlike a nook or a cranny underneath theTrain so this train is about I can’tremember if it was 9 or 11 carriageslong but it was a big old trend anywayweabout I think about the fifth carriagethat we looked underneath from the backwalking towards the frontwe found the foot and it was wedgedbetween the wheel of the train and therail head and it was wedged good andproper and we all sort of come up to itand it was about five of us and wecouldn’t get this foot from finished inthis tree and we’re all techniqueinterns to try and pull this foot freenothing between the people and the therail head now I had had my turn and youknow we’re talking gallows humor hereand I’m not trying to be offensive toanybody and when the sergeant went tohave a goal of pulling the miss fault Isort of stood behind at the back and Isaid and whoever shall call the swordfrom the stone so you called birth thecoping yeah you know it’s a copingmechanism yes anyway in the end weactually had to ask the driver of thetrain to move the thought that moved thetrain forward a few inches so that wecould get this fault and then gone habitto the to the body back and and that wasyou know in terms of the most bizarrecall that was definitely a 9.0 on theweirdo meter and and the thing after Igo to a railway fatality I always havethis intense hungerI am absolutely starving I have to goand eat somewhere and I’m talking properstomach growling really drained ofenergy and the parent there’s a bit ofscience to this it’s because your bodyhas burnt all your energy reservesdealing with a sort of situation becauseyou’ve been back and forth and you’vegot to bear in mind you know we will getall the stuff in the body back and wethen got to carry it oh yeah you’reburning calories big-time yeah and andit’s not an intact body so things areshifting around in the bag and youhappen to wobble to sort of you knowprop it up again and carry your end andwe had to get that I mean we had to liftthat body bagover a draft stone roll wall carryacross a field and then get it overanother dry stone wall where theUndertaker’s ban was what we we callthem Undertaker’s I think you might callthem funeral directors yeah coroner’sare directors we probably have a courtwhat you see we have it’s slightlydifferent rules because it’s unusual forthe coroner to come out to a fatalityunless no suspicious circumstances andso coroner’s dog handled the body andthey’re not doctors we do have what youwould probably say medical examinerwould common a pathologist that’s likethe scientific name for the medical namefor them but yeah it would be funeraldirectors they would come in ablacked-out ambulance and they wouldtransport the body to the morgue at thehospital so bill is is the guy thatpulled the bullet foot out is he stillthe king ruling we have to move theTrain yeah it was just casuallyengineering but no crowns handed thatday but soon yeah after we after we leftthat I said to the guys a cell phone I’mstarving we’ve got to go somewhere so wewent to KFC and I absolutely smashed towear to box meals I’m really over eightyeah I don’t know if I would’ve donestarving up for that bill that’s wellthey don’t mark my colleagues you werewith me they were like no we’re fineplanks just just get us a couple ofcoffees and I understand the back in thevan the drive back down the motorwaythat’s why I post just absolutely fillin my face with chicken and sheunderstood you know I get really reallyhungry I have this craving for foodafter I’ve been handling their dead pondparts oh yeahhey Steve yes I predict that this isprobably one of the most disturbinginterviews you’ve ever done and yetwe’ll be the most popular to date thatcould be true I believe so people liketo hear when people don’t pull thepunches and that’s I mean hey that’sit’s the truth so what they had to dealwith it’s just it doesn’t matter whereyou’re a cop I mean whether you’re apolice special police constable specialconstablewhen you signed up for that you’re gonnayou’re gonna see the worst I like Billhe’s got me got my popcorn out in mysoda I’m going what’s next the catalogand carry on with the interview hespends a good yarn and I think I thinksome genetically Americans arepredisposed to just just to be in awe ofpeople and they have a British accent Ijust feel like he is a doctor and we arestudents just about buying two braincells together together this is goodstuff I’m adjoint I’m just sitting herelike this is so good I love it I lovethe I just love getting inside ofanother country – I’m picturing like thewhere the train could do 125 miles anhour it’s probably more rural thereyou’re what you’re climbing over stonewalls with body parts that are awkwardI love the whole imagery of it well Imean it’s it’s one of those things thatyou know you can tell your non bully’sfriends in the poll and they just sitthere the jaws just hit the table youknow they like and you do and you haveto do that and you did what and you knowI said yeah there’s no magic departmentthat you called to come out and pick thebody parts or PC it’s the policeyes the roads were stuff to do it it wasthe same thing we’re just recentlythey’ve come out with these crime sceneclean-up crews but before when you usedto go to a crime scene there’d be stuffyou know wherever in a blood gutswhatever in a crime scene and then wejust locked the door and leave and thecoroner would leave and then nobodythought twice about hey who’s gonnaclean this up nobody even thought aboutit so far but you know if let’s say it’sa house that’s owned and if there’sgoing to be an inheritance in a will youknow if nobody goes and checks to cleanthat up can you imagine you know if theyleft it a month say can you imagine thissmell when they open that doorthey’d have tear down to the isopreneface somebody cleans it up we don’t knowwho it is but they’re out there we dohave we have those companies in Britainas well that you know that they do cleanup fromsort of industrial problem direct youknow and biological fluid says dividedwe do have most companies in theBritain’s well I know that imagine theyjust named a price I can’t imagine thisthat there’s much haggling goes on whenit comes to call in the work Steve youknow I thought was interesting becauseanybody who’s written in a commutertrain back and forth when I was writingfor about three years on the Metrolinkfrom from Los Angeles to RiversideCounty we I think we are train hitpeople a couple of times and not maybethe train ahead of us or something likethat but anyways they clean up it seemedlike an hour later we were back on theroad and the train was movingeverybody’s gone in a dozen I thought itwas kind of quick oh well there’sprobably a target time for nonsuspicious fatality is like we have overhere then so we want if it’s beendeclared non suspicious or when it’sbeen declared non suspicious they wantthe body passed picking up they want twohands and the wines back to the railwaywithin 90 minutes that sounds right itsounds similar did the thing is it costscosting the railway company money it’scosting the economy money you know it’scause it’s natural infrastructure sothey just do they just like pick up allthe body parts and then someone comesand hoses it down or what yeah they dohave the network rail is the railwayAuthority is a public only the companyif they do have a maintenance team thatwill come out and treat sort ofbloodstains everything but they don’tcome back within a day they will wait itwill do it overnight when the thetimetables quiet and leave their chanceto do engineering work but if it’s alevel crossing so if it’s where theworld meets the round like the railwayauthority will pay the local firebrigade to come out and hold it downjust so that can be open the roll themacross again probably the local dogs andWildcats help here help us clean oh yeahI mean we’ve had it before where theTulsa something tonightand then people have called up afterafter dawn and said look you know mykids have opened the curtains thismorning and we can see in flash on therailing lines of the garden fence andwe’ve goneabout to pick bits up and it’s notuncommon for like crows to be flyingdown the scooping up little bits offlesh or like you say dogs cats foxesyeah all the wildlife comes out to oneface the opportunities there mmm billcan you tell us about the most intenseor terrifying thing that you’re spotted- yeah a couple years ago I responded tothe Manchester Arena terrorist attackwhat a lot of people don’t know is thatthe Manchester Arena is actuallyattached to Manchester Victoria railwaystation and this then when they pay apeppercorn sort of freehold rent for theland after the railway and because ofthat it’s it comes under ourjurisdictionso I remember the evening quite quitewell it’s not something you’re going toforget I paraded on that night evening Iwas working I was partnered up with anew colleague and she had transferredover from a different divisionshe wasn’t new to the job she was justin a different area and I said thereright so when what have you got ontonight what’s the craic and she saidright I need to go over to such-and-sucha town and I need to go and see a victimof a robbery gone take a statement fromhim get his victim’s statement and Isaid alright what’s what’s the addressbecause I know that sound very well andshe said on such-and-such a street Isaid all right okay well I’ll come withyou then you don’t have to you knowdoesn’t need two of us to take thestatement and I said no no no the thatarea of town I will sit in the car andmake sure it doesn’t get bricks whileinside the house taking statement ohright okay then yeah sure so we driveover it’s about a 40 minute driveshe doesn’t house to take statementpaperwork I’m sat in the side of the carsure enough this is an area it’s apretty rough part out we’re not talkingcurtains which is here but people comeout of their house and they will stareat you to know what what are the policedoing here we know what’s going onwhat’s going onand then sort of kids come up to the carso you wind the window down and oh youknow can I put the sirens on oh no youcan’t put the songs on because peopleare trying to watch telly and they’reeating into dinner and they don’t wantto be disturbed you can pull the lice onI’ll let you put the last I’ll see youlift lift a kid up and you pull themthrough the window and say press thatbutton there and the lights on then youpick the next one up and they turn thelights off and you pick the next one offyou see no if you press this button hererun around the back of the car and seewhat the lights are doing now and anywaydoing all that sort of jazz and mycolleague has finished the statement shecomes out of the house she’s walking upto the car and I said okay guys we’vegot to go now bye bye you know reallynice to meet you know in the st. Arthurnice to meet you officer bill bye byebye and all this sort of thing and I’mthinking oh great you know plus one forcommunity relations there and as mycolleague is just about to open the backof the car to put my paperwork in or shegets in the front a message comes overthe radio and we have big geographicareas in my force and we were on thesame channel at Manchester and a messagecomes over from one of my colleagues andshe just says there’s been a loud bangjust a Victoria Station the screaming Idon’t know what’s going on that’s thatwas it that’s all she said now in arailway station that could be a carsback fired outside that could be adisplaced and has fallen on through theecho it maybe sounds like a loud banggone it has happened before where aglass panel and the roof canopy has comeup and smashed on the floor and thatsounds like an explosionbut then the palimony works works up atManchester he came on and he is hiscommunication his radio drill wasabsolutely brilliant he said there hasbeen an explosion in the city rooms areathat links Manchester units andManchester Victoria railway stationthere are several casualties there havebeen fatalitieswe have panic I believe it’s a bombbecause there are not involvedeverywhere you know his communicationswas absolutely on point and we just saidwe’re going yes we just fired up theBlues and twosand we we flew away now normally itwould be I would say it would take youan hour to drive at normal speed toManchester Victoria railway station wewere doing 100 and I didn’t even knowyou could get 140 mile an hour out of aFord Focus you know we were we wereblasting down the motorway and anothervehicle from our postjust as we joined them all the way theywere coming down so we were in front ofthem so we’re sort of travelling in a2-2 vehicle convoy and I said to mycolleague at Burning Man she’sconcentrating on her driving I don’twant to distract her said what is on atthe arena tonight she said I don’t knowso I’m firing up Google on my phone butManchester Arena event sort of thing andI’m looking at it and I said what’swhat’s an arien grant because I didn’tknow what her IANA grande was soundslike a Starbucks drink mansounds like a Starbucks drink yeah yeahyou’re right yeah yeah tall Aryan groundchicken and but colleague said I had noidea so we’re doing the hundred eighthundred forty miles an hour on themotorway and I’m playing ariana grandesongs on YouTube on the phones becauseI’m just curious to know what arianagrande was sure so won’t you know we’reblasting down the motorway hundred fortymiles an hour this pop music’s comingout at my phone and like a minute of onesong two minutes of it over a minute ofanother and I went right okay I said Ohfor that crap and switched it off andthe thing is we put the post-cold in orthe what you would call the zip code ininto the Sat Nav the GPS mapping devicedo you guys use Google Maps over thereon your phones at all we do now they nowgive us John Bob our phones and we usethe mapping on that now but the firstthat gave us the phones but no cradlesto pop them in the vehicles you don’thave to clip them in and they weren’tgoing to do that at first it was reallybizarre because they said if you’reusing that phone while you’re drivingthat classes you’re breaking the law andblah blah blah blah and we said lookwe’re adults why don’t you trust us suresodid send us the cradles they also sentus these little stickers that we have tostick on the dashboard it is illegal touse a mobile phone while drivinghonestly the most patronizing Honeckerthing you can imagine and it was likeyeah you guys are never getting gunsthen you know we’re not getting they’renot it’s you know I mean every timethere’s a new bit of kit I’m sure it’s achallenge amongst police officers rightwho can break this first it just seemsto be different can’t trusted withanythingsure no no no I’m just under spin itdude that’s it yeah the cradles that weeventually got with the sticker that’sthat’s standard that you know the mostpassion isin briefing that you canimagine came with it as we’re over thereand but yeah so we’re going now but thething is the the blue dot on the map inon the G on the on the sat-nav it’s notdesigned to keep up with 130 140 milesan hour hour speed limit on are multiplea 70 so the the blue dot is actually notcatching up with where we are and weactually missed the junction that weshould have turned off the motorway andthen it caught up and went our no weshould have gone off at that lastJunction there so my colleague wentright okay but the vehicle behind isthat we’re in convoy with they’re justfollowing us so to if they’ve been asort of observer looking from aboveyou’ll see these two police vehiclesdoing blues and twos down them all theway over chute Junction a come off atJunction B fly around the roundaboutsalmost on two wheels taking the cornerscome back on the motorway at Junction Band then come off at Junction anywhereit should have been in the first placeso already it wasn’t going very well butwe get to Manchester Victoria railwaystation and this pandemonium you knowthere’s people walking around bleedingand crying and screaming and I don’tremember there being any underlain seasthere well we’ve got they took us soonwhat should be an hour’s drive it tookus about 40 minutes to do it I was quiteimpressed with their with my colleaguesdragons considering that hadn’t workedbefore I wasvery impressive advanced skills andthere were no ambulance is there theonly ambulance staff that were therethere were medics private medics for theevents but the only under one stuff thatwas there were what would we havesomething called community firstresponders and they they volunteer withthe ambulance or buildings let me askyou how could there be 40 minutes thatpass by no ambulances because nobody hadtold me I’m one service it was safe forthem to attend yeah oh they were in arendezvous point this is all gonna comeout in the community room actually butit’s it’s no secret messages weren’tpassed that should have been passed whatI think I’m gonna get on my soapbox herethe biggest mistake we made was handingover commands to the local police that’sthe battles I think the weak link in thechain bought it will all come out in thechorus here in next year all that sortof stuff so we would get in there and itwas three community first respondersthese volunteers and they’re notparamedics they’re not EMTs they usetheir own cars what they do is they lookafter their own local area so they canget somewhere particularly rural areasthey can get there before an ambulancewill come from a town they can keepsomebody on my pants when the ambulancearrived so they’ve got defibrillatorsthey’ve got oxygen masks cylinders thatsort of thing to do I’m giving you asort of painting a picture of what whatkind of skill set they’ve got absolutelyso there’s three of these communityfirst responders there there was aJewish guy wearing a yarmulke cap therewas a Muslim guy wearing a Muslim prayercap and there was a great big jollyIrishman with a great big beard I’llalways remember the three and I rememberthinking afterwards it does sound likethe start of a joke you know a dream inIrish sure go to a major incidentmedical yeah and but I realized thenjust it was just a flicker that whateverthis is whatever you know it’s got to beterrorism but whatever the motivation ishere to try and wreck our way of lifealready it’s failing because you’ve gotthree people from these communitiesworking together in a triage areathere’s been a triage area saving lifeso that was statue Li this might sound abit I don’t know a sentimentalist orRomancing but that could have been awindow marseilles that did that gave mea boost you know like right let’s get onwith jobabsolutely there’s a lot of people thatwere just stood there like sort ofoverwhelmed by what was going oncouldn’t process it your members of thepublic railway staff it was sort of inawe what was going on and one of theannoying things was how fast within ourfirst date I bet I mean there were toomany beatings for Kali just so peopleknow bill this is this was after anariana grande concert in the railstation is partially underneath thearena is that correct it’s attached yesthat’s right and so the arena is onrailroad property and you can gostraight from the arena into the railwaystation from they’re not turnstiles assuch but the entrances to the andthere’s a lot of people you knowoverwhelmed by what’s going on and butone of the things that impressed me ishow businesslike my colleagues were theywere just getting on with it and we’dran out with first day materials and thesame colleague that made be very clearradio broadcast to tell us what wasgoing on 30 40 minutes earlier he hadsaid well on the way bring all thefirst-aid kityou can we were running out life oncenter I remember talking to a colleagueweeks probably months after the eventand she had said to the private medicalcontractors you know bring everystretcher a wheelchair that you’ve gotnow gone get it from wherever and bringit here because we need it for casualtyevacuationwhat stretches what what wheelchairs andit shocked me to learn that an eventthat can have a venue for thousands ofpeople that has a medical team and noone has ever thought before this youknow we should have stretches from thefirst cable we should have wheelchairsto convey non ambulance casualtiesit really really not we have to go andget the railway staff to go get becauseyou can in Britain if you if you’regoing from a staff railway station ifyou’re an elderly or infirm you can bookpassenger assistance ahead so therailway staff will meet you at theentrance with a wheelchair or we theluggage trolley whatever you need sothey have their own wheelchair so wehave to go and get them to bring like analum that let’s say they have fivewheelchairs it’s a big relay station butyou know they came in handy but yeah itwas all very businesslike and I remembergoing up to the blast area businessesit’s a park called the city rooms andcolleagues have come from all over thenorth they’re from my force and theywere using like portable crowd barriersMac and cranberries flipping them onthis sideripping laminated card advertisingboards off the walls and the fittingschucking them on the bars of the crowdbarriers and just putting casualties onthose picking up the barriers andcarting around and that was it was youknow it’s a proper belt and braces jobof getting these casualties out of thereand some of my colleagues this will thiswill probably you know put a positivelight to this story as well I mean it’squite a bit more I’m going to tell youhere but some of my colleagues thatarrived from another post they came inthrough a service entrance into thearena to try and get through to the cityrooms area and as they were runningthrough this corridor and firearmsofficers from the local police we’resort of 10 steps ahead and when theyheard my colleagues coming up behindthey spun round and actually drew andaimed at one of my pals and would youinspector like can we see your officerback on shift and then shoot for theTransport Police all right okay and myman matey it was about the gun pilothe’s actually an ex firearms officer andhe said that one of them he wasconvinced done a bit of a twitchy fingerand it was psichology I said if we if wejust open their mouths a second later hesaid we’d have possiblypossibly got shot out so so this is EFchaos mostly oh it was it was yes it wasthere was a lot of screaming and cryingand people are dying you know there werepeople crying they were doing theirlusts there were a lot of people thatwere having the last moments a lot ofpeople the relatives they wouldn’t leavethem I remember one of my colleagues whoone of his skill sets is what’s called afamily liaison officer so if there’sbeen like a murder or a major incidenthe will his job is to bridge between therelatives of the deceased or some usinghospital farms in their life and and thepolice he doesn’t accentuate embedswithin that family throughout theinvestigation process if you know whatI’m sayinganyway this family is an officer he wasstood with this guy and this guy wasstood over his his child who was deadand the guy was saying is it okay if Istay for a bit and he said yeah it saysfor as long as this is a medicalsituation not crime seeing that this isyou can you can stay and he stood thereand comforted that guy who stood overthat child quite a bit hey Bill how manyhow many people are we talking about atthis event thousands I would sayprobably I think maybe 8,000 that wouldhave been there me I can’t remember offthe top of my head exactly how many butthere are a lot of casualties you knowit’s a mass casualty incident and whathappens in those incidences there’ll bean advanced paramedic for the ambulanceservice will come in and start doingtriage and you will have a bag full ofcolored tags and what they do with thesecontacts green means walking wounded’sor can make thealways ask that sort of need be ambermeans that they need some sort ofmedical attention they’re going to needan ambulance cry hospital red iscritical red means that they needstabilizing now before the ambulancegoes to keep them alive from the journeyto the hospital but they also have blacktag and that mod says on it dead and youput that on somebody who is dead or whois not expected to survive the journeyto the hospital and saw that those whoare in those triage we’re talking triagehere it’s sort of a sensual a sort of acold way upon this you don’t waste yourtime you concentrate on the ones you cansave that’s that’s what I’m saying hereoh yeah ask up you got to you got tomake decisions like that bill I can’timagine responding to this the chaos ohthat the shrieks is screaming the thebody parts the then the fear in yourmind I mean are you thinking okay wellthis is clearly a terrorist attack I’veheard about this growing up it happensin England London but could there be asecondary attack for the Public Safetyguys at respond yeah I know that’s yeahI will come on to that just a momentbecause it changed the shape that’s whywe had lead all the commands the localpolice are well what one of these guysone of the casualties had this dead tagon and he woke up and it started to tryanyone who’s trying to get up andfalling downit couldn’t let’s just say he wasn’tbeing attacked enough to stand on hisfeet and he saw the tag and startedscreaming I was one of the colleagues atCasa VAX somebody gone back into theblast area and saw this guy screamingand shrieking in his gun optionsyou’re okay mate everything all rightand he’s you know pointing it at thisdead tag and he’s trying to pull it offand he’s he’s freaking out and heactually starts attacking my colleaguehe was sold panic stroke and thecolleague had some sort of push him onthe floor I mean any sort of it didn’tslap him but he probably shook him aboutit and said listen you’re going to livebut you’re going to have to do exactlywhat I tell you and that conned the guydown and he you know went got himstabilized got him on gotstretchy got into the casualty triagearea and what a lot of people don’t knowand again it will come out next year isthat it was about two and a half hoursafter the bomb blast before the lastcasualty was evacuated wow that’s a longtime that’s a long time to be withsomebody who’s dying you know or alwaysconvinced to gonna die my colleagues andI’m not gonna I’m not blowing ourtrumpet here but my colleagues in theTransport Police did a damn fine jobthey really did a damn fine job of youknow we have some pretty good first aidtraining advanced first aid trainingbecause of the nature of the injuriesthat people can get on railwayssometimes you know we have good majorincident training both theoreticaltraining we do major incident Johnworking exercises and we have like etlearning and we also have firm somethingthat we call Hydra which is an immersivelearning process but yeah so whatactually one of the things thatconfounded that what made it worse wasthat people came forward and gave firstaccounts and said oh I saw what happenedbut now with hindsight my first questionwould have been if you were there andsaw what happenedwhere were your injuries however twopeople came forward and gavecontradictory first accounts of whathappened one said I saw a guy beingthrown out of the venue by the securitystaff in his fighting just beingrestrained by the security staff and hetook a rock sack off dumped it on thefloor shouted something ran off and thenthere was allowed back then somebodyelse said I saw what happened I saw aguy come in off the street with a boxput it down in the middle of theconcourse when he got crowded as peopleare leaving the venue run off and thenthere was a loud bang neither of thosethings are what happened mmm it’s justcomplete horseshit these two people justWatts in off the street and just made upfirst accounts of what happened in causeoh yeah but you see the thing is thisthis now effective decision-makingprocess because when an incident likethis happens things that people walkpast wouldn’t think twice about they arenow picking up the phone down and triplenine and they are saying there’s asuspicious package there’s a suspiciousperson I’ve seen this I’ve seen that andthe thing is the calls that were comingin to the local police coupled withthese first accounts we now thoughtthere is a marauding terrorist attack inprogress on that assistance center II socommand has been handed over to localcourts the local police force is alsothe regional counterterrorism unit theyhave the brutal counterterrorism unit inthat force everything logically weshould have handed over to them but Ihave my own reservations so we are nowthinking about Mumbai are you familiarwith the Mumbai terrorist attack at thehotel well it was a railway station itwas a hospitalyeah there is a very good movie aboutthat I just watched last month a thingoh there’s a movie right soft I’mlooking up do you know what the time wasI thought it might have been hotelmumbai but i can’t remember but i focusthe real focus was on the hotel that wasintensewell that’s it’s not the hotel that webarricaded themselves in and they had tobe very it was you know I say yeahwell we’ve had briefings about Mumbaifor quite some time before this happenedand we were varied with the called themarauding terrorist attacks and we youknow we were thinking right okaysomebody gonna come round now and pull agun out and shoot us while we’re workingon the entire latest hmm so there wasthere was a lot of that in the back yourmind so the firearms officers are thereto basically stand guard in keypositions so that if someone does pullit on out they can instantly engage andand drop them from one of a betterdescription to incapacitate the offenderand save more life if need be so therewas a lot of that going on in the backin mind about what’s going on and one ofthe things after wait you know the newsreports or what have you there was thislocal meet one the national media we’rereportingthis here old tramp do you know what atramp is I don’t want to lock it downand out somebody who lives on thestreetsoh yeah like lady Marian we call themtramps in in Britain and this Tramp thathad come in after they heard this banginwalked in to the railway station wherethe cutters treatment triage area beensettled and it helped all these peoplehe’d comforted these down equal and allthis sort of stuff and had been thinkingI was there for quite some time and Idon’t ever remember seeing this galleryand he was being praised in the mediaand there was a fundraising effort forhim and the people were Tommen’s ofpounds were raised for this guy for thishero that had done all these greatthings that this this this terroristattack and then people started to lookinto itand it turns out that he had beendipping the pockets the dead and thedying homeswallets watches jewelry yeah and peoplehave been praised him as a hero and allthis sort of stuff and yeah he’d beenstealing from the dead and dying but tobe fair he is a tramp he’s a tramp wellI don’t want to cast people because Igot I’m quite a sympathetic person tosome homeless people and I will tell yousomething a little bit later about apositive story I’ve got involved in adata guy who was was homeless but soyeah that was that was sort of that wasthe event and I know that the last oneof your last podcasts there was a guy ontalking about a shooting involvingofficers and the trauma sort ofaftercare that they offer in some policeforces over there it gave it a name anda camera where it was but we havesomething that some of the police forcesover here called trim traumatic riskincident management and after you go tolook at the talents fear of sudden deathor a major incident like this they dolike trim screenings to find out whoneeds essentially who needs counselingwhom who’sprobably who’s not fit to be on duty fora while colonel to sort of gauge howthey are what they are I mean I at thatnight I think it was the best part of 16hours shift that’s what we what we didbefore we got back to our home post andI’ll always remember when we got back wewent into the office and my colleaguehad got back before us we had to stopoff that we feel the car and one of mycolleagues the one who’d beenconferencing the guy who had the deadtag he had chucked his his best is Kerrybest not its ballistic best but the bestthat he wears over with all the pocketsand when you can attach things he tookthat on the back of chair in our messroom with the dent tag hanging off himAmir McCauley looks a teaching we’relooking at this tagging and look in eachotherwe felt oh my god where is he so weactually looked around our Police Postevery room just to make sure he wasn’tthere if you don’t know me hmmwe were quite worried for well as it washe transpired that you know he hadthrown himself into like that he justjust chucked his stuff down I mean Iremember I am I had the smell of all thelike the explosive it was used wascalled ti-tiki on kind of just worn nowanybody that’s listening if you were togoogle search TATP recipe or anythinglike that and have that in your internetsearch history if you were ever beinginvestigated for something and theyfound that you would be a lot you wouldbe asked questions just just so you knowI don’t know you know differentjurisdictions but it was called to theNCP this chemical toilet use and I hadthis smell like in my hair and on myclothes and it was just awful so Ichucked all my uniform on the floor wentand had a shower then got into myclothes and I started walking making myway home and there’s a cafe around thecorner from where I live but I sometimesgoing I can pick up a sandwich on theway to work or a suit that sort of thingthis they don’t open until seven o’clockin the morning when this was about sixo’clock in morning and as I was goingpast I noticed the shutters were up andsome of the lights are on so the theperson that runs the cafe was in theregetting settled for them and I decidedto knock onI said waved to her through the windowshe came over and shit hey you’re righthow’s it going sweet I am absolutelystarving yeah of course come in come insit down on what can I get you I couldjust go through baking and scrambledthat big booty I could just have a baconand scrambled egg sandwichshe said yeah no no problem and she hadthe radio on and inevitable in the newscame on and she said ahterrible isn’t it almost you know thatconcert like that and I just looked upand I said yeah those poor children Ijust looked back down and concentratedon the sandwich in and I think sherealized because she knows what job I doI think she kind of realized that all inthe minute that’s something you knowI’ve touched a nerve here and I ain’t myfood paid for it and just went home andI remember I went have another showerbecause I still felt like I smelled ofthe sort of chemicals that have been inthe air and I went to bed I was out likea lightI was so exhausted I just fell asleepstraight awayI bet it was you know I was just drainedthis suicide bomber in that’s correctyes it was a suicide bomber we’ve made avest of explosives he’d walked throughthe city rooms area once around aboutthe time the concert was due to finishwalk through it thought it wasn’t busyenough soon and then came back through acouple minutes later when he was busierand then detonatedhe on actually a.m. I actually saw himor rather his remains in the blast areaon the night and I always rememberbecause I’ve gotta be careful I rephrasethis because if you figure if I giveaway what my role was in the incidentsit will be attributable to Who I am soI’ve gotten careful I froze this I don’twant to sort of give away you like Who Iam the kissit’s a bother at work but I saw the CCTVfootage of the blast and I was asked doyou think that’s him pointing to acorpse and I’m sort of looking at thisthing and I’m looking at this guy who’slike a 2 feet in front of me what what’sleft of him I said yeah that’s those arethe coal you know that’s that’s the guyyeah I remember looking I’m and you knowwhat I know I know I’m getting towardsthis guy I know that might sound strangebut I remember looking at him and I justthought you shoot busted you stupidbastard you know the fact that somebodyhas been able to manipulate you to dothis to brainwash you to do this youknow you absolutely stupid bastard butyeah surprisingly no hatred it didn’tseem as a victimI didn’t pity him but I just thought whyhave you done you know I couldn’t that’sthe way I processed it at the time yeahit’s it’s it’s hard to imagine what wasgoing on in his brainWow absolutely yeah absolutelywhen I remember them the next day when Iwoke up talking about what I calledtrollmanafter After Effects in that I rememberthem a walk up and one of the first fewthings I do when I wake up is I fire upthe phone and fire up social media Ijust do thatand I remember seeing on social mediathese posts that have been shared andshared and retweeted and they’ve goneviral and they were missing posts my sonand his girlfriend’s went to the concertand Manchester must have and haven’tcome home because any but these are thepictures do you have any informationanybody does anybody know anything aboutwhat’s happened to him and I didn’trecognize the people in the posts but Iknew into a dead I knew and it’s notcomfortable thing to to to say to peopletwo strangers 61 well I cried yeah youknow it it brought it on me but you knowwhat I think I was crying for a fewminutes and then I was just sort of satme under my bed and I thought well thisis no way to a fit in life you know getoff your ass and get you know get up andlet the restthere’s no point sitting here feelingsad so I did I went and had a shitshower and shave and I felt greathonestly I just got all on the system itwas bizarre bought some of my colleaguesthey they’ve got complex post-traumaticstress disorder they had to havecounseling you know it’s it takes itstoll on the first responders definitelysure that’s like a that’s like a scenefrom war but it’s in you know it’scivilian casualties it’s it is I havefriends who’ve been in the military andthey said you know it was it was likebattlefield trauma you know people havelost limbs heavy bleeding you know whatwere saying about equipment and they’renot trusting us to have itwe’re not issued to maquettes you knowwe have quite a bit v taken up out ofsome of those but we won’t issue as tothe cats really why is that becausepeople are touting those as veryimportant though it is absolutely yeahso quite a few people they’ve got traumadressings which have like at Sony catsand rapping on them but they will notgive us the actual you know the fabricadjustable tourniquets and really thoseare the ones we need the adjustable onesso that you can take the pressure offevery 10 minutes and 15 minutes just sothat the limb don’t you know the tissuedoesn’t start to dial it in the oneleading foot ball from for every reasonthey won’t do it and our First Aidinstructors they are internal butthey’re externally accredited so theywork for the BCP for the BritishTransport Police but they are accreditedwith the st. John Ambulance which is abig multinational first stage theyprovide that doctors in Africa that’sthat’s sorted they do very similar tothe Red Cross if you hear that the RedCross and you know he’sthe understandable they refresh thecurriculum for the course every year andthey said he understand the pondswouldn’t say look let us let us teachtuna cats disciplined and lowly theywant to go out and care the road and letme do that but I understand that youdon’t wish them because you think thatyou’re gonna cause more harm than goodand somehow that of course yeah he forwhatever reason he couldn’t convince meit sounds like like you know England andAmerica are obviously very differentcultures in a way but suffering from thesame type of things like work it’speople in charge are so worried aboutliability in doing the wrong thing thatthey’re having trouble doing the rightthing and we have a bit of that here ofcourse as well it seems just fromtalking with you and reading articlesand stuff in in Great Britain it seemseven worse they’re like they’re they’rejust too concerned with with liabilityoh yeah I would say that the litigationculture for parts of the United Statesis definitely granted invincible Iremember when there was an incident oncefor so they got electrocuted on theother headlines and he was actuallyfleeing police officers and the familywere well known for petty crime and theyactually found a solicitor’s a lawyerthat specializes in suing the policebefore they even found a funeraldirectors for the classic of the wrathoh yeah yeah really yeah absolutelyclassic yeah you know that sort of stuffas crept into British culture and thepress loved to blame police they love toblame the police for other people’s poordecision making money and in Californiaespecially Los Angeles if you dosomething wrong if you’re the bad guyand you get arrested and hurt so likethat you can sue you can make a claimwith the city of Los Angeles becompletely in the wrong and they’ll payyou off because it’s cheaper to pay youoff and give you a few thousand dollarsand it is to go to court yeah they’llsettle out cool yeah yeahI mean we’ve had we’ve had that in myforce I mean we had one incident thiswas years ago I wasn’t there so it’s notreally my story to tell but for somereason one of our police dogs justsnapped and attacked a baby in a pramthat was Washburn and passed and now youdon’t need to certainly we’re not goingto call you know this kid has got bitemarks defense you know we settled outcore for that I can understand that sureit’s all truewell there are people that they werefighting with police officers they’vehad to be restrained and the wrist ofsnaps when they’ve been handcuffed orwild and trying to get them in handcuffsand they will complain about use offorce and and threatened to sue fordamages and just pay out you know it’sbonkersI just it’s irritating can you know itcomes to minds that North Hollywood bankrobbery over and over here in Californiawhen that happenedthese two guys are I’m themself ofak-47s they had drum magazines they werejust mowing down cruisers and cops andcops are shooting with all kinds ofweaponry they had to go to a local storeto commandeer ar-15s to kill these guysbecause the body armor and the guys thatdid this their families got millions ofdollars because the police didn’t renderfirst aid to them quick or at all werequickly enough after they were shot itwas like rah you’re kidding me theseguys go on a rampage terrorizing a cityand their families are enough you knowfilthy rich it’s saying hey all ourfirearms officers they have advancedfirst aid training they have oxygencylinders in the chemo could be onresponse vehicles the idea is that thoseshoots of the money to incapacitate themand then this but that person still hasa right to lifeso you’ve got to treat them until theambulance arrives it’s keep them aliveI’m not against that that make I meanthat’s fine but in like you know now thesituation I described was like you knowit’s kind of like give the guys thebenefit of the doubtI mean I wasn’t there I don’t know whattraining us or the procedures are forthat particular Police Department butI’ll bet they didn’t just stand therewatching play to death I’ll bet theydidn’t unless that’s what happens andthat’s why they got the payout andunknowableI just capacity even the most horribleshitbag of criminal you know I justcan’t see cops in the litigation culturethat we live in what can’t see them juststanding by watching somebody down hewould at least try and stop the bleedingor seek out somethingwell Ken I think they print they thoughtthey were dead right they thought they’dkilled him well you tell mother NorthHollywood yeah you doubt that one waswhere they thought there was so therewere two guys down and they thoughtthere was still a third active shooterin the neighborhood and they wouldn’tlet the ambulance in because they didn’tknow if there was still a shooter outthere so the guy ended up bleeding outbut you know do you do you risk thelives of medical personnel because yougot some dirtbag bleeding out in thestreet I don’t think so but apparentlysomebody took issue with that and you goto court and there’s you get someone tolisten to you in a jury and it just goesfrom there but ya know they thoughtthere was another shooter and until theycleared the area they weren’t gonnaLiddy buddy medical personnel in therewe have to say you think particularlynorthern ireland’s the IRA used to dothings what used to call commands andwhat they do is they will draw theemotive services to an initial incidentand then attack the mostly services thatwere responding yeah you know the like aduck hunt for one of a betterdescription all these vehicles comingwith flashing lights on and then peopleget it out it wasn’t one column for themto do that and to this day Vietnam beatthese extremist dissident groups theyhaven’t gone away Northern Ireland isstill there and you have to look for thenews articles because it all seems to beit’s always the local news you know itseems to make the national or theinternational news but yeah they’restill planting pecansI have colleagues and present officerCollins in in Northern Ireland theystill have to check underneath their carevery day before they get in thereyou have litigation is out of control Idon’t Steve I don’t know if you youheard in the news this week there was athis is totally this is off topic alittle bit but is on topic there’s acouple in some state I can’t rememberwhere it was but they’re suingMcDonald’s because McDonald’s hasquarter pounders with cheese and theydidn’t want cheese and they’re suingthem because McDonald’s forced them tohave cheese on their burgers and allthis stuffthen they found a lawyer a lawyer filedthe lawsuit so this is the faint chopsthese spurious lawsuits there’s alwayssome shock in a suit that wants acommission who’s prepared to go to courtwith this stuff or wants it or to filethe paperwork support shot across thebowels of the pundits try and get themto settle out for this is the thing yousay you know people are going thesepeople that try and see these companiesbut somewhere in this process there is aallegedly an educated person a lawyer alegal practitioner that goes oh yeahyeah oh you’ve got a caseabsolutely sign here no win no fee andI’ll take this Commission if you get apayout yeah and it happens in in theUnited States there are lawyers theirsole practice is police litigation civilrights violations police litigationthat’s all they do and so there’s an Fyeah you’ve got those we’ve got to befair in Britain you tends if you’re alawyer you tend to have to dospecialisms so you can broaden what workyou deal with but yeah we have got we’vegot lawyers that deal specifically so ifyou get if you get found travellingwithout a ticket on the railway by therailway company and get bought up by therailway company there’s this law firmsthat specialize in dealing with thosekind of cases and we have got loads ofthe law firms that deal with the dealwith specialize in dealing with thedealing police more suits and you knowthat you’ll see them when these crimefamilies are on the news saying you knowthat the police shot my baby you knowalways holding up the picture of themthe family or when they when they wereat school so they’re in this schooluniform you’ve been looking younger thangee Alec I like America we always havethe same phrases like talentedfootballer of gold he’d do anything foranybody had a heart of gold other onesthat we found recently aspiringarchitects joined in college yes he wasgoing to college to to better himselfbut carrying drugs and also firearms butwe won’t go into thatyou know Tammy is amazing because rightat the city this happens every timeright at the time that they get shotthey were just gonna get their lifetogether and go to college right the ngand they’ve just got some bed the doorgive them money there’s a university nottoo far from where we live in the cityof Claremont which is a affluent andvery liberal city but one of theircolleges has you know 10 foot by 10 footmural of Michael Brown dressed in hishigh school graduation gear you knowokay hands up hands up don’t shoot guythere was you know they shot an unarmedblack male and in Ferguson yes and thenit came out that you know he was a thugand you know not a great guy andwrestled with the officer but thiscollege I mean to this day you can drivedown the Claremont and there’s a 10 footby 10 foot mural of a waste how the copswasted this kid’s life not the other wayaround and the NFL players came on thefield holding their hands up in thenewscasters is CNN they they held theirhands up being innocent it was like thisbig media blitz of how awful the copsare really help relations with thepolice and everybody that’s out therethey want to stir up these tensions andthis hatred because they want the linksbetween the police and the communitiesto unravel so that they can controlthese communities with their drugs andtheir violence and you know they PIR anydid it welljust the I already did some of theloyalist dissidents did it in NorthernIreland you know you did you did notcall the police if you had a problem youcalled the voice and they saw you knowthey used to punish drug dealers andthings like that on the housing estateshowever they were only punishing thosedrug dealers because they were competingwith them because that’s how they raisedtheir money they used to root you knowthey used to bring drugs over the borderand stuff like that as well you knowthat’s how they that’s what they did youknow and that’s what it’s all about ifthey can sour relations between thecommunity and the police they then stepinto the vacuum that’s left behind inthis design in that community and theythen become sort of the default law andorder yeahhey Steve this is probably a second thisis probably a totally separate podcastbut now they have the Ferguson effect orthe cops just don’t want to do don’twanna engage the community right youknow why bother I’m just gonna get introuble that type of thing yeah bill canyou lift us up and take us out we’realmost at the two-hour mark here can youtell us though yeah positivetell us a positive situation that youencountered right so I was working lateshifts I noticed in there quite a bigmainline railway station in the eveningsthey tend to lock up at night after thelast train and they’re closed for a fewhours before the first train but theydon’t always do it and which rest are onfor the night shift and I noticed it wasa guy in the waiting room about threenights on the bounce and I thought wellhe’s clearly not traveling so I call herand I’ll speak to him on that list thereat night and I said Jaime you know how’sit going and he was he was actually fromDetroit in Michigan and what hadhappened was he told me his story he’dmet somebody online he’d met he’s met awoman online and she’d gone over to theUSthey’ve got married she didn’t likeliving over there and they moved back toBritain and he’d been there for abouttwo months and the marriage justand she kicked him out the house and heknew nobody yet know where to go to sohe was sleeping rough who’d beensleeping rough for about five six nightsand he’d been coming to the waiting roomin the railway station because they’vegot plug sockets so he could charge hismobile phone up or put some juice on hisbattery so I was talking to him and Isaid okay right so tell me them you knowwhat what’s your story man at least saidwell I said she’s kicked me out andshe’s dropped all my stuff in the frontgarden I’ve got nowhere to go to take itso it’s probably all got wet it’s beenraining and this you know I’ve just gotthe clothes that you’ve seen me in nowand this rucksack and this bag you had amountain bike bicycle with him I saidlook if you don’t mind me asking do youtake drugs it was a bit of an unusualquestion oh no – just a scannablehe said I’ve had marijuana in thepassport I’ve not not over here I don’tknow where to buy it you know and I saidright okay so I’m thinking right I’vegot something to work with here so doyou drink he says I did I’d like a largeat Daniels book so again no not reallyHannah drinks is have been over here atall I can’t think yet not had a beer oranything and I said right listen lookand there’s a there’s a charity that Iknow that it’s lucky they room very muchon the lines of a commune so what you dois you go for an interview with them andthey decide to accept you as what theycall a companion they’ll call inresidents they don’t call and serviceuses recon companions you can live intheir residential center you sign youryour welfare for good what we call usedto call that I think it’s still calledHousing Benefitso the local authority pays your rent tothem and that pageview roof over yourhead food and clothes and the deal isyou have to work so you can go and finda job outside of the community want tothat’s fine God won’t 9:00 to 5:00somewhere else or you can work for themand what they do is the way that theyraise money is if you’ve got furniturethat you don’t want you can just ringthem up and they’ll come and collect itand they’ll refurbish this furniturethey’ll sand it down or repaint it willfix it whatever and they sell it inthese second-hand stores these bigwarehousesand this charity I actually I’d done alittle bit work than before so I knew abit about them I thought this guy isactually he fits their criteriahe’s got no drug addiction he’s not analkieyou know it’s just a guy that’sgenuinely fallen on hard times and itjust had a positive attitude about himyeah he was in a bad situation but hewas totally like look if you want me toleave officer that’s fine I don’t wantto cause any trouble I know what I meanyou know he’s draining outside they’renot closing for an hour so stay here foran hour if you want to get up causingany harm there’s there’s been nocomplaint but I said lucky eh okay if Itake your mobile phone number and passit to this charity and I’ll get them togive you a call and he said yeah sure noproblemand so I dropped them an email and saidlooking again switch this guy couple ofbullet points about him he’s foundyourself on hard times he’s got no homeit’s been turning up at the railwaystation thought they’re gonna be lockingthe doors and kicking him outparticularly cuz towards the weekendanyway yep no problem thanks thanks alot cheers back sort of response didn’thear anything from them for months fastforward a few months and I was walkingup the high streets it’s gonna get somefood in uniform and I go past one oftheir secondhand furniture stores andsure enough out comes this guy wearingvery uniform t-shirt and he sort ofdidn’t Esau stops and looks at me Istarts and looked at him and I said Kyleand he said Oh officer Billy how are youand we shook hands honestly it was likeseeing an old friend that’s great and Iasked him how are you doing and you knowhow do you know everything okay and hesaid yeah this place is great he saidI’ve got a job I’ve got an incomeputting a roof over my headI met these great people unbeknownst tome he had some sort of a mental healthissuehe said I’m a big big family andcounseling and he said everything isgreat and I must have stood theretalking to him for about 15 20 minutesmy food won’t callI just didn’t care it was just sopositive to see this guy and I’ve hadother experiences like that with withpeople that they’re either homeless orthey’re in in secure housing you knowthey’re surfing on the surface offriends and things like thatand yeah when you get the chance to dothat for somebodynobody can pay your big big enough someof it honestly there is no reward it isgreat and I do quite a bit of workparticularly intelligence-sharingmulti-agency information show in some ofthe towns that I cover railway stationsin to try and problem solve for thesepeople to try and get them first of allaway from other drug addicts try andisolate them away from all of your banksand then get them get them a roof overthe head try and get them drug treatmentand it’s hard don’t get me wrong surethey’ve got a want to reform if theydon’t want rehabilitation you knowthey’re not going to do it but if youkeep pushing and pushing and sort ofsaying look it’s cold last night andwe’re going to be staying tonight ohI’ll be in this multi-story car park andyou say well you do realize you knowthere could be an offer of a room therefor you if you prepared to take thedrugs I love that um that whole set upyou’re talking about I’ve heard halfwayhouses around where I used to live thatwere privately funded by like justdonations that did the same thing whereit wasn’t a handout it was uh you got tostay clean and you got to work and we’llhelp you that’s how you help people backon their feet you don’t just give themstuff absolutely for freeall you have to do is open the door forit’s up to them if they walk throughthat door I’m gonna feel the thingsright I’m sorry said again I says letthem get some pride back you know andabsolutely I’m very big onproblem-solving and trying to tackle theroot cause problemyou know the broken windows theory cameout of the u.s. goldstein of these sortof academics that have done researchevidence based policing and problemsolving policing and different namesdifferent getting places calleddifferent things yeah I’m very big onthat sort of stuff and yeah unless let’streat homelessness as a problem thatenforcement is the last sort of elementof it if they’re not engaging with youto try and help themselves then allright and then let’s start locking themup for offenses you know let’s startlet’s start getting court orders thatbalance and part of the town center andcertain shops and shopping centers andstuff like that you know let’s go downbut you know use the carrot first tryand attach them to the camera and ifit’s not working then beat the littleshit out of them would because you knowyou know really go to town with it youknow proper and force the most minor inoffenses with them just to remind themyou know it doesn’t have to be like thisyou know I can be a best friend or Icould be your worst enemy and alarminglyyour friends that might sound a bitsloppymy son of it’s sentimentalist but Igenuinely believe I’m watching some ofthe homeless people that I literallydeal with I’m watching them that theywill not survive this winter hmm they’rekilling yourself we the drug the drugthat the homeless the drug of choice forthe homeless that’s cheap over here iscalled spice and it’s there’s syntheticcannabinoids yeah that’s what’s aroundhere for a while still is I’m sure it’sbeen here for ages but it went away fora bit and now it’s come back in and thespice is cheaper than cannabis it’scheaper than marijuana hmm and the thingis I mean we have a spade at oneparticular railroad station that Ithought that these people were beingfound and you know it was thought to bedead and you were calling the ambulancewe would get them into the coveredposition andyou’re clearing their airway and thenthey just let out a wheeze and by thetime the ‘unless has arrived I mean theydefecate themselves and urinatedthemselves because they just lostcontrol of bodily functions when theypassed out but by the time the AMAsurvives this out and talked him youknow they’re wondering what all the fussis aboutit’s love deadly drug Ohoh yeah absolutely yeah and you say to alot you know you’ve just you’ve shatyourself you don’t this is no way tolive your lifewhy don’t you know what are you doingyeah but some of them they don’t theydon’t care they hate themselves and soyeah like I say I’m watching some ofthese homeless people particularlyyounger ones living they killingthemselves with these drunks and thenyou know I hope it’s not me that fundstheir body turns up mm-hmm well bill Ilike I like where your head’s at I likewhere your hearts at man I like that umthat’s a good place to end them in theinterview I think you like bill I likeBill – feels cool he’s our buddy Wow I’mglad I was a little bit nervous aboutwhether you know I would haveinteresting you know things to talkabout so thank you very much for you oneif I appreciate no I thought I thoughtit was great and I was super interestedthe whole time and you know wedefinitely have you back I know you havea few more stories and yeah I just youknow we’re going on two hours here so Idon’t want to I don’t want to push thelimit with the with the listeners no Iunderstand thank you very much Iappreciate the invitation to speak itwas yeah it was awesome man reallyappreciate it really honored that youtook the time and with the big timedifference and all that we scheduled tocome on and thank you so much and like Isaid if you’re not opposed love to haveyou back to chat some moreyeah sounds good to me yeah I’m glad Imet you this is very engaging for me asit’s just having a good time full timealright brother thank you thank you guyssee you bill hey guys thank you forjoining us that was a really fun episodeI hope you enjoyed it ken and I had agreat time interviewing bill the specialconstable from Englandreally cool Ivan I’ve been asking for acop from another country to come on fora while finally got one and would loveto have another one so if you’re inanother country and you speak prettygood English love to have you come onthe podcast I want to urge everybody tojoin the Facebook page that’s I’ve beentrying to build that up lately we’reover I think over 400 followers now andI the episodes there and I post othermeans and things that pop up and thingswe talk about on the show I post thereso I’m going join the Facebook communityif you like that sort of thing and alsoif you haven’t appreciated if you couldgo to iTunes or I guess it’s calledApple podcast now if you could go toApple podcast and give this the show a5-star rating that would help we’restarting to trend we’re getting close tobreaking the 200 rank mark in a fewdifferent countries including America inthe true crime category I’m not surethis is the right category for thepodcast but it previously was in societyand culture which I never felt like wasright and then Apple came out with allthese other new categories so I switchedit to true crime subcategory society andculture that seemed to make more sensealthough now I’m learning true crime iskind of a very specific kind of like onesingular story unfolding type of podcastI didn’t know that so I don’t know I’mtelling you all this by that’s that’sbeen going through my head lately butanyways we’re starting to chart thereand that’s awesome because it gets moreeyes on the podcast so please go rateand review and we’ll see you next time
