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Cops at hristmas
Page 36
Page 37
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For the police Christmas is business as usual but, despite rumours to the contrary, officers are human and have been known to turn a blind eye when they see a lorry load of abandoned Christmas trees transferred on to the roof racks of a convoy of cars. However, if you want lenient treatment, there is one thing you should never say to a policeman...
4 shall be spending my Christmas
I looking for birds and trees," says PC Dusty Skipper, attached to the HG V Unit at Hampton Garage in west London. "And I usually find them tucked up in the back of a sevenand-a-half tonner."
It's the same year in and year out. Alongside the frantic and legal activity that characterises the weeks before Christmas go the actions of the criminally-minded. In addition to the usual targets of alcohol and cigarettes, the villains make a beeline for the turkey and Christmas tree farms.
They know that there is a huge market for the goods and they are almost impossible to trace back to the lawful owner once they have been off-loaded on to a street market, boot fair or dishonest retail outlet. Whole swathes of young trees are dug up overnight in the remote hillsides where they are grown and trucked into towns, while other gangs will descend on the poultry farms to steal a couple of hundred or so birds at one swoop.
Close watch
The consequences for the owners and their customers are devastating and the police will, as usual, be keeping a close watch on the problem.
Years ago that included foot patrols
between all the butchers' shops in the town, when the PC would be expected to rattle the front and back doors of the shop to make sure it Its. was all secure.
Now, because resources tend to be much more scarce, the foot patrols have been replaced by mobile patrols who will stop any HGV coming from the direction of a turkey farm or conifer forest, particularly late at night.
The excuses are many and varied and most of them will have been heard by the Old Bill before, but they are always on the lookout for a new one. If the excuses fail there is always the 'If you don't believe me then phone them up and ask', routine.
This nearly always consists of giving the officer the address of a genuine turkey farm or forester but with the telephone number of a mate who has been primed to give all the right answers. If the officer accepts the telephone number as genuine, the villain is home and dry.
"I never take the telephone number I am given." says Dusty Skipper, who got his name from always being covered in dust and oil from the underside of EIGVs. "The villain knows that he has got to conic up with the address of a real farm so I will always go through directory enquiries for the number of the address he has given me. In the meantime, the load stays with me."
It is not always stolen trees which cause a problem. Every year some really do fall off the back of lorries and are picked up by grateful motorists, but it is not often the entire load which comes off.
"I knew something had happened when I saw a line of cars go by, each with a Christmas tree sticking out of its roof," says one officer. "A few miles down the road I found a load of cars parked by the side with their drivers rushing around trying to find a tree that had not been run over by a passing vehicle.
"Others were pushing trees into cars already full of kids or were trying to work out how to make the tree stay on the roof without a roof rack. The mess seemed to go on for ever and there was no sign of the lorry so we let the motorists get on with it. After all, they were clearing up the mess for us and we had no hope of tracing the owner."
Of course it is not only theft that the police are looking out for at Christmas. Long hours are the constant scourge of the haulage industry but the additional pressures of Christmas make the problem more acute. That doesn't excuse the actions of an Italian driver who was stopped in Kent on 23 December last year, having not had more than one twohour rest period in the previous 48. He was apparently trying to get home by the 24th which is, in most Catholic countries, the start of the festivities. Unfortunately for him he ended up in a British magistrate's court on Christmas Eve being fined £1,250.
It isn't just a question of exceeding the number of permitted hours. With all the large food retailers operating under the just-in-time principle, the pressure to get the goods into the stores no matter what the obstacle is awesome and the pressure will occasionally result in a mistake or three.
"Just before last Christmas I stopped a lorry on hire to a very large haulage company," says PC Chris English, attached to an FIGV unit in north London.
"It was not displaying an Operator's Licence disc and when I checked at the depot I found the company had had a total of 10 HGVs on hire since September without asking for an increase in the number of vehicles shown on their licence."
Rain-lashed
The pressure can get to the police as well. One officer in the south of England will always remember the difference between the French word for fish and the English word for poison.
On a particularly cold, rainlashed morning in late December last year, as traffic streamed through one of the more notorious bottlenecks a few miles outside London, a French-registered HGV swerved to avoid another vehicle and turned on to its side.
Before long a police car was at the scene and an officer approached the upturned lorry to see the word "poisson" emblazoned on the side. Seizing the initiative he called for assistance, cleared the area„ halted traffic in both directions and called the fire brigade. It was over an hour later before the population in the south east could again begin its journey round the lorry load of, by this time, smelly fish.
"I would be really grateful if you did not mention the county" says my somewhat embarrassed informant.
Whatever else they may be, police officers are human and, provided the offence is not serious, will tend to turn a blind eye to much that goes on at Christmas that they would not allow the rest of the year.
But be warned, there is one phrase that guarantees the book being flung at you. Do not, if you are stopped, ever say: "Come on officer. it's Christmas."
by Patrick Hook