#341. Whistleblower on British Police Corruption - Chris Amey

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2:26bottles thrown at us. I think one of the biggest problems that policing has is it doesn't pay enough. 9 ,000 people left policing last year. 53 % of those were voluntary resignation. 2012, Theresa May. She was hated. Was she? Oh, now we've seen high profile figures getting arrested, you know, associated with Epstein. You've seen Labour Conservative, Labour Conservative. Every couple will have their views. What's it like going to work knowing that you disagree what the government are doing. They made me the temporary chief inspector. I was covering everything now. I was feeling the pressure. I now knew I could see this train coming down the track and I was standing on the railway track and it's coming for me.

3:13Welcome to the Eventful Lives podcast. I'm your host, Dodge, and I'm the founder of Bournemouth Sevens, the world's largest sport and music festival. On this podcast, I speak to proper characters of all lived eventful lives. Do us a favour and hit that follow button and be sure to check us out on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at Dodge Wooden, where we've now had over 100 million views. Let's roll all the way back. What was it like being a policeman in the 90s trying to keep football hooligans in order? It was fairly challenging. So I joined the Met in 92, came out to Division 93 and I went to Hammersmith and Fulham.

3:55And Fulham has the strange thing of having three football clubs in that borough. so we had Chelsea Fulham and QPR and obviously Chelsea was was quite interesting looking after those guys we used to travel away with them to games so that we could keep an eye on who was doing what where and we'd be the eyes and ears for the home team force who would want us to be all over our main hooligans really and and keep them in order so were you were you undercover or were you playing clothes or were you wearing your uniform what was it so it i mean in the very early days like in the 80s i think it it was playing clothes but um and actually when when we went abroad with um you know for the european games with particularly chelsea because obviously qpr weren't one weren't in that but um with the the guys wore plain clothes then um but at home it was always um it was always uniform because I think previously in the 80s obviously that there's real potential for trouble and the risks to your own safety if you're in plain clothes and you know you're a cop and obviously they find out whereas if they see you in uniform they get to know you over a period of time yeah yeah so we it was all about spoiling their fun really and and their fun is coming out of a match day having a few beers uh meeting up not necessarily anywhere near the ground it could be in victoria so if they were playing at stanford bridge and uh they just want to rock and how did you how did you find out about it what was the intelligence with the old build back then um i guess you know we we did have people come forward and tell us uh where certain stuff was It was quite an interesting dynamic.

6:00The, you know, the hooli groups would always try and find out who it was that might be supplying information. So, you know, we had to be very careful back in the day about, you know, channels of communication with people. But you pick stuff up from ordinary punters, really, that go into the games, they might overhear something. and let you know there's going to be a rut tomorrow in the Fulham Road. How naughty were the Chelsea head-upners? Did you come across the ICF? Did you come across other firms in your time? Yes, obviously the ICF West Ham. I think it's well known that when Tottenham was probably one of the biggest grudge matches, Chelsea-Tottenham, um you know I'd been on duty a couple of games there where you know people have been stabbed in the Seven Sisters Road and um you know where they could get away from the old bill and away from the grounds if they had if they could have a ruck in a in a quiet side street they they'd do it and um and so we were there just to to to prevent it but yeah we you know I did quite a few games I did hundreds of games but all over the place I remember running down Green Lane at West Ham by the old bowling ground Green Street Green Street and just trying to keep them at bay from fighting each other, West Ham, Cardiff West Ham, Millwall Chelsea, Tottenham you name it, there were so many games and it seemed to be quite prevalent in that sort of early 90s.

7:46But you wouldn't necessarily hear about it if nothing major had happened, had come of it. You know, there might be a little ruck and that's it. But I think probably the scariest game, if you like, it was Chelsea-Milwall in, I think it was 94, 95. It was an FA Cup. Whereabouts? At Chelsea? At Stamford Bridge. And it proper kicked off. um we had the horses into the stadium um as you'd gone into the stadium actually went into the stadium yeah um seats were thrown uh the people on the horses injuring you know the cops on on the horses it's just absolute chaos and all i remember i was a young pc and i remember being with it with a guy bless him he was so good um really experienced cop and he i remember him saying to me he said if they come anywhere near you boy it's them and i literally i i was literally hitting everybody that came past me with what bound with about we are with a truncheon with a baton yeah and and because it was so everybody was just like fueled up i think mill will beat chelsea on penalties i think to go through and it proper kicked off it was it was in it was in the news and everything um and you've got to look after yourself you know and have your your your partners back really so how many years were you involved with football then um i mean i guess i started pretty much straight away when i when i joined i actually got into the sort of command and control side of things um so i'd be in the control room or as it was then up on the gantry with the camera i mean now you've got to see you know you've got the rooms now where the the cameras are controlled from the rooms.

9:34So I worked my way up as a radio operator. So in the end, I was controlling cops at the ground. I'd have a chief superintendent next to me that was in charge of the game and he'd be relaying information to me and I'd be doing the communication to every single cop at the games. Chelsea, Man United, we'd have 1 ,500 cops on that. 1 ,500 would turn up a big match? Yeah. My God. So you'd have all the TSG units that would be there and it'll be my dulcet tones over the radio. And of course, there's a bit of pressure on you because you've got to get these commands out really quickly and get people to certain places and people will be putting up urgent assistances.

10:15So I loved it, really enjoyed that. And then that led me working at Scotland Yard in the special operations room. And they run every single major event that happens in London from there. so it's something you you go up to uh they bring in people from all over the place and it's basically like a massive control room and they have all the different services come in and so things like diana's funeral would have been run and controlled from there right okay um controlling all the streets controlling all the police on duty at the event yeah and also So, you know, all the third party agencies that were there to help like barrier controls and things like that.

11:02You know, you'd be there sort of control. You know, you'd be in control of the police, but there'd be someone across the room from you and you'd just be going, oh, hi, can we get such and such? Yeah. But back then, I'm sure when she died, 97? Yeah. I'm sure there wasn't as many CCTV. Well, there wasn't. But what was it like for CCTV back then? It was pretty good. It was, was it? Yeah. I mean, London, I think, has always had good CCTV. I think actually it was a result of all the IRA attacks in London. I think that's why it was heavily CCTV'd up. So yeah, quite from an early stage. And then I kind of outgrew the control, the command of control.

11:43I saw all my mates going away with Chelsea abroad and enjoying these European nights. And I thought, you know what, I fancy a bit of that. or I fancy going up to Liverpool or Manchester of a weekend. They were good times. At times it was tough and you had to look after yourself but other times you could actually really enjoy yourself especially if you went away with a mate that you knew. Once you're off duty you can go out. A few beers and have a laugh. Absolutely, yeah. Have you ever come unstuck when people have clocked you knowing that you are a copper and you're on him every time every time you clock him every home game or away game you're on him and I think I've had enough of this have you ever been off duty somewhere where you've actually gone oh shit I'm in trouble with you no I think you've got to remember a lot of these guys as well live away quite a way away from a lot of the the sort of headhunters for Chelsea lived out in Kent and Zuri and all round I just tried to be fair with them and I think if you were fair with them firm but fair and they knew that so it's a weird situation because one week they would be talking to you uh and chatty as anything and the next week they'd be looking at you like you're a piece of shit on their shoe and it was a really weird dynamic and I had that several times well they It got a bit angsty with me.

13:20But, yeah, strange old relationship because when they're in trouble and they're outnumbered, they would have looked to us to save them. And we did save them. We saved them a few times. And yet when they had hundreds of them and the other team was in the minority, they were frustrated with us because they couldn't get to the people that they wanted to get to. So give me an example. When you're going away with Chelsea, are you the coppers that are walking them down the street so they know there's 50 old bill with you covering them up as they're walking down the street or is that if they're going away to Manchester City or going away to Sunderland would it be the Sunderland old bill there yeah or are you just there to to communicate with the Sunderland police yeah so it would be uh when you're away from home it's all the home forces yeah guys and girls that will be um policing them yeah but we will be there in the background going right you need that we we'd be with a home spotter yeah um who would then come to us for for games at stanford bridge or craven cottage or loftus road and um we'd be with them and we we'd be saying you need to you need to keep an eye on this group this is your main group here these are the ones if anything's going to happen yeah it's going to be these guys I've got a funny story actually when I'd left the Met and I transferred to Dorset and I was out walking the dogs in the New Forest and I got a call from the Bournemouth FIO Football Intelligence Officer and he said, mate, we need you I said, what's the bank holiday, mate?

14:58I said, are you going to pay me to come in then? And he went, yeah, yeah, absolutely I said, what's happening? He said, I've got a hundred headhunters descending on Bournemouth for a birthday party yeah and i went what he goes yeah he said didn't obviously you know you policed him he said you're gonna know him he said can you come in so i just i took the dogs back home and managed to get in and i just got to bournemouth railway station just as the train was pulling in i couldn't believe it there was about 150 guys just getting off the train i'm going no him no him no him and they're all and they're all looking at me yeah as much to say how did you get here so quick because i i don't think they realized that i was down here i'd left uh they end up going to pub in westbourne and i walked in and um there was a couple of the main the main guys in there going what are you doing here you know and and so that in a way was a a nice interaction with them they recognized me one bloke come over and goes oh you nicked me in 96 in the fullham road i remember you like they goes fair play to you governor i was out of order stuff like that were you respectful coppers you know because you can be a nuisance copper or you can be I've got to nick you mate or calm down I'm going to have to nick you a bit or no I'm nicking you because I want brownies points from my boss what sort of copper were you?

16:19no I was always I think your biggest tool in policing is how you speak to people 100 % yeah and in life right? correct yeah and that served me well for well pretty much all my career really and you know uh sometimes you have to deliver bad news and you have to be the one that's taking you know their liberty away from them um but you can do it in a certain way i mean i've worked with plenty of guys that would just go steaming in you know and just go you're fucking nicked yeah you know um and sometimes it works and other times it can cause more problems than you know uh yeah it creates more problems than than you know you would ordinarily have to have to deal with so I was always respectful but I was always I had a limit I had a line in the sand yeah and if someone crossed that line that that was it and so in terms of um using force and arresting people I knew what my I knew what my line in the sand was.

17:25Yeah. But you're a strong boy. So it must have been quite nice knowing that you're super strong and you can handle yourself. But I see a lot of coppers these days that are like nine stone. Nothing wrong with your nine stone. I'm not saying it's all about weight or whatever, but I just see such a difference from the 80s, 90s and early noughties to what we got on the streets today. Have you noticed that difference? Yeah, a massive difference. You have, yeah. Yeah. And I think it goes back to pride about fitness and standards um the type of people that we recruited into the organization we're all like-minded we're all young but i say all young we we weren't some some guys were obviously older and joined the service later but they all had experience of life yeah and if we didn't have experience of life they were the ones that you look to to guide you and you learned from them and you learned bloody quickly yeah because and the difference i think we we all had each other's backs and i don't think that's happening now okay um and i think this is why you're seeing loads of cops, good cops leaving getting done over misconduct which isn't sackable but they're getting sacked and there's thousands leaving and I really, I'm really concerned I'm concerned for policing but I'm more concerned for the public because there is no other line between the public and the bad people I hear and when you've got when you know that if you are a thief or you are being naughty on the street and you're getting away with it and there's no one there to stop you, you're going to carry on right and then that's just going to put the fear up all the local people living around the area going who do I call?

19:33I've seen incidents before in the last year i've seen incidents thinking would you call i sometimes think there's no point yeah literally no point by the time they get the details by the time they arrive the time when something happens and it's swept under the carpet or they haven't got a do you know what i mean like i've seen incidents where taxi rank people have just helped just on a clipboard in the middle of town and they've taken a beating of three lads or whatever and they've just run off and what you know there's no one around it was just it was an odd feeling yeah you know so what is the answer is there an answer is there something you has been in the police force for 30 years and very well respected by many people all around the UK in your industry in your world what is the answer right now there's several bits to it um money is a huge driver because if you've got money, you can throw that recruitment and getting the right people in.

20:35I think one of the biggest problems policing has is it doesn't pay enough for what the guys and girls have to do. So therefore, you're not going to attract the right kind of person because as nice and as noble as it is to say, oh, I'm going to join the old bill because it's a vocation and I want to give back to the community and the rest of it. If your bills aren't getting paid, if your mortgage aren't getting paid and you've got a young family, you're not joining. You'll go and find an admin job or whatever pays the bills you'll do and actually who can blame people now not joining When you're seeing some of the stories that we're seeing now about cops for writing stuff in a private WhatsApp group and then getting exposed and then all of a sudden it's made public and their lives are turned upside down, they're investigated, their names are released in public and they end up on gross misconduct for things that they've said in a WhatsApp group.

21:47which in any other walk of life, people are saying, people are laughing at photographs, inappropriate photos, in a private group. You know, people that work for maybe JP Morgan or something like that will have a private watch group. That's up to them, having a laugh. Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you? Whatever the conversation is, whether it's about a footy team, whether it's about your mate or... So has it become, has it become too, has it become too wokey? If that's a word, has it come too soft? I'm trying to understand what it was like and how, what it is like today. And when you've seen the biggest change and where, where we sit today as a police force, knowing that people can phone up the old bill and feel protected rather than phoning up and going, sorry, there's your, there's your insurance code number.

22:43I can't even come around to your house. We're too busy or we haven't got enough coppers. Yeah. I mean, yes, it has. And you see a story every day in the papers now about people getting shot. I mean, don't get me wrong. There are some people that fall foul of the law, fall foul of the regs and policy because they're out of order. They steal or they false account or, you know, they're sexual predators, which we've seen. As coppers? We've seen them get into the police. and you're joking me no and what people have been done for sexual misconduct no but sexual doing naughty stuff and then getting into the police well let's let's let's go back you know we look at the met and the likes of and i can use their names because obviously they've been convicted but Wayne Cousins who sexually assaulted and murdered Sarah Everard in London and is it David Carrick he was you know he's been found to be a serial rapist where's he now all banged up both banged up all banged up how long did they get well Wayne Cousins got got life and I think Carrick got life as well so if they get life what is that what are they going to serve well life can be anything from 14 years but i mean i think they got severe sentences you know 20 30 maybe in 40 i think one of them might not even be allowed to be released i think i think everard because of the because of sarah everard's killer because of what he did uh and how he manipulated her and got her into the car um using his warrant card so there's a huge problem there's a reason for that okay so if i take you back to 2012 it's a conservative government in theresa may was the home secretary david cameron was prime minister they both hated the police and this stems back david cameron's hatred of the police stems back many years ago to what I'm led to believe was a conference in Bournemouth and it I don't know where they thought they were going with this but they essentially and Theresa May in particular absolutely ruined policing she turned up in Bournemouth for the conference at the BIC Police Federation Conference and I was sat there that day amongst my peers and she got up on stage and um she was heckled and booed uh she was so unpopular as a as a home secretary and she said you lot have got to stop crying wolf you are scaremongering you are telling the public that crime is rising it is not rising it's falling and these austerity cuts that we are going to introduce because you know we get there were there were difficult times but she went after she went after the old bill and um we told her not to do it you know the federal peace federation at the time a guy called paul mckever who was absolutely superb leader of the police federation i can't say that too much about them nowadays but um he was he was very very good um and he was trying to fight the fight but what it did it decimated policing because they cut and cut and cut there was no promotions within the service for about seven or eight years they stopped recruiting so you turn that recruitment machine off yeah it's like any business you don't recruit and people are leaving at the other end you've suddenly got a big void and a big a big gap to fill so it all stems back to there where they stop recruitment and and i ended up actually going in to training uh in dorset police at the time where they were just thinking about starting recruitment again but you're playing catch up yeah and in order to get that many people back in you might have remembered the campaign more recently where they said the the government we were recruiting 20 ,000 extra officers.

27:09Well, that never touched the sides. One, we couldn't get 20 ,000. Wanting to join. Yeah. But two, it was only, it was half of what we'd lost. We'd lost 40 ,000 cops over those years in policing because they'd either retired, some of them, and actually now the case is people are leaving. Yeah. you know when i joined in 92 it was a career for life and i knew that i'd be in it till you know god willing and i if i looked after myself i kept myself fit and everything else i would be leaving in 22 2022 which obviously did happen yeah um and um yeah so how much a cop is how much i just want to hold you back there because you mentioned about the money with the policemen police women and men coming in now.

28:01How much are they coming in on? What sort of price? What sort of salary are they coming in? I think it's something like about 27, it's 27 to 29. So it's minimum, it's minimum wage. It's gone up, do you believe? When I, when I was in training, it was people coming for a 24 ,000 pound a year. Yeah. Absolutely crazy. Crazy money for someone who's putting, you know, their life on the line. Yeah. Potentially. you can understand why some coppers when they're thinking i've got a couple of kids i've got a mortgage to pay and you want me to go and chase that bloke down the street and he's waving a night but he's doing something like that he's probably thinking what's what am i risking all that for 12 quid an hour absolutely and i've got to go home and i might not be with my kids but i want to put food on the table i might just you know go get away i can understand why some coppers would do that as well and i can also understand why another set of police men and women would go chasing after it to do their job.

29:02So it's, but then if you got the, it's like a double sword really, because if you do go and chase someone who's got a baseball bat or something's kicked off somewhere and you get involved and you might do the wrong thing slightly, you could end up losing your job. Yeah. So there's no, there's no real, is there a real win? Is there a real win there as a policeman? I don't see it now. and I've got three sons. Yeah. Not one of them wants to join the police. And that's a sad indictment, I think, of where we are because back in the day, you always got sons and grandsons of cops. Following through. Following through, joining.

29:47You know, as fathers, as grandfathers, we'd be saying to them, oh, you know, it's a good career, guys. You know, you'd be really good at it. you're good at talking to people you know you'll get on you'll do really well not now okay and i think my and in my own case i think my three boys particularly at the end of my career they saw what dorset police did to me and they said no dad yeah we're not having any of that we don't like the way they treated you and we don't want to work for yeah for somebody like that but i was going to go back to that vet the the vetting because you wondered how people like cousins and carrot yes got in yes were they convicted did they have criminal records before they got in um i'm not sure if i'm honest um but some of the processes that we had in place in the early 90s to identify these issues were not in place more recently and there's one reason for that is because they were trying to cut corners they were trying to bring in as many cops as they could into the organization i mean i've heard stories from colleagues ex-colleagues telling me that um and i kind of knew this was this was happening at the end when i when i was just about to go um that so when you join the police right you'll go through like an induction you'll go through an interview process okay and you'll be up in front of three people in a room and they'll be asking you questions you got to pass that interview um i've heard stories of um people being invited back having failed that initial interview and given a start date without a further interview six months later now what makes that person a different person and suitable to join six months later when they failed and you haven't even interviewed them yeah this time to to ascertain what what their thoughts are or you know to try and get a measure of that person and when we when we joined we had a home visit and you can tell a lot from a home visit so when i joined the met there was a a local sergeant came around from Dorset.

32:13I can't even remember who it was. And he came around, he sat in my family home, and he looked at all the pictures around on the mantelpiece and stuff, and he could build up a picture of what kind of person I was. And it worked. And it was really in-depth, because I'll let you into a little secret. So when I was 19, I was banned from football for just a secretarial issue. well everybody seems to do it on a Sunday morning I've never done it since I was 19 but I got a two year ban by the FA for what? because I signed on a player who was ineligible because he'd been banned playing for a previous team and it was a top of the table clash and I put he was a good player I put him in and of course I changed his name on the result card because people you know I was young and you know I wanted us to win the game anyway it all backfired I got found out and I remember being when I was on my interview in the Met at Paddington Green I remember the interview an inspector go Chris do you consider yourself an honest person I'm thinking yeah I am an honest person but I'm going to say yes of course I am like that he goes ah he says you weren't so honest in 1990 when you changed that result card in the FA weren't you and I was like oh my god and i was i was completely taken aback but that was how in depth the research was to make sure you were the right person okay and that's very different today is it hardly anything do you find do you find like it's more university-led students who've got degrees now going into the police it's all that it's all of it is it yeah so when i when i um was the chief inspector in charge of operational training well actually just before that when i was running initial training in the police um all our recruits were what we call pcda um so it's the degree apprenticeship people coming through now this was a scheme that they introduced um so that people could get a degree when they come when they come into the police they could earn a degree over three years now look i'm all for rewarding people for hard work and you know um they should get something i mean at the end when we went you know when we came through we didn't really get anything then it became a diploma in policing but they want they wanted academics and the government introduced this scheme uh whereby 18 year olds could join the police and then do this degree program over three years but the problem you've got you had academics joining you weren't good cops or you had good cops who couldn't be academics so straight away you're thinking this isn't going to work you know the old tried and tested routes there was nothing wrong with them um and but you know we change we you know if you don't change with them you get accused to being a dinosaur and not adaptive to change.

35:32So because with that, the government promised money to the police forces. And what haven't police forces got? They got no money. The budgets, I mean, are overspent before they've even started. So of course, being a small force down here, they were lapping it up. They're going, oh yeah, we'll get these people in because we can get money for their training. We don't have to use anything. Oh, I see. So that police force would get money from the government for their training. Correct. Oh, I see. Okay. We don't have to pay out for their training. Right.

36:10And it was, you could tell what was going to happen. And you had people coming in that weren't suitable. It's almost like, might as well drive a lorry down the job centre and pick up a load of students, stick them on board and say right come cut you're in like the uniform on put that uniform on yeah whereas the process for us was so different yeah and it was difficult to get into the job when i was 18 when i was 19 i had i applied for dorset dorset first sorry 18 i applied for dorset first i went for an interview before the met before the met okay yeah uh and i thought i'd go for my local force and um i went for interviews four of us and out of i was 18 there was another couple in their 20s and then there's a guy 35 36 who's a farmer who'd you think they took took the farmer yeah because he had experience of life yeah so when you go back when you go back and what it was like you had 14 years in London Met Police what was it like your team being first at the scene on the Jill Dando murder it's not something that happens every day is it and something that you remember two of my really good mates who I'm still good friends with now were first on scene and I don't think they really knew what had happened to start with because it wasn't it wasn't overly obvious her injuries but you know and then obviously soon enough they realised what had happened and I mean those guys are brilliant really but there wasn't a lot they could do for her but yeah moments like that are you know quite sobering really and then when you realise who it is it's kind of like a bit of a wow factor really because it's someone you've seen on telly presenting crime watch every every day um and of course the buzz around it for years was was incredible and obviously they convicted somebody that was later proved to be unsafe conviction and to this day that the murder remains unsolved so we don't so they convicted but they they convicted convicted is he still in prison no no so what happened what happened so he was a it was a guy called barry george george yeah so i think he was a bit of freddie mercury uh like look a lot look alike um changed his name yeah to because i think barry george was freddie mercury no it wasn't was he i remember i was because i was living around london at the time then i was in brixton clapham or fulham or something like that but i remember that happening on the day and then the next day or a couple of days all over the press it just said Barry George on the front page of everything so did he get nicked yeah he got nicked he lived just down the road from uh Garon Avenue which is where Gildando lived um and he was a bit of a it was a bit of a loner it was a bit of a weird chat really um and when they did a search of his his home address there was all pictures of of women that had been taken covertly um i think he'd been found at some point to have ordered a a handgun uh online or like a blank firing pistol and because they they think the the murder weapon for for jordan though was a blank firing pistol which had been converted to allow live live ammunition fire and they found a bit of residue gun residue on it in in his pocket but later at court i think his defense said that you know they they felt that was cross-contamination from firearms officers that gone in and arrested him so anyway um the i think he spent seven years in prison yeah and in 2008 i think it was he was uh he had a retrial and he was found found not guilty and he was released so he spent seven years of his life in prison but i don't i think at the time i I don't think anyone was convinced of it.

40:25Okay. Well, it was him, but they need to put a name to it. Who knows? Do you know what was interesting at the moment, because I think it was an anniversary just come up, Jill Dendo, Jill Dendo's, is that she was about to talk about a paedophile ring. That's what everyone's talking about now. Yeah, absolutely. So everyone was like, has this been set up? Has it not been set up? What's going on here? Yeah, and I think because of what we've seen in the news over the last couple of weeks. Now we've seen high-profile figures getting arrested, you know, associated with Epstein. Yeah. You know, obviously we know about Jimmy Savile, we know about Rolf Harris.

41:03Well, was she about to expose that paedophile? You know, was that a paedophile ring at the BBC? Who knows? You know, and I mean, I think every indication's worth it was something to do with um uh serbian hitmen because she'd done like a charity thing for albanian kosovans yeah because obviously at the time there was the the kosovo serbia war um so there was they still say now that they think it might have been a serbian hitman that that did it on the on the say so of the leader of the the serbs yeah arkan or something yeah i think but yeah I mean remains unsolved to this day but I mean who knows it was just such a weird thing yeah she was just returning to her house from on her front door wasn't it yeah she'd stayed stayed the night with her fiancé I think over in Hammersmith and literally went from Hammersmith to Fulham and then whoever did it approached her on the doorstep from behind and and and shot her in the head

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43:49Weird. Tell me about the London riots. Were you involved in the London riots? I've been involved in like two or three. Have you? Yeah. What's that feeling like? I've been living in London when the riots have happened. But what's that feeling like when you know where it's really kicking off and you're losing control? yeah I think um it's I'll be lying if I said it's it's not scary um I wasn't up there for the initial kickoff in 2011 of those of those ones so mine dates back to like Brixton in 95 I was a young PC on a bus I'd just done my public order training uh we got shipped into Brixton and oh my god welcome to London yeah that's a tough part of London yeah you know Brixton wasn't like it is now no you know it's gone up market yeah yeah yeah and gentrified they call it yeah when I bought there in 2000 right next to Brixton prison it was literally it was it was it was madness it was madness yeah so yeah that was quite scary and then um I've been in a couple of like but a lot of fun I'll throw in there as well do you know what I don't I think the actual I think I think you think back on it afterwards I don't I think when you're in the middle of it yeah I'm not sure well I think you just get on and do your job actually and I certainly remember um the stop the war demos in in 2000 outside down the street and there was a load of paint thrown all over us the serial that was right outside the gates and we were there as well just trying to keep back The thing is, you look at people's faces and there's so much anger, there's so much hate in their faces and they'll do anything.

45:43And the anti-capitalist demos in the city that went absolutely peak tong, I was there for that as well. and I remember coming down the Euston Road for one of the demos and we were actually getting bins and bricks and bottles thrown at us and I thought wow this is what we train for but at Hounslow or Gravesend as it later was when training moved there it was all wooden bricks and you get tennis balls thrown at us there was like big chunks of rocks coming and and actually that that latter one at Euston Road for me um we were trying to protect the trains Euston Railway Station and Kings Cross and uh and trying to keep this mate uh this uh mob back I was a sergeant then and um you know suddenly you're not looking after just you you're looking after your guys yeah you know in in in the serial so it suddenly dawns on you i've got to get this right i can't i can't can i swear yeah you can say what you want i can't fuck this up yeah if i if i if if we do the wrong thing here you're in trouble we're in trouble yeah and someone's going to get seriously hurt and i've got a question now i've got in your mindset say if like you've been in the police force 30 years you've seen Labour Conservative Labour Conservative every couple will have their views what's it like going to work knowing that you disagree what the government are doing but you're being paid by the government to go and do a job that you you disagree with yeah it's really difficult I think it's harder for the protection guys that look after these MPs because they're with them all the time and there must be this temptation to say, will you please just stop what you're doing because you've no idea what effect you're having on this.

47:55And actually, you go back to that 2012, Theresa May, you know, she was hated. Was she? Oh. Okay. Absolutely hated. Or by every police force around the country? Every place. Because they could see what, by her actions, she wasn't listening. And she was saying we were crying wolf, but actually it's come true. What we were saying was you can't bring in these many cuts and then try and get the whole thing going again because you'd have interrupted it, and you're going to get good people leave because they're going to get fed up. And that's what you've got at the moment. you've got loads of experience leaving just young kids.

48:40We had people to learn from. They haven't got that now. So there's no mentors or guidance right now. They're coming in young and just expected to do the job. Yeah. They're getting driving courses now. I saw the other day, so an area car driver with the big cars in London that you drive around in. They're getting courses now as young as three years service. I was still walking to beat it till five years before I even got a basic. standard driving course so i'm not saying that that's not you know you know you can cope with that it's that's not a problem given it there's a lot of responsibility on someone of young shoulders but the problem you've got now is those guys and girls that are left that have got experience don't trust the ones coming in yeah okay so they don't want to mentor them but that's not a good sign in any business it's fractured yeah massively fractured yeah it's hugely fractured um they don't trust and the problem is they're coming to the force now and the first thing someone in my position would have said to them on induction no i never said this although i want them to be honest and truthful of course i do but they're now getting indoctrinated to say well if you see something and you don't like it, you come and let me know.

50:05Oh God, okay. And so therefore, straight away, this whole toxic culture is being created. And I think we've seen it with, you had Lorne Castle on there. Yeah. We saw it with Lorne. Great guy, Lorne. Superb cop. Yeah. I've got a lot of time for Lorne and obviously, it's documented, it's well documented. I've helped him and I've been behind him all the way and so have some very senior politicians as well now, are right behind him because they just see the lunacy of this case. What do you think happened there? What's your view on Lorne getting sacked for taking down a lad with a knife and saying herty words to him and getting sacked for that?

50:51Did you see the video? Yeah. What did you think? Mate, I was fully behind Lorne. I was like, mate, he's got a knife on him. He's got a knife that big on him. who's pinned him down. Apparently he didn't use the right words or something and then he's got sacked. So what knock-on effects is that for yourself and other police women and men in the force when they see that you can actually lose your job for doing something like that? Well, I think what it did, it was kind of like a lightbulb moment for other cops because they suddenly thought, my word, if he's going to get done for something like that, where he's done nothing wrong.

51:30I mean, look, you look at that situation and, you know, the language he used, and I say this to him, I said, it's a bit weird, mate. But he said, I know, but he said, I was just trying to talk to him in a language that he understood. And I said, well, absolutely, there's nothing wrong with that. My biggest thing with the whole thing is that's a 15-year-old drug dealer, confirmed, it's been confirmed, he's been recruited by a county lion he's carrying a knife admittedly Lorne didn't know that at the time and it was only when it fell out of his pocket that obviously he knew he was carrying it but Lorne knew something was wrong and that was intuition that you can't teach you gain that intuition from experience and when you're trying to detain someone who is violent or potentially violent um you are you're thinking to yourself something wrong here this kid either wants to get away or he wants to do something it's one of the two things it's flight or fight and if you look on um youtube and it's particularly in america and you see these these people pulling out knives and and having to go at american cotton there's one the other day on youtube i saw and I think it was outside a train station.

52:54This bloke was just happily talking to these American cops and all of a sudden he pulled this knife. He started stabbing the police officer in front of him. The other cop shot him a few times. I don't know whether he died. I think he might have survived. It was so quick. And the cop with a gun on his holster didn't have the opportunity to react. The cop with him obviously did, shocked to start with, but he'd already put the knife in him a couple of times and there's an old saying that action beats reaction and so they've always got the upper hand and the one thing that Lorne did there is he kept that I say a kid he's got a beard and he's quite muscular and that's the thing as well or Lorne didn't know at the time, because he had a mask on.

53:54And the first thing I'd have done with that situation is, I'd have had him in my office and I said, Lorne, that's superb, mate, what you did. I'm going to write you up for that. I'm going to have a word with the other two that were there, because I'm a little bit concerned about what they were doing while you were struggling on your own there. with him and um what's there was two other coppers with him eventually though i think it was three actually and what were they what did they do they pin him down as well one just stood there talking to him and the and i think actually lorne had pretty much contained the situation by the time the other two got there but he did shout for assistance and he was waiting a long time and that's the thing you don't see you don't see him there holding or trying to hold yeah this kid I say kid I'm loathe to use that the offender if you like so what would you have done because you were his boss at one point yeah I was what would you you would have bigged him up and you would have what else would you have done would you have said this is a great example well done I think I would have just said to him look you know I've seen you know I've seen a body worn video and you know I thought your language is a bit strange Lorne you know maybe just avoid that next time you know and just it's like words of advice just plain old words of advice and but actually essentially what he did was he took a knife off the street right and it wasn't just a knife it was a proper it was a big knife yeah and this is where I take issue with Dorset Police because they try to keep it secret how big that knife was and I remember his hearing that the barrister was saying oh it's just a small knife wasn't it and actually that's why I released that picture of the knife.

55:58It was already it was aired at a public hearing so there was no issues with that. I think at one point I think Dorset Police thought I'd entered the files and taken the picture of the knife and had circulated it and that wasn't the case at all you know it's in the bundle it's a public hearing it's you know we put that out and i think it made people realize for serious hang on a minute he had that he had that on him yeah now who knows what he would have gone on to do that evening he may not have done anything but don't forget he's assaulted a 60 year old man punch him in the face before the incident sending his glasses flying and he's assaulted a 14 year old lad in mcdonald's so bad that McDonald's have shut the doors.

56:40And I don't know about you, Dodge, and I think the vast majority of the British public, the law-abiding British public, would want our cops to be doing what he did. And it's an absolute farce that we are where we are at the moment, awaiting an appeal for something that should never, ever have got that far. And certainly wouldn't have done if I'd have been the inspector or the chief inspector in charge. Why do you think, do you think there's an undercurrent on they wanted him out before that or were they using this as an example to get him out? Someone said to me yesterday that Lorne was a very proactive officer.

57:24He was getting into some real, you know, really bad people, people that are dealing drugs and stuff like that. And in order to do so, He has to ruffle feathers, you know, he might have to kick a door down or he might, you know, have to break a window on a car or something. And someone was suggesting that the pound signs around him were going up and that the police didn't like it because they were paying out. Now, I think there was a story that broke in the echo about him. with uh they dragged they dragged this person up from uh from a few years ago where she got raided by trading standards yeah and lawn happened to be on that on that job with them and um i think i think there was cannabis at the home address or something so it was a justified warrant um but obviously you know um normally in those situations if people try and claim for like damage to doors and things like that if they've been found with something then they can't um claim yeah because they're in the wrong and that's just the way it is um but people do try and claim money etc etc and i think there was something about that that they they paid out for that job that's down to them that's that's their business but you know it's almost like

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1:00:29I liken it to Hot Fuzz. And I've told him this. You know, Nicholas, you're showing us up. We're going to send you to Sanford because you're nicking too many people. You're doing too good a job here. And I know what he's like. It's a character. I got him into the police. You know, when I was... he's the sort of copper I would want on my street protecting the street 100 % he's really fair he's really polite he's hard as nails he can handle himself yeah MMA fighter as well yeah got a beautiful family like he ticks all the boxes for the perfect policeman you would want on your streets of Bournemouth and Boscombe and everywhere else absolutely and I recognize that in him when when I was at Boscombe I was the number two at Boscombe just for people listening out here.

1:01:22Can you just break down what Boscombe was like when you first went on the scene in Boscombe? Boscombe's right next door to Bournemouth. Yeah. I suppose some people describe it as a bit of the Wild West. Now, in some quarters, I think that was a bit of an unfair label because there's a lot of what's the word?

1:01:47Vibe in Boscombe. There's some cracking little sort of like clubs that people always venture to after a night out the people of boscom the lovely people i was born in boscom hospital which is now shelly road and there's an estate there now so it was a weird one for me because i left london 2005 and i came back and they posted me to boscom and it just brought back memories of me going up to the sainsbury's with my mum and doing the shopping and here I was kind of as a sergeant and then later I became like the deputy um neighborhood inspector uh working with a good friend of mine and we started to turn Boscombe around yeah and everyone saw that by the way did they yeah they did because you I think Lorne come in as he come in I can't remember what his title was he come in but he was he was Boscombe 24-7 Yeah, he was.

1:02:42Yeah. So he came in. You've got to be clued up to being Boscombe. You've got to understand who's serving up, who's the dealer, who's the naughty ones, what's going on the back streets, keeping an eye on everyone, who's carrying. You've got to be that. You can't just be some green copper coming in and go, right, I'm going to walk the streets of Boscombe now. No, absolutely. And I can see why you and your team did such a good job there. Yeah. And in 2012, Boscombe was the second worst region for antisocial behaviour and crime. and there was this thing called In where? In the southwest region and it was quite high up on the national front as well, on the national picture and there was this thing called the Indices of Deprivation and it listed and for the first time ever we could see where on a list Boscombe ranked amongst some of the other areas in Dorset so it gave me and my friend um it was my boss at the time and i mentioned his name chris i'm not going to mention names today but i can mention chris because we had a bit of great relationship chris was ex-met as well and uh we started to you know stamp down on on stuff that was happening in boscom outside mcdonald's that's where all the drug dealing was happening we said no we're not going to tolerate us anymore so we had this idea of bringing in like a permanent fixture that we could put a cop on yeah um to prevent people from serving up or you know selling the drugs or doing whatever they were doing at the time so we come up with the idea of putting a uh the original 1829 police box they got one in else court in london chris and i went up to to london and got the plans from the museum uh from the archives and we came back down here and with some local local traders we got this thing built it's amazing two two two ton of steel and it needed to be because it was going into the heart of boscom and it was really successful and we put a cop on it every day for most of the hours of the day um and that together with a scheme like um community safety accreditation scheme that's where you you bring in private security um under a private security company but however we are the overarching partner so we give them a police radio you know uh we give them training um they go through their de-escalation and conflict management and all the rest of it and lawn was one of those so he came in at the same time with two others and they were brilliant uh uh dave hellier and jerry smurden was the other ones um and lauren and they were doing a fantastic job they were into everyone yeah so they all had sia badges um and it was brilliant and people in boscom really loved them because they were a visible presence they were presence i remember yeah yeah and that was the whole thing when you've got a presence on the street you're not going to have crime yeah or you might have crime but it's going to go somewhere else and that's all you can hope for is to keep it away from the parts where you don't want it.

1:05:52So if you say there you've got to have presence on the streets why is there no presence on the streets these days? Why is there no presence? Is it to do there's not enough policemen and women actually in the forces and I hear now that all the police cop shops are all closing down? So where do people base themselves? Where do the coppers base themselves now? What's the hierarchy? Are people in there just going I'm just going to make a career out of it hopefully I'll get my pension I don't know what's coming through you're in contact with a lot of policemen ex-policemen, have they got the same thought process as you, where's this going and what is the end result here, what's the goal, there must be a goal of going we need to get under a thousand more coppers in there but for that they can't be on 27 grand because they can earn the same money working in a cafe or in a bar serving, you know, on a minimum wager but they're putting their life at risk there must be some kind of way forward here to go right that's the way forward everyone's jumping on 35 grand as you come in it's great training we're getting the older fellas who have been around the block like you have done 30 years 20 years we're going to bring you in on two three days a week to train everyone up is there any of that going on no no they'll just keep churning out what they're churning out if you keep churning out people are going to leave people are going to leave with mental health issues and still carried on their salary as we know that's a a part of the police force people are going to go you know what i'll take my pension early or i'm out or people to go that this ain't for me i've tried two three years this is not for me because there's not enough protection around me i'm going to go and get a job as a state agent or i'm going to go and work in a bank or i'm going to go whatever it may be is that what you're seeing yeah 100 percent 9 000 people left policing last year and 53 % of those were voluntary resignations 53 % have gone I've had enough yeah my god well they found something better I mean I know I know some guys that um 53 % yeah in any business that is seriously high I thought you might have said like I don't know 10%, 15%, but 53%.

1:07:59Well, 53 % of that 9 ,000. So what's 9 ,000 of the workforce? There's probably about 140 ,000 cops in Britain, I think. It might have gone up. I don't know. I don't know. I'll take that back. There's no way it's gone up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's only gone one way. So how many, if you broke down, like how's it all done? It's done in counties, is it? That's how it works. Apart from London, is it done in counties? you've got your Dorset, you've got your Sussex, you've got your Surrey. Is that how it worked? Yeah, those figures would have been a cumulative figure from all the forces. So if you broke down Dorset police, what did that actually look like?

1:08:40Well, I know that a recent figure was since 2022, I think it was, to now, their attrition rate was 25%. So 25 % of everyone they'd recruited since 2022 has left and said, no, not for me, not for me or haven't made it. Or, uh, I mean, I don't know how you can't not make it nowadays. Yeah. Cause it's just, you're in, you're in, we need people. Yeah. Put the suit on. Yeah. How many people do we know what percentage of people left with PTSD or any kind of like mental health? problems or whatever is there any stats on that i mean there will be definitely and my own personal knowledge is there are quite a few that are going um i spoke to someone last week who's just on in a in the final stages i was on firearms with him down here and um he's just about to go and um yeah he's you know obviously he's got his he's got his own issues um but that's the thing that they don't they don't look after you we see some horrendous things we have to deal with some horrendous things and you'll then have to compartmentalise that and so you don't take it home to your missus or to your kids that's tough it's really tough and I think this is where the whole whatsapp thing has come in has come about I just quickly going back to Theresa May in 2012 I keep going back to her she's like in my head did she do your head in?

1:10:27she did my head in yeah okay I see her at the cricket now at Lords and I think how are you still getting how are you still getting a free ticket? free bigs yeah and yeah no you go back to 2012 and she said at the conference we have to get rid of this canteen culture it's not good for policing that's where you bond correct yeah we had canteens in the met where it was the central hub of everything we didn't stay in there all day we went out to a job as a young probationary i'd go down a full and palace road my sergeant would say if amy if you don't come back with five tickets on the bus lane i want you're going back out you're not coming back in for your refs but we did it we went out there and we were proactive and we did it and i'd stop nice people this is the difference these days by the way, Dodgers, when people get stopped these days, it's like an easy win to stick a nice member of the public on for a seatbelt or for maybe speeding too much.

1:11:30Now don't forget, cops have got discretion. Save that for the bad people that are driving around with no insurance, not wearing a seatbelt, because there's plenty of them. Mr. and Mrs. Nice, who are the very people that you want to be on your side, you're turning them off. Yeah. Yeah? That's what I see a lot of. You see it all the time. People saying, you know, my dog was off. My dog wasn't properly harnessed in the back. What's all that about? I'll tell you what it's all about. It's about money making. It's about generating funds to keep their units going. What about for you? What was it like for you?

1:12:14you've done 30 years whatever job you do for 10 years 20 years coming up there you're going to get to a point where you're going you know what i've had enough of this this is not what i signed up for and i'm looking forward i need to get out of this was there a point where you were pushing yourself out or trying to get out or you've had enough or you had your notice in what happened to you towards the end uh for me it's yeah it wasn't great i was treated appallingly I got to 28 and a half years service I'd been the force training manager for initial recruits so anybody coming in service it was down to me to sign them off and say yep suitable for the next stage and there's three parts they come into training school and I'd done some good things because of the uplift we needed bigger premises and Dorset Police had scaled everything right down because recruitment was non-existent so all of a sudden we had to build we had to find premises to put a load of new recruits into so I along with others we redesigned Ferndown and made it like the training hub, we took it away from Winfriff and brought it to Ferndown you know, I was involved in the uplift for Taser so there was 250 officers carrying taser enforcement we needed to get it up to 850 again another government incentive saying right here's a load of money if you don't get us up to these figures you ain't getting the money right okay so so each county was under pressure to yeah from the government to make sure this money's released yeah okay um and obviously i brought the degree program in with my teams and we worked my people really hard and they they suffered actually and i told my bosses you are pushing people too hard you're trying to get a degree program in because they want the money yeah um oh yes we must we must be one of the first to go to go live and i said you're pushing people too hard and sure enough i had members of my team go off sick long term with stress where we we've broken them yeah but we got this thing done covid hit that was a really challenging time in training because you couldn't have people in the same room you know in a in a in a police car on a for driver training you had the instructor and the three cops in the car in the end i said to him do you know what we'll wear we'll put two in the car with the instructor and wear a face mask and and one of windows down yeah because there's no way around this we had firearms officers that we needed to re-qualify in their shooting every three months because if we don't there's no arm response out on the street to protect the public so it's crit it's all critical stuff so i was involved in all of that and I thought wow it was tough I was doing 15 16 hour days they made me the temporary chief inspector in charge of operational training so literally I'd gone from my job as an inspector and I was covering everything now and I had departments in Devon and Cornwall as well because we were in an alliance with them and um I was I was feeling the pressure you know a couple of things in my personal life weren't going particularly well and I was just doing too many hours.

1:15:39Anyway, we had a couple of students that were causing us an issue and they caused us an issue probably right from the very start, I would say, where you could tell that some of you weren't clicking with them. They didn't really get it. One of them in particular, a female officer, just couldn't pass anything in the initial training. And the guy, he got through initial training but then really struggled with the whole process on the street. And right from a very early stage at week two, the recruitment team and the diversity team, positive action team, had made them the face of Dorset Police. So all the materials that you see for Dorset police, they're on it or certainly now he's on it.

1:16:36And I said, look, I get why you're doing it. I get you want to encourage people from ethnic minority groups, the smaller groups to come forward and, you know, and be cops encouraging to come forward. And, you know, they've got a role model there. I completely understand that. I said but you're playing a dangerous game here because these guys aren't necessarily going to make it and I can tell from a very early stage from the reports that we've had that they might not oh yes yes yes but it's fine it'll all work out no problem at all so I'd let my bosses know a very early stage this was going to this potentially was a problem okay and obviously it coincided in a period what happened in america with george floyd with the american cop and we all saw that and how outrageous that was uh no matter what his background was and what he'd been involved in he certainly didn't deserve at all to be treated by a cop like that and that was horrendous but had a massive effect and knock on and you saw some of the demonstrations over here and statues getting launched into the harbors and stuff like that and i i now knew i could see this train coming down the track and i was standing on the railway track and it's cut it's coming for me because my honesty and my integrity wouldn't allow me to sign people off who weren't good enough and I made it I made it my I'm the kind of guy that I need to see stuff for myself sometimes so I've got all these people telling me they're failing they're doing this we're late off again it's because it's because of him he just doesn't get it he doesn't understand it we went to a pub fight he stepped back he didn't step in now he's a big guy he should be stepping in he should be protecting everybody you know and um and this is what you were clocking was it i was i was being tired i was being fed in i was being fed information saying that i don't i really i don't think they're going to make it so then i started to watch a couple of videos i went on the training day one day where um i don't know you've seen it streetwise down at kinson where they've got that where the kids go yeah to learn how to cross the road and stuff like that they've got a load of buildings in there we use that well we were using that for training scenarios you've got a railway line and a train so we you know we had a suicidal male or female on the railway track you know and it's a really good test and we we put them through it and i remember one of them uh goes into a building to speak to a domestic violence victim uh it's all set up um the victim we put makeup on it's really really well done and clearly she's been assaulted and the idea of the scenario is that they go in and they identify the victim and they identify the fact that the suspect is somewhere but they don't know where.

1:19:38And the whole thing is to try and get them to look around the house because he's hiding upstairs. Well, this female officer just went in there, didn't really deal with the victim very well. This is right at the end of her initial training, by the way. She'd been on action plans right up until this point as well to try and get it right. and um anyway the suspect's upstairs and in the end we have to get the suspect to start banging around upstairs which is not the same scenario that's not part of it it shouldn't be that but we had to do it to trigger her mind to go up there okay there's somebody up there did you find that you were being blocked like you're seeing all this but were the police then just allowing people to pass was that the thing that was annoying you yeah so what i'm getting what yeah so what I'm getting on to say is that there was no way it was made in no uncertain terms clear to me that these two were going to pass and regardless of whether they passed or failed the course and in the end she ended up moving to Devon and Cornwall because that's where she was from so she always wanted to go back there anyway and the guy he's still now in now he went out of training he shouldn't have left training i saw a video of him stop and search a young male outside bournemouth hospital and his tutor i can see i'm looking at the video and i can see the tutor looking at him and looking at the boy's waist and he's not picked up the signals and this is what i mean about it's intuition yeah life skills you know right he's just about to let this guy go and the tutor steps forward goes well i'll be taking that then he pulls out this massive great knife down from down his trousers he hasn't even seen it that's dangerous that's really dangerous so anyway what happened was we ended up with a complaint um that my department was was or sorry the training department was racist and that we hadn't supported them properly and we had supported them but nobody bothered to come to me and say what's your view all of sudden there's a couple of um um there's a couple of complaints on an assistant chief constable's desk saying oh they've been treated badly blah blah blah they haven't been treated badly and it actually scarred a couple of my trainers who'd done work so hard to get them through and dedicate loads of time to them the whole tutor unit for the guy were late off every single day that's too much and you can't 8 hours to take a statement from somebody if I come into your house and I took a statement from you simple theft from motor vehicle and I'm still there 8 hours later you'll be pretty annoyed with me you wouldn't be there 8 hours I've been mate you can do one so anyway I'd just been written up for promotion and my form was on there and I thought I'm happy with this I think I'm going to do alright because I've got all the evidence and stuff.

1:22:42And I've worked my nuts off for 12 months. I've gotten through COVID. I've done all these changes. And they turned around. So they signed me off. I had an interview that following week, whenever it was. I got a phone call at home saying, you know your promotion? Yeah. You're not getting promoted. And I'm like, what? yeah it's we've had a complaint and we just think there's a few more issues that you can learn from basically they withdrew my form that they've written me up and the same person rewrote it and put a load of negative stuff down about me because they were more interested in getting these guys through so they continued to be the face of Dorset Police and they were happy to put me 28 and a half years senior officer you know speaking about what i've done in my career on the scrap heap and they cancelled me and they they um i could see what was happening okay the writing was on the wall i could see it everybody said what they're doing to you is not right and even my boss my immediate boss phoned me and said i'm so so sorry they're doing this to you this is so wrong i i recorded them yeah or the phone call i've still got it yeah to this day so i went sick and i was off i was off sick for about a year i think it was um and it brought back some horrendous things for me because my feeling was i'm quite a proud guy i think i've done an all right job and it triggered stuff okay in me when i was off and i got ptsd and i started seeing things that i dealt with in my career which weren't particularly pleasant i think that's what happens with people that suffer from it yeah um i felt a bit of a failure uh i i might i went to hell i wonder what my parents were I lost my parents quite well I lost my dad quite young uh just before I joined the police and then I lost my mum um really affected me but I hadn't dealt with it yeah okay so it brought all that sort of trauma still there yeah yeah yeah and you're at home by yourself nothing yeah okay and and you know I'm spinning but you know the worst thing is they left me at home they never contacted me because they didn't know how to deal with me because they knew that I held their secret yeah okay and um they're still doing it now to people so people are off sick at the moment they're not in contact with them it took my psychologist that they sent me my rhr had said you've got to go and see this guy and the first thing he said to me was he said why why did dorset police treat all their senior managers like this he said what is it about them i said i I know.

1:25:46And there were several others off with exactly the same thing. And we got to a situation where they stopped paying me, they reduced me in rank, and then they realised they couldn't do that, that was unlawful, so they then reinstated my rank, my temporary rank, and had to back pay me for a year. Did you get your pension? Yeah. Yeah, okay. But I didn't get, I didn't, and the other thing I did as well is I appealed that promotion board decision and it went to devon and cornwall and the assistant chief constable down there returned a verdict of that it was perverse what they didn't what they'd done to me because they tried to say i wasn't operationally competent and my god they couldn't get a more or more and the reason why they took me into training yeah by the way in 2014 when i've done everything I'd done at Boston um that um the chief constable at the time she said to me oh Chris I want you in training I think it's a really good fit for you because you can impart all your knowledge and everything you've done yeah yeah yeah and she said I want to know as well what are they doing in there what is going on in that department because the person that did my legs I won't I won't say her name but people will know is um she'd done it to five other senior managers and what it was about was not not taking the blame herself she always had to offload it on someone and now if you you remember i said to you i told told her months ago this was going this way this train's coming down the track you need to be mindful of this i know when the assistant chief constable came to her and said, what's going on in training?

1:27:32Why are these two complaining? Is your department racist? Oh, I don't know. That's down to Chris. And she completely threw me under the bus and she'd done it to five other people. And the previous chief constable knew she was like that and was trying to get information on her. So when you've got people like that leading up recruitment and training in the police, you've got no chance. what would you do if you were a copper down and your boss said i went to go around to that house and nick that 73 year old lady for writing a tweet and you had to go around there with three other coppers but you didn't believe that you should be doing this how do you react as a copper have you got to do what you're told or you're not going to or you're going to lose your job you have to walk away from it how how does it make you feel knowing that you've got to nick someone for something you don't agree with well i think you just said it there what would you do i know what i'd do i know i would do i wouldn't be a copper first of all number one because that's not my thing but if i if i was in that situation i didn't agree with it i'm not doing that yeah but then if you say i'm not doing it you're gonna lose your job like you're then going if you don't do you're going to lose your job sorry mate i'm going to get your p45 out yeah well i think um crucially actually they are now employing people that they've always wanted because they always said we want critical thinkers and that's what this degree apprenticeship gives us so they want people that are going to challenge them when it suits them yeah would i do it no no And I actually, and you're seeing it in the press now, aren't you?

1:29:23Seeing, I don't know if you saw that video of the female officer in Whitechapel the other day. Did you see it where she was stood with the group of Muslim guys? And she stood up and said, look, guys, I appreciate you don't like what he's saying over there. However, in this country, you know, we have something called freedom of speech. And actually what he's saying is nothing illegal. So I suggest if you don't want to listen to it, then you move away from this area. And they said, well, this is our area. She was brilliant. Yeah, she was. Do you know what? Actually, I think I tweeted on it or I put something on Facebook saying, God, we need more of you.

1:30:04She was unbelievable. And she's since won a lot of applaud. It's everywhere, actually. Do you think when the government changes in 1 ,200 days, I'm not counting down or anything, 15th of August, 2029. You know it's going to happen, right? it's going to change wherever it goes when government changes

1:30:26and you're employed by the police would it be a sigh of relief knowing that for the last five years you've had to do stuff against what you think is not right so all of a sudden something's been changed i don't know whatever government comes in then you're like oh hallelujah okay now i fully believe in this that must be so hard it must be so hard you're being employed by the government and have to do what the government say but you maybe not believe in it and there may be a big percentage of the police force who do believe in it or big percentage of councils that do believe in what's been said but it's amazing how a government can just change and then all of a sudden the whole direction changes everyone's got to go with that direction i mean i think it just all depends on what government comes in doesn't it chris i've really enjoyed this really enjoyed it thank you thank you for your honesty and you've certainly lived an eventful life for that last 30 years and I really appreciate you making the effort to come down here but just seeing how the police force has changed over 30 years listen, all businesses change everything changes over time but seeing old school coppers coming on here and telling their stories and just giving their view on how it is today it's extraordinary, it really is but I really do appreciate your time mate No worries, thank you so much nice one Chris good man cheers

1:31:48hi guys I really hope you enjoyed that as much as I did can you do us a favor and leave us a review as it massively helps us grow the show cheers guys

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