I arrived in the police station hereto after, referred to as ‘The Nick’, 15 or so minutes before my appointed time, probably just as well, as I wandered through the mostly deserted and certainly labyrinthine corridors with a growing certainty that It was some great psychological experiment and my lab rat like efforts were being secretly filmed for the edification of some unseen power. Anyway, I did eventually manage to stumble into the neighbourhood office, and sat quietly awaiting my contact in the form of Inspector x, who actually turned out to be a top chap. After a couple of hours spent having what seemed like a rainforests worth of paper work, forms, tickets, and aid memoirs thrust upon me I was exhausted and my mind flew round in circular quite jerky movements mimicking the actions of a wounded game bird.
My relief was palpable as we headed down to the garage to ‘kit up’ and hit the road, I know the phrase ‘Fire up the people carrier' does not have the same ring as ‘Fire up the Quattro’, but you get the gist.
Its actually the first time (believe it or not), I have sat in a police car, I had to sit on my hands when faced with the array of infinitely pressable knobs and buttons, yet I was strangely uncomfortable due to the positioning of my Asp and handcuffs, phnarr phnarr.
First mission was to the motorway, a multiple pile up? A road block? A herd of escaped wildebeest?...of course not we were bloody hungry after all the paper work...we needed food!
After refuelling curtesy of the golden arches we drove across our borough to set up a speed trap, What fun, out of the car with hats and hi viz. The power of the Hi Viz is truly remarkable, it is like a powerful force field, a tractor beam if you will. The merest glimpse of which causes vehicles to miraculously slow to a crawl and drivers stare fixedly ahead, with the look of one more used to marching through no mans land in a hail of machine gun fire. Yet sometimes its power wains, and the hapless motorist is beckoned to the side of the road to be handed the good news,
“Do you know why we have stopped you sir/madam?”
“Was I going a little fast officer?”
“Yes you where..here have a ticket and a nice day”
It doesn’t quite work like that to be honest.
In our case dependent on the number of mph they were going over 30 they either received a ticket, of more properly a Fixed Penalty notice, of where given a little on the spot education in the form of a Driver Alert. This involves offering them the chance to fill in a little form and look at some rather unpleasant photographs while we tell them the story behind the picture, and explain the implications of excess speed. I did several of these, with varying reactions from the ‘offender’.
After our speed reduction success, we patrolled the leafy borough in search of mobile phone users, not any random person chatting at the bus stop, you understan, but the annoying numpties who still insist on driving with a Nokia clamped to their ear and one hand on the steering wheel. It wasn’t long before we came a cross a young girl in a dependable German car, hareing around a roundabout like something from Tokyo Drift. Needless to say she left our little encounter with a lighter bank account and a much heavier driving licence. On the way back to the Station...sorry 'The Nick', we stopped a car with a defective break light, nothing serious, just to point it out and tell them to fix it. However, the car contained several unseatbelted children, worryingly one in the from seat, kneeling up with no restraints, after pointing out to the childs mother who was driving the car that it is quite expensive to replace a windscreen after a toddler has flown through it, we issued her with an non endorsable FPN i.e a fine but no points.
Back at 'The Nick' we had another hour or so of form filling and note book write ups before we could knock off.
The day was utterly brilliant and I enjoyed every minute of it with perhaps the exception of the Chicken Mac something or other I had for lunch, I paid for that later I can tell you!
