Purleazing the police
A view from the fence top. Some of my encounters with, and takes on, the blue meanies.
When I was about six years old, a neighbour called Stephen Cook (the Baker’s son) convinced me we should throw this old bottle we found in our huge village vicarage garden, over the wall onto the main street… I agreed - but he threw it.
In a different, bigger and posher town, at age twelve, I answered the rectory door to two uniformed policemen who directly confronted me with, “You know why we’re here, don’t you?”
That feeling -
the sudden shock of being faced by the huge navy blue weight of the law, was the same both times. The first involved a visit from Constable Basham (I kid you not) and the question, “Did you throw that bottle over the wall, young man?”
It had smashed near a parked coach where my mother and her fellow Mothers Union members were disembarking from a trip…
My cowardly but honest snitch, “No sir, it was Stephen Cook”.
The second time, at twice the age, elicited the instant confession to their question, “taking things from shops”,
With my parents now watching on in horror, I was sent to retrieve what I (still) had and came back with a few meaningless toys and a Fry’s Chocolate Cream that I couldn’t eat any more of, having puked up on the rest three days previously.
My father walked with me to the police station in Harpenden to receive the verbal caution from a senior officer - both of them no doubt hoping that the fear factor would shock me into resisting a life of crime. What it immediately did was add a layer of fear to my feeling of being deprived - the very feeling that had prompted (doesn’t it often?) the desire to steal some treats.
I soon found out that an unnamed schoolfriend, who had overheard Robin Hind and me discussing our latest haul, had told his parents, and thus the police, that the vicar’s boy was a petty shoplifter. This showed me one thing that I took as a positive,
I wasn’t caught.
Robin, on the other hand, continued his somewhat bolder thefts, and was twice caught.
- I did not see him at school after the 5th form and I moved to Aylesbury where 2 years later I ran into him again… He had become a police cadet.
There were two murders in the first 2 weeks of our arrival in Aylesbury and as one was reported as a stabbing in a major shopping street, late at night, I went out to explore the location the following day - there was a trail of dried blood and a larger red mess in a shop doorway where I guessed the poor guy passed his final hour or so.
I don’t know how Robin found me soon after that, but before long we were going to the cinema together on his free +1 pass for being a Thames Valley based cop. This was soon followed by my introduction to snooker at the Police social club - a generous modern space (in 1972) where we played, uninterrupted, while off duty officers drank and chatted about “This Paki I smacked” and various other dubious exploits that they really should not have been talking about within the hearing of a cadet’s signed in guest.
I had a dream of travelling across America.
and when I was travelling across America, I had a dream that I was in England and might, one day in the future, be travelling all the way across America…
I was awoken in this dream by a cop,
an American cop who touched my arm, as I slouched in the back of a greyhound bus at 3:00 a.m., and asked, “Are you Patrick Graham? - come with me”.
In my barely awake state this gun toting accompaniment was clearly a continuation of the same dream, or nightmare, in which I was about to be arrested - but once outside, things started to click, and my very generous hosts thanked the officer and took me in their car to continue the waking side of that tour.
Outside, after a Peter Tosh gig at the Cardiff Top Rank, Ahmed, a guy I had been friendly with that evening, was joking with me about the police Alsatian dog opposite us in Queen street. They must have seen him laughing at the suggestion the dog was way too dangerous to approach, and they came over towards us, singling out Ahmed for attention, asking him if he was insulting their dog, and pushing him into a shop’s inset doorway where I could see them punching him, and he doing nothing to defend himself.
I grabbed my camera out of my bag, and bluffed that there might be enough light to get a meaningful image (there definitely wasn’t) by shaping to photograph what was happening. A police transit swiftly squeaked to a stop in front of me and I was ushered away from the scene, but soon joined by Ahmed and we walked speedily in the direction of the docks…
He thanked me for what proved to be the trigger that stopped them punching him, and I asked how come he could resist the natural urge to fight back.
He said, “Man, the last time I did and I got 2 years”.
In my “CoStar” community development office in Cwmbran, I would often hear the comment, “Awful dry in here, isn’t it” and I knew that, Community officer, Tom Daniels was looking for a cup of tea and a chat. It was a friendly chat most of the time but was also a useful intelligence exchange when it came to keeping the community peaceful and happy.
It was from Tom that I had found out about the Blaenavon cop who regularly let two clients of the mental health services that I knew about, stay in the cells overnight on a Saturday because it was one of the few places they felt safe.
Working with the Gwent consumer forum (for mental health service users) I developed the idea of a voluntary ID card whereby those who knew they had a regular risk of a florid episode would carry it at all times and thus could have this card found by a custody sergeant if held by police, and it would explain who they were, what they needed, a contact who might help them and other useful info.
It was a pleasure to see the custody sergeants attend and lap up the talk and explanation I gave them. They understood that turning down their radios so the lost looking person who approached them wasn’t hearing any more disembodied voices, was a good idea. They appreciated that far from being scared of policemen, many service users were scared of everybody else - the uniform could be a beacon of hope for some. I could see a usefulness for police engagement that would make for a better community for everybody.
Later, as chair of the local community safety forum, I became closer to the police than I would ever have thought possible. Tom had suggested me for the role and the police needed a break from it as local councillors on that group would spend the whole meeting slagging them off. Together we developed ASBO protocols that meant of 80 referrals, only 2 sorry cases ever made it to an actual order, the rest were managed well back to zero trouble… and youth play facilities, some urban environment and path changes with some serious funding. This was the nearest I ever got to being a cop’s “friend”.
20 years later that all changed.
The police were very clearly my deadly enemy.
Three detectives knocked my door at 8:00 on Thursday June 30th 2016 and the, most unpleasant, fourth phase of my life began.
Unlike the smiling protestor pictured, the shock was a jaw dropper. My home was invaded and all (my wife’s as well) computing devices confiscated.
In the 80 minute drive as they took me to Cardiff I chatted, with a kind of faith that this was all a silly mistake, wrong identity or something, because they told me it was an accusation of a sexual crime.
4 hours in a solitary cell with pockets, laces and dignity removed, is a good softening up process. DNA, Photographs, fingerprints - the process is dehumanising just on the basic level.
It became clear that these police officers had unquestioningly believed a woman I had vaguely and briefly met as the child of an ex admin worker of mine, at a party, and she had invented a grotesque fantasy of a paedophile ring involving me and three men I had never met in my life, as well as a close friend who was a Cardiff GP.
the story unfolded and my life collapsed.
It was clear to all five of us falsely accused that the police would not be swayed by the bleeding obvious backed by strong evidence we presented, and that their corrupt method of failing to investigate obvious leads that pointed away from the prosecution case was not going to be exposed by our complaint through “the proper channels” - all the way up to IOPC. The system is brilliantly designed to protect itself and deflect and deny the true issues of corruption- and their only lip service to justice is to throw the occasional expendable officer, labelled as “a rare bad apple” under an inflatable toy bus. The system has to be preserved, even though it is the fundamental problem.
I tried to fight my way back into a career that had been squashed by this persecution, but found the malevolence of South Wales Police had not yet subsided.
I was interviewed and offered a post by a reputable charity, in my specialist mental health field, as a user champion, inspecting care homes and special shared housing schemes - all I needed was an enhanced DBS check.
I applied for this and waited.
6 months later the check came to me containing a false statement about my involvement in questionable paedo-parties that other witnesses had supposedly confirmed I had attended.
A barefaced lie.
Of course I complained - as per the process.
Another 6 months went by before I got my clean DBS check back.
Let’s not pretend that SWP did not full well know they had thus achieved their goal of ending my career.
But it didn’t even end there.
Some months after this I was enjoying some blessed release of anger in humour form by chatting about the whole issue of the falsely accused and the insane behaviours of accusers and police alike when I was called in for a “voluntary interview” at Stroud Police Station.
Apparently my False Accuser had been stalking my Twitter timeline and very much objected to the code I used to avoid naming her -
It is a clothing brand I am quite fond of, and in legally avoiding mentioning the crazy narcissist’s details, it served well as a descriptor…
The police interviewer in Stroud made it clear to me that she was acting on behalf of South Wales Police and she was subtly clear that she disagreed with the action being processed, since I had clearly not broken any laws.
The net result was a deletion of my Twitter account but no deletion of my wishful thinking fantasy that both involved detectives in the SWP and the narcissist herself need to meet with dramatic and shameful demises.
Progress has now placed that vengeful fantasy on a deeply hidden shelf in the larder.
I have a life, and its a good one. I am not in jail, unlike hundreds of other innocents, caught in this spiral of justice destroying insanity sparked by Keir Starmer’s fawning to the Feminists, with their “believe all women” BS.
I have now found out that some quite senior police officers resigned when this “believe the victim” semantic and justice destroying nonsense was introduced - and reinforced by the ghastly successor to Keir Starmer as DPP, Ms Alison Saunders
There are also many other officers, mostly safely retired, who have been quite open about how the orders came down from on high, that all rape cases were to be believed and pursued, even though their own experience on the front line was that at least 75% of all reports of rape were lies.
If I lived in South Wales still, I would definitely be of the view that, on hearing the clear signs of a burglar breaking into my house, I would definitely NOT call the police.
I would instead grab the handsaw that lies discarded from a recent DIY job, under my bed, and go to deal with the intruder myself.
Because I have no faith that the South Wales Police would not check their records and arrest me for the crime of being burgled.
I am just about able, now, to believe that it is not the police en masse, that are against me, that there are some decent officers out there (but don’t even dream of asking me to trust a female RASSO detective), and there is a need for the police to be supported in doing the incredibly difficult job that (uniformed) officers have to do.
Yes, I know that there is a character type that desires to be above the law and can become a crook or a cop, or both, and these folk are embedded in the hierarchies of law enforcement in ways that would take a genius dictator and some decades to extract.
I also know that when it comes to False accusations of rape - most ordinary policemen know, better than the general public, that the liars outnumber the truth tellers 3 to 1.
Those cops I will share a drink and a chat with, when it’s awful dry in here.