An Army Of One
January 31, 2007 by inspectorgadget
The train at platform two is the seven thirty five service from Ruraltown to Metro City, calling at Green Field, Blue Lake, Grey Street and Metro City.
The recorded message is talking to herself. And to me. There is no one else on platform two, or any other platform. And there is no seven thirty five service to Metro City. Not anymore.
A big, brown torn suitcase sits defiantly in the concourse, staring back at me. This is not a suitcase. This is a suspect package. This is a physical symbol of the misunderstanding, fear and suspicion which rages between the followers of three great books.
Our powerful, rich, modern, industrialized nation’s response to this perceived attack is to send the Duty Inspector. An army of one.
In my yellow coat. The coat that I wear to convince the public that there is more than one of me. The coat that I wear so that if a bomb really does go off, they can tell the bits of me from the bits of pigeons.
There are a range of sophisticated and sensible procedures for this kind of thing. To go through them all each time would close my corner of England six times a week. This is not a bomb. But it could be.
I stand at one end of the freezing hall, the suitcase sits at the other. Like some bizarre scene from an old Western, like a shoot-out.
The recorded message speaks loudly of trains that will never arrive and I fight the desire to sit in the photo booth and get some souvenir pictures. Of me in my yellow coat. But I haven’t got any coins, and besides, if there is anyone left on F Division who still thinks I am sane, the CCTV operators will soon spread the word.
I walk towards the suitcase and squat down to look. This is not regarded as mad. But it is. The tramps old suitcase is a tramps old suitcase. But only I know this at the moment.
So I sit on the freezing polished concrete, close my eyes and suck in some cold air. Two minutes of bliss. I raise my thumbs to the CCTV operator.
On the way out, a scruffy station manager in an ill-fitting cheap gold and purple suit demands to know if I’m intending to leave the tramps bag on the concourse. He looks irritated and arrogant. He asks for my collar number. The public rushing past look accusingly at me. Like I’m responsible for the delay.
The rush-hour returns to it’s noisy, selfish, desperate self.
Did you tell him that we dont live in america and therefore you dont have a badge number?
That reminds me of an instance in the time honoured town of Shrewsbury some fifteen years ago when a few young wags decided to hold a mass wrestling match in the Inn I was visiting. As there were about one-hundred-and-fifty of them, things quickly went into turbo. Somehow the landlord became a bit excitable when a Police Inspector arrived to support the troops. After a little wild belligerence, the landlord bawled: “I’m reporting you what’s your bl**dy number”.
The Inspector stepped forward and gently announced:
“I, am an Inspector. I, don’t have a number. If I did have a number, IT WOULD BE NUMBER ONE”
Words in the air. Desired effect. Result. Calm ensued thereafter.
Just out of interest, how did you know it was a tramp’a suitcase?
reviewed the CCTV and saw him leave it there, but still had to go through the motions!
Don’t forget, Felix only has nine lives.
I don’t know if you have the same public information poster in Ruralshire as we have around the capital re the abandoned suspect parcel, It says “You two options, The first is inform the Police, the second doesn’t bare thinking about” That means that when the public phone these in and control send me to the location, my only option is..well, it doesn’t bare thinking about! You might think working in Central London we have super sexy training for these incidents, all I can say is I have a large knife to open the cases and the contents normally go all over the street. Its a message to the absent minded that I have just spent the last 15 minutes wondering if i will feel anything if it does go bang, Did I kiss my wife before I left home, will she name our baby after me, does the extra life insurance pay out if i get blown up?
So it was you holding the bloody train up!
SD
One thing that gets me about people demanding collar numbers - obviously not from Inspectors, you don’t have them, but from the much more common PC and Sergeant. You don’t need to ASK, their collar numbers are ON THEIR UNIFORMS.
Or maybe it’s just that these people can’t read - the ones who can don’t demand the number, because they’ve already seen it.
What if he’d been a terrorist dressed in the cunning disguise of a tramp? Eh? Eh???
Living in the capital, obviously I’ve heard the dreaded “Important Station is closed due to a security alert” announcement ‘once or twice’ - funny how they never add “and one poor sod is checking the suspicious item, so fingers crossed he doesn’t get blown to hell and back”…
Beautifully written, incidentally; I could picture the scene, feel the tension.
It’s just as well that I am not in the Job.
If I got that kind of a reaction from the station manager, after I had made sure his station was safe, he would have got my baton in his teeth!
If the owner of said items of suspicion reclaim them, do they get fined?
Time was the PC would get to the scene, “It might be bomb, sys he. Call the Sergeant”.
Sergeant says “It looks like a bomb! Call the Inspector”. Aha, the Inspector would say, a chance to do something managerish! I’ll go and sort out this incident.
Meanwhile, everyone else would have retired to a safe distance …
Well Done Inspector! Posts like these, and those of Tom Reynolds, remind all of us that there is another side to security incidents, a world away from our aggitation at being late for work.
I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now and it has certainly opened my eyes to the real aspects of “the job”. As a civilian who works with various government agencies in a technical capacity, your insights have managed to humanise what I used to think was a very secular profession. Keep up the excellent work and remember Sean Connery’s first rule of law enforcement from The Untouchables - “At the end of your shift go home alive”.
Lily of the field has a point Guv. The tramp could have been a cunning disguise. You should’ve called the bomb squad.
SQUUAADD!!! Did someone say squad? My Met days are coming back.
Well Guv, I’ve got to admire your balls
Just lucky no one else had to as they swung from nearby lampost!
Ha no you should’ve sat in the car for half an hour waiting for the BTP to turn up, telling anyone who asks “I don’t know, its not in my remit”
I am told the IRA did a lot of their reconnaissance work in Westminster dressed as tramps. Thankfully, most, not all, but most of those who choose the career choice of tramp, are ICI and so far most, but not all, of those who chose Al Qaeda as their destiny are not IC1.
I got called to something simialr years ago.
Isn’t it funny how you prod it at arms length with your baton extended, thinking that if it were a bomb, that would offer you some protection…
I called the police out to a stupidly similar bag once at a polling station at an election during a period of “heightened security”. PCs came to it on blues and did the tried and tested “Give it a Prod with a Stick” anti-terror technique. To my lasting shame as I ushered my panicked voters into the carpark, a kid of about seven said “That bags been there ages Missus, there’s nothing in it or we’d have had it by now”. Cops were very pleasant and understanding, I felt a total pillock for creating a non-job.
Still a great post though, keep up the good work.
People pay no heed to the Inspector, for he toys with your emotions so that you will fear for his safety and envelope him in a blanket of warmth and compassion.
However,
It has long been an established and irributtable fact that Inspecting ranks, on the eve of their promtion are fitted with a blast proof right leg, and an indestructable right boot place upon its end.
The addition of these appointments, is specifically for the hoofing of left luggage that has shut down most of the major stations in our country over the years….
Its a bit like Witch finding, If it goes off, your a brave inspector, and that will be written as your epitaph, and If it doesn’t, your a stupid inspector who will be hauled from one pillar to the next for your incompetence, and THAT, will then be your epitaph!
I guess what i’m trying to say is, I would never criticise anyone for closing anything, let alone give a toss what Mr or Mrs commuter thinks.
“they want us on that wall, they need us on that wall!”
Go on, I’m sick of hearing it on The Bill………
What does the ‘IC’ as in IC1 Male stand for????
SD
IC - IDENTITY CODE , 1 TO 6 PLUS IC7 FOR GINGERS
And all the while, a sergeant who wanted a raise was right behind you, holding a balloon and a cigarette lighter, ready to be popped…
Ha Ha to the above, I had a stack of silver trays in mind!
I like it when the angry man demands my collar number then asks if he can borrow my pen!
You know I heard once (though it may be an urban legend) that the reason you don’t get bins on the platforms is so us Irish bog trotters couldn’t put bombs in them. Probably not any more since the provos seem to be winding down operations to concentrate on their main business of drug dealing and fuel smuggling.
I have to admit I have little patience for the commuters you occasionally see moaning on the evening news about security incidents like this causing delays. Or even worse the TRAUMA they suffered from a hoax.
Personally it wasn’t the traffic jam that was caused it was futilely trying to stop him bleeding and the sound of his screaming girlfriend that stresses me.
Not so terribly long ago I was working with a bomb dog and its handler at a busy station. It was a hot day and the dog was bored so it laid down with its head on its paws.
A passing member of the public wandered by and made a comment about the dogs apparent lack of interest. Quick as a flash the handler came back with “It’s looking for shoe bombers sir”
Laughed my ass off for the rest of the shift.
There is a new documentary about video surveillance (CCTV) in Britain coming out, and this time, the topic seems to be covered in a more critical way. There’s a trailer online:
http://www.EveryStepYouTake.org
Lee, I also like that when they ask for a pen and a bit of paper - ‘ITS FOUR NUMBERS IDIOT WHAT DO YOU NEED A PEN FOR!’ is what I would like to say.
Biz, thats the funniest retort Ive heard in ages - those dog handlers, you can smell them enter the parade room Eau De Wet Landshark!!
http://bigfellainblue.blogspot.com/
Insp, excellent post - been there, done that, but normally with a colleague who’s already striding towards it whilst I’m still standing off putting my radio to “transmit-inhibit” and wondering the best way into it without ending up as charnel, by which time the bu55er’s normally kicked it, shaken it and resulted it on our support channel!
Good site!!!
As ususal, I love what I read here. Your site makes me appreciate that there are good cops out there. It’s hard to do here in the land of the
freeKing George. We shut down airports when pipe salesmen have sample pipes in their checked baggage, shut down ports when someone misplaces a packaging list, and arrest people for clever marketing schemes. Here, people are killed during botched drug raids at wrong addresses set in place by a claim of marijuana.[...] Inspector Gadget . Even if he’s not on duty, he can be called out at any time to deal with whatever explosive device you may have found. He doesn’t charge you anything and best of all, because he gets no overtime, it doesn’t [...]