Dismissed With Thanks: Wellington Boots, #4

By V.M. Frost

The end of Mowing It When I like; the third in the Wellington Boots series, left the author - having just transferred from Thames Valley Police, to the Metropolitan Police - in the austere accommodation of Brentford's Heartbreak Hotel.This true story is taken up again during his first days as a Met officer in the borough of Hounslow, West London. The author had been busy enough in his last police area, but was soon to find that policing the nation's capital would be a different thing entirely. Waiting, would be gang warfare, stabbings, the joys of policing football matches and the seemingly endless demonstrations and protests – some violent, and some peaceful – but draining, nevertheless. Yet to come, were armed robbers, the shit pit that is the Notting Hill Carnival, the extreme front line during the London riots of 2011, the London Olympics, and being part of a task force with the remit of planning and carrying out early morning raids.

• Language: English
• Publisher: V.M. Frost
• Release date: Jan 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201384098

Book preview

Dedication

For the other four...

Acknowledgements

I must thank Umberto Sparacio, who by making me the subject of his first ever portrait, unwittingly provided me with a most fitting cover for this book.

Thanks also to Frank H for your hilarious list, compiled back in 2011 in our North West Task Force days and only now rediscovered. Brilliant!

Also by VM Frost

By Conscience Bound

The Boy In Wellington Boots

Despatched

Front Stack

Double Locked

Back to Back

Just Add Alcohol

Farewell To Boots

Rear Stack

Entebbe – Marshalling The Crowd

Mowing It When I like

Palm To Palm

A Handful Of Frost

A Bird In My Drain

About the author

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VM (Jack) Frost was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Moving with his Air Force parents to the Mediterranean island of Malta in the 1960’s, he remained there until 1976, when he returned to the UK to complete his education. Leaving school with negligible qualifications, he joined the British army where, after completing several operational tours, he left as a senior non-commissioned officer. Since then, he has undertaken such diverse work as: grill chef, baker, mechanic, and builder.

After a period working as a residential social worker with troubled adolescents, he became a police officer; firstly with Thames Valley Police, and then later the Metropolitan Police, where for the remainder of his 15 years service, he served on the front line carrying out both investigatory work and public order duties, including the quelling of the 2011 Tottenham riots. Finally out of uniform, he now lives in Malta.

Dismissed With Thanks is his thirteenth book.

Riot

Out on routine patrol 

All is under control

‘Til the guvnor starts screaming 

For help desperately, appealing 

One sergeant and four have answered the call

At Gravesend they’ve trained, petrol bombed one and all

No more smoking and joking

Tottenham’s fires they are stoking

Struggling into their kit

They know this is it

The one they’ve trained for

Now is the time to settle the score

With knives they’re stabbing at the cops on the line

Visors orange, from the flame’s wicked shine

The sergeant and four take their shields and run

Then move into the gaps and stand by for fun

Another officer is down 

He's slumped on the ground

His comrades are racing to drag him away

Brick to the head but he'll fight another day

The streets are aflame 

It's no longer a game

They're hurling their bricks

And grabbing long sticks

Cops dodge the barrage 

Flames engulf the garage

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V.M. Frost

Marsaskala, Malta

July 2019

Dismissed with thanks

London is the venue for multiple demonstrations and protests, with the distinct possibility that multiple potential seats of disorder be staged on any given day.

The above phrase, when transmitted by radio to officers on the ground by the operator at the Metropolitan Police Lambeth Command and Control Centre, is without doubt the most welcome transmission of all.

The phrase, You are dismissed with thanks - aka - dismissed with spanks, preceded by a particular public order serial number, heralds the end of an arduous deployment – usually in Central London – for those level two and level three serials that have been deployed to police protests, and or disorder.

Those officers are likely to have been on their feet for anything up to sixteen hours, with little more than a short comfort break; the facilities for which are rarely close at hand. Indeed, an officer can use up a short rest period simply by finding the nearest convenience, before stepping back into the line.

Note from the author

From time to time – be it fiction or non-fiction - I indulge in a little revenge writing. That is to say, that those I have met along life’s path that I’ve found difficult, unpleasant or just downright nasty, have inspired me to create almost mirror image characters out of them. This is especially the case when I’m writing fiction, as making them the hate figure that they truly were, gives me great satisfaction – almost as though I am sharing their loathsome qualities with the rest of the world. It is even more rewarding when friends that I have worked with that have read my stories, often quickly guess who I have based those characters on, and for the most part, agree with my depictions.

The downside to my revenge writing – particularly in the case of my non-fiction stories - is that I may appear to those readers that have never met me, to be someone who is bitter, supercilious, or unable to take orders from superiors. I shall leave you, dear reader, to be the judge of that...

Although sometimes difficult, I have tried not to allow true stories that I have woven into the Front Stack series to migrate onto the pages of my non-fiction writing so as not to be repetitive. That said, there may be the odd one or two that slip through, simply because the events were too good not to repeat and, because I am aware that I have a separate following for both genres.

A case in point is my account of being present during the London riots of 2011. For the purpose of Front Stack, the account momentarily left the realms of fiction and was told warts and all in much the same way as I have recounted in this true story.

There are of course, countless other police stories – some tragic – some comedic, but to relate them all through these pages, would be to steal the thunder of my crime series...

Chapter One

Beat Crimes

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When Old Mate in the Met’s transfer office had assured me that there were no longer any vacancies for firearms officers at the airport and mis-sold me a posting to Hounslow, he’d sweetened the offer with a promise of an attachment to a Gucci-sounding vehicle crime unit, based at Chiswick.

I was quickly disabused of any such notion on my first day, when I was informed by a mystified Human Resources woman that although there had been a vehicle crime unit, it had long since been disbanded. No - she’d told me – I was off to join the borough’s Beat Crime team, whatever that was. Sent up to the CID office, where the detectives had reluctantly given over two desks to Beat Crimes, I very quickly discovered just what Old Mate had shafted me with.

The team’s skipper – I’ll call him Robin - was spindly, bespectacled and nerdy looking. Avoiding eye contact, he’d nervously welcomed me to the team and briefed me on my duties.

In an attempt to relieve the overworked core team cops of some of the dross – or LOB (Load Of Bollocks) crime reports that needed writing off, the Beat Crimes team had been created to field such crap. Allocated, in some cases, up to forty crime reports per officer, The Beat Crime cops had been expected to contact so-called victims, take statements and arrest and interview where appropriate.

The problem was, that many of the reports were taken by a civilian call taker, who in the knowledge that a Beat Crimes team existed made no effort whatsoever to filter out the majority of what quite clearly was LOB. And every day, just like the Rumpelstilstkin spinning-straw-into-gold story, brought more and more shite. No sooner had you cleared one report, than up popped another, courtesy of Robin; who, incidentally, never took the time to filter any of them out himself.

An actual example, given to me, was a case of alleged harassment. When I called the woman that had made the report, she had explained why. She lived in a multi-occupancy house and one night, when passing the closed door of another of the occupants, she overheard someone inside bad mouthing someone. The subject of the alleged slagging off, she’d been sure – although her name hadn’t been mentioned and she’d heard not much more than murmuring – had been her.

Outraged, she’d dialed 999 to make a report. This had been typical of the crime reports that Robin – a so-called sergeant – should have taken two minutes to read. Rather than being palmed off to me, it should have binned immediately and after a quick telephone conversation with the alleged victim, during which she must have surely detected my disgust, the crime report was no more.

Upon speaking to the other disconsolate cops on the team, I soon realised what the borough had done. Out of the five or six officers on the team, apart from myself, three were also transferees. One had joined the Met, before transferring to his hometown in Wales and then having found it dull as ditchwater, had transferred back. Another had done the same, but from the Met to Cornwall and then back again. The fourth transferee, a female, had also transferred from Thames Valley Police. Hounslow borough, not wanting to miss a trick, especially as volunteers for Beat Crimes were non-existent, had simply posted all transferees straight to Beat Crimes. Problem solved.

One morning, Robin announced that he was going to arrest one of the brothers from a large and a very well known family that often resorted to violence against both cops and rivals alike. I had yet to meet the infamous family, but I can now vouch for the fact that they are a bunch of nasty bastards. Anyway, for his arrest, he tasked the Welshman and me to come along with him. As we were all in plain clothes for our office work, we buckled our utility belts around our waists and clipped radios to the loops of the stab vests, worn under civilian jackets

I remember watching the skipper as he struggled to hang an oversized stab vest over his skinny frame, picked up a radio and then, after ferreting around in his drawer for what he called his, stick, he stuck his Asp expandable baton into his pocket and off we went. I should say at this point, that despite his appearance, Robin was a regular rugby player; although that said, he often turned up on a Monday morning with at least one of his eyes blacked and scratches all over his face. Given his regular injuries, to this day, I have no idea what kind of a rugby player he’d been, but I had assumed that he could handle himself. He wasn’t an unpleasant man, but he did come over as ineffectual.

Robin’s first mistake, that morning, had been to turn up at the house early in the morning demanding to be let in to check whether his suspect was in. His second and the one that produced the most spectacular effect had been to remove his Asp from his pocket and rack it. When the bleary-eyed patriarch of the family had angrily opened the door and heard the skipper’s demand, he’d been outraged enough, but when he’d noticed the baton in Robin’s hand, he’d gone berserk. His exact words, looking contemptuously at the Asp’s owner had been, ‘what you gonna’ do with that thing? Come in here, and I’ll shove it up your fuckin’ arse!’

To be fair, the skipper, although visibly shocked by the aggression of the bull-like man before him, had stood his ground. Fresh from the counties, where due to low numbers of officers, facing violence alone was par for the course, I somehow managed to get between him and Robin and in what people have referred to as my vicar voice, talked Mr Angry down and got him to agree to let me go upstairs to check for the suspect.

Finding an empty room, I turned to see the father, who had followed me up. Vindicated by the absence of his son, he practically chased me back down the stairs, and bellowing a string of threats, peppered with the foulest swear words he could come up with, he kicked us back out of his house.

The locals were shit scared of that family. Despite many assaults, some as serious as GBH, their victims had been too frightened to report them to the police. Most notable for his violence, the eldest son, who we had been seeking to arrest that day, had badly assaulted several people, none of which dared to report him, leaving the police powerless to act. A couple of years later though, some very good work was done by CID. Somehow managing to get his victims to stand up in court and testify against him, the detectives finally got him put away for a long stretch and after that, things had quietened down considerably.

After a few weeks of wading through the treacle of literally endless crime reports and hating the fact that after a fair deal of action back in Aylesbury, I was now shackled indefinitely to a desk, I became depressed. Not the kind of clinical depression that effects some, you understand, just down. Heartbreak Hotel hadn’t helped either. It was time to make an escape attempt.

Going to see the awful and uncaring head of HR, I unsuccessfully appealed to be released from Beat Crimes. After all, I’d told her, I hadn’t transferred to the Met to be dealing with the kind of crap a day one probationer gets given. She hadn’t budged, hadn’t given a toss and hadn’t been any help. She hadn’t even been able to confirm that I’d only be doing six months on the team, either.

Back in my cell at Heartbreak Hotel that night, I sat and wrote a letter, outlining the concerns I’d raised with HR that morning. If there was no way of releasing me from that office, I continued; then I wanted to request an audience with the Borough Commander. Slipping my missive under HR’s door early next morning, I waited to hear the outcome and not more than two hours later; I received an email from the Superintendent’s PA inviting me to an interview. The HR bitch, it seemed, had arrogantly called my bluff and I was off to see the boss.

I had dug myself out of a hole back with TVP and like now, had sought out the Area Commander at Aylesbury. On that occasion, I’d been put under great and unsympathetic pressure to become an Area Beat Officer. Knowing that one of the other teams had been short of tutors to puppy walk an influx of new probationers, I’d written to the commander and, informing him that I was a newly-qualified tutor, I suggested that I be moved to the other team. I recall writing something that included the corny line that, a volunteer was better than ten pressed men. On that occasion, my strategy had succeeded and leaving the skipper opening and closing his mouth like a beached trout, I’d jumped ship.

Now in the Met however, I hadn’t been able to hide behind a letter and hadn’t had the ace of having something to offer up my sleeve. I must admit to having felt petulant and not a little apprehensive about my impending audience as I sat inside the heavily perfumed and tight-skirted PA’s office, waiting to be called in.

Unlike most of my peers – both in TVP and the Met, I had no prior knowledge of Hounslow’s Borough Commander, but he had been none other than the now disgraced Ali Dizaei.

When I met him and he heard that I had recently arrived from Thames Valley Police, he started to mention names from his era at TVP, some of whom I’d been familiar with. He’d been most keen to know what position they had attained since he’d left, and when I told him what I knew, he’d been quite smug, chuckling even, to hear he’d outranked them all.

I must admit to having found him utterly charming, and before I’d known what was happening, he’d thrown a friendly arm around my shoulders and was ushering me out of his office. He’d assured me that I simply had to see the month out on Beat Crimes and then I could leave and go back on to team. After all, he’d smiled; good officers with experience were always needed on core team.

Leaving his office, the last ten minutes a blur of charm, I made my way down the corridor and going into the HR office, it had been my turn to be smug. My news that I was to be moved hadn’t gone down well with old sourpuss, but she’d not been able to do anything about it. Some time in the not too distant future, she would have the opportunity try to do my legs again. But more of that later...

Still brimming with smugness, I went back to the Beat Crimes office and spoke to Robin. I hadn’t run my intentions by him up to that point. He hadn’t known about my petulant visit to Ali Dizaei, and the result had been wonderful to behold.

‘Robin,’