No One Likes Us, We Don't Care

Nights last night, and it was fairly quiet. Only one job really stands out.

Just before 3am a bloke phones the Police reporting a concern for the welfare of a friend of his. Apparently, she had taken an overdose and threatened to throw herself off her balcony. Our control room ran her through PNC on our way there and updated us that she makes allegations against Police officers. Including allegations of sexual offences. Splendid!

We got there within a few minutes and spoke to the informant, who was very drunk. He told us that his friend, a woman, and he had been drinking and that she had become depressed. He said she'd taken up to 30 tablets and threatened to take more, plus she had made the threat to launch herself off her balcony.

We spoke to "Lorretta" via her flat intercome and were told to f**k off. She explained that we were on private property and had no right to be there. Not strictly true, but I didn't feel that it was the right time for a legal debate. We got a neighbour (who, given the time, was surprisingly pleasant) to let us into the communal entrance and we walked up to her flat.

I knocked on the door and spoke to her through the letterbox. And the language she came out with made me blush. A laydee screaming things like, "f**k off you f**king pr*ck rapist c**t! I hate the f**king Police! You're all wa*kers!" And so it went on. Already this woman was starting to try my patience. Inbetween insults, she'd say things like, "Yeah, so what? I'm gonna top myself. Why don't you just f**k off and let me get on with it?" And, much as at this point I'd love to let her crack on, I've now got a duty of care towards her. There was a point where I could have passed a couple of razor blades and some more pills through the letterbox to her though.

But, I'm a professional, so I can't let that show. However, I eventually had to point out that, if we had to, we would force an entry to her flat. Which would cause a lot of damage. Wouldn't it be easier just to open the door so that the paramedics could speak to her? Apparently not. It was actually easier to prop herself up against the other side of the door to stop us being able to use the Big Red Door Key.

To stop myself from swearing at her, a mate and I left one of the paramedics and another bobby to stare at her backside through the letterbox and went off to check whether we could get in anywhere else.

We popped round to the other side of the building and her balcony was possibly reachable, with a bit of lateral thinking. Three of us made this sort of wobbly human pyramid thing, and I was just able to reach the bottom of the balcony and drag myself up, my feet slapping another of my mates round the chops. If this sounds impressive, then it definately wasn't. Think "pissed Chinese acrobat with inner ear problem".

Poking my head over the top I could see that she'd moved to the lounge and was on the phone. She still hadn't noticed me, so I helped one of the other officers climb up, just as she looked up and noticed us. It was quite strange, we both just sort of looked at each other before both thinking, at the same time, "patio door!"

We made a dash for it and I got there about half a second before she did, letting myself in followed by my colleague.

Now, if she was unpleasant before, she was really quite nasty now! Screaming in our faces, swearing, calling us every name under the Sun. With her following me down the hallway I went and let the other officers and paramedics in through the front door.

It was now about 3.15am. We tried to talk to her, and make her understand that she needed medical attention. But she was now saying tha she hadn't taken any pills. But that she did feel like killing herself. And then she'd scream a bit more, telling us to f**k off out of her flat!

For some reason, she took a particular dislike to me. I think it's because I chose to deal with her abuse by looking confused and saying things like, "Loretta, I think we've got off on the wrong foot her. I think there's issues we need to iron out before we can move on?" If I'm honest, I could see that this really wasn't calming her down, but there's only so many times you can be called a "f**king pr*ck c*nt rapist w*nker!" before the novelty starts to wear off.

I also had to think about how we could resolve this issue. We couldn't invoke a Section 136 Mental Health Act detention because she was in her home. We could potentially get a doctor and Approved Social Worker to assess her mental health, but it was now getting on for 4am on a bank holiday Monday. And because she had been drinking I knew they'd say she was unassessable.

I left her phoning various news desks of various national papers to go and make a phone call to the Out Of Hours Social Services. I spoke to a chap who was actually quite helpful. He agreed to get the doctor to phone back and speak to Loretta. Maybe he could persuade her? To be honest, we'd stopped thinking she was that serious about killing herself now, but you have to consider what it'd look like if we left her and she did go and kill herself. Out of spite if nothing else. So we were going to have to stick it out.

I let Loretta know what was happening and was only interrupted a couple of times as she screamed all sorts of rubbish at me. Then the phone rang and she put on this amazing telephone voice, like a receptionist at a top bank's head office. She sounded like the bloody Queen, "Hello doctor, yes doctor, no doctor, please tell them to go away doctor".

She handed the phone over to me and went off to scream at someone else. The doctor said he'd pop round to see if he could persuade her to go to hospital voluntarily and rang off.

And we stood around. And waited. And waited. We had nothing to do other than get abused by this drunken, unstable, slightly odd-smelling banshee! Every now and again she'd smash something or shout at us to leave, but by 5am the shine had definately gone off this job.

Both our control room and the paramedics control room were chasing up the doctor, who still hadn't arrived, and I spent most of the time on the balcony talking to a lovely paramedic about our jobs and different incidents we'd been to. Smashing people, paramedics. We both agreed that if the doctor wasn't there soon then we'd throw ourselves off the balcony, just so we didn't have to listen to this bloody woman.

The doctor eventually turned up at about twenty past five. I quickly briefed him in and then he popped into Loretta's bedroom to speak to her. I'd warned him that she made allegations but he didn't seem to care. He was in there for less than five minutes before coming out and saying he wasn't concerned and we could go.

He hadn't even finished the sentence before he was nearly stampeeded by a load of coppers and a couple of paramedics. Poor chap. For all I know he's still lying there with boot prints on his forehead.

This isn't the first job like this I've had to deal with, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Loretta did have one bit of originality about her. I've posted before about how people name drop with the Police, "I know Such and Such. He's my mate and he'll have your job." That sort of thing.
Well, whilst we were there Loretta screamed at me, "I know your Chief Constable Xxxx Xxxx (she even got his name right!).
I replied, "Really, tell him I said "hi"."
Loretta: "Yeah, he's a w*nker too!"

Excellent, not just me then!