Possible Murder

Is how the job sounded at first...

The local ambulance service received a call from a member of public last night. This member of public reported having seen a male lying at the side of the road. When he went over to the male he saw that he was totally unresponsive. Eventually, after shouting at him a bit, the male came round and stood up, mumbling something like "no police" before staggering off up an alleyway.

The male collapsed another couple of times before coming to the side entrance to a shop. He opened this door and let himself in, locking the door behind him. The member of public reported to the ambulance that this male looked like he'd been badly beaten and possibly stabbed. So whilst attending the paramedics, quite rightly, called us.

I got there first and was met by the paramedics who'd been there for a minute or so. They filled me in on what they knew, and it sounded an awful lot like "bloke leaves shop, gets mugged and stabbed then crawls back into shop and dies in a pool of his own blood". It's amazing what your imagination does when you find yourself first at the scene of a job like this.

By now, other officers were begining to arrive. Whilst a couple of them cordoned off the carpark outside the shop I busied myself banging really loudly on the door. No response. Bugger! Because the door was predominantly glass, we couldn't use the Big Red Door Key to open it, so I called for the armed response car to attend with their door opening gadgets. (In truth, these are just another door enforcer and a "hoolie bar" which is a long, scarey looking piece of metal. But they have protective stuff to wear that stops them being shredded by the glass).

The next officer to arrive was the local beat bobby who knew this property quite well. He told me that it was well known for drugs. So now I was imagining "bloke leaves drugs hideout with £5000 in cash. Other drug dealer decides to "borrow" this money from him, stabbing him in the process. Bloke then crawls back into the flat to die in a pool of his own blood".

The beat bobby went off to another shop round the corner because he knew that there was a keyholder there as the two shops were related in some way. By now, there's about 8 or 9 coppers there, a major scene log running and house to house enquiries going on.

The key holder turned up with the keys to the outer door, but stated that there was a self-contained flat above the shop. He also gave us a probable name for the unconscious male - "John". "John" lives in the flat above the shop. We ran him through our computer and he's well known for getting into fights. Which he invariably loses. Splendid. The latest possible scenario is "idiot leaves his flat, starts fight with first person he sees and promptly gets the poo kicked out of him. He then crawls back into the flat to die in a pool of his own blood".

We let ourselves into the shop and searched the ground floor. No trace of the male. We went upstairs and the flat door was locked. Lots of banging. Still no reply.

The armed response fellas came upstairs and "opened" the door for us. By smashing it's lock and causing lots of damage. Not a problem because we have the power to do this in order to save life and limb.

So in we went and "John" was lying there. Fortunately, not in a pool of his own blood. He was unconscious again and the paramedics brought him round. At which point "John" showed himself to be a complete halfwit. He became really abusive to the paramedics (which is one thing I won't stand. I mean, you kind of expect it when you're a copper but the paramedics are there to help save his life!) and to us. He was aggressive and disorientated. He also hadn't been cut, stabbed or otherwise beaten.

The paramedics could tell that he'd taken a bucket full of amphetamine and that this is what had caused him to collapse outside. I asked if he'd been assaulted. I didn't get a straight answer but, as he told me to "fuck off" I took this to be a no. His family turned up and called him all sorts of things that I wish I could get away with and we left them to it. And to be fair, they accepted he was their responsability and were happy to look after him.

In total, given the number of officers at the incident for over an hour in total, this job probably took about 10 to 12 hours of Police time. Which wouldn't been half as irritating if the time had been spent on somebody at least vaguely pleasant and appreciative of the efforts made to make sure he wasn't lying in a pool of his own blood.