Everyday Offending in Devonport Past and Present Session One: Policing Everyday Crime on the Streets

Judith Rowbotham (chair):

Good morning. What I want to stress is that the whole point of a ‘witness seminar’ is to give people a chance to create a historical record that’s never intended to be scandalous, but quite literally just to contribute to the local, national, regional history of particular ideas, schemes, incidents and because of the importance of understanding local communities and local community dynamics, including the way that policing is part of that community dynamic. One of the things we’ve been doing in witness seminars here is trying to explore both police perspectives and community perspectives coming back of policing, to understand the realities of modern policing and what might come of that. It’s part of a broader project where we’re looking at, not so much the big, high-profile crimes which are only about 5-6% of law-breaking, but the everyday offending that actually concerns most community policing. So, this is a chance for the mundane, the ordinary to be put on record, because actually, it’s what history is really all about. The mundane, the ordinary and the everyday, because if you don’t have that, all you have are the headlines and we all know how misleading headlines can be.

The way that this seminar will be organised will be that I will ask each of the panel members here to speak briefly to identify themselves and their relationship with Devonport and Devonport policing. They’ll do that each for about five to eight minutes, then what I shall do is ask a number of broad, open-ended questions and ask them to record their reactions, understanding or memory. Sometimes the silence on something is as important as having something to say. After that I will throw the questioning open to comments, reflections, shared experiences or ‘it was different here’ or ‘what do you think about this?’ from the floor. Can I ask that any time anybody speaks, that they identify who they are. At lunch-time we’ll be handing out the various sheets where you give permission for what you say to be attributed to you, but before it goes in any form of public record, you will be sent a transcript of the whole session. As I say, it's not about tripping anybody up or anything like that. You have the chance if you think “I wish I hadn’t said that” or “that’s not really accurate”, you have the chance to modify or redact. That will happen as soon as we can, after the end of the seminar, when we’ve got the transcripts. So, please feel free to comment or reflect and generally, just to relax and think about Devonport. I’m going to be sinister and I’m going to start on my far left. Katherine, would you like to …

Katherine Hickling

My name is Katherine and I’m a PCSO based at Devonport Police Station. I’ve been a PCSO now for two years. I’ve only just moved to Devonport, so, the last six months I’ve been based at Devonport along with three other PCSO’s, just recently one extra beat manager, so there’s two of those and one sergeant and it’s a fabulous place to work, extremely busy. There’s always something going on, but the community is great to work for. Everybody wants to speak to you, share information with you, it’s just great.

Alan Lane

Good morning to you. I’m a retired police officer from the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary. I joined the Force, well it was Plymouth City then, in 1954. After training I was posted to Crownhill on the northern side of the city. I was there for about two years, then moved to Ker Street, here, in 1957. At that time, it was a vast difference in policing. The northern part of the city was mainly residential and new housing estates were being built and that sort of thing. At that time, we used to turn off the traffic lights at midnight, at Crownhill, and at six o’clock in the morning, we turn them back on again. But then, Devonport was different altogether. The housing was deteriorating, it was old Victorian places. For a start, the Dockyard were extending their boundaries and they were building a wall through the main part of Devonport and I think it could’ve been the model for the Berlin wall, really. The people were quite proud people, Devonport people, and a lot of them were being moved out and of course, nobody likes change, do they? I was situated here for quite a number of years. We were foot-patrols and most of the men were ex-service people, national service if not war service. Then there were the older kind, the policemen. When you came in at mealtime, you wouldn’t sit in their seats, they’d have their seats and you wouldn’t sit in their seats, that would be a bit of a misdemeanour. That’s the start of my memories.

Reg Davison

I also am a retired Devon & Cornwall policeman. I still work for the Constabulary. I originally joined the Cornwall Constabulary in 1966 as a police cadet. Because I’m still serving, I am currently the last member of the Cornwall Constabulary still to be serving and I am also the longest serving member of the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary. Someone will take that when I go, won’t they? My first station was Devonport. In my day, it was known as Exmouth Road. It was a brand new, or almost, brand new police station when I went there. I have fond memories. I didn’t want to come out of Cornwall, but having had two years or 18 months in Exmouth Road before they sent me back to my homeland, I have to say I enjoyed every minute of it. Discipline was key. We were kept strictly to 45-minute meal breaks and I understand what Alan says about who sits where. We used to play crib around the meal table. The sergeant would expect you not to come in a minute before and not to go out a minute after. I remember Devonport as a young bobby on foot-patrol. I particularly remember this building, which I never ever got into. Today is my first time inside of this building. It looked rather dilapidated to me in those days. I remember being told about Ker Street Police Station and I think perhaps Exmouth Road took its place, I’m not sure, Alan can perhaps help with that. Foot-patrol was from Stonehouse Bridge, which was the border of Devonport area and it came up through Mount Wise, Devonport, the park, down to the ferry, Keyham, Stoke village, St Budeaux, obviously, I didn’t get out to there on foot-patrol, but my area was here on foot-patrol. I particularly remember that I was afraid of the PC who was the ‘office man’, because we used to have a senior PC and he would do the office duties. I had stopped a taxi-driver in Albert Road, he had driven all the way down from ‘Aggies’1 to his office, which was the last building on the right, and he was on the wrong side of the road and I was on foot-patrol. So, I went up to him and being a good Cornish boy, I very politely … I explained to him he shouldn’t have done it and left it at that. I can tell you his name, even now. It turns out he was a criminal, but I didn’t know that when I spoke to him. By the time I got back from my meal-break, “come here!”, the PC from the desk, “I’ve had a complaint about you”. Anyway, he threw it out, he reeled me in and he … I couldn’t possibly repeat here what he actually said to the taxi-driver who had come in to complain about me, but he sent him out with a few expletives ringing in his ears and telling him not to come back in and complain about “my PCs” anymore. I found policing in Devonport around the three tower blocks, down to the ferry, I particularly used to enjoy going out around … it was army, navy stores I seem to remember, around the point there …

Steve Pearce

Still there.

Reg Davison

Is it still there? I thoroughly enjoyed that. Whilst I didn’t find the public wanting to engage with me, and I’m a natural chatterbox, my wife seems to think I talk to my own shadow, but they wouldn’t particularly engage with me, but they accepted me, which is quite nice. I was moved from Devonport, Exmouth Road, to me it’s Exmouth Road, it’s not Devonport. I’m sorry, it’s Exmouth Road, but I was moved from Exmouth Road to Falmouth. On one of my very first foot-patrols out in the town of Falmouth, I was stood watching the world go by, a car came out of a narrow lane between two buildings across the pavement and off up through the street. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. A man came out of his shop, came across and asked me what I was going to do about it. I told him “nothing” and he didn’t seem to like that, so, I said, “if you don’t like it, here’s my number, please complain”. That was that. He scuttled off back to his shop. I went back into the station for my meal-break, recounted the story and was told he was a local magistrate. [laughter] The point of telling you about that is that I found policing in Devonport was quite different to policing in Falmouth. I can’t compare policing in Devonport to Stonehouse, for example, because for me, Stonehouse was the city centre police station. The city centre police station was part of the building you all know as The Court House, it wasn’t Charles Cross. I worked in sections entirely of men, because there were almost no policewomen in the job in those days. Those here in Plymouth who were serving, were all stationed in the policewomen’s department in the city centre police station. Plymouth, in my days, which is August ’68 until February ’70, Plymouth was two divisions – ‘F division’, which was this division, the headquarters was West Park, you also had Crownhill Police Station, I seem to remember it as a Nissan hut, and it was Exmouth Road Police Station. ‘E division’ was the city centre police station, Greenbank, which was the headquarters of the old Plymouth city and The Octagon. Never the twain shall meet. The bridge … I would not cross over onto the city centre patch. So, Stonehouse, to me, was alien country. [laughter] One thing I have learned, is communication is most important, which is why I say there’s a difference between Devonport and Falmouth, because in Devonport I probably wouldn’t meet that person ever again, if I’d been rude to him, whereas if I’d been rude to someone in Falmouth, it was going to be my next-door neighbour. [laughter] They were just completely different sorts of policing. Devonport – absolutely brilliant.

Judith Rowbotham (chair)

So, was it that difference between Falmouth and Devonport a function, do you think, of the relative size or something else? You said that you didn’t think you’d meet them again, but in Falmouth it was going to be your next-door neighbour.

Reg Davison

Yes, I think it is a difference in size. My personal view is that it’s also something to do with the attitudes of city people and country people, because Falmouth is, ok, in Cornish terms, it’s a big town, but it’s actually not, is it? It’s 20-25,000 people, whereas in my day here, the city was around 250,000 and Devonport, obviously, had a lot less. People’s lives are different.

Judith Rowbotham (chair)

What Reg has done is begun his answer to one of my first questions, but what I’d like to do before going on to pick up with Katherine and with Reg, is to ask if we can see the clip from Steve.

Kim Stevenson

[start of clip] Well, thank you very much Steve for coming along and joining us for this interview this afternoon. I wonder if you could start off maybe just explaining a little bit about your role at Devonport Police Station and your duties there.

Steve Fleetwood

Yes, my role is I’m one of the local policing teams Sergeants at Devonport Police Station, responsible for the supervising and managing of the local police department, which comprises of beat managers and PCSOs, for the whole of Devonport West.

Kim Stevenson

How far does Devonport West actually cover?

Steve Fleetwood

Within Plymouth we’ve got coagulated policing areas. We’ve got North and East which covers Crownhill and the surrounding areas. We’ve got South and Central which is the city centre, Plymstock and surrounding areas, and then Devonport and West covers our constituencies, such as Devonport, Stoke, Morice Town, Ford, Keyham, Beacon Park, Pennycross, Ham, Peverell, North Prospect, St Budeaux, Weston Mill and Barne Barton.

Kim Stevenson

That’s quite a big area. So, how many policing teams and how do the policing teams relate to those areas?

Steve Fleetwood

Within the office, we’ve got one inspector for every area. There’s three sergeants working there and then every patch that I’ve just explained has one beat manager, so one police constable per patch. There’s a couple of smaller patches, such as Peverell, Ham, Hartley, Pennycross, that have been made into one, but as a rough guide, every patch has one beat manager, then three, four or in some cases five Police Community Support Officers. So, the tree is the inspector, the sergeant, the beat managers and then the PCSOs.

Kim Stevenson

And specifically, what has Devonport itself in terms of …

Steve Fleetwood

The actual patch of Devonport has one beat manager, a sergeant who supervises the beat manager and then at present we’ve currently got four Police Community Support Officers. We’re soon to get a second beat manager, because we’re going to have one police constable more than patches, so, Devonport being the busiest of our patches, we’ve decided to take the decision of having two beat managers in there.

Kim Stevenson

In terms of coverage, is that 24/7 there’s someone on duty?

Steve Fleetwood

No, it’s not 24/7. The 24/7 aspect of response policing used to be in Devonport. We used to have a response function at Charles Cross, Crownhill and Devonport, but Devonport response function got merged to Crownhill, but they still come across to the immediate calls, that’s 24/7, but it will be coming from Crownhill. [inaudible] policing isn’t until four in the morning. [End of clip]

Judith Rowbotham

So, one of the questions, as I’ve already previewed, is to ask – is there anything in your experience, your memories, your understanding, that really does make Devonport stick out? or is it really, just about policing? If I could start with you, Alan.

Alan Lane

I think it is the set-up of the divisions in Plymouth then. There were three divisions and Devonport was the ‘C division’ and it was combined with The Octagon station and this station here, at Ker Street. There were four sections with roughly eight men. There would be one ‘office man’ and the remainder would be foot patrols, except for one exception, was the most type of patrol.

There were eight beats, which covered from Devonport Bridge out to Camelshead, taking in that area. There was another police station, actually, in the division, it was at Morice Town, but this wasn’t manned at all. It was just a place where the PCs would have their meals because they were on beats which were further from the station and it was more convenient for them to eat there. There was a cell there, as well, if we had somebody misbehaving. Then foot-patrols, as I say, and we were controlled by one sergeant to each section, four sections, and an inspector over the top of that. We would be keeping points every hour and we could be met by the sergeant with the inspector and this was quite religious. We had to keep those points every hour, although we might have a tea-break or something like that, we had to double our stride to get to the point sometimes, in case the sergeant was there with the inspector. Discipline was quite strict. We weren’t allowed to gossip with another man on the adjoining beat. You did, but if you were caught, you used to get a smacked hand. This is relevant to the set-up and it was really set up for prevention more than cure, as you can see with that amount of men policing the area. There was a night duty, which was a different sort of policing, because the naval personnel had a big influence on this area. When they came ashore, as you can understand the Navy was much larger then, when they came ashore they were in their uniform and they would make their way to the Union Street area. Pubs turned out at half-past-10 and then they’d make their way back. They couldn’t afford taxis and they used to get up to all sorts of tricks on the way back. One of the best ways to deal with them was to hand them over to the Naval Patrol, who we had a great relationship with. Of course, they would be dealt with by naval discipline then, as opposed to being taken to court. They would pick up mementos on their way to take back to the ship as trophies to display. Then, of course, we had relationships with ‘ladies of the night’ in the area. I can remember one brothel we raided, that never went to court. It just happened that the landlord turned out the people out of the house for punishment, and that was enough. There were single women that operated in the area, but that was no trouble to us really, we’d just get acquainted with them, perhaps for information from time to time of what was going on. They were a good source of information. They could tell you who had money and when they had it. [laughter]

Judith Rowbotham

Could you say a little bit more about the tricks that the naval personnel got up to? You mentioned mementos.

Alan Lane

I remember once, the sergeant, he was in the police station at Morice Town, and he said, “what can we charge this sailor with?” – I said, “what’s the problem?” – he said, “I got him carrying this cat, he wants to take it back to the ship” and I said, “I don’t think you can do anything about that”. That was one incident that I can remember, but that’s the sort of thing they did. I think these days, it’s parking signs and that sort of thing that they take back to their accommodation. They were different characters. They were a breed of their own, sailors, the stories they would tell you when they were caught for something or other was unbelievable at times. The Captain’s table, I went there a couple of times to listen to their excuses and the Captain, sometimes, would give them points for initiative. [laughter] Confinement to barracks, the equivalent in the Navy, for certain things. They were fun in some ways, in drunkenness.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you, Katherine?

Katherine Hickling

I find Devonport very densely populated and there’s pockets of Devonport where there’s poverty that you just wouldn’t believe. It’s so surreal. You walk down George Street, just out here, and then literally on the other side is Mount Wise, which is the newbuild properties which are very affluent. You go into those properties and it’s just unbelievable. The contrast between the poverty and the affluent areas, especially the new-build up at Redrow as well, there’s some affluent properties there, it’s just unreal. I also find, I used to work in Keyham prior to working in Devonport, I could walk around Keyham for hours and hours and hours and not see a single person. If I did see them, they would not want to engage with me. They wouldn’t talk to me. I’d walk past local schools and parents and children wouldn’t engage with me, whereas I find, when I’m on foot-patrol in Devonport, nine times out of ten, pretty much every person who’ll walk past, will speak to you. The children will stop and speak to you and people are not afraid to tell you information. I found when I was working in Keyham, people wouldn’t stop and talk to me and tell me about drug dealing next door, for arguments sake, whereas in Devonport, people … it’s almost like they take things into their own hands. If there’s an issue in the street, [inaudible] Street I’m talking about, at the moment where there’s a lot of issues, they’ll report it and report it and report it because they want something done about it. Sometimes they will take it into their own hands and get anyone to call where they’ve given a good word over the garden fence, but in areas like Keyham, I don’t feel that the police … I don’t know whether or not that’s because they don’t see officers as much, but Devonport, there’s always somebody walking around. Going onto what Alan was saying, he was mainly on foot-patrol, but a lot of police officers now are in vehicles, whereas it’s mainly just PCSOs that are out on foot and gathering the information. As you probably know, we have limited powers. So, when we come across things, there are things we can’t deal with because, again, we don’t have the powers and nine times out of ten, because the officers are now based at Crownhill, trying to get an officer down to deal with issues that are going on, is very difficult. From a PCSO perspective, we’ve got an issue at the moment with street drinkers, and they have absolutely zero respect for us.

Judith Rowbotham

That leads me onto, in fact, another question – what do you think are the main challenges of policing in this particular area of Devonport?

Katherine Hickling

Drug dealing, mainly. Drug dealing is absolutely rife in Devonport. We have real problems putting a stop to it because as soon as one person who knows a drug dealer has gone down, it pops up in another place. I would say that’s probably one of the main issues and street drinkers. There is, what we call, a DPPO in place at the moment, a Designated Public Place Order, which means you can’t drink in an area. Well, you can drink, but if we believe you’re going to cause anti-social behaviour, we can ask you to surrender your alcohol. If the person does not surrender their alcohol, put it in the bin, it’s actually an offence. Again, that’s not something we could deal with, it would be a police officer that would assist with that. Those are the main ones, I would say.

Judith Rowbotham

Reg, how about you, when you were here?

Reg Davison

I have very fond memories of being here. Like Alan, it was mostly on foot-patrol and the way it was policed, in my day, there were five sections of eight or 10. A sergeant and eight or 10 with two inspectors and a superintendent at Exmouth Road. I was issued with a whistle, a little, short wooden truncheon, and handcuffs with a chain-link and a strange key that you used to open and close them. The whistle was taken away and we were given radios during my probation, one to transmit and one to receive. [laughter] I also remember the Naval Patrol. We used the Naval Patrol rather a lot. I, personally, didn’t quite see the point of some drunken matelot being punished twice. Why should he go to court the next morning and then have to go to the Captain’s table, just give him to the Naval Patrol and let them sort him out. What was interesting was, we went to court rather a lot and your managers, your sergeants, your inspector, it was the sergeants because you rarely saw an inspector, the rank structure was so defined that if you saw an inspector or higher, there was something wrong. You dealt with your sergeant, who was God. He would make sure that you got to court, because going to court was a good way of learning your job. It was a way of being ‘put on the spot’, rather like sitting with you here today, and you’d sit there and you’d worry about what you were going to be asked and you try to get across the story. The best way of giving evidence, obviously, is to tell the truth, because then you’re comfortable with your story. I use the word ‘story’, your account. Going to court was really rather important.

I have one memory, I’m not sure I should recount it, I remember being on foot-patrol here in Devonport, being called back to the station and the sergeant saying to me so and-so is in the cells, a member of the public found him lying in the wet on the pavement in Stoke village. He was drunk and incapable. He said “at such-and-such a time you were on duty in Stoke village, where you saw him, you arrested him and you brought him to the station”. The next morning, we went to court. The guy was prosecuted for being drunk and incapable, and he thanked me, to the magistrates, he thanked me for the way I dealt with him. [laughter] Another memory is, opposite the Forum2, up at the junction there, the bingo hall, it was a cinema, and opposite the Forum there was a theatre. I think it was disused. I’m almost convinced from my memory it was disused, and I found four youths in there. I went in and grabbed them. I had progressed from foot-patrol, and I was using a panda-car, a Morris 1000 panda car. Anyway, I take these four back to the station, back to Exmouth Road, and the inspector said, “put them in a cell”, so, in the cell they go, and he says “ok, you wait out there”. He went in, closed the door, left it slightly ajar, I’ve no idea what was said, but these four, rather cocky young men, came out very chastened and off they went, no stain on their character. The only record of the event is in my pocket-book, which no doubt has been destroyed by now. I remember the wall. I don’t remember it being built. [laughter] I remember the wall, which separated the town centre. I remember one night being on foot-patrol, in the back lane, service lane of the main street, Marlborough Street, and there was a sudden noise. Goodness me, didn’t it set me on edge. The hairs on my neck stood up. I thought it was a burglar breaking into the back of the business premises. It turned out it was a refrigeration unit just starting. I remember the Van Dike Club3 which was opposite Exmouth Road Police Station. We’re talking the late ‘60’s now. My 21^st birthday was spent on drug observations in the ‘Van Dyke Club’ with a policewoman. We were put in there to find out what was going on. I remember borrowing a wig [laughter] from my sister or someone, and I was in tatty jeans, and we sat there. I also remember being able to claim for two pints of beer. [laughter] It was absolutely amazing. Our patch didn’t stretch to Peverell or anything like that, but I remember being sent to Peverell to Pennycross Stadium4, which was a speedway track. I was sent to police a concert with ‘Fleetwood Mac’, the original ‘Fleetwood Mac’ and seeing Mick Fleetwood get out of his Alvis with his leather jacket on, that came nearly down to his ankles. There was a marquee, I call it a marquee, but it was an old tent, put in the middle of the track and they performed. I didn’t get in there, but I didn’t need to, it was only canvas and that wasn’t bad. So, yes, I have some fond memories of policing Devonport.

Judith Rowbotham

Any particular challenges that stand out?

Reg Davison

No. It’s interesting to hear about, as I know it’s a problem now across the country with drugs and drinkers and so on. I think it was quite a benign place. I think everyone, even people who were on the wrong side of the law, I think they had a respect for the police that maybe isn’t around now. I didn’t find any particular problems. I commented coming here, there was a pub up the road, it’s gone. There were lots of pubs around this area here and none of them caused any particular problem. They all policed themselves, I think. People just looked after themselves. They didn’t bring their troubles to the police. Society now, it appears to me, no-one wants to accept responsibility for what they do. It’s always someone else’s fault. No respect for authority. I didn’t experience any of that when I was at Devonport.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Alan? What challenges, do you think, you most encountered, if any?

Alan Lane

Alcohol, at that time. The only way you could obtain it, was in a pub or an off-license. The number of licensed premises these days is unbelievable and this is why you’ve got these wino’s in the street, isn’t it? In our time, that sort of person would sit begging. We didn’t have much begging out here, but the begging was dealt with by “you’re causing an obstruction, get on your way or else you’ll be arrested”. That was enough in most cases. Sleeping out was another thing. There wasn’t much sleeping out, I know we had a regular one here who was down on the Mount Wise frontage, he used to sleep in one of the old century’s boxes there. The Marines used to have century boxes during the War. That was taken for granted, that person. There were other sleepers out, but they were directed to the hostels in Union Street. There were two hostels there – the Salvation Army and the St Joseph’s Hall. Lots of times they would miss the ‘lights out’ time at the hostels and that’s why they were sleeping out. If they were again found sleeping out habitually, they’d be arrested and put before the magistrates. That’s some of the policing I can remember.

Judith Rowbotham

Do any particular incidents or typical incidents stand out?

Alan Lane

Domestics was another thing as well. These days there’s a big note of it, isn’t there? But in our day, we used to go to these domestics, but all we had to do was, if it was all quiet and there was no action taking place, no threats or abuse or anything like that, we just used to tell them that redress, see a solicitor and carry on our way. It was none of our business really. All we had to do was keep the peace. If the peace was there, we’d carry on and of course, it was regular places we used to go to, it was Mrs Jones again, that sort of thing. They wouldn’t make a complaint. Mostly it was females that were suffering, but they wouldn’t make a complaint and they wouldn’t leave the household because they had nowhere else to go. That was a regular affair.

Judith Rowbotham

When you were called to a domestic, was it neighbours who had called or the women themselves?

Alan Lane

Yes, it was a mixture. Most of it was the women themselves. Sometimes there were court orders made, but they weren’t effective really, unless you had ‘power of arrest’. Occasionally, they used to issue a ‘power of arrest’ where we could take some action. That was when the partner or the husband or whoever it was was actually separated from the household and they used to live elsewhere and come into the premises. If there wasn’t a ‘power of arrest’ we couldn’t do much about it. All we had to do was keep the peace and that was it.

Judith Rowbotham

How about you Katherine?

Katherine Hickling

I don’t get deployed to domestics because I’ve got no PPE, but nowadays I think when officers attend, depending on the complaint, I think if both parties have separated and one person is put on the ‘ask to leave’, am I right in saying that? We always record what we call a domestic file. It’s called a ‘DASH5’ training where our booklets are filled out with the victim identifying the risk that they’re at, but nine times out of ten, well, it would always be recorded, even if the victim doesn’t want to make a complaint. Is that right?

Brendan Brookshaw

I’m a DCI with Devon & Cornwall Police and I’ve 29-and-a-halfyears service. I’m not going to catch Reg up, by a long way. That’s one of the biggest changes I think I’ve seen over the last nearly 30 years. Certainly, when I first joined in the ‘80’s there was this sense that if there was no immediate breach of the peace or there wasn’t a criminal offence of assault, then the police tended not to get involved and it always felt a bit weird leaving things like that. I guess that’s a societal change. Nowadays and for the last 15-20 years I suppose, we’ve recognised that this domestic abuse, particularly against women, is a massive issue in terms of homicide prevention. So, we go all-out now in terms of a full risk assessment to try to ascertain what risks exist in that household and to take action both with the police and the partners to put interventions in to try to sort it out through counselling, court orders, the whole [inaudible] of tactics that are available. That’s a big change from when I first joined.

Judith Rowbotham

Were you conscious at all of domestics Reg?

Reg Davison

Yes, we didn’t have … you say, ‘how did we learn of them?’ was it the neighbours? was it the lady? sometimes the chap, but you think of modern technology, we didn’t have that then. People didn’t have telephones in their houses. There was a red box on the corner down the road. So, a lot of the time, yes, it would be the neighbours who would tell you, but you were on foot-patrol, you’d come across it. You would know your patch. You would walk your area. You would come across it. I agree with everything that’s being said about the way it was and the way it is and the modern risk assessment around it, but we used to walk in, and you would assess which one was more in the wrong than the other. It was generally the man who was more in the wrong, not always, but more often. You would probably pull him outside to let things quieten down, but I found on many occasions, the minute, despite the fact that they’d been fighting like cat and dog, the minute you grabbed one of them to deal with it and separate them, you had both of them against you. The one you deemed to be the innocent in the argument would turn against you. So, dealing with domestics was always quite difficult. I agree with Alan, we used to keep the peace and move on.

Melanie Simmonds

My name is Melanie Simmonds, Chief Inspector of Devon & Cornwall Police. I think what you’ve highlighted there and what Brendan’s highlighted, is our greater understanding, over years, of the victimology around this and the fact that a vulnerable victim of domestic violence will probably suffer nine or ten episodes before they choose to call us. If a neighbour has called, what that female or male victim will fear is retribution after the officers’ leave, especially if they leave saying there’s nothing they can do. So, the victim will feel obliged to look to be defending the offender against the police because they fear what they’re going to suffer next if they don’t. Certainly, what we have now, as Brendan alluded to, is very much a positive action approach. So, by understanding the victim’s needs we can even separate out prosecution from safeguarding. So, we can do the risk assessment and put safeguarding in place for the children and other family members and whether we prosecute later, or not, can be another decision. But, safe-guarding will always be the priority. I think one of the changes I’ve seen in my 14-years policing, is that we used to be very heavily performance centred in terms of our targets and this drove our activity. I think it’s fair to say that if we saw rises in domestic violence reports in previous years, we naturally would be concerned and think “ok, this is something we need to tackle and we need to get these numbers back down”. Now, we very much publicise to our victims that you can trust us, you can speak up, and we will be there to support you and protect you. Increases in domestic violence reports today gives me some reassurance victims are trusting us and they have a greater confidence in coming forward and telling us. If we know that people are being abused or are suffering, then we can help. So, rises in certain types of crime reporting aren’t always a negative, because it sometimes indicates we are achieving better interaction and trust and confidence with the public we serve. I think probably domestic violence is one type of crime where that’s most true.

Reg Davison

I think what you’ve just said is we’ve moved in the right direction, but it wasn’t something that any of us thought about in those days. I think females thought they had to put up with it. That’s an impression that I’ve got now, thinking back. Females then thought that’s part of being married, that’s what they had to put up with.

Melanie Simmonds

You’re absolutely right and where we are now, in terms of female victims of domestic violence, is that many more do feel that they can now speak out. I don’t think we’re there with male victims of domestic violence. Actually, it would be great to be sat here towards the end of my career, when I’m 29-and-a-half-years in, and perhaps seeing male victims of domestic violence, and victims who are in same-sex relationships, being able to speak out with the same degree of trust and confidence, because I’m not absolutely convinced we’re there yet. It’s still a very hidden crime, I think, for male victims of domestic violence.

Reg Davison

I don’t think we saw it in the light of being targets. The police now seem to be target driven, whether that’s because of the Government or whatever. The police are target driven. The targets we had were local targets. The man in charge, because it was a man in those days, the man in charge of the station would think we’ve got a problem with theft of milk off the doorstep, let’s deal with that. He wouldn’t think we’ve got a problem with domestic violence because I don’t think we even called it that in those days. I don’t remember it being called that. We just didn’t think about it in the same way that it’s thought about now.

Judith Rowbotham

Alan, you just made a point. Could you make it again?

Alan Lane

I got the feeling that the police these days seem to be a social worker as opposed to a policeman. A policeman is prevention and detection of crime. It seems to be siding on the ways of social worker and whilst you are giving up lots of other jobs, you seem to have taken on that job, which I think doesn’t relate to the police at all.

Katherine Hickling

Part of our values is the protect the vulnerable and safe-guard them. That’s how it’s kind of changed. There’s so many things now that are prevalent, like child sexual exploitation, modern slavery, it’s about protecting the vulnerable.

Reg Davison

It was the same for us. Protection of life and property, prevention and detection of crime, protection of offenders against the peace, prosecution of offenders against the peace. That’s the definition we all learned as the duty of a constable. Our prime theme was to look after the public, be it their personal welfare or their possessions and we used to do that, but I don’t think we boxed it off in the way everyone does now. I totally agree with Alan about being a social worker. It’s one of my bug-bears now. We have taken on the role of the local council, the social worker and anyone else who, for whatever reason, isn’t going to keep undertaking their own responsibilities. A policeman is to look after the law. When I joined, I joined to be a law-keeper, not a social worker. I appreciate that you may say I was a social worker by going in and separating the husband from the wife when they were beating each other up, but it wasn’t seen that way.

Judith Rowbotham

I’d like to ask one question before throwing things open to the floor which relates to something that has come up during the discussion so far, which is – the locations where the police are to be found in Devonport have changed during all of your experience and one of the things that perhaps has not been said relates explicitly, but is coming through from your comments, is the issue of the accessibility of the police in terms of those locations. You talked about Ker Street. You talked about Exmouth Road. I know when I came this morning, my sister driving in from St Budeaux passed, what was labelled, a police station. It certainly wasn’t either on Ker Street or on Exmouth Road, so, there’s been clearly a movement of locations. How important is that community placing and how important is, if you like, feeling that the police are easy to get hold of?

Reg Davison

We were accessible, not because of the location of the police station, which in my day was Exmouth Road, we were accessible because we were on foot-patrol 24-hours a day. We worked shifts so that there was 24-hour cover. I’ve worked foot-patrol around this building, at one stage or another, at all hours of the day and night and the police station was open 24-hours a day, seven days a week. It was even open on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. So, if someone wanted, they knew they could go to Exmouth Road, walk in and it would be open and there would be someone there to listen to them.

Judith Rowbotham

Was it welcoming? Was it a nice place to work in?

Reg Davison

The building itself, because it was new, I prefer this one, personally. Most of the stations I’ve worked in have been like this building. Exmouth Road was almost brand new when I was there, so, yes, it was nice. It was very 1960’s austere and clean, but the public didn’t get into that. They got into the small enquiry office where they went through the front-door, into the foyer, went up to the desk where, in my case, the senior PC was there and it was “yes madam, what can I do for you? how can I help you?”. They would listen and I think the difference is people would come in with their problems and they would be listened to. We may have very subtly convinced them that we were going to do something about it, when really, we weren’t, but they went away happy, by and large because it’s back to what I said to you earlier on, communication. We communicated with people, be it me walking around here talking to Mrs So-and-so who’s stood on her doorstep and saying, “good morning, how are you?” and maybe even being offered a cup of tea and a piece of “‘eavy cake” [A Cornish fruit bun pronounced ‘eavy cake, the h is dropped], less likely in Devonport, more likely in Cornwall, [laughter] but anyway, it’s all about engaging with the people. I don’t think it’s particularly the location of the police station. It’s whether it’s open, whether there’s someone there to see you, listen to you, modern technology is where the world is. We all go through Mel’s department. We phone in and we speak to some faceless person who’s doing their best under extreme pressure. Whatever people tell you to the contrary is wrong, because I still have to deal with complaints against the police, so I know that Mel’s staff are under real pressure that I’ve never experienced or my colleagues experienced, because we just were out there dealing with it. Very often what we dealt with, we dealt with, no-one else knew anything about.

Alan Lane

Well, on every beat there were pillars and sometimes police boxes. There was a public side and a police side, so, you had to ring in every hour. If they wanted you, that was the time they could get you or direct you to an incident or whatever. So, ringing in every hour and then the public side of the pillar, they could speak to the headquarters at Greenbank and tell them their problem. Of course, there were places on your beat where you used to have tea-stops, all sorts of places, whether it was a shop or the dockyard, dockyard gates, and people knew where you had your tea-stops. It was just a place to take the weight off your feet at times and have a smoke if you smoked. It wasn’t a place where you gathered information or anything like that, it was just the respect of having a policeman in your shop. You weren’t there to ask questions or anything like that, it was just to make acquaintance with the shop-keeper or whoever it was and this was the respect you did have.

Judith Rowbotham

How about the police stations themselves? Having heard the comment about the brand new Exmouth Road, what was Ker Street, what was Morice Town like?

Alan Lane

Well, Ker Street here, talking about the ‘office man’, he was the senior man in the section and he was probably near retirement or something like that. You wouldn’t go behind the counter. You would only be on this side of the counter. He was the master of the section. If you had any incidents to report on the end of your spell of duty, you would enter them in your pocket-book. It might be an insecurity on night duty or some domestic incident you attended or anything like that and he had to enter these incidents in an ‘occurrence book’. So, if you were putting in too much information, he would be out telling you “I’ve got to write all this in the occurrence book, less of it please”. There were two books they used to keep – the ‘occurrence book’ where there was a history of everything. It was a pleasure to read because they would fill in your information as well as from other people, and there was the ‘general information book’ where it was a ‘special attention book’ or communications where there were stolen vehicles or anything like that and was read out to you. One of the complaints of the ‘special attention’ I can remember, as it used to happen time and time again, was the slipping of unpleasant things through letterboxes in peoples’ homes - excreta wrapped up in newspaper was a favourite one. I don’t know if it happens these days or not, but if a person was disliked it could happen. I can always remember one incident because we used to parade a quarter-of-an-hour before our duty started and all this information used to be read out to us by the sergeant. There was one occasion, one of the policemen, his sergeant read out ‘special attention’ to Ford, somewhere in Ford, where excreta was being slipped through the letterbox of this person’s home and then he said “turn to your right, Peter, did you get that information?” – “no” he said, “I haven’t seen the Evening Herald6 tonight”, so he wasn’t paying attention, obviously. [laughter] “Rubbish in the newspaper” he said, “if you haven’t seen this about the rubbish in the newspaper” – “no” he said, “I haven’t seen the Evening Herald”. [laughter]

Judith Rowbotham

Katherine, how about you? What about some of the issues on accessibility in the actual station that you’re working in?

Katherine Hickling

It’s not open to the public. It’s by appointment only. There is a wall-phone on the outside of the police station, so, if there is a real need for somebody to call and say they’re outside, then somebody can go down if there is somebody in the police station, but to access that station you need to make an appointment via 101 or 999. So, it’s not accessible, unfortunately. I think the only two that are, are at Charles Cross and Crownhill Police Station, but I think that’s only specific hours that they’re open. So, the majority of reporting needs to be done either online or by telephone.

Judith Rowbotham

Do you see that as a problem or a challenge in your experience?

Katherine Hickling

I used to be a call-handler up at Crownhill, so, from that standpoint, yes, because the demand was humungous on the people that work up there. Whereas, if I am on the beat people will report it and I’ll record it myself, but that’s the only way people can … I think people know that now. People are frustrated, I think. A lot of people are frustrated that want to report something. Sometimes things to do go unreported because you think “I can’t be bothered”. Sometimes if you call 101, unfortunately there is sometimes ‘wait times’ and sometimes you won’t see an officer. If it’s a closed block, you might not see an officer for 24 hours. There is sometimes a delay in a response, not 999, but some people may feel as though they can’t be bothered, unfortunately. Not in all cases, but in some. In some cases, you definitely see that, in Devonport especially.

Brendan Brookshaw

I think that’s our response to, again, change in society because when I was in probation you had to take a turn on the front office. It was part of the things you did. If the person was on leave or even their lunch-break, you had to take your turn. Primarily that was the way that information came into the police station. People would come in and report stuff over the counter and that’s not so long ago. It isn’t so long ago that I had my first mobile phone, in the great scheme of things and now I’ve two – one for work and one for home. Everybody carries Smart phones around, communication devices. I think there’s a real expectation, I’ve heard it described as the ‘Amazon generation’. There’s a real expectation of instant response, so, if I order something on Amazon, it sends me a text immediately to tell me that someone’s packing it up. It sends me another text when it leaves the factory, another text to tell me where it is and if I really want to, I can track it on a mapping system right to my house. I don’t think the police have quite caught up with that yet, but we went through a phase, because of austerity measures not so long ago, where we did, not close, because there were still police officers working [inaudible] a lot of the stations in the force, but closed the front offices and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there’s only three or four now that are open at all, let alone 24/7 and those are the big[inaudible] Torbay and Plymouth. If you go to Tavistock or Bude or places that used to have front offices, they now don’t. The rational for that loss, do a footfall survey, you’ve got one person coming in every couple of days and it just becomes unjustifiable to spend the money to have a front office person sat there and that’s all they’re dealing with. Hence, the demand falls on the telephony in the organisation.

Melanie Simmonds

What we’ve done … you’re absolutely right about the footfall survey … but we need to ask members of the public how they would choose to contact us and what accessibility means to them. If you were to ask my 18-year-old daughter, she would want Instagram or SnapChat or some other kind of social media that is completely unfamiliar to me, but if you were to ask my mum, she probably would prefer to walk into a police station. There are more than the three or four, but actually, yes, less than we had before, for that reason. Calling through to the police into the contact centre now, you can use the 101 or the 999, but you can also contact us by email. We have a live chat facility now. You know if you contact your bank, a little pop-up box comes up and says, “would you like someone, an online advisor to help you”. Well, we have the facility to be able to do that now when people are inputting crime reports. I think the ways of accessing the force have changed a lot and will continue to change. Actually, it will be interesting to see how we go. Our sociodemographic means that we’re always going to need to have that wide menu of options because what will aid someone in their 80’s is not going to aid someone who’s in their teens.

Judith Rowbotham

Do you think that the knowledge of how ways to communicate with the police have been widely publicised? Do people know about …?

Melanie Simmonds

We have done publicity and it tends to be, I think, that when people have experienced that new way of service, they then tend to tell 10 or 15 other people. For example, if you are in a queue, which they are typically between five or 10 minutes now in 101, waiting to speak to someone, it only costs 15 pence for the whole duration of the call, but while you’re there we can play messages that say “did you know you can report a crime online?” and by tracking our abandonment rates on our calls, we can see that members of the public are thinking “that’s a good idea” and hanging up at that point and then going online and reporting the crime. For a lot of them, that’s far easier than ever speaking, but as Katherine said, some people do need to speak.

Katherine Hickling

We had a lady ‘in box’ as well, which is … each sector has it, so Devonport and West and that’s accessed by PCSOs on a daily basis, where people can go onto the Devon & Cornwall website and they’ll email in, and quite often there’s quite a lot of emails in there where people have emailed and then it’s down to the PCSO or beat manager to then make contact with them. So, definitely, people are reporting stuff, but there are the few where we will say to them, “you need to report this when it’s happening” and they’ll say, “no point”. They can’t be bothered. You explain to them, but they won’t do it. I don’t know if that’s people just stuck in their ways rather than frustration with how things are done. I think it’s just they used to be able to walk into a police station and they expect that, rather than taking responsibility for ringing or emailing.

Judith Rowbotham

At this stage, I’d like to open generally for comments or reflections. The first hand I saw was Steve Pearce.

Steve Pearce

Steve Pearce former Devon & Cornwall officer. It transpires from the notes that Reg and I joined about the same time and our paths crossed, not at Devonport, but much later on in life. It’s been fascinating listening to all the input from various ages. What’s struck me is, and I suppose I straddle both generations, Brendan mentioned about footfall at police stations, and I think if you look back as to why people went to police stations when we joined, they did things like [inaudible] documents, technology took over. They took in lost dogs. They took in lost property. They asked the way. They came into the police station at Charles Cross in my day, in the ‘80’s, and would say “can you tell me how to get to New George Street please?”. Nobody does that anymore. They look at their phone. So, technology took over. It may be a bad thing that police stations closed and the numbers involved in closing one or two around the place in the last three or four years, because we were providing a service and people weren’t going in, but they had the comfort of knowing if they wanted to go in, that generation, they had the comfort thinking if I need to go in for any reason, I will, but they never did. Gradually, they realised they didn’t have to anyway as they could do it on their phone, and they could do it on IT. I don’t blame the police for closing the police stations to the public, as such, because no-one was ever visiting them. I must say I’m privileged to have peeped in… even though I’ve been retired for 14 years… todays policing through various things I do and in spite of the rest of my colleagues who’ve retired at my age [inaudible] I see what the staff do these days, and there’s a tremendous amount of effort by everyone to try and prop-up a creaking service because of demand. The demand has been created by people like us. You hit the nail on the head, if nobody answers the phone or if I don’t get this on my iPhone within five minutes … whereas a few years ago there was that acceptance that things were a bit slower and if the police did take 12 hours to come for a non-emergency, then people accepted it. They don’t accept it anymore, do they, because of what we’ve created.

One thing I wanted to say… go back to this project… I never worked Devonport, Exmouth Road and certainly not Ker Street. Exmouth Road wasn’t around in my time in Plymouth… is that, this area in particular, what changed for me, dramatically, was we lost it in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, I think. It was a very deprived area. You could parade 10, 12 cops every night, and it still was never enough. I think one thing… I suppose it does get difficult, this answer of mine, is that Devonport regeneration, the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, and the amount of money brought into this place actually made a difference. It made a tremendous difference because cops used to call Devonport, Exmouth Road, Ker Street… that type of level of policing in places not far from here, a cop would drive down and a burning mattress would be thrown out of a window on top of his car. I don’t recognise any of that now, but the money and effectively, by reintroducing bobbies on the beat in neighbourhood police and stuff that Katherine talks about, into this area, together with partnership working with the Devonport community and social services, the council, MPS, everyone, it needed that injection of funds to turn it around. Now you see a totally different place to what we all recognised because of the houses, the developments, the Dockyard wall, which is coming down, parts of it is coming down. So, I think, in my experience of working around Plymouth, I still hear people talking about how they’d never drive or walk down through this area because in their heads, they think 1980’s and 1990’s, so they don’t come down here. I make a point of coming down to have a cup of coffee if I’m meeting someone and people say “what about my car? the wheels will be gone” and that sort of stuff. [laughter] We are wedded to what we know and unless we are privileged enough to know what is going on and you’re involved in stuff, you’ll never know. The same in the city centre. That reminds me, parking your car in the Theatre Royal car park, when I was involved with policing, you’d reckon your car would get screwed in the Theatre Royal car park and if it didn’t you were lucky. So, people don’t park there anymore and that was 20-odd years ago. It’s one of the safest places now with CCTV, cars have changed, but people still, in this city, won’t park their cars in the Theatre Royal car park because they think it’s a high crime area. You’ll never change it. The police repeatedly say, whether it be online or face-to-face at public meetings “it’s safe to park”, but they won’t park. Sorry, I’m rambling.

Judith Rowbotham

Alan or Reg, any comments on that?

Reg Davison

I, like you Steve, don’t recognise … I didn’t police … because I’d gone back to Cornwall … by the ‘70’s I don’t recognise that policing, but I heard about it and I was concerned because I thought back to policing here, when I was able to walk alone at any time of the day or night as a police officer, up and down Tamar Street and all the rest of the streets around here without any fear of any problems whatsoever. I don’t know what happened to Devonport shortly after I left to create that situation. One story, that I always remember, is being told if a police officer wanted to go to a house here, in those days, they would go in two cars with three police officers. So, you would have two police officers that would knock on the door so you had one to protect the other and you would leave the other police officer down looking after the two cars. I don’t recognise Devonport being like that at all, and I have to say when Brendan and I arrived this morning and I parked the car and Brendan walked away and left his coat on the back seat, I said to him “are you going to leave your coat there?” [laughter] I do apologise for that, but you are absolutely right, because this very morning, that was in my mind.

Brendan Brookshaw

Absolutely correct, there was a time, it was probably about the time I joined, so, mid- to late ‘80’s where Devonport was this sort of Fort Apache, a real sense of being under siege from the police. Certainly, officers who served in Devonport amongst Devon & Cornwall colleagues had some sort of kudos because they were serving in a really rough and difficult area. I wasn’t here as a PC. When I came to Plymouth in ’97 as a sergeant, I had the other end of the city, I had Sutton and Mount Gould wards, but I was aware of this. Really, I had an input into Devonport when I was first a Critical Incident Inspector, so that would’ve been 2003 onwards, but I’m a Plymothian and I’ve got 42 first cousins, most of whom live around Devonport and Stonehouse. So, I’m really familiar with this area and I never felt any particular fear because it’s a family thing for me. I can remember an incident, not too far from here, the houses have been knocked down and rebuilt, where, in 2003 when I was an inspector, in the early hours of the morning loads of phone calls coming in and an argument over some money that’s owed and a guy has taken an axe and gone up to the house of the bloke that’s owes him the money and hacked his way through the door and chopped the man’s hand off and then there was this sort of siege thing going on. I turned up, we didn’t deploy firearms officers back then. I don’t think we had the armed response situation that we’ve got now, but I used officers in riot gear with shields to go to the doors and enter the place and arrest the guy and he was taken away. The other guy with the hand was obviously off to hospital. I can remember, everybody and sundry were there. There were probably 20 cops there and a dog-handler and everybody else and everybody was out on the street. All the neighbours were out and giving the police a hard time because somebody was being arrested. I can remember at the conclusion of that incident, everybody just jumped into their police cars and left and I was left in a police car with the sergeant and he was saying to me “boss, get in the car, we’ve got to go, look, there’s 60-70 people on the street, all annoyed with us” and I think it was a police attitude at the time which was somehow the residents were completely anti-police and even if you were doing something for their benefit, i.e. taking away a bloke with an axe, you were still somehow their enemy. I thought to myself “this is my family, people live here” and more to the point, if this happened on my street, I’d want to know what was going on. So, I went around to the front of the police car and just said to them “look, this is the situation, this is what’s happened … somebody’s been injured, we’ve arrested them” and the answer came back, in fairly direct language, I’m not going to repeat it here, but “why the hell did you have riot cops beating this guy up?” and I said “well, he wasn’t beaten up, but he was fighting, so, he had to be arrested and it was for their protection because he had an axe” and there was probably a five-minute conversation and all of a sudden the people went “fair enough gov’, thanks very much”, and off they went and no problems. I was a bit taken aback at the time at the attitude of the police in the area. It was get in the car and get away as quickly as possible because if we stay, we’re going to get duffed up. I suppose that’s the relationship I’ve always had in Devonport, which is the policing bit, it has been difficult and there has been more violence here against the police than other parts of Devon and Cornwall, whilst at the same time, some of these people are my aunties and uncles and cousins. So, I find it interesting to see it from both sides of the coin.

Judith Rowbotham

Alan, have you got any reflections or comments?

Alan Lane

Well, the comment I can make about that was that in our time the public knew the policemen. If you went there, they could say “that’s PC Lane” and you knew the people as well. You could pick them out and say, “that’s Jim Jones” and so on and so forth. I’ve taken knives off people, no trouble at all. I can remember being at the fairground and taking a pistol off a visiting sailor without any trouble. He was taken back aboard his ship, and nothing more happened about it, but there are quite a few incidents like that. We didn’t call out the orchestra to form an orchestra. It was just dealt with lots of times with one or two policemen and that was the end of the story. Your report went in, sometimes it got into ‘The Herald’, sometimes it didn’t. It depended on what the reporter wanted to say.

Judith Rowbotham

Did you often talk to the reporters?

Alan Lane

Yes. Well, there was only one you could trust really. I can’t remember his name now. You could tell him what you wanted to know. It’s the same with the magistrates. I can remember there was one certain magistrate, when you went to court, the policy in Plymouth was you don’t bail people, you keep them in. You could go to this magistrate before the court and say “look, Jimmy Jones is coming up, can you keep him in please?” and that would be it, he would keep him in. He worked in the Dockyard and a lot of people who came up in front of him were Dockyard workers and if they were fined or anything like that, he knew exactly what their wages were and what they could afford, [laughter] and with his colleagues he could work out what the fine should be. That’s the connections you’d have in those days.

Judith Rowbotham

Is there anything you wanted to add Katherine, briefly?

Katherine Hickling

Oh yes, I can walk through Devonport and not feel fearful. The only concern I mainly have are lifts, that’s the only concern. [laughter]

Judith Rowbotham

David Rees.

David Rees

David Rees, the Chair of the South West Police Heritage Trust. I just wanted to ask Reg and Alan to reflect on something that Melanie mentioned earlier in terms of … we pick this up in the press all the time, is that the police are playing the role of social workers in lots and lots of situations. Personally, I find that worrying in terms of policy and direction of travel when there are bigger issues which their time needs to be spent on. So, I wanted to ask Reg and Alan, in terms of going back to the past where somebody else was doing the social work of these incidents that you might’ve gone to, what did that look like in terms of …

Judith Rowbotham

Could I come back to that question? Because I think that I saw two hands go up here, which might mean that we can add to the reflections on all of that. Kim Stevenson.

Kim Stevenson

Mine is more of a follow-up to the points that Brendan was making. When I interviewed Acting Inspector Steve Fleetwood, one thing he said very clearly at the end was that police officers want to come to Devonport now. Devonport’s a really attractive police station and people are applying to come here. When we did some of the interviews with the ‘50 Years and 50 Voices’ project, some of the officers that had previously served at Devonport described it as being a bit of a ‘dumping ground’, a kind of punishment location and people didn’t want to come here. So, two or three things occurred to me, you spoke earlier about being in this building, to what extent did the design of the police station have any relevance to people wanting to come and work at particular police stations? I think Steve was intimating that and maybe Brendan you can explain a little bit more about the background and the design. The other thing I was thinking about was the kind of pride. Judith and I have been looking at Devonport police in the past and they had very well-known tug-of-war teams, they had the rowing boats, they had the gigs, they had the football team, the rugby team, they had a chess team. There was a lot of sports and leisure competitions, not just with other divisions, but with other organisations. How much does that support feelings of wanting to be part of the community and also wanting to come and work here?

Brendan Brookshaw

I can answer a little bit about that police station up there because I was here when it was being designed. I noticed downstairs, you mentioned ____ _____7 who was the inspector at Marlborough Street. Marlborough Street was my old bank, the police station and it was really grotty. The locker-room was actually the vault and it was underground and it was damp and all the uniforms used to go mouldy and mildew. It was horrible. And that’s not so long ago. So, when we were thinking about the design for that police station, there were probably three things uppermost in our minds. Number one was to try to attract people in. Number two was that there was money available from Devonport regeneration, because of all the other building that was happening on the other side of the wall, they had to put Section 52 money into public works. Then there was also this national thing, I think, of making it glass-fronted. In years gone by, police stations were designed as fortresses to hold people in and now, for a number of years, they’ve tried to make them open and welcoming and you see a lot of police stations with a glass-frontage. My only real input, because clearly the design was done by someone who’s an expert marketer, my only real input was I wanted to try to bring something of the old into the new. I’m always really clear about what I swore to do when I joined the police. It’s quite old fashioned, but you still do it, you have to get up in front of a magistrate and put your hand on the bible, or if you don’t believe in that, you have to attest and swear that you will uphold the law and there’s a whole load of wording that goes around it – without favour or affection, malice or ill-will etc. The wording is really powerful, but we often do it once in our service and forget about it. So, what I wanted to do was to make sure that we reminded police officers and staff about that. So, as it was developing, we got those words laser-printed onto aluminium and they’re on the stairwell. So, if you walk up and down that police station, the last thing you see before you go out is the words of the attestations, so, subliminally, the idea was you’re meant to be reminded of the reason why you actually joined the police. That’s probably my biggest contribution. I thought I was going to have an office in there, but I changed role beforehand, and I had planned it so my office had a beautiful view, [laughter] but in reality, all the houses that have since been built, has ruined that now.

Judith Rowbotham

I think that has given some interesting extra dimensions to the question asked by David about the issue of social work. Could you, the panel, reflect on aspects of both of those questions? You’ve already touched on certain … also, do any of you remember or have any knowledge or memory of being involved in police teams of sports or chess clubs or anything like that? Reg.

Reg Davison

Before I answer that particular part of your question, you introduced it by talking about social workers and things. In my day, here, we had virtually no contact, I certainly, personally, had no contact with social workers, we were the police. We dealt with the issues that the police dealt with, other people dealt with issues that they dealt with. My memory is, never the twain shall meet. Was I part of any police teams? The tug-of-war that Brendan loves and all these other chess teams and things, again, in my day here, I don’t recall any of those being in existence. They may have been, but I wasn’t part of them. However, being a Cornishman, I love my rugby. I played rugby and I did turn out a few times for Plymouth Police against local sides. When I went to Cornwall, I played for Cornwall Police and we always beat Devon and actually, we always beat Plymouth, because we were a better side. [laughter]

Judith Rowbotham

What about you, Alan?

Alan Lane

Oh, there was plenty of sport in our time. You could get, what we call, representative sport. Whilst you were on duty you could be excused to carry out those sports. There were football teams, rugby teams, cricket. Myself, I was involved in swimming. I was recruited into that, no volunteering, recruited into that. Being in Plymouth, surrounded by water, the chief constable used to insist that you qualify for a swimming award of some description because you would, no doubt some time or other, be involved in that. We used to go to competitions all over the country. Well, not all over the country, but I can remember the one we were taking part in, we didn’t have these facilities ourselves, we used to train in Mount Wise or else on the river, train, swim, towing and that sort of thing, exhibitions of rescuing people and again, it fell to us to borrow things off the Navy. The Navy was very good to us because we used to get invites onboard ship for dos, all sorts of things Christmas time and celebrations like that. We used to use their swimming baths in the barracks for training. I can remember on one occasion, we had a competition and we beat the County forces and we went up to Bath. We were swimming in Bath and the water there so warm they had to cool it before [inaudible]. We won that competition there and then we went onto London, but that was a different kettle of fish altogether. There were these sports and as I say, it was taking part. If you were on duty, you could be excused to carry out training.

Judith Rowbotham

Do you think some way of, if you like, being involved with the community communicating was sort of some form of unofficial social work?

Alan Lane

Yes, well, you see most of the people that joined the force, Plymouth City at that time, they were local people and of course, the force itself, you knew everyone in the force or if you didn’t know them personally, you knew of them. We used to socialise. Greenbank was the licensed premises there. We had a club there and that was the centre of the places. I know on one occasion, out at Ker Street here, the caretaker had a barrel of beer out in the back by the table-tennis table, but we never got to it. I think it was the older policemen there who got to that. [laughter] I can remember that. Going back to Greenbank, police dances used to be arranged. That was a sort of charity do as well. Police balls were a regular affair every year. Certain divisions or sections used to go for nights out at particular hotels and that sort of thing. The social side was very good. Christmas parties, and we used to get the children in from the families and beforehand we used to go around to the shop-keepers, and that sort of thing, who would donate prizes for the Christmas gifts for the children. That was one aspect of it.

Katherine Hickling

Can I just make a point about the social worker?

Judith Rowbotham

Yes.

Katherine Hickling

A lot of my role is to attend meetings about safeguarding children and that kind of thing. Although it’s not directly a policing issue, the safeguarding often is. There’s child protection issues in families and that child’s experiencing things that are then in tag and they commit crime or be involved in anti-social behaviour. So, it’s kind of, almost, a bit of early intervention of us attending and gaining information and understanding what is going on in that family unit. Although it is social, you might describe it as being a social worker, it’s kind of just working with partner agencies to understand needs of families and what’s going on. It’s like at the moment, in the city centre, there’s a massive issue with youths hanging around causing issues. I’ve worked quite closely with some of the other agencies, sort of social services, Reach, and that kind of thing and in sharing that information. It means that we can deal with it properly and deal with the underlying issue, rather than it just being a policing issue because we can’t always deal with the anti-social behaviour if there’s issues at home that need to be addressed.

Judith Rowbotham

Dave Cox?

David Cox

Dave Cox, University of Wolverhampton. I’m probably asking this because I live as far away from the sea as is possible to do at the moment. I’d like to ask all three of you – what were relations like with the Naval authorities, between the Naval authorities and the police? I know you touched on that a little bit, but I’m interested whether they have changed over time.

Katherine Hickling

None now.

David Cox

None now.

Katherine Hickling

The MOD sometimes pop into the station and will sometimes offer assistance if it’s busy, but from my personal perspective, I’ve not had any real …

David Cox

That’s really interesting how it’s changed over time.

Alan Lane

We used to have connections with the Dockyard police and if you wanted anything done, anything made, it was possible for the Dockyard police to relay it to some workshop in there and get it made. Relations with the Navy, the Naval Patrol, that was a stop at the end of the night duty, when they used to come in after midnight, when they finished, and they used to do a lovely soup up there, at the barracks.

David Cox

Has the Naval Patrol stopped now?

Brendan Brookshaw

I’m surprised to hear and it’s not a criticism, I was last in uniform as a Chief Inspector here four years ago when I was running that aspect of operations in the city and I had a really good relationship with the provost, the commander here and all of the Naval police and the Royal Marine police that are based here. MOD police are based within the Dockyard and really have shrunk as an organisation down to guarding the nuclear submarines and various other things that are in there, but the Navy police, the provost was really keen to get out and work with us. We did a number of joint drugs operations, so, those were joint patrols that were really common and very active. What these two gentlemen were saying still applies, which is, sometimes you don’t want to apply the civil law to the military because it’s far better that they get dealt with once and get dealt with well and the military are very good at dealing with their own people. When I was a custody sergeant here, back in, before the millennium, that sounds terrible doesn’t it? around ‘98, you get some gobby sailor come in and at that time they weren’t wearing uniform because of fears of terrorist attack by the IRA, in particular, so, you couldn’t easily identify them on the street, they would get arrested for being drunk and then you’d find an ID card or something. They’d be lairy in the custody centre and it used to make me laugh, because you’d call the provost and in would come a regulating petty officer, five foot high and five foot round, with a flash [inaudible] on, and the tone of voice they would use. This drunk would just straighten up and march out very smartly, completely under control. So, there’s something about that relationship with Plymouth. I’ve worked all over the force, it doesn’t exist anywhere else, only Plymouth, but has traditionally been really useful for both parties.

Kim Stevenson

Steve Fleetwood did say that one of the representatives comes every fortnight to one of your briefing meetings, so there is some contact.

Brendan Brookshaw

We used to get the regulators have their own intelligence unit and they used to come along to our by-weekly intel meetings.

Katherine Hickling

Yes, they still come into the briefings.

Reg Davison

Can I just say, our contact, both with the … we used to call them ‘modplods’ … sorry, the MOD police [Ministry of Defence Police], our contact with the MOD police and with the regulating branch was on an informal … yours sounds rather more formal … ours was just like going in and being friends with the neighbours here. We used to stop for a cup of tea and certainly we would use the Naval Patrol to come and collect someone and take them away, save us the job. I certainly, as a probationer, where they’re trying to throw you in at the deep end so that you learned how to deal with things, I got onboard ‘The Ark Royal’, the one of the day, because I needed to go and interview a sailor. My very first prosecution was a ‘no excise license’ from a petty officer on ‘HMS Penelope’, a frigate, and I was taken onboard to see him and interview him. We had quite a relaxed and close relationship with anything to do with the Dockyard.

Brendan Brookshaw

The thing I’ve learnt is organisations cannot make relationships, people make relationships and so it very much depends on the individuals. As it happens, the Provost Marshall at the time for the south [inaudible] was based here, ____ ____. He was a commander with the Navy and he and I hit it off. We got on really well. We had a couple of mess dinners together and so there was that social bit that happened and add to that the mutual like, I suppose, we got on very well together. Out of that grew this sense of “why don’t we do these joint operations?”. So, without the personal relationships, it’s really hard, if not impossible, for organisations to actually do things purely on a formal footing. There has to be some personal link as well.

Judith Rowbotham

Melanie.

Melanie Simmonds

I was thinking about our 50-year anniversary as Devon & Cornwall Police and actually how the make-up of the force generally has changed over the last 50 years. So, listening to the Women’s Only Division, WPCs, as we have, I know having spoken to retired female officers, they were issued with handbags and different types of truncheons and had different roles and I look at how we’ve progressed. You think about the Peelian Principles of the police being the public, and the public being the police. Our police should be representative of our communities in respect of gender and ethnicity and so on. I don’t think we’re where we want to be in terms of equality but we are making fantastic progress. At senior level, we don’t have the same representation of women, but we’re certainly aiming in the right direction quite clearly and I personally think there’s fantastic equality of opportunity for women now. Fantastic anecdotes from Reg and Alan. Katherine, you’ve got a wonderful spirit and a wonderful knowledge of your community and you clearly serve them well, which has been really inspiring today. Certainly, I think we know for senior officers and certainly female officers, there was a study done a few years ago by, I think, Hewlett Packard, that said that men in most industries or all industries, generally, typically, will look at a job description and have a really positive self-confidence. It’s not an arrogance. They’ll look at it and if they’re 50% confident, they’ll think “yeah, I can go for that”, whereas women, typically, for the same role description put in front of them will need to feel 100% certain before they’ll go for it. So, this force is really embracing that and we have ‘confidence workshops’ for women running at all ranks, police staff as well as police officers, which is great. So, we’re going in a really positive direction and when you talk about this being a historical record, I thought it was a valid reflection.

Judith Rowbotham

Very much so. We have one hand waving over here.

Leigh Ferguson

I’m probably going back a step.

Judith Rowbotham

It doesn’t matter. Could you state your name?

Leigh Ferguson

Yes, my name’s Leigh Ferguson. I work for the British Legion. I was just reflecting on something. I’m an ex-PCSO. I was a PCSO about five years ago and one of the most important things I think we did, we had a football match against a local school, sixth form, and we ended up playing football for about two-and-a-half hours because about 60 of them turned up. Mainly, I think, they just wanted to kick their local bobby. [laughter] But, actually, it was really important because what it did was it did show those young people, lots of whom were problem people, that we were somebody behind that uniform and we did have things in common and it just made those relationships better, and it’s why, I personally, as an ex-PCSO, even though I don’t do it anymore, think the world is really, really important because it offers that continuity of a person that somebody knows and that they’ll give information to that you won’t get if you report things online or over the telephone to a stranger.

Judith Rowbotham

Since you’re a former PCSO and we have a current one here, do you think, building on Melanie’s question, that the general profile of the PCSO matters?

Katherine Hickling

I think it’s about the relationship you build with your community rather than … I think you’ve just got to be the right person and as long as you can communicate and you can build relationships, then I think anyone can do it. It doesn’t matter at all.

Leigh Ferguson

Yes, I’m happy with that. In my experience, it was a role that attracted a lot of very young people.

Judith Rowbotham

So, the PCSO attracted a lot of young people.

Leigh Ferguson

Yes, only in the department that I worked in, but yes.

Judith Rowbotham

Which department was that?

Leigh Ferguson

I worked in South and Central neighbourhood team. So, my patch was student land in St Judes and around there.

Katherine Hickling

The PCSOs at Devonport are quite a lot older. It’s quite funny. There are some younger people, but they’re older rather than younger.

Leigh Ferguson

I don’t know if it’s shifted, but in my day, I’m sounding old now, but in my day, it was a route into the police and if you didn’t do that, it was kind of out of the ordinary. That might’ve changed.

Judith Rowbotham

I have two people waving hands. First Craig Newbery-Jones and then Dave Cox and then we’ll bring this morning session to a close. Craig.

Craig Newbery-Jones

Yes, Craig Newbery-Jones from University of Plymouth and co-lead ‘ChitChat’ initiative. I work into the public image of lawyers through history and contemporarily, but also look at law technology. Just going back to the original discussion about accessing and reporting crime and moving away from offices into [inaudible] regeneration. I guess you guys might be affected by this, is there’s been a lot of money invested in the court service becoming fully digital, submission of court documents etc and it’s interesting on a professional level, lawyers are screaming for it, on a public level, when it comes to submission of court documents, while you can do it … I read something a couple of weeks ago that around 84% of civil court documents are submitted in person as people still want to, literally, go and speak to someone. I think that’s kind of interesting about the important role of PCSOs and I just wonder whether … and the stereotypes you were talking about … Devonport, watch your wheels, put your jacket in the boot … I just wonder whether those stereotypes of … in the public mind as well … while we were all happy, we’re all digital natives or the generation behind the digital natives, perhaps we’re not as technologically literate as institutions and organisations think. I think the legal profession and the court service, in particular, is struggling with that at the moment. I wonder whether the PCSOs are that crucial really where people are… yes, they’re more than happy to call 999, but getting them to call 101, perhaps is a bit of a different shift in their… I don’t know… their understanding of how they deal with the police. They want to speak to the bobby on the beat and I think that’s something we read in the press quite heavily.

Judith Rowbotham

Can I have comment back from Reg?

Reg Davison

Just very briefly, only yesterday a PC in Falmouth came up to me, not part of my department. He came up to me and he’s to do with cameras, police videoing everything they do, and he said this force is… I’m not here criticising the force, please understand that it’s just a comment he made. He said this force is in the shadow of others because apparently some national survey is saying all police officers should wear body worn cameras at all times and that the courts want … you talk about lawyers … the courts want body worn footage because it shows exactly how a person was behaving and allows the lawyers, the courts to better assess individual incidents. I’ve thrown that in because you talked about modern technology.

Leigh Ferguson

When I was working as a PCSO, I used to have to walk through somebody else’s patch to get to mine and I walked past a lady one day who was pacing outside her neighbour’s property and it didn’t seem right to me. So, I approached her and I asked her if everything was ok and she didn’t really want to engage with me, so I pressed her as much as I was comfortable to do so and she still didn’t want to speak to me, so I left. About half-an-hour later, her local officer from that patch walked past and she stopped him and said, “I wasn’t that comfortable talking to your colleague because I didn’t know him, but I’m really worried about my neighbour”. It turned out her neighbour was dead next door, in the property, but she had no intention of telling me that because she didn’t know me, she didn’t have that relationship with me, but my colleague, half-an-hour down the road, she did, and she was comfortable saying that information to him. That’s just an example of those relationships.

Judith Rowbotham

Dave Cox.

David Cox

Just a very quick question specifically for Katherine and Leigh – if PCSOs were issued with the powers of arrest it would aid or abet you? Would you want powers of arrest?

Katherine Hickling

Well, if I wanted powers of arrest I would be a police officer, but I have felt in the last week, in my honest opinion, I’ve walked past and I’ve seen drug deals happen and I’ve seen people walking out of addresses where I know they’re active drug dealing, and sometimes I do feel frustration that I have no powers to search, but like I said, if I wanted to do that job, I would’ve joined to be a police officer.

David Cox

Do you think it would hinder your relationship with the public if they knew you did have powers of arrest?

Katherine Hickling

I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know. Quite possibly, but if I had the powers of arrest, I wouldn’t be doing the job that I’m doing, so, I wouldn’t have that relationship. Does that make sense?

Leigh Ferguson

I never wanted them. I had no desire to have those powers. I would’ve been a lousy police officer. I was always a little bit uncomfortable being told that you’re not confrontational, but being issued with a stab-vest on, it always felt a little bit of a contradiction.

Katherine Hickling

On Saturday, there was an incident where three of my colleagues … we were stood being verbally abused and threatened and all we had was our voices. As soon as a police officer comes, these persons ran off. So, things like that are very, very frustrating, but it’s part and parcel of the job, I guess.

Judith Rowbotham

Are there any comments that either you, Reg or you, Alan would like to add at this stage?

Alan Lane

Just one comment I can make, it’s such a wide variation from the force I worked in and what it is today, tremendous difference.

Judith Rowbotham

For the better? For the worse?

Alan Lane

That remains to be seen. [laughter]

Judith Rowbotham

Very tactfully put. What about you Reg?

Reg Davison

I agree with Alan. Today’s policing is so different to the policing that I remember. It’s so different now. I think the way we policed then was relevant to the era we were in. It’s not necessarily relevant to now. I think you have to have progress, but with progress, you cannot leave behind all of the old practices. You have to bring with you some of the old practices because they are still relevant. They are still good, and they’re sometimes still the best way to do things.

Judith Rowbotham

Thank you very much indeed. Could I thank you all for your contributions and ask you to thank the panel for putting in two hard hours.

End of Recording