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Back to Schooldays
Rowson's Comment
Around the Block
News in Brief
Stop the War
Mini-march
Lysistrata Day
Fringe Festival
Straight to the Point
Time to Finnish
Day in the Nick
Starting Over
Readers Letters
Herbal Cleansing
Local Music
Tripping Out
Tippling at the Tup
Property
Housing Matters
Very Testi
Art Happenings
Vietnamese Food
Entertainment
Gardening
Marathon Man
Surfing N16
Man in North Bank
Xword

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Mike spent twenty-four hours at Stoke Newington Police Station and received the full co-operation of the police. His visit coincided with the massive Stop The War demonstration in central London on 15 February. Here are his impressions,

Three times a day, 365 days a year, the area patrols of Stoke Newington Police Station parade at the start of their shift. As I joined them mid afternoon on Friday 14 February, the intelligence officer was running through his briefing. The three rows of seated police officers listening to the briefing were a mix of age, size, race and gender; the atmosphere, while professional, was tempered with humour.

Gone the old days of a few notes read blandly out - now it's a high-tech Power Point presentation. The screen filled with photos of local villains, missing persons and cars to be on the look out for. Warnings were issued not to approach certain characters without armed response back-up. At the end, everyone was congratulated for all the work they'd put in the previous week in helping to apprehend some persistent local housebreakers.

With that, the duty sergeant checked off each officer to his or her area patrol car or foot patrol, as personal radios were already tasking officers to urgent despatches. A few minutes later, the car park at the rear of the station was empty, a new shift was on the road.

Later that evening I joined PC Justin Whitehead and his colleague to spend the second part of their shift out on the streets of Hackney for St Valentine's night. Their orders took them on a southerly route, and within minutes of leaving the station we were heading towards the Queensbridge Road area. Currently Stoke Newington handles most of the police action in the north of the borough, while Hackney and Shoreditch handle the south.

Coming up to a major road junction, the vigilant passenger seat officer spotted an argument between two drivers who had been in a minor collision. Our driver swung the car swiftly around and the first task of the night was underway. It quickly became obvious that both drivers considered that the other was responsible, and while both had a licence, neither had any insurance documents with them. They were ordered to produce the documents at the police station.

As we pulled away a call came through regarding an incident between two groups of teenagers around the back of Hackney Town Hall - with sirens ablaze, the police car accelerated away. The next few minutes seemed to flash by as the patrol car, often on the wrong side of the road, sped to its destination. A number of other patrols had also responded, so while other officers talked to witnesses, we went in search of the group of young men  responsible for starting the fight - but by then, they'd vanished into the Hackney night.

Pulling up in a dark back street, beside a car filled with four suspicious characters, PC Whitehead rolled down his side window and exchanged a friendly insult with the passengers of the other car. I relaxed as I realised that this was an unmarked police vehicle loaded with CID officers. With a friendly wave, we were on our way again.

And so it went on. By 9.30 pm, the temperature had dropped rapidly outside to below freezing, and trade had seemed to slow slightly when a call came across to attend an assault. Sirens wailing, the car surged into top gear. Twice during the evening I witnessed drivers braking abruptly as our car came up rapidly behind them. The advice from the crew: don't stop, keep moving forward until it is safe to let the police car through.

Pulling up in Mare Street, both officers headed into the graveyard and round the back of the church. It quickly became clear that a couple had had a falling out: the young man had cleared off; the young lady decided that she did not wish to press charges.

Although during the evening we answered a number of calls for assistance, the evening was actually quite quiet. Mentioning this to the two officers, the reply was - never mention the 'Q' word, especially towards the end of your shift.

Back at the station, I spent some time in the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) suite, clustered around banks of computers and CCTV monitors, where all patrols are constantly monitored. The suite is staffed by police officers and civilians, and overseen by a duty inspector. The computer system logs all 999 traffic, and the operators have instant access to computer generated maps of each incident, calling up details on screen of information relating to any address in the area. As an incident comes up, operators call for assistance from patrols and cars are despatched to investigate.

The CCTV system, which is run by the Council, is controlled 24 hours a day from Stoke Newington Town Hall and covers major hot spots around the borough. As I watched the screens, something attracted the attention of the CCTV operator and a camera zoomed in on a small group in Ridley Road, while the duty sergeant called for a car to investigate. In less than a minute a patrol car was on the scene and we watched as the police officers had a quiet chat. Nothing wrong on this occasion, but the technology had proved its point.

While the CAD suite may be one of the hearts of the station, the canteen is another. This is the one place were all the different units of the station meet. In use around the clock, there is always someone taking a break, be they from CID, the community team, uniformed patrols, or one of the many specialist teams located at the station. The canteen is on the ground floor of what had once been the section house at the rear of the station. Now this large multi-storey building houses a number of specialist teams.

It was approaching 11.30 pm when I was escorted over to the custody suite on the lower ground level of the main building. About a dozen of the 16 cells were occupied as I arrived, although earlier in the evening every cell had been in use and a number of suspects had been shipped down to Shoreditch Police Station. Again, this area of the station is manned by both police and civilian staff - a busy place, with people being charged, solicitors talking to their clients, translators, officers booking suspects in, and people being released on police bail.

In the hour I was there, there was only one new arrival. A pregnant young woman had been picked up on suspicion of possessing crack cocaine, brought in by a female plain clothes police officer and a uniformed officer. The plain clothes officer explained that a full body search was required. One of the female custody officers accompanied the CID officer and the suspect into a cell, and shortly after they all returned to the charge desk, with a sealed scene of crime packet containing what was believed to be crack.

The young girl listened quietly as the duty officer explained what would happen to her over the next few hours, while a call was sent out for a duty doctor to come and check the young girl and her unborn baby.

Hackney police are currently trialing a new government scheme which covers a wide range of crimes including shoplifting, assault and street crime.

Anyone who has been arrested for these crimes is tested for the use of drugs – and all the custody team are trained to take medical samples. While I was there the solicitor of one middle-aged man who had been arrested for the theft of a pair of jeans and a jumper arrived. After a discussion with his solicitor, the accused agreed to the drug test.

It was long after midnight as I left the cells and headed through the station. At the front desk, one of the civilian staff was dealing with a solicitor who had just arrived to see his client, while a young man waited patiently for his turn to be seen.

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