him more closely to see if I knew him. It wasn’t uncommon to arrest the same person time and time again, but I didn’t recognise him. He was white-faced and sweating profusely. It was a real effort for him to keep his eyes open and every so often he’d give in and allow them to close for a couple of seconds. When he opened them, his eyeballs rolled. After a matter of only a few seconds, he fell asleep, which worried me a little.
‘Are you with us?’ I asked him in a deliberately loud voice.
He gave no response. There was a very simple and very effective way of checking to see whether or not he was genuinely unconscious, or whether he was just acting to try to make us take him to hospital before taking him to the station. A lot of prisoners do this, as they feel they have a good chance of escaping from hospital, as the police are often put under pressure from doctors to release the handcuffs whilst the prisoner is being assessed. I pinched the lobe of his ear.
‘Arrrggghhh. Fuck off,’ he mumbled and I knew from this that he was probably fine.
Other officers arrived at the scene and a crowd of about twenty people had gathered to watch. This was also very common. I asked one of the officers if he’d transport my prisoner down to the cells. With little fuss, the man was put into the back of a van and driven away from the scene. Brian and I began to walk towards the suspects’ vehicle, which remained with the doors open.
‘You okay, Mick?’ he asked.
‘It’s just my hand,’ I replied. ‘The bastard tried to whack me on the head with a bloody crowbar. He got my hand.’ I looked at it for the first time and saw that there was blood dripping from a small cut along my little finger, which had swollen considerably.
The injury wasn’t serious, and my interest in searching the vehicle intensified as we arrived at the silver Escort. I opened the boot and was amazed by what I saw. There was an array of equipment that was associated with burglaries, ranging from crowbars to cutting tools, several pairs of gloves and a couple more balaclavas, but most strikingly of all there were two monkey masks. These normally fun items, when seen in the boot of a violent burglar’s car, soon take a sinister turn.
I checked the ignition, and it came as no surprise to me that it had been black-boxed (thieves damaging the ignition of a car in order to steal it). In fact, the car had been stolen from Manchester three days earlier. The most alarming items which I found were actually in the door wells: two seven-inch-bladed kitchen knives and a machete. These boys had meant business and it dawned on me that I’d been most fortunate that the man had been carrying only the crowbar. I knew his previous convictions would make interesting and lengthy reading. I’d find this out back at the station.
I took the vehicle into police possession and I requested a SOCO to attend in order to make a full examination. Finding fingerprints or matching fibres to the suspect’s clothing would be useful evidence. I arranged for the keyholder of the premises to attend in order to secure it and reset the alarm. With all this to do, it was well after one o’clock in the morning when I eventually arrived at the cell area to explain my reasons and grounds for the arrest to the custody sergeant. I was pleased to find out that ‘the Monkey Man’ was indeed a prolific burglar and was on bail for a similar offence. I did the necessary paperwork to hand the job over to CID, who would interview him the following morning.
When he eventually went to court, the Monkey Man pleaded guilty to four other burglaries and the assault on me. He received just a four-month prison sentence for the burglaries and a conditional discharge (a conviction without a punishment) for the assault. I received a written commendation from a senior officer for the arrest.
I made the transfer to Millgarth Division in December 1995, just weeks after the job at the Co-op. My first memory is one of bewilderment. I remember spending almost an hour in nose-to-tail traffic, as I made my first journey to the station, a complete contrast to Cleckheaton in the Dewsbury Division, where the journey took fifteen minutes at most. I wanted the change, though, and this was just a small price to pay. I yearned for the challenges of the hectic routine of city policing, something that up to this point I hadn’t experienced.
When I arrived, I struggled into the station clasping onto a mountain of police uniform, which meant that I had to walk sideways so that I could see where I was going. I asked the office clerk to press the buzzer on the door to let me in. She seemed amused as I tripped over my long overcoat, which was hanging out of the pile of clothes I was carrying, and as I sprawled onto the floor, I looked up at her. She politely tried to hide her merriment.
It’s okay, you can laugh,’ I said as I scrambled to my feet. ‘I would.’
‘Are you PC Bunting?’ she asked, rather red-faced.
‘I am.’ I brushed the front of my trousers down with my hands as I stood up. I walked over to the desk and held out my hand. ‘Mick,’ I said.
‘Hello, Mick,’ she replied, letting out a little giggle. ‘I’m Christine. You need to take the lift to the third floor. Your sergeant is expecting you.’
Lift? This was a big place! Cleckheaton was a world away from here, its police station an old converted terraced house. My nerves and excitement amalgamated and I hurried to the third floor, where I found my unsuspecting sergeant tucking into a hearty English breakfast. I thought this might be my second mistake of the day, arriving just as he was on his meal break. He gave me instructions as to where to get my locker key and told me to get settled and he’d see me in ten minutes or so. He looked a little displeased by my arrival at this critical time in his day. I got on with the laborious task of making several visits from the car to my locker with heaps of police clothing. Christine looked amused each time I precariously walked past her. I think she anticipated another blunder. So did I.
Eventually, the job was done. I tidied myself up and went to my first Millgarth briefing. I felt a little nervous, but nothing out of the ordinary for someone starting a new job. I was introduced to the shift and began to find my way around the station. I was left off operational duties for the first hour so that I could get to know the building. I spent my time wisely and introduced myself to the various departments in the station. Everybody seemed welcoming and I felt at ease relatively quickly.
I was told that I’d have to spend the rest of the day driving around the division with my map of Leeds so that I could familiarise myself with the vastness of my new workplace. I already knew the city centre quite well, but I was amazed at just how hard it was to make progress through the busy traffic. I ventured to the outskirts, where I was faced with a different problem. The streets intertwined seemingly at random. I would spend long periods trying to get from one street to another, only to be beaten by the complexity of the layout. Just as I thought I’d cracked it, I’d be greeted by a set of bollards in the middle of the road. It seemed ironic that the bollards, put in place to prevent joy riders, were blocking my route in a marked police car.
I tried to respond to calls to which other units were being sent as a means of testing myself. Every so often, I’d need to pull into the side of the road, as I looked up the street which I would have had to attend. Usually the other units had arrived, sorted the job out and departed before I’d even got there.
I continued driving around and discovered two areas of Leeds which looked particularly problematic in terms of law and order. The first, Little London, was a small suburb comprised mainly of high-rise flats. They were a depressing sight; just looking at them produced a feeling of inertia. They were listless. Even though they were spilling with inhabitants, to me they projected a sense of indolence, as people with seemingly
