three months harrowing. The paperwork involved for each shoplifter could take up to four hours; I can leave you to guess how I felt when I saw six or seven prisoners on the board for my attention. I could quite easily be dealing with shoplifters until one or two in the morning. In the main, the average offender was aged between sixteen and twenty-five and often they stole to feed their drug addiction.
Of course, there were exceptions. The strangest job I encountered whilst I was on the squad was when I arrested a woman in her mid-fifties at House of Fraser in the city. She was quiet and very well-spoken and looked immaculate. She had a ring on her finger with a gem the size of my thumbnail. It must have been worth thousands. Her perfume was recognisably one of the highest quality. When I searched through the property she was carrying with her, I found she had several gold credit cards and an equal number of debit cards and cheque-books, all of which were legitimate. There was no doubt she had considerable spending power, yet here I was arresting her for the theft of a £20 cutlery set. I lodged her in a cell before going to her house to perform a search in accordance with PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act).
I was amazed by what I found. It was not the usual journey to Hyde Park or Little London, but to one of the more affluent areas of Leeds—Alwoodley, not an area where you would usually suspect its inhabitants of being shoplifters. Upon my arrival, I informed the lady’s husband what had happened. He just looked at me with a sorry expression and said, ‘Oh no, not again.’ I suspected that she had an ongoing problem.
Searching the house was no easy task. In the basement, there was a large gymnasium and a swimming pool, beautifully lit with underwater lights which made the water glow green. I found nothing of any note until I got to one of the spare rooms upstairs. I opened the door and it was like a department store warehouse, full of brand new goods, still in their original wrappers. There were about twenty sets of cutlery and the woman obviously had a fetish for soap, as I found about three hundred bars, ranging from store own-brands to the best quality bars costing over £20 each. There were no receipts to be found anywhere. The husband looked mortified. I believed him when he told me that he didn’t know those things were there, as the house was so large and the room felt cold, as if it wasn’t used for living in. I called for a van and then began the massive task of seizing and logging all of the suspected stolen items. It took me three hours just to list them on a property record sheet.
I returned to the Bridewell, to a rather angry-looking custody sergeant who wanted to know where I had been. I informed him of the situation and so he called the lady’s solicitor, despite the fact that she had stated that she didn’t wish him to be present.
I conducted the interview with her. It took over two hours, as I had to question her about every item. In her quiet manner, she admitted to stealing them all. What I found most surprising was the fact she remembered the date and location of the theft of everything. She was remorseless, but I don’t think she knew what she’d been doing, I think it was more an addiction. It was decided that the best way of dealing with the woman was by means of a help group and her condition of bail was to attend weekly meetings to rid her of her habitual stealing. She agreed to this and the decision was eventually taken not to prosecute her. As far as I know, she never offended again. It took me over two months to return all the stolen property to the appropriate stores, some of which weren’t aware they’d even had goods stolen from them.
Whilst on the same squad, I once did a house search in Beeston, a suburb of South Leeds, following the arrest of a habitual shoplifter. The house was a two bedroom terraced dwelling and the first thing I noticed was flies buzzing around the bare light bulb, which precariously hung from the ceiling. There were piles of soiled clothing on the floor and the only remaining carpet spaces were covered with cat excrement. There were remains of food on a plate on the sofa, but this had formed a layer of mould and looked virtually unrecognisable. There were several used needles in the bedroom and I found a spoon with a burn mark on it in the bed.
The most repulsive sight was the bathroom. The water in the toilet filled the pan to the top and it was stained black. There were carrier bags tied up on the floor, containing human excrement. There were faeces floating in the bath, too. More distressing was the presence of a cot on the landing right outside the bathroom. The stench was too much and I did the best search possible under the circumstances, before going back to interview the eighteen-year-old mother of two. She was charged with the offence of theft from shops: she’d stolen toiletries and nappies.
Dealing with people like this saddened me. This woman had no chance of breaking her cycle of crime and I felt no satisfaction from charging her, as I knew that her crime was not driven by malice, but by an instinct to survive. I pitied her greatly and found myself making her several cups of tea during her time in custody. Just three days before her court appearance, she was found dead in her house. She had drawn a headstone on her bedroom wall and written the letters RIP on it. She had then lain next to it and taken an overdose of heroin. Her life had become too much. Her children had been with the body for two days before it was discovered. The eldest had eaten bits of flesh from her arms just to stay alive. This was another part of the job that I found difficult to deal with.
As you’d expect, I was glad when those three months were completed. I was pleased to be back with my shift patrolling the streets of Leeds city centre. Almost as soon as I’d finished my time in the shop squad, I made an arrest that attracted national media attention.
One night in January 1997, I was on another night duty. It was Saturday and, as always, we were anticipating a busy night. I didn’t expect, however, to arrest this particular person. It was around midnight and I was driving the police van past the Majestyk nightclub in the centre of the city. I was with my colleague, PC Dave Braddock. There was a long queue of people outside the club, shivering in the freezing temperatures. My attention was then drawn to the other side of the road, to a group of men. They were lively, excitable and loud, but seemingly nothing other than in good spirits on a night out.
Then, without reason, one of the men shouted across towards us. His words were scathing of the police in general and his language was expletive. I was surprised by the blatant nature of the comments. He was a tall, thin man, well dressed and daubed in chunky gold jewellery. He kept on walking towards us and stood directly in front of the car. He looked in at us and shouted once again, ‘You fucking pigs.’ It was at this point that I recognised him.
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