Wanted On Warrant

I'm back in the days of the good old Proactive Unit in Dystopia - a sergeant who had the luxury of patrolling with his officers and laying hands on criminals. We're tasked with arresting a Billy Burglar whose DNA has come back on a docket for an aggravated burglary. It was quite a nasty burglary too. Billy was found in the living room by the elderly victim and delivered a hit to the victim's head with a cosh. That wasn't the nasty bit, however. This elderly gentleman was a veteran of the Kenyan War against the Mau Mau. A hard nut, who later recounted the stories of the battles he fought. The veteran, after being hit, responded with a crack on Billy's head with his walking stick. Billy's blood was everywhere - a SOCO's dream - and he was soon marked as a wanted man.

We'd gone to Billy's address on two prior occassions. The first was at the usual warrant-enquiry time of 6 am. It's a good time to catch a Billy. Either they're in a drug induced sleep after spending the night burglarising homes to pay for their crack cocaine, or they're resting ready to wake at 10am in order to burglarise houses when decent people are at work. This time, there was no reply to our repeated knocking and gentle pushes against his door. I looked at his pre-pay electricity metre and saw that there was about 68 pence left. I lodged this in my memory in the knowledge we'd try again the following day.

Second try - again there is no response from Billy's address. We try to look through the curtains, but can't see a thing. I know Billy's inside. I can feel it. As we're leaving, I remember the electricity metre reading. I open the box and lo and behold, it now has over £20 in credit. Billy is in there, but without our seeing signs of life to suggest he is, we decide against forcing the door to search the premises. If he's not there, he'll know we're onto him and may go underground at a friend's address. We'd also have to spend at least an hour waiting for the boarding-up services to arrive, and we've other ne'er-do-wells to catch that day.

This requires a bit of cunning. Billy thinks he's smart, but he's not. We've dealt with many such low-lifes as him before, and we've caught the lot of them. Back at the station we resort to a tried and tested technique...

One of my officers puts on the luminous Royal Mail jacket and blue baseball cap, and grabs a clip board. He's attached an envelope to it. The plan is self-evident. He'll knock on Billy's door, Billy will see the trademark jacket, will ask what he wants, then open the door to sign for the letter. At that point we'll have our man.

This is what happens, it all goes exactly to plan. My officers handcuff Billy in his hallway and I go outside to radio for a van to take him back to the station. Suddenly I hear Billy shouting and screaming. What the hell is he trying to do? He's handcuffed. There's no way he can escape. I go inside and start calming Billy down.

"What the hell's wrong with you Billy?"

"Your f*cking officer, he's taking the p*ss".

I look at my officer who is in fits of laughter.

"What's going on?"

"Sarge, he asked what's inside the letter, so I showed him."

I see the scrumpled piece of paper on the floor and pick it up. I open it to read what my officer has written.

"You're nicked!"

Hobbesllian Footnote: I feel the need to point out that I severley chastised the officer for displaying his wholly unprofessional attitude towards Billy Burglar. It is imperative that we respect the rights of individuals who break into people's homes and are quite prepared to assault the elderly residents, having no regard to the injury this may cause.

The Labour Theory Of Property Part 1

As had been widely reported by the media last year, and as I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, the government set about releasing prisoners early so as to ease prison overcrowding. The prisoners that were released were those that had supposedly been convicted for 'minor' crimes, mostly theft-related offences. And so it came to pass that quite a few Billy Burglars and Rodney Robbers were given the delightful opportunity to steal more of your hard-earned possessions much earlier than they had expected. They could therefore continue to fund their prolific heroin and crack addictions. Or, as more often than not, to simply buy an eighth of weed for their evening's entertainment, whilst discussing how marvellous it would be if McDonald's did home deliveries.

So what's the big deal? Surely 'minor' offences such as the theft, burglary and robbery of equally 'minor' property such as mobile telephones, DVD players, laptops, LCD televisions and even cars could reasonably justify the early release of such people? Those items are just objects after all, mere material possessions that can be replaced via your home or car insurance policies. Well, it is a big deal. It is a big deal and is morally reprehensible to the victims, and The Labour Theory of Property will highlight why. Please bear with me on the following philosophy bit, it only consists of a paragraph, and has been written in the most simplest of terms that enabled me to understand it.

The Philosophy Bit. The 18th Century philosopher John Locke , (not the T.V character from 'Lost'), asked under what authority can anyone claim ownership of any part of the world if, according to the Bible, God gave the world to all mankind in common? He reasoned that as a man has ownership of his own person, they therefore have ownership over their own labour. When a person works their labour enters into the object, making the object an extension of that person, and that item their property. So how does this relate to the victims of everyday theft-related crimes that police officers deal with on a regular basis?

The Back to Reality Bit. I was extremely fortunate to be a sergeant on the Dystopian Proactive Unit prior to my promotion last year, and it has been the highlight of my career thus far. Robbery and burglary were rife. It was our job to reduce them and within months we did. It wasn't too difficult to achieve in all honesty, as it was impossible to turn a corner without coming across a Rodney (the Billy's were much more slippery characters, but long operations eventually bore the fruits of our labour). Dystopia itself is a depressing landscape of high-rise blocks - failed architectural experiments in social integration - inhabited by Diaspora who had arrived in the 'Earth's Anus' hoping to make a better life for themselves and their families. Instead, they entered into an environment where the conditions of life are miserable, characterised by human misery, poverty, violence, disease, pollution, and a level of depravation comparable to whatever Third World country they had just left.

Another day, another robbery call, another 12 year-old victim. Except this one was different. There was something about this boy's circumstances that resonated with me; that drove me to reflect on the reasons why I joined the police; and that caused me to recall the many philosophical principles, such as the one above, that reminded me why I did. In my next blog I will explain why, but in the meantime, contemplate and meditate upon what I have written thus far...