Police Life - Driver Licence Testing

Here's a photo of me flying an F18 jet fighter simulator. It's a little more complex than driving a motor vehicle, however, it would probably be an excellent idea to have simulators for learner drivers. (Let me know if you have seen any, I know they have them for mining machinery.)

Well before all the automated reverse-parking cams, warning beepers, road alignment sensors, and other fancy technology came along, I spent six months testing drivers every couple of weeks. It was a rostered duty, 8 am to 4 pm with driver testing the main objective.

It was a break from the business of evening and night shift attending pub fights, break and enters, domestic violence, missing teenage daughters, traffic incidents, and drink drivers etc. And it wasn't without a few good laughs, much needed in policing.

The Sexy Candidates

A couple of times in any week I was rostered, an attractive 17-18-year-old woman would roll up for her driving test with the shortest skirt, the loosest blouse, or loveliest nipples I had ever seen either visible or sticking through a tightly knit top.

As they got in their car, they would pull up their skirts exposing their young, smooth thighs and occasionally their underwear. Some of the braver ladies would tell me, "Dad told me if I wore a short skirt, I'd have a better chance of passing."

I was in my very early thirties and despite finding the conversation starters and lovely thighs arousing, I had a job to do and had to do it professionally. I rarely answered the braver ladies and managed to focus on their driving ability and not their ability to arouse me. I was also married and while I enjoyed admiring the beauty of these women, kept my focus where it should be.

Most passed. Not because of their physical appearance, but because they were able to safely control a vehicle and comply with the traffic rules.

The Idiots

These are the one or two people who were stupid enough to turn up for a driving test with a vehicle that was obviously defective. Tyres with hardly any tread pattern, parts of the body of the vehicle missing (under repair they'd say), handbrakes that didn't work, no horn, mirrors missing and a host of other defects.

They didn't get to do a licence test, but they did go home with a defect notice and one or more traffic infringement notices. As the vehicles were unroadworthy, they'd have to get them towed away.

Unbelievable.

The Scary

The scariest two incidents I had during my testing career involved a handbrake failure and an inability to stop a reversing automatic vehicle.

There weren't many hills where we tested, but one was very steep and we used it to test people doing a stop and start on a slope. It led to a T intersection.

I always taught my candidates to turn their front wheels slightly inward and select the first gear so that if something happened to the handbrake, or to move the vehicle, it wouldn't roll down the hill.

One day a young man who had been driving quite well drove up the hill, positioned the vehicle and was just about to turn the wheels inward and "snap!" The handbrake cable snapped and we began rolling backwards towards the T junction.

I yelled at him, "Apply the footbrake! Apply the footbrake!" and fortunately, he managed to stop the car across the intersection road without launching into the house directly behind us. We were both shaken by the incident and needed to get out of the way before traffic approached.

We managed to get back to what we were doing and I gave him his licence despite not having fully completed the handbrake start due to no fault of his. I gave him a defect notice without penalty to get the handrake cable replaced. 

The next case was with a woman driver in her 60-70s going for her first licence (see next topic). Automatic cars weren't as common then as they are now and she had one for her test. It should have been a breeze, but when we did a standard reversing street park, she reversed into the parking spot and then continued in a curve only to pull up in the middle of the road forming a 90 degree angle. Thank goodness there were no vehicles travelling at the time.

I had to decline issue of her driver's licence.

The Fails

Fails during my testing were rare, I can only recall two. One was the woman above and there was another woman in her later years whom I also failed because it would have been dangerous to let them loose on Queensland's roads.

The two women were about my mother's age and it pained me to fail them, however, safety is always the highest priority. Theirs and other road users.

Their stories were familiar. Each had lived on a nearby cane farm and their husbands had done all the driving since they had married. There had been no need for them to drive, but both were now widows and needed to be able to drive to attend appointments, go shopping and visit family.

At this late stage in their lives, they needed a driving licence more than ever.

When someone booked for a test, there was a six-week waiting period. However, I treated them as special cases and told them what they needed to practise and to call me when they felt competent to do a test and that even if I wasn't rostered on to do driver testing, I would do a test with them so they didn't have to wait and I also got them driving to the several key places they visited so that they were familiar with them.

Both improved their driving and managed to pass within a few weeks.

There are some things police officers can't ignore but I and most of the police with whom I worked always exercised compassion when it was called for and endeavoured to be fair and reasonable.

Robin

Lending a Hand - Traffic Accident

For a little over four years, I worked with the Traffic Accident Investigation Squad that covered the larger Brisbane Metropolitan area. Our role was only to attend fatal traffic incidents and those where dangerous driving or criminal negligence was concerned.

It was a tough job spending our working days watching people kill each other or themselves on our roads. It was especially difficult when victims were young children and those whose deaths were preventable had an iota of common sense prevailed.

While working, we didn't have time to think about the deceased and broken. We had to do the work measuring the road, drawing a map, photographing the vehicles and interviewing witnesses. 

Afterwards, the reality that someone's life had ended and that their loved ones would be heartbroken and never see them again would come into our thoughts. It was a policing task wherein we were dealing with largely lovely people (the families) and not the usual misfits we'd deal with in other areas of policing. The criminals, wife bashers, sex offenders.

All of us in the section drank too much and sometimes we used humour to get us through the day as shown in this photograph of a very old Holden sedan in which a young person was killed. He let his expectations exceed his ability when cornering and rolled the vehicle. I took numerous photos of the scene, but this one attracted my attention. I thought there was a certain irony in it.

We worked in teams of two and one week we had a young police cadet assigned to us for training. I guess he would have been 16-17 years old and keen about getting experience in traffic accident investigation.

My colleague and I were on a 7 am to 3 pm shift and just after 8 am we received a call from Police Operations that a fatal had occurred. The boss asked us to take the cadet with us, which we did.

We hopped into our F100 Ford truck commonly known as the "Death Mobile" and headed to the scene. A couple of local police was in attendance directing traffic around the scene and it appeared that a guy on a motorcycle had overtaken and hadn't seen (or perhaps thought he could beat) a cement truck coming the opposite way.

Unfortunately for him, he had hit the side of the truck and the scoop had taken off his right arm and some part of the truck had smacked into the right side of his helmet.

The body was lying on the roadway with what was left of his helmet intact and he obviously had a missing arm. 

While I asked the cadet to hold the end of a tape measure, my colleague walked up and down the road looking for the arm. After he found it, he covered it with a piece of rag and came over to us and said to the cadet, "Can I give you a hand?" and passed the limb to the cadet.

He almost passed out. After telling us it wasn't funny and calling my colleague a ghoul, he did what we asked and placed the arm with the body which by now had been covered. He was visibly shaken for a while as he hadn't seen a dead body before, let alone one with bloodied injuries and an arm savagely pulled from its socket. My colleague and I thought it was a great joked but after a short laugh, got back to work.

After we had finished up at the scene, on the trip back to the office, we talked to him about how it was necessary to have some diversion strategies, including humour to survive.

We made sure he helped follow up with several witness interviews, and attended the autopsy of the deceased.

When he left our office and returned to the Police Academy, he assured us he had gained a lot from us and appreciated the experience.

Another day of policing.

Robin

Police Life - Working Radar

Marconi Radar System

When I worked radar detecting speeding vehicles in the mid-70s, we used Marconi static radar equipment.

At left is a more modern version than we used. Ours was a grey box with four legs that sat on the side of the road and cast a radar beam at 45 degrees forward across the road. It had a round dial with speeds from zero to about 140 km/hr.

When we began our shift, we'd pick up a police vehicle, a 12 v battery (same as a car battery), the Marconi set, a spool with several hundred metres of dual-core cable, an office chair, and an audio box. It was fairly primitive.

When we chose a scene, we'd set everything up and then drive our police car through the radar beam at 60 and 80 km/hr to check that the radar was working correctly.

We'd roll out the dual-core cable to the place where we would stop offenders, and hook it up to the audio speaker.

Then we'd get to work. We'd hide the vehicle and a sergeant would operate the Marconi.

When a vehicle exceeded the speed limit by over 10 km, the sergeant would say something like, "74 on the green Mazda". We'd walk out onto the road and signal the driver to stop.

We'd then advise the driver we had detected a breach of the speed limit and issue a Traffic Offence Notice (TON).

It was a pretty ordinary job, but occasionally we'd get to chat with lovely young women, arrest drink drivers and people who abused us, and occasionally have a laugh at someone else's expense.

We worked with one sergeant who, on evening shifts, always brought a briefcase with him. He said it was his paperwork, but it weighed a tonne on the rare occasions we could actually pick it up - he was very defensive of his briefcase. Inside were three or four bottles of beer - 750 ml bottles.

While we wrote out TONs, he'd be sitting in the dark drinking beer.

Every few shifts, we'd see a vehicle approaching that was obviously doing well over the speed limit and we'd hear nothing on our audio. We'd press our audio button and ask, "Are you there serge?" No answer.

We'd leave it for a few minutes thinking our colleague may have taken a walk to urinate. We'd call again. Still no answer.

One of us would walk the 300 m back to the sergeant only to find him asleep with no evidence of the empty beer bottles which he would have thrown into the scrub. We'd wake him up and get back to work until he told us to pack up.

One day we tied a log to the audio cable after we'd told the sergeant on audio to wind in the cable. He wasn't impressed at having dragged a large log 300 m, but eventually saw the funny side.

Another day one of our teams tied a stray dog to the cable. It was pretty unhappy by the time it had been pulled 300 m by a force it didn't quite understand and then had to confront a pissed-off sergeant. 

When we worked one Christmas Day the serge told us he didn't want to write too many tickets just concentrate on really fast speeding. "After all, it was Christmas", he said.

There was very little traffic about, but one driver we had to pull up - 25 km over the speed limit. The sergeant told us to ask him hadn't he seen the radar set and give him a ticket for 10 km over which was less expensive. So we did that.

When we reported to the sergeant that he'd not seen the Marconi, the sergeant pulled it closer to the edge of the road. As expected, we never got to write another ticket for the day.

His strategy of kindness at Christmas worked well.

Next edition - lending a hand.

Robin

Police Life - The Habitual Drunkard

Although I had several years of policing experience, after I completed my initial training at the Police Academy, I had to spend another six months on rotation through several police stations to continue training before being assigned to a permanent station.

Everyone in those days started at the bottom as a rookie, despite my being the only one of our course of 20 having prior police experience.

The first station I got transferred to was in an upmarket suburb south of Brisbane next to a huge shopping centre.

A Sergeant First Class was in charge. He was a tad humourless but didn't drink at work and ran a tight ship. After introducing me to other officers, he assigned me to the front desk on reception duties. Most of my time was spent writing stock permits, typing up driver's licence renewals, inspecting motor vehicle roadworthiness and engine numbers and, handling various public enquiries.

One day we received a call from the public to advise us a drunk person was sleeping on the seat at a bus stop. A senior constable who had over 10 years of service was assigned the task and he took me with him. We had known each other for a few weeks and got on quite well. I was always pleased to get out of the office.

The bus stop was only half a kilometre from the station. We parked in the bus zone and inspected the drunk male who was probably in his 60s. His accompanying bottle of happiness was a common brand called Masarla and it seemed that after about one-third of a bottle and he was happy enough to sleep. 

We arrested the drunk for the heinous offence of "drunk and incapable in a public place" under an Act assented to in the Thirties called, "The Vagrants, Gaming and Other Offences Act" and loaded the drunk into our patrol van.

We drove to the Police Watchhouse at South Brisbane and offloaded and processed our drunk knowing that he would appear before a magistrate the following morning and get a $1 fine and be released. We drove back to our station.

A couple of days passed and another call about a drunkard came. This time, a drunken male was lying on the footpath outside a small general store. The senior constable and I once again made the trip this time to the shop. Much to our surprise, it was the same man and another bottle of Marsala with about two-thirds remaining.

We did the long trip to the watchhouse and back and my colleague said to me, "If this prick turns up again, I'll take him out and shoot him."

Three or four days went by and yes, you guessed it, another call from a disgruntled driver who got out of her car to go into a shop and a drunken male had moved into the passenger seat. Could we please help?

Off we went. And again the Marsala drinking drunk sat leaning in front of us again. We removed him from the woman's car, much to her delight, and once again lifted the drunk into our patrol van.

I was driving and when I headed down the shortest route to the watchhouse, my senior colleague told me to take an alternative route and pointed in the direction.

In the 70s, the road we were taking headed to a seaside suburb and was like being in the country; hardly any housing or built-up areas. I asked my colleague why we were heading in this direction and he assured me he'd get rid of the drunk for good.

I started to panic inside. What did he mean? Surely his comment about shooting him was simply jest? I hoped so.

When we reached just past an intersection, he asked me to pull over to the side of the road. There were no people and no passing traffic. He asked me to help him lift the man out of the van and it took a lot of encouragement for me to do so. My heart rate must have been thumping as we laid the man on the ground well off the side of the road.

My thoughts were racing. Is he really going to shoot this guy? I would be implicated in a murder. I'd get goaled - who would look after my family? Oh my god, I had heard about the Queensland Police Force being a Hill Billy Outfit, but nothing like this had ever occurred to me.

I decided that if my colleague went to shoot the drunk, I'd have to shoot him first to save this person's life. I placed my hand near my shoulder holster and gripped the handle. I'd have to be quick. Pull out the weapon and perhaps do a lower abdomen shot so as to disable him but reduce risk of death. 

My colleague pulled out his 38 Calibre Smith and Wesson standard issue, swung it round his finger like a cowboy and slid it back in its holster. Fortunately, he didn't point it anywhere near the drunk, otherwise it may have ended in disaster for both of us.

I asked why we had left this guy on the side of the road and he told me that the intersection nearby was the outside limit of our patrol area and in another policing district. He got on the radio and advised Police Communications that a driver had told him a body was lying on the side of the road in the nearby police district.

The police from that district would have attended to our drunken friend and we never saw him again. Problem solved by my senior colleague. Ain't experience great?

Robin

PS: Next issue I'll discuss what we did with these people at Easter and Christmas

Police Life - Introduction

During my work life, I spent around 14 years in policing. I often say I was a police officer until I came good, however, I have great respect for police and the very difficult, often dangerous job they do.

I started my policing career in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) where I was a service policeman.

After discharge from the RAAF, I joined the Tasmania Police where I spent the next two years and only left because the woman of my life came from Queensland and didn't envisage living in Tasmania after we got married. When you have found a "keeper" you do what you can to keep her and to date, it's lasted 48 years. In retrospect, my choice of life-partner was an excellent one as my wife is almost perfect and I often wondered whether I was the less perfect in our relationship.

When we got married I joined the Queensland Police Force (QPF) (and spent about a decade).

The Tasmania Police during the short time I worked there was a slick, well-disciplined operation and later, I often regretted leaving. The QPF by comparison when I joined was a Keystone Cops outfit but Commissioner Ray Whitrod was doing his best to change it into a top-rate policing agency.

Large numbers of the senior staff had severe alcoholic problems and more than enough were subsequently incompetent or disinterested enough not to give a shit about much that happened. Levels of literacy among older officers was often below par.

Promotion by seniority meant that the incompetent and disinterested alcoholics only had to last the distance to get into the higher echelons. A certain recipe for failure that ensured a police force operating at minimal efficiency and effectiveness.

It didn't help that Queensland had a Bjelke Petersen government that had been in power for decades. Neither did it help that Commissioner Whitrod had not come from the ranks of the QPF and was resented by many of the long-term officers.

Despite considerable difficulties from both the government, the Police Union and some senior staff, Whitrod managed to make a considerable number of positive changes.

One of Commissioner Whitrod's innovations was to encourage a better educated police force by ensuring promotion from constable first class to senior constable after seven years instead of about 10. One had to have a Senior English pass and complete several subjects in a TAFE Police Arts and Science Course. 

At the bottom of the seniority ladder, I needed the job, liked my colleagues and had a wife and two young children to feed, clothe and house. As my first-born was hearing impaired, my wife, a registered nurse/midwife, didn't work so she could care for him, so finances were a balancing act for quite a few years on one salary.

We survived from one pay to the next and I worked as much overtime as I could while also studying for adult matriculation and later, a degree.

One of Commissioner Whitrod's innovations was to encourage a better educated police force by ensuring promotion from constable first class to senior constable after seven years instead of about 10. One had to have a Senior English pass and complete several subjects in a TAFE Police Arts and Science Course. 

I liked policing. I felt as though I was doing some good protecting and serving the Queensland community. I liked my colleagues and looked forward to going to work. The drunken senior sergeants and othes were just something one had to cope with.

Among the many personal skills and attributes police officer need are resilience to deal with stupid people and an excellent sense of humour.

In following posts I'll tell you about some of the interesting people I met and the humorous events that kept us sane while serving you, our community.

Robin