Hoax

Seven emergencies; two hoax calls, one assisted only and one standby. The rest went by ambulance.

Sheila's Wheels called me. I thought at first they had seen the blog and were about to complain but it was just to see if I needed anything after my accident. The 'Sheila' was actually very nice and kept asking if I had been hurt. She told me not to hesitate if I developed any neck pain or other problems. I wonder if there's a commission system for such claims. I certainly wouldn't lie about an injury because, at the very least, it would affect the young lady's insurance premium when she renews. I'm sure she is in enough trouble already now that she has made a claim.

It also occurred to me how easy it was to fall into the 'where's there's a blame, there's a claim' culture. So many people are getting rich at the expense of a few unfortunates. Some of those who do make a claim are no doubt genuine cases but how many have been enticed to say the word 'whiplash' at the behest of an insurance company? I'd only have to lie about neck pain and I could pay off some of my debts. I won't though because it's not me and never will be.

I didn't start my duties 'til just after 9pm. More than two hours were spent moving from one car to another because of confusion about who was assigned to what vehicle and where the keys were to the one I was given. I swapped a lot of equipment from one car to another, then another only to find out that the keys for the first vehicle had turned up. So, I moved everything back again. I was dehydrated at the end of it all. Who needs the gym?

First call of the shift and it's a hoax. Someone has been making calls every night over the past week from the same call boxes. He simply hangs up. On the single occasion that he called the police, he ranted abuse at them.

When the next call came in I was asked to scoot to the location and try and catch him in the act. Then the police could be called to arrest him. When I got there he was gone (having a bright yellow car isn't always an advantage). He was close by though because the call had only just been made, so I stuck around.

A gang of police officers came up to the car and asked if I had seen him yet. They had all been sent to track this guy down (there were six of them). While I was describing how I had just missed him a familiar shape walked into view. It was someone I have had a lot of trouble with in the past - he has attacked me with a bottle, threatened me and generally been unpleasant. I'll call him MD and I'm sure that any LAS bod from central who are reading this will know who exactly I'm describing.

The police formed a little circle around him and asked him about the calls. He denied everything of course but he is a practised liar. He has been calling us out for imaginary problems (and some that he has staged for impact) for years. I have known him for two years and I remember how gullible I was when I first came across him. I can say without much fear of reprisal that he is a time waster of the highest order. He is also dangerous.

This man contributes nothing to society. He costs the tax payer tens of thousands of pounds every year with his antics and he is known by almost every crew and almost every cop in this part of London. There seems to be nothing we can do about him. An ASBO has been suggested and it may well be that he has had one but it won't stop him. I think he wants to go back to prison.

Anyway, the police couldn't prove he was the hoax caller, so they had to let him go. As soon as they were gone, he made threatening gestures at me while I sat in the car doing my paperwork. I moved along to somewhere else. It was the wise thing to do.

It felt like a Friday night out there; so many drunken people spilling out of bars and clubs in the middle of the week. My next two calls were for 'collapsed' males, one of whom was so out of it he could barely see. His friends became aggressive when I tried to help. He had collapsed outside a tube station and his mates, who were French, started in on me. I was threatened in French by a tall, skinny guy and he was getting kinda close, so I told him to back off and said I could understand everything he had said to me. I did, in fact.

Meanwhile, his other mate (an Israeli) would not stop talking at me and prodding me for no reason. Enough was enough; I asked for the police. When they arrived they dragged every one of the drunk man's friends off him and let me get close enough to start my obs. The crew had arrived by now and it was decided just to get him into the ambulance where it was safer. I left them to it.

Around the corner another male had collapsed. A 40 year-old man in a suit and a decent pair of shoes lay motionless on the ground. Two doormen from Stringfellows were watching him and told me he had just fallen down and stopped moving. I was glad to have them behind me - they were big guys and I knew that, at the first sign of trouble, they would wade in.

The man was easily roused and I explained that he was lying on the pavement.

"Do you need an ambulance?" I asked

"Yes" he said

Why?" I asked

"You just told me that you have no medical problems and that you are just drunk"

Then he mumbled stuff I couldn't decipher because I haven't learned to speak drunk yet.

The crew arrived (they had parked down the road a little because they thought this was a no-trace...so did I at first) and I let them finish what I had started. I had him sitting up with his eyes open and they got him to his feet and on the way to a taxi. He'll probably fall down or be found 'unconscious' on a bus in someone else's territory.

Meanwhile, the hoaxer had been making a few more calls and the police had arrested someone in the callbox where one or two of the calls had originated. It's unlikely it was the real culprit because I believe it was MD and no other. Nobody hates us more than he does.

After my break I was asked to investigate a call which had originated from a callbox in the same area that the hoaxer was haunting. This 999 plea was for a 35 year-old male who had been stabbed in the chest. There had been a lot of stabbings all over London tonight, including at least one fatality but because we had been running around in circles for this caller, it was up to me to decide whether or not it was genuine.

Control advised me to "be careful". I put the eyes into the back of my head.

On scene and a few telephone boxes later but no sign of a stabbing victim. Usually there is a degree of panic - people shouting and screaming, that sort of thing but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I reported back to Control and told them I would do a quick area search but, in the meantime, perhaps it would be best to cancel the ambulance (someone may get stabbed for real somewhere else). I had just completed that call when a small group of police officers (they were all running about in gangs tonight) approached the car and told me that a man had been stabbed and was in another street. Uh oh. Then the man appeared from the shadows. He had a bloodied shirt wrapped around his chest.

I advised Control and the ambulance was updated. The crew arrived as I was calming the man down. He had a single stab wound to his chest; it had penetrated but didn't look too deep. He had no breathing problems and he seemed in good shape, considering.

He was taken to the ambulance for a thorough check and then transported to hospital. Allegedly, he had been set upon by three black men wearing hoodies. They had dragged him into an alley and demanded his ipod. He had refused, so one of them pulled up his shirt and deliberately stabbed him in the chest with a screwdriver (or similar instrument). It sounded like a cold-bloodied and callous attack, more to do with the rite of passage earned through stabbing someone (anyone) than through material gain. This is far more common than you'd think.

He will survive because the assailant was clumsy. If the wound had gone deeper, it would have penetrated his lung and collapsed it. His life would then be in danger. Surviving the assault was more luck than chance.

I rolled down toward Leicester Square to do my paperwork and a cordon had appeared. There were police vehicles building up in the area and I thought it might have something to do with the stabbing. Then I thought it was all a bit too much for that. My DSO turned up and he explained that a suspicious package had been found.

The cordon quickly began to fill up; 5 Fire engines, 2 HART vehicles, myself and the DSO and at least a dozen police vehicles, not including the dog handlers and bomb disposal unit. It was 4.30am and the whole area around Leicester Square was closed off. It was eerily quiet and for a while there was a little sea of blue lights.

I waited on standby with the DSO and my colleagues from the HART teams until the all-clear was given. The culprit had been caught and arrested and the 'bomb' turned out to be nothing of importance (a bag with some bottles of liquid I believe).

I got a real sense of just how seriously these suspect devices are taken. It wouldn't take much to bring Central London to a halt without even planting a real device.

Finally, I get back to my base station only to be pulled out with ten minutes to go. Luckily, it’s a job just around the corner, ‘60 year-old male fallen from bike, head injury’. Well, he had grazes to his face after he went over the handlebars of his bike. He was lying on the ground with a couple of people around him to help out. One man in particular seemed a little over zealous and before I knew what was going on he had got someone to ‘phone for the police. The police weren’t interested – it was a simple accident, so I took the ‘phone and told them all was well...

I cleaned the man up, listened to how he came to land on the ground so hard (his front brakes seized) and offered him up to the ambulance crew when they arrived. It was going home time and my eyes were stinging with tiredness. It all starts again tonight...

Be safe.