Confessions of an Undercover Cop. Ash Cameron

because in policing you are rarely involved with people at their best. After all, unless something’s gone wrong, why would you need the police?

      It’s a strange phenomenon, and a bit perverse, when a good day at work can be a bad day, a sad day or a tragic day. Saving a life is one of those days.

      There are also moments of fun and bizarre absurdity, slivers of sunshine, when you can laugh a real, gutsy belly laugh and know that today is one of the good days. They are golden.

      I would have liked to reach the rank of inspector. Beyond that you become a manager, a pusher of pen and paper or mice and emails. Although the higher ranks are necessary, it’s a totally different job. I finished my service as a detective sergeant and I was happy to settle for that, in the end.

      Officers higher up the chain of command don’t deal with the public. They deal with police officers and bureaucrats and forget what life is like policing the street. The real gutsy jobs are carried out by those who work hands-on with victims and suspects, getting down and dirty, and there are fewer hands-on officers nowadays, at a time when we need them more and more.

      There are lots of opportunities in the police force. I wanted to experience as many as I could. I moved on, did different things, worked in diverse roles with different people in various departments. If I found myself grumbling too much, I knew it was time for change. I believe you make your own future and I’ve never sat around waiting for it to happen.

      I’ve worked in the capital, in the East End, the West End, and north London. I’ve worked somewhere in the North too, in a constabulary. I’ve been a uniformed constable, an undercover cop, a detective and a sergeant. I’ve worked with the public in their many guises – victims, witnesses, prostitutes, rent boys, criminals, suspects, and many professionals in multi-agencies. I worked in London at the height of the IRA bombings and dealt with a few too. It’s scary going to work knowing that you might be bombed at any time. As emergency workers, we’d run towards the explosion whilst urging everyone else to run away, and hoping there wasn’t a secondary device primed to go off on our arrival. I’ve worked with the vulnerable, investigated racial incidents, homophobic attacks, elder abuse, missing people; I’ve worked in witness protection, on murder squads, in domestic violence and child protection. I’ve been a volunteer that took underprivileged kids on week-long camps. I’ve helped out in a women’s refuge and come to the aid of Girl Guide and Brownie packs. I’ve saved lives and failed to save others. I’ve done some good things and I’ve also made mistakes, but I’ve always tried my best.

      I had a fantastic time and have lots of marvellous memories. I miss the job incredibly, every single day. I loved it. All of it. Even when it was bad, it was good. It was part of me and it always meant more to me than perhaps it should have. It has taken a toll, like it does on every one of us who put everything we have into it. There are threats that still bounce around in my head from time to time, spat out by vile people who I helped to send to prison. I think they’re probably out of jail now, and sometimes I feel them looking over my shoulder.

      In the end, I had to make a choice. I could finish the last third of my career on completely restricted duties or take medical retirement due to a physical condition I was diagnosed with. It wasn’t an easy decision and not the way I would have chosen to end my career, but I decided to leave with twenty years’ service when there was a chance to start a different life while my children were young. I gave the job everything I had to give and I still believe the things I believed when I joined. I believe in justice, in right and wrong and, most of all, I still have that desire to help people.

      It’s a brave and frightening world out there, but leaving the police force was not the end of my life, even though at the time I wavered and thought it might be. I’ve had some wonderful, exciting and difficult times. When I left, many people asked what I was going to do. All I knew was I intended to take some time out, be a mum, keep my options open and see where life took me. And I wanted to write, because ever since I could I have written stories and there are so many stories in my head.

      These are my memories of all those things I’ve mentioned I did, and more. Not all of it is pleasant reading, but then not all of society is pleasant.

      I wanted it all and I got a lot. These are my stories, told my way, with names changed to protect the guilty. And the innocent. A colleague might tell them differently.

       In the beginning, there was light

      All of the new recruits were sent to Hendon Police College. I was young, naive, and full of hope, anticipation and excitement, eager to complete the twenty-week residential course and get out onto the streets.

      On the first day we had to swear our allegiance to the Queen. One hundred and sixty of us gathered together in the gym hall that I would come to hate during that twenty weeks.

      A female chief inspector spoke, filling our heads with horror, some reality, a few romantic ideals, and a squiggle of ‘What the hell have I done?’

      ‘Some of you will stick the thirty years. The majority won’t. You’ll love it; you’ll hate it. It won’t always be pretty. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been wounded on duty at least once, so be prepared. You might be injured and it could end your career. You might be shot. Stabbed. Killed. You will get hurt. Get used to it.’

      She paused. ‘Some of you won’t make it through training school. Once on the streets you might decide you’ve had enough of being hated by the public, the press, the politicians and the prisoners, for you are nobody’s friend. Remember that.’

      My head spun. I looked at her. She was tough. I was soft. How would I cope with being hurt? Being hated? I only wanted people to think the best of me.

      ‘But you may love it. It’s the best job in the world when you save a life or stop a suicide. When you help people in the most difficult of circumstances. When you find a missing child and reunite him with a distraught family who feared the worst. But don’t forget, you can be a hero one minute and then you’re back out on the streets being pelted with flying bottles and vicious words.’

      She looked around the room at the sea of fresh untainted faces in front of her.

      ‘It’s a good job if you can hack it. Not of all of you will. There are specialist departments to work in like mounted branch, dog section, CID, or undercover, so deep undercover that sometimes you forget who you are. You might decide to go for promotion. Or stay on the beat. Your whole time served might be in one police station, entrenched in a community. The rewards are there if you want them, but watch your back and those of your colleagues because they are the only allies you have.’

      Among us were youngsters like me, not much in the way of life experience, starting out keen and vulnerable. There were others who’d decided they wanted a career change and policing had sounded like a good option, with a decent wage, job security and a pension. There were ex-service personnel who’d seen so much more already, and there were graduate entries straight from university.

      We stood and listened and wondered why we thought we could do this job. The only dead body I’d seen was a boyfriend’s grandmother in her coffin, but she had been over eighty and it didn’t seem to count.

      ‘You will come across things you don’t like, things that turn your stomach, deal with offences you didn’t know existed,’ she continued. ‘You will see things you know aren’t right. You will have to decide what to do because when you’re out there, you’re on your own and only you can decide if you can live with the consequences. Only you are responsible for your actions.’

      She was done. We filed out feeling like we’d been bollocked, looking anywhere but at each other lest we saw the fear.

      In that moment I decided I could, I would do this job. If I survived training school …