For the most part I've worked alongside some fantastic police officers over the years, I was chatting to a sergeant when I first went to Scarborough and told him how I really noticed how they worked with us and he commented that its so busy in Scarborough sometimes that there's limited police and doorstaff so if we didn't work together it wouldn't work. So refreshing to hear that when I've personally dialled 999 in one other area asking for help the police never came, sorry but it's just a fact it's only or area but massively disappointing.
Again that's not to say other areas the police haven't been amazing towards us obviously Scarborough for one but also up in Newcastle when I first started on the doors things were a little more, shall we say tasty, and self defence didn't come into it sometimes.
Thankfully these days in extreme situations doorstaff are permitted to use a first strike but unless you're prepared to stand in court saying and being able to prove that doing so prevented further harm coming to yourself or others it's just not worth it so you have to wait for the hit to come, back in the day thou .....
Well lets just say one night two lads had tried to get in the door I was on with another guy, even at the end of the street they looked like trouble and back then I was a little hothead who to be honest needed a crack to bring me back to reality sometimes! On this occasion thou when I refused them and one guy became aggressive he tensed quickly I the spot to make me react, well I did I hit him. Cue two mins of me and the guy I'm with putting them down and then having them lifted, sadly they decided to put all the blame on me, well it was pretty much me being overly aggressive yes but I guarantee they were the sort of guys who kick you in the head if you were down and scrapped every weekend so no biggie in my eyes. They clearly knew a bit more than I did about the law, this is fifteen years ago and doorstaff didn't need to know the law then just be able to scrap when you had to so I could sense I was in trouble here, luckily though the officer dealing knew them and took me to one side looking me square in my eyes, nodding at me and saying "you were in fear for your life you say then?"
Thank you very much for that, mental note made!
I did have a cheeky dig one quiet night in Leeds when a sergeant and newly badged lad were out on patrol. I'd spoken to the sergeant plenty of times and he didn't look happy at all this night, when the new guy was chatting to my colleague the sergeant told me what a nightmare this guy was, straight arrow no life experience and way too much OCD, so in other words he was having to work properly! The new guy was clearly pretty arrogant and didn't have much respect for doorstaff by the way he was talking to us so when he commented that he'd heard bouncers were just thugs really I smiled with a "actually we're highly trained intelligent thugs, cheers pal"
"Oh yeah?" He said, "what do you mean by that?"
Nice, he'd bitten, time for a play.
I've always loved useless information so threw something at him,
"Well Ive had a decent education, certainly good enough to know where the word 'copper' comes from, do you?"
"Course" came the smug response, "it's from when we used to carry copper badges years ago"
I made the buzzer fail sound and reeled off "oh our survey says no! Actually it's from the Latin capere which means to seize or 'capture', what about something simple? Policeman, does that mean then?" The sergeant smiled at me but the lad cracked! Clearly he must have known but was scared to say in case he was put down again so called me a smart arse and said come on then to his sergeant. As they walked away I couldn't resist calling after him, "don't worry it does come from Latin too! Politia! Polis! Greek cities mate so it's man of the city!" I'm like a dog with a bone sometimes.
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