Visit to Wood Street Police Station
‘I am visiting a police station this evening’, I said to a friend. ‘Surrendering to bail, are we?’ came the response. ‘No’, I said, ‘just looking round’. ‘Well’, my friend continued, ‘You could stay at home and watch some paint dry’.
Ah! My friend missed a treat. Wood Street Police Station has a WOW factor. Some 30 of the Company went along. It is the headquarters of the City of London Police. My first surprise was to find the police housed in a listed building built in 1964 (an era not conspicuous for good architecture) built around an internal courtyard, just like the Romans did 2000 years ago in Londinium.
My second surprise was the stabling quarters of the City of London Mounted Police. They have a cadre of 10 large handsome horses who are bought in as country dwellers and then trained for the delights of city life such as street patrolling, demonstrations, gun salutes, and control of football crowds. The horses have a country retreat in Bushey Park which they visit regularly. On the wall is their Roll of Honour; some 73 horses since 1946.
Our next stop was the Museum with a fascinating collection of police memorabilia: equipment, uniforms, newspaper cuttings, forged bank notes and pictures of the police as Gold Medallists in the 1908 Olympic Games. The sport? Tug-of-war of course. What else? Big burly men. The curator said that up to 1986 the average height of the City police was 6 feet 2 inches; thereafter it was illegal to insist on a height qualification, so I’d be okay then? The curator added that they currently have a woman police officer of 4 feet 11 inches and woe betide anyone who messes around with her. At this point you could make a copy of your own fingerprint if you felt that way inclined.
Our next port of call was to see the Road Police in their underground garage. They had a dazzling array of vehicles and roadside equipment. In my book the star was the Yamaha 1300 cc motorcycle costing a cool £12,000 with a top speed of 160mph (presumably they take the bike to Bushey Park to put it through its paces). Finally, we came to the dog handlers and were shown three dogs, two sniffer spaniels and a person-handling German Shepherd dog. The handlers take their dog, or their two dogs, home with them when they go off duty. The brown-and-white spaniel was trained to detect explosives and we were given a demonstration amongst the vehicles. A decoy rag had been placed randomly inside a vehicle and the dog came to the right one, sniffed and instantly froze. The reward? The handler took out a tennis ball from his pocket for the dog to play with and the spaniel was as happy as a sand boy. The brown spaniel was trained to detect drugs, cash and spent ammunition, an eclectic combination you may think. The cash had to be £5,000 or more, said the handler, so my wallet was safe. Or was he pulling our legs? Sadly we couldn’t visit the cells on ‘health and safety grounds’. Anyway, the days are gone when you could visit institutions such as Bedlam and gawp at the inmates. So it all came to an end, a very enjoyable and instructive visit.
David Ashton