The Sheriff of Nottingham

I

‘I didn’t have a choice,’ I said in front of the committee investigating the death of an old woman.

II

I had become the Sheriff of Nottingham because heads rolled and mine was bumped up. The guy before me quit under pressure from the public. There were whispers about high incarceration rates amongst minorities, and the occasional pistol that went off in a neighbourhood where the less fortunate lived, but apparently, he was ‘eased out’ because Mr Mayor wanted someone who was pliant, less combative, and a career police officer without blemish. I fit the bill. There was little fanfare around my appointment. I had worked in Nottingham for thirty years, my ambition restricted to earning a decent living that help me cross the class divide. My father was a factory worker, my mother a tour guide, I had no brothers or sisters. Growing up was easy in Nottingham. I finished school, went to college when college was affordable, working in a nearby tyre repair shop to supplement the modest monthly allowance my parents sent me. I graduated and got a job in the police force. I never married. My days in the force were rewarding. My policing work was mostly limited to crowd duty and I stayed away from the fancy. The occasional trip to the pub where I could hold my drink as good as anyone from Nottingham often ended with me winning a game of darts.

In thirty years of my service, I saw the fabric of Nottingham disintegrate to my sadness. The original inhabitants, low-paid skilled and unskilled workers, the descendants of the hard-working folks who built the backbone of this great country, left the inner city. Entire neighbourhoods, once bustling with city life and all its appendages, emptied of the natives, who were replaced with people with no emotional connection to the soil they lived on. Crime rate and recreational drug consumption rose. Joblessness was rampant. There was little work to employ the youth. Gaming arcades sprung up, neat facades hiding illegal trades in the darkness. The police force attempted to tackle crime, but apathy was hard boiled, the electoral votes were locked, and powers allowed the system to fester. I stopped caring when I crossed fifty.

III

Then, Robin Hood happened.

Born in a family of immigrants to the inner city, he had fought his way through a complex web of crime and poverty. Until the day he robbed the Smiths, he wasn’t a blip on our radar. He would mug an odd woman and, sometimes well-dressed to blend in, he would walk up to polished company executives near the station and at knifepoint take their bag, laptop, cheque book, phone and watch. The force knew he was not enriching himself from the loot, rather selling it off and distributing the proceeds amongst his poorer neighbours. He lived alone. The force filed a few reports, but nothing was big enough to warrant media attention in a country used to knife crime and muggings. He only became a problem after he robbed the Smiths.

The Smiths dealt in gold. Robin Hood burgled their house on a Saturday night while the Smiths were at the Theatre. He hacked into the security system, entered the safe room, unlocked the safe using his trained hands, and emptied its contents that included two hundred gold coins. Robin Hood took the gold to one of the arcades, called Friar’s Tuck. At Friar’s Tuck, it was sold off to a buyer from an oil-rich Khanate in Central Asia, and the cash distributed to the neighbours. He had devised a system to determine who deserved how much. The Smiths were as connected as they come, and after my previous boss fielded calls from concerned individuals from the Capital, a raid was arranged to arrest him. No one in the force expected to see what happened that night.

As the arresting officers entered the building, a few youths torched their police vehicles, instantly blocking the exits with the burning car carcasses. The police called for backup, but when backup came, it was treated to a hail of exploding fireworks and stones. The police retreated with some officers sustaining minor injuries. The embarrassment made national news and heads rolled. My head was thrust into the mess.

IV

Early on during my service I learnt one thing about crime. A crime is a crime. You could be racially endowed with less melanin and smart and intelligent, but if you shoot an insurance executive on a street in a big city and run off with an easily identifiable backpack, the force will catch you.

I had to arrest Robin Hood.

We knew where Robin Hood lived, in a block of flats called Sherwood Forest, four stories tall, thirty-two units in all, mostly inhabited by working-class families. A Deputy suggested we use a weapon deployed in all the rough-tough places in the World to devastating effect. I licked my lips. For too long, Nottingham was held hostage to the whims of the new inner-city inhabitants. They had swayed the vote. Politicians forced us to go slow on prosecutions, and then the same politicians would use their connections to strong-arm judges to giving bails. It was a revolving door prison policy that would see boys and girls picked up for crime and sent back on the same street within weeks. The deterrence value of prison evaporated. Kids treated prison like summer camp. In my years of policing, I saw how we went from a respected and feared force, integrated with the city and its happenings, to a distant, weaponised, militarised, body, treated like an occupying force in the inner city. It was time to instil some respect and fear of the police uniform.

I assembled a task force. On the chosen night of our raid, we arrived at 12.30 a.m., armed to the teeth, from canes to tear-gas, stun grenades, tasers, and loaded guns and a secret weapon. I took a bullhorn and shouted, ‘Robin Hood, we have you surrounded. Come down with your hands up.’ Lights turned on throughout the building. There was activity behind closed doors. I could sense people were texting. On the walkie-talkie I asked for technical intel on who was typing. Intel came back identifying a few flats where people were discussing plans to throw fireworks and empty glass bottles at the police in the car park. There was chatter about taking positions along the stairs and shutting power to the lifts. I understood that we were dealing with an evolving situation that needed a show of force. The time for being nice was up.

I summoned the secret weapon.

V

Learning to drive an earth mover is an art form. The JB 4X Backhoe Loader and machines like it are the preferred machines used by law enforcement agencies throughout the world for ‘de-weeding’ operations. These operations entail the use of large machines for the purpose of destroying ‘criminal infrastructure’ which can be as dangerous as a weapons dump, or as benign as a home gate. My Deputy, John Hiss, was a big fan of the use of the ‘dozer’ and got official sanction for its use. The driver, Ian Bishop, was a thirty-year veteran of the use of various models of the JB in construction and destruction. I was worried that his common ethnicity with the tenants of Robin Hood’s building may affect his performance. I was wrong.

I repeated my call for Robin Hood to surrender. A firecracker exploded on top of one of the police vans. A stone smashed the front pane of the cruiser parked in front of the stairs. The lights went off in the building. I gave the order to fire the tear gas.

Hiss and I got on our gas masks and entered the building from the West wall. As we climbed the circular stairs to the fourth-floor corridor, making our way to flat 4D, the one where Robin stayed, we were showered with empty milk bottles. I fired into the air. At the door, we met our back up team, Ben and Netan. Ben kicked the door open. We entered the flat. It was a mess. A quick search revealed that Robin was gone, and there was nothing of good value left in the flat.

We radioed to the lookout teams on the ground floor and near the gates. No one had seen Robin exit. Technical intel came back saying his phone was active in the building.

I went down and spoke on the bullhorn. ‘Come down, Robin. Or this will end badly.’

We were met with a hail of more milk bottles and firecrackers. An exploding firecracker burnt Ben’s face, and he had to be evacuated. I commanded Ian to bring the JB 4X into the building’s car park. Breaking the small gate, a portion of the wall, and ruining the evergreen bushes that lined the kids’ play area, the JB 4X made its way into the compound. I repeated my threat to Robin, and we were met with another round of firecrackers. I ordered Ian to tear down the West wall of the building. The JB revved up and Ian raised the bucket to the full height of 17 feet, tearing down the first landing of the stairs and a portion of the first-floor wall. A family that was crouched behind a sofa in their living room were suddenly exposed to us. The look of shock on their face! The kids started crying and the woman screamed. I ordered them to stay in place and shut up. I didn’t know if they understood English. There was no path for them to evacuate. Ian continued with the destruction of the Western wall. In sequence, the walls of a bathroom, a kitchen, a study and then the rear balcony were torn down. It looked like a tornado had ripped the wall. I could see a black, white, green and red flag fixed to the wall in the home. There was a deafening silence all over the building. No milk bottles. No firecrackers. I could hear the shock. Fear flew into every home and into every heart. A family was homeless. I asked Ian to turn to the East wall.

As Ian was positioning the JB to tear down the East wall, I heard a shout. Robin Hood was surrendering. He came down the stairs from the East wall with his hands up. He was a small man, smaller in his surrendering stature, almost a dwarf. I handcuffed him and took him to the cruiser. Ian reversed and crushed a green Ford Fiesta before turning. He tore down the exit gate and disappeared into darkness. I sat with Robin in the cruiser. There was quietness. A solitary firecracker exploded on top of the car, breaking the siren. I ordered tear gas to be fired into the building again. As we left, we heard coughs, cries, and the shouts of the weak. An ambulance tried to enter as we left, but we asked the driver to wait until we give all clear. It was fifteen minutes before the ambulance took the asthmatic old woman to the hospital and an hour before she died from the tear gas in her lungs.

VI

I faced an enquiry over the death of the old woman. Mr Mayor with his newfound confidence, and his burgeoning ranks of supporters on the ‘Right’ side of the political spectrum, found a cause in me. He was able to exert his influence through coercion and politics to stack the enquiry committee with members who were favourable to me. When asked, all I said about the old woman was, “I didn’t have a choice. I ordered tear gas to be fired to save our lives and the integrity of the operation.’

The line froze inside me. ‘I didn’t have a choice’ became a rallying cry for many who saw the police force as defenders of the lost greatness of the inner cities in the grey country I live in. ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ police officers repeated at enquiries when they were hauled up for killing men and women in ‘dubious’ circumstances. Mr Mayor got a promotion to the Capital and was the propelling force behind a law that is now known as the ‘No Choice Law,’ which gave protection from legal challenges to all police officers who, during duty, ‘need’ to arrest, injure, kill, or to destroy property, to maintain public order.

VII

Today, Robin Hood is in jail. Mr Mayor is the Prime Minister. I am retired. I have a pension, and I have no regrets.