Confessions of an Undercover Cop. Ash Cameron

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       The end

      I was nineteen when I went to London to join the Metropolitan Police. I left the police force twenty years later, combining my leaving do with reaching forty.

      They say life begins at forty. Mine didn’t begin but it did change. I look back and wonder: that person, that police officer, was she me?

      It’s easy to see why cops feel battered when the people they deal with are often the bad people, the sick of mind people, and the victims and witnesses who are often distressed. And there are those who for whatever reason blame the police for everything.

      Police officers can become embittered working in areas of high crime, populated by people with an abhorrent dislike of the law and those who try to enforce it. It’s easy to understand the cynicism and jaded outlook when the days are filled with endless abuse and violence and grief. Even the officers working in the affluent suburbs and the beautiful countryside see people at their worst, all high drama and emotion, 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.