I was born and raised in Bradford,Yorkshire. In 1971 I joined the 2nd Battalion, The Light Infantry, where I served for 2 years, including time in Northern Ireland, before I got the siren song to come to Bermuda.
Like so many others I had the interview in London with Superintendent Joe Nixon and Chief Inspector Syke Smith; a quick medical and then the flight over on June 6th 1973. I was met at the airport by the unholy trinity of Sergeants Dick Murphy, Barrie Meade and Constable Pat McBride. We were having a nice ride back to Police HQ at Prospect but on the way we came across a 10-56 (a damage only road accident) and they threw Pat - the junior man - out to direct traffic until a unit could attend, while we carried on to our new home in the Prospect Barracks.
Training School was appropriately in the old garrison guard room, complete with cells, where we were under the command of Inspector Dave Parsons. We had a stirling group of recruits none of whom had any previous police experience. I thought we might have been the first such group because of the lack of training manuals! In that class were, amongst others, Jerry Lyons, Norman Ingemann, his older brother Wayne, Ralph Saints, George Jackson and who can forget Frank Dublin - we cleaned up on Sports Day!
It was a pretty effective training programme, although one has to wonder why there was only one copy of the training manual and everyone was supposed to make their own written copy in the evenings and weekends. Our training fortunately (for those who had not copied the manual) came to an unexpected close when Commissioner “Nobby” Clarke ordered everyone out onto the street to meet the manpower demands of the murder investigations. It was an interesting time to come to Bermuda.
My first posting was to Central Division, the old police station by the Post Office on Parliament Street in Hamilton. Bob Massey was the Sergeant, Mike Parris the Station Constable, ably assisted by Jimmy (the Wop) Costello, and Howard “Stumpy” Kirkham was the Duty Driver. There was also Frankie Thom (who went back to Glasgow) Jerome Simons, “Chalky” White, Stuart Donaldson, Paul Deans and John Dale. The corresponding Traffic Watch had Sergeant George Garrod, and I remember Dickie Coulthard and John Baxter. Later on, as personnel changed, we had Bob ‘Pudsey’ Hay, Willie Woods, Dave “Cookie” Cooke, Derek Fletcher and for a short but memorable time, Dudley Proctor, as our Sergeants.
My first arrest was on the first night, James Llewellyn Allen. I was working with Jerome Simons and I don’t know what exactly happened but suddenly we were running all over Court Street and the back of town chasing Allen. He was finally cornered and arrested with the help of everybody. It was never boring working with Jerome!
Eventually I moved on to Operations (Traffic) Division. George “Derrick” Taylor was in charge and Ernie Moniz and Carol Royer ran things. Mike Burke was the Sergeant, with Ernie McCreight, Steve Rollins, Martin Pearson, John Henry Skinner, Roddy Barclay and Stan Francis on our Watch. I was radio at first and then later Tango 4 working with, and getting an education from, David Smith. Later we had John McConnie as the Sergeant.
In 1976 I married a Bermudian girl, Elizabeth Campbell, and moved to Prospect , living next door to Ottiwell Simmons.
My final posting was to the MCPS with Eddie “Boxhead” Foggo in charge. I took Norrie ‘the cat with the yellow shades’ Galbraith's spot when he went off to Hong Kong, and worked with Russell ‘Bull’ Paynter, David Small, Tony Laughton, Mike ‘Smelly’ Brown (the cat with the black lips), Ralph Lindo, and Charlie Dorrington.
Finally at the end of 1979, Elizabeth and I moved to Vancouver BC. In January of 1980 I started with the Vancouver Police and on arrival at the Police Academy was met by Sergeant Pat McBride who was, no surprise, the PTI (and generally running the show). Am I the only person who went through Basic Training twice with Pat? !
While at the Academy I ran into Graham Maddocks who was with the Victoria Police and was finishing off his training, and of all people ran into Mike Woods who had been with West Vancouver Police Department and was now an investigator for the Ministry of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, and occasionally lectured on such matters at the Academy.
I remained with the Vancouver Police until retirement. While with the VPD I had a secondment to the UN Civilian Police, first of all in Bosnia, and then in Kosovo where I was part of the Advance Team that set up the police portion of the mission.
I was also involved in firearms training, and after retirement got an appointment as a Provincial Special Constable and became part of the firearms training team at the Police Academy. While there I got used to training recruits whose parent(s) I worked with, and more recently there have been recruits whose grandparents I worked with!
Elizabeth and I are still happily married after 36 years (they celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary in September 2012). After completing over 40 years of service to the Crown what amazes me are the people I associated with while in the Bermuda Police. There certainly was nowhere else with such characters. I am not sure anywhere else could accommodate such a variety “strong personalities”!
Quo Fata Ferunt
Nick Bolton
Editors Note - Nick heard about our website from Pat McBride and says there are a few more former Bermuda Police colleagues living in BC including Graham Maddocks on the Island, Steve Rollinson in the interior near Osoyoos, and Nick who lives in the Lower Mainland (Maple Ridge) just across the river from Pat.