Not Taggart or Line of Duty: Here's what it was really like to be a cop on Friday night in early 1990s Glasgow – Jim Duffy

The east end of Glasgow was probably one of the best places to train as a rookie cop in the early nineties.
TV series Line of Duty may be good drama but Jim Duffy found the reality of life as a police officer a little bit different in Glasgow's East End in the early 1990s (Picture: Liam McBurney/PA)TV series Line of Duty may be good drama but Jim Duffy found the reality of life as a police officer a little bit different in Glasgow's East End in the early 1990s (Picture: Liam McBurney/PA)
TV series Line of Duty may be good drama but Jim Duffy found the reality of life as a police officer a little bit different in Glasgow's East End in the early 1990s (Picture: Liam McBurney/PA)

I loved the buzz of the place. The grittiness and dampness that always seemed to be in the air. And driving into London Road Police Office for a Friday night shift was one of the most exhilarating feelings I have experienced.

No Juliet Bravo or The Bill fiction here. Not even Taggart or Line of Duty. No, manning up a two-cop patrol car on a shift of ten cops was not for TV viewing, the PC brigade or the faint-hearted.

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Sitting in an east end muster room with nine other male cops waiting for the gaffers to come in was always an interesting time. The battle-hardened guys did all the talking.

As a probationer with less than two years’ service under my belt, my role was to watch and listen. A bit like the Strathclyde Police motto at that time that was emblazoned on my cap badge: Semper Vigilo.

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Opening one’s young gob and upsetting the wrong guy could make for an uncomfortable four-letter, five-letter and six-letter tirade of profanity that would make Frankie Boyle blush.

In fact, the language used in a Glasgow muster room was worse than used by some folks who got “lifted” for it two hours later. It was just their way. Fifteen years of hard policing, sectarian walks, arriving at brutal serious assaults and having to deal with pub rammies.

Muster over, we would collect our radios, have a quick chinwag with the controllers downstairs and head out to our “Pandas”. Of course, the livery was blue, black and white, so the old panda meme was not all that up to date.

Already the radio would be going ten to the dozen with petty disturbance calls. Usually low-level stuff at this time of night, a couple of hours before midnight. That is when it got really juicy.

By then, the bevvy had kicked in and a different reality was shining through in the minds of men in pubs and clubs. Leaving the security of the electric gates we ventured out, all knowing that we would be back within a couple of hours with a “body” or, in today’s PC language, a prisoner.

On leaving London Road cop-shop, there was a plethora of choices on where to head. One could go south to Dalmarnock. Not much to see, just tenements and high-rise blocks. It sat in no man’s land between Rutherglen and Bridgeton. A decent set of “neds”, but they liked to stay in their one fiefdom, rarely venturing out, even when full of Buckfast.

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Then there was Bridgeton itself. Bristling with pubs with Union Jacks proudly hanging on flagpoles letting everyone know that this was a “Rangers” area. A preferred hunting ground for cops, there was plenty of action here on a nightshift.

Or perhaps, head down to Glasgow Cross and the Barras area, with even more pubs, this time with Irish Tricolours hanging outside. This is where Glasgow city centre met the East End. Always a flashpoint for violence on the nightshift.

More fast food shops and places where drunk folks could get themselves into trouble. And finally, one could drive north to Dennistoun. Pubs, eateries, students, high-rise flats, council tenements sitting one street away from posh Victorian townhouses. Dennistoun was a most entertaining hangout. So much choice. But as always, the radio was our master.

First call of the nightshift was a good-going disturbance inside a pub at Glasgow Cross. And off we went with blue lights flashing and sirens waling. On the way to a call like this as a rookie cop, so many thoughts pile through one’s head.

Listening for updates, “one male seriously injured’ came over the radio. I was trying not to show my tutor cop that I was nervous, excited and bricking it all at the same time. The Scottish Police College at Tulliallan doesn’t prepare you for these emotions on a Friday night. As we pulled up under the railway bridge, I knew right away, I was out my depth.

What seemed like a throng of screaming females, half-drunk, half-distressed immediately surrounded my passenger door, yelling at me to get inside.

Why did it take you so long to get here? A mixture of abuse and relief that I witnessed on so many more occasions in my career. An ambulance was also just arriving, summoned by our controller. And some back-up, thank god!

I entered the dark pub that was still heaving with people drinking and shouting, chatting and staring. I ran into the male toilet where the fight had taken place and was confronted by two, thankfully peaceful, guys, whose mate was lying on the toilet floor, blood everywhere and very confused. We all swung into action…

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Ten minutes later I was headed to Glasgow Royal Infirmary in the back of a screaming ambulance, handcuffed to the “victim”, who had come to. Even with one eye that had been glassed with a bottle and needed immediate surgery, he wanted to fight with the police. The irony was not lost on me as I tried to cam him down before we arrived at Accident and Emergency.

Handed over to the nurses and some details in my notebook, it was back in the car with my grumpy colleague, who had made me quickly wash the blood off me at the hospital and then it was back to work. No health and safety malarkey here. This was a “man’s world”. No-one at the pub was saying anything, so just another unsolved crime.

“Echo Alpha one, report of a serious assault in Main Street Bridgeton." Off we went again. Only another 30 years to wait for a pension I thought… What have I got myself into?

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