Keeping London Safe, One Call at a Time

Keeping London Safe, One Call at a Time

From time to time the dedicated ward officers based with me at Lavender Hill Police Station are required to work on the Emergency Response Policing Team (ERPT), a shift they refer to as ‘staffing-up’. ERPT are based out of Wimbledon Police Station and cover the whole of the boroughs of Wandsworth and Merton, taking the officers much further afield than Northcote Ward!  

My colleague PC Julia Robak was ‘staffing-up’ last Saturday and during her late shift responded to a real variety of emergency and non-emergency calls.

Straight off from Wimbledon at 1400 hours the first call of the shift was to Putney High Street where the ambulance service had seen a motorcyclist riding inconsiderately. Despite driving on blue lights to Putney the motorcyclist couldn’t be found.

The next call was to Southfields where the new resident of a house near Merton Road was clearing out the garden shed and found what appeared to be an un-exploded bomb! After racing to the scene and getting close enough to the article in question to take some photos Julia and her colleague put in cordons to keep people at a safe distance. Experts came down post haste and cast their eye over it and it was found to be a World War One era artillery shell, which was now empty of any explosive and a souvenir rather than a threat to anyone. The experts took it away to be disposed of safely.

Leaving that job, and on the way to the next, a cyclist stopped the Police car and handed Julia a wallet he had found.

Carrying on to the house she had been called to, Julia spoke to a 15-year-old girl who had seen a handgun being held by someone in the background during a video call. CID were contacted by Julia’s colleague, and the girl was left safely in the care of a family member and given personal safety advice.

Then there was just time to drive to Streatham to the house of the owner of the wallet and reunite him with it before going back to the Police Station to collect keys required at an address in Point Pleasant, Wandsworth.

Their special mission involved going to where Police had previously secured a front door with a padlock after forcing entry to check on the occupier. But a cat had been left inside that needed to be fed so Julia used the keys to let the occupier’s mother in to give a very fluffy and very noisy cat it’s dinner!

Finally, one last call of the shift: to Richmond Park where there was a reported deer attack. A man had to be taken to hospital with injuries assessed as neither life-threatening nor life-changing. A full report can be read on the BBC News website https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg8y1jxzrjo

Julia was surprised but happy to finish on time at the end of a “rollercoaster” shift and when she later told her parents all about the bomb, gun and the stag they wondered what else she sees during a day’s work.