A Visit to a Police Station

I await PC Charming outside the dormant police station for my 1.30pm appointment with legal correction and admonishment. This police station operates on a seemingly part-time basis even though the car park is full of vehicles, including a riot van, abandoned on this most sunny, warm Indian summer of early Autumn afternoons.

In this quiet town, the riot van is like a football super-sub, a powerful, muscular Wayne Rooney of police vehicles awaiting its big chance but, alas, confined to the bench forever. Perhaps not until Christmas will it be brought into action when the town's pubs fill up, revellers frolic in the one main street and the odd drinker succumbs to seasonal over-exuberance. Or maybe when the new, insane licensing laws come into force.

Crediton Police Station is a 1970s building hidden away in the upper reaches of the town, on the hillside by the large secondary school. It looks more like a banal, bland suburban semi than a police station; perhaps that is a measure of crime in this small, dull mid-Devon town. Everything is still except for a gentle breeze swaying the roses and a feisty squirrel making its forays across an idle cul-de-sac.

For all the busyness of the car park, the police station itself is deserted. Even the doorbell produces no effect, not even the reassurance or satisfaction in hearing an unanswered bell. No response at all. It is the opposite of Assault on Precinct 13, this outpost of law and order rendered a Marie Celeste of an operation, an abandoned fortress of justice in a desert of crime. The frontier. However, a police car draws up a few minutes later.

Two police officers enter the premises at the rear while I await my fate by the front door; they take several minutes to boot up the operation until one eventually greets me, again outside. He accompanies me into the building, via the rear, and we head for the reception desk. I now feel like I'm in a hotel, only the Hotel of Misdemeanours with nothing en suite. Now begins the rigmarole and bureaucracy of arrest and temporary detainment at Her Majesty's pleasure. It is like an extended hotel check-in.

They don't search me this time but I am presented with various leaflets and books informing me of my rights and so forth. This includes a book on PACE, a 200 page volume - a blockbuster of arrest - ideal if you are spending the night in the cells and can't sleep.