“I can no longer work on the front line. I have seen enough.”

In his 20 years with the Metropolitan Police, Chief Superintendent John Sutherland has dealt with some of London’s most violent people, and the most vulnerable. In a new memoir, he reveals the toll it has taken on his own bruised psyche

Springtime in London, this kaleidoscopic carousel of a city that is my home. I walk into the ground floor of Southwark Police Station. One of the PCS chirps in my direction: “Guv’nor, it looks like we’ve just had a murder.” It’s April 2013, and I am six months into my time as borough commander at Southwark, one of the Met’s big beasts, primarily because of the volume of serious crime that is committed there. It’s the most prestigious job I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some really good ones. In my office the phone rings. It’s the PC from the control room again: “Good news, boss – we haven’t had a murder.” He pauses: “But we have just had someone jump off one of the bridges into the Thames.” I put the phone down, return to my seat and, for the first time in my working life, this thought occupies all of my mind: I don’t know if I can do this any more. The thought of another life taken, another blood-soaked scene and another shattered family, is just too much to bear.

Rewind 20 years. I am awarded the Baton of Honour on my passing out from Hendon in 1993, given to the outstanding recruit in any intake. It is the proudest moment of my young life. After two years in Belgravia in west London, I take up a new role in Lambeth, south of the river. I see and experience more in my first two weeks in Brixton than I have in the entirety of the past two years, beginning with my first murder. A domestic. A member of the public has dialled 999 to say that they’ve discovered the dead body of a relative in a flat just off Coldharbour Lane. There’s no need to check for vital signs. Sometimes it’s just obvious. She has been stabbed repeatedly in the throat. The carpet is old and dirty and dark in colour. It absorbs and conceals the extent of the blood. The next day the DI from the murder team, an old hand, meets me outside the morgue for the post-mortem, offering me some Vicks Vaporub to put under my nose. That will be the smell I remember. The DI leads me into the room where the victim is lying on the slab. I can see her face – blank and bloodless. I make my identification and stay for a while, part transfixed and part horrified by the desperate and essential indignities that follow. They catch him in the end. He’s a former boyfriend – a man of unimaginable violence, the inhabitant of a world beyond my comprehension.

My second murder scene, a few weeks later, is another domestic, unfolding in a block of flats at the top of Brixton Hill. The victim, a young blonde woman, was still conscious when the first officers arrived. She was even able to say a few words. But by the time I get there, she’s fading away. She’s been stabbed several times and she’s slumped on the floor at the foot of the bed, surrounded by

colleagues doing what they can for her. There’s blood everywhere and bandages scattered all around, as words of reassurance are spoken to an ebbing soul. “Stay with us now.” “We’re going to look after you.” “The ambulance is on the way.” The suspect – her boyfriend – is still at the scene. I find him sitting, glassy-eyed, on the living-room sofa, staring into the void. At one end of the corridor, she’s losing her struggle for life. At the other end, he’s losing his mind. Caught between the two of them are a bunch of police officers, doing the very best they can.

It’s early 2007, and London finds itself in the midst of a grim succession of teenage murders – 26 before the year is out. The previous summer, I had become a dad for the second time. What kind of world will my daughters be growing up in? On 14 March, Kodjo Yenga, a 16-year-old A-level student who had never been in contact, much less trouble, with the police – is knifed to death in Hammersmith Grove, west London. My patch now. He is hunted down in the street by a pack of kids. Investigators trawl through CCTV footage and find Kodjo in the shopping centre at Hammersmith Broadway at about 4.30pm. It’s there that he meets and speaks to one of the boys who challenges him to a fight, and who will become a murderer before the day is out. Within days, the team has made a number of arrests. Almost all of them are children and some of them are as young as 11 years old. Every single one has grown up in a home where domestic violence has been a reality.

It’s a Sunday afternoon in June 2008 and I’m now superintendent in charge of uniform policing in Islington. Yet another teenager has been murdered – on my patch late last night. The victim was 16 years old. His name was Ben Kinsella. His sister is a wellknown actress and the media is giving it the full treatment. There’s a press briefing scheduled and our conference room is heaving. George and Brooke, Ben’s dad and sister, arrive early and are shown to my office. They are grey and bewildered, and I am struggling to find the right thing to say. I tell them how deeply sorry I am, and I make a stumbling promise to do everything in my power to make sure that no other family has to find themselves in this desperate place. As the investigation progresses, four possible suspects are identified. Two of them are siblings. They are only teenagers, but earlier in their young lives they had witnessed their father’s attempt to kill their mother. One of the brothers is later convicted of Ben’s murder. It’s not difficult to make a connection. Violence begets violence. Of course, not every young person raised in a violent home will themselves grow up to become violent. The reality is much more

“She’s been stabbed several times and she’s slumped on the floor. Her boyfriend is sitting, glassy-eyed, on the sofa”

hopeful than that. But my experience of those young men who do go on to cause serious harm is that it all begins behind closed doors – hidden in their childhoods.

It’s another grainy, grey north London afternoon. Local officers come through on the radio, requesting a hostage negotiator. They’ve got a man high up in a tower block, threatening to jump. The flats in question are a short shout away from the Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal, and the man is on the 17th floor. It’s a hell of a long way down from there. The stairwell is full of PCS, talking in whispers and standing by. None of them has much in the way of information, but local residents have been told to stay indoors and the area around the block has been cordoned off. I head through the door on floor 17, onto the communal landing, and into a thin space between life and death. At the far end of the landing, there’s a huge window, stretching almost from floor to ceiling. Standing beside it is a uniformed PC and, on the other side of the glass, is a young man in casual clothing. For reasons I can’t begin to comprehend, the window can be opened from the inside, allowing the young man to climb outside and close it to a crack behind him. He’s now standing on a ledge no more than about 3in wide, holding onto the metal frame with his left hand.

Our man is from Eastern Europe and English is far from being his first language. The PC has managed to get an interpreter on his mobile phone. As I approach, the man takes the phone from the PC, says something to the interpreter and passes it back through the tiny gap in the window. I step forward hesitantly to take it and, as I do so, take in the vast distance between us and the ground. Immediately, I regret having looked. I speak on the phone and then give it back for the translation. The simple act of handing it over is hold-your-breath-and-shatter-your-nerves stuff. Communicating like this is impossible, and exceptionally dangerous. I dispense with the mobile and decide that broken English, however difficult, is the least bad option we have.

I listen to what I can make out of his story. He’s recently arrived in the UK and is having trouble finding a job and a place to stay. The struggle has evidently taken him to the end of himself. As we fumble words, my usual optimism fades. In my mind’s eye, I begin to imagine the moment he jumps. Or perhaps he slips. These unnerving thoughts take hold and start to play on a loop in my head. It’s just me on the landing now. The PC has retreated and everyone else is tucked away on the stairs and on the floor below. It all depends on me. After an age – and contrary to the sense of despair that has taken hold – I hear him saying he wants to come back in. But there’s no sense of relief. He’s on the wrong side of a window that hinges in the middle and I have no idea how to get him back in. The ledge is terrifyingly narrow, and beyond it there is just empty space. I inch towards him. The window is jammed. Shit. I’m terrified that I’m going to push too hard, terrified that I’m going to push him off. I feel physically sick. Oh please, God… I work gently on the catch from my side, like a nervous father handling a newborn for the first time. He works on the frame from his side – tiny movements with big consequences. Somehow, we manage it and, suddenly, he’s standing on the right side of the glass with solid floor under his feet. I could almost weep with relief. A group of PCS leads him away to whatever comes next – one of thousands of migrants who don’t show up on the census or on any other kind of official record, one more member of London’s hidden communities. I hope he does OK, that he manages to get back on his feet. As the rest of us head down the stairs, there’s plenty of banter. But I trail behind, lost in my thoughts. This particular happy ending has somehow passed me by and I find that I am haunted by the prospect of what could have been. I can still see him fall. These are unfamiliar emotions and I have no idea what to do with them. I’m bothered and I don’t know why. But I don’t talk to anyone about it. I’m needed back at work.

Towards the end of 2012, I take over as borough commander at Southwark. Reports come through of a 14-year-old boy alleging that he’s been raped. The account given by the victim goes something like this. He was walking down the street when a male suspect approached him and produced a knife. He demanded the victim’s mobile phone, but the victim didn’t have one. The suspect led him off the street and into a nearby estate. He took him up some stairs and, in the vicinity of one of the open landings, raped him. Within about 48 hours, forensic evidence has been recovered and a suspect identified. He’s 15 years old. Something about this case gets through an unseen gap in my professional armour. Perhaps it’s the ages of those involved – children who could be my sons. Maybe it’s the fact that it happened in broad daylight in a residential community. Or it might be that I’ve hit some sort of tipping point.

I am back in my office at the end of April 2013, just after news of the jumper on the bridge. I am sitting alone with the door closed, bewildered and utterly lost. Truth is, I’ve been feeling unwell for a couple of months – waking in the middle of the night in a state of complete panic, heart racing. I’ve had to wake my wife, Bear, just so she could hold me and tell me that everything would be OK. I lurch through another evening and morning at work. I tell myself to get some rest and an early night, and tomorrow I’ll be fine. I go to bed just after seven. But, not much more than an hour later, I sit up, look at Bear and say, “I think I’m going to have to go to hospital.” I am scared. Really, really scared.

For the first time in my life, I’m taking antidepressants, quietly terrified that my health is going to go the way of my dad’s, who lived with bipolar disorder. I’m taking diazepam as well – anything to keep me calm and help me sleep. The only time I’ve come across the drug before is down in the cells, given to restless alcoholics while the next drink is beyond their reach. I feel shame. The shame of falling, of failing. I finally make it back to work in December 2013, seven months after I walked out of the station. But I don’t go back to Southwark. For now, all I will be able to manage is four hours a day, three days a week, somewhere far removed from the policing front line. I can no longer do trauma. I have seen enough.

But my experiences are by no means unusual. I’ve worked with police officers who have seen many more dead bodies than me, who have been to many more fatal accidents than me, who have been faced with the unthinkable on many more occasions than I have. Sometimes I wonder how they manage to keep going. Perhaps they’re just stronger than me. Perhaps they’re holding it together better. Some people get sick, some people don’t. That’s just the way of things. But perhaps some of them are hurting, too. We all have our stories and we all have our scars.

© John Sutherland 2017. Extracted from Blue: A Memoir – Keeping the Peace and Falling to Pieces, published by W&N at £16.99. A longer version of this extract first appeared in The Sunday Times © The Sunday Times/news Syndication.

“Local officers come through on the radio. They’ve got a man on the 17th floor of a tower block, threatening to jump”