Harrowing rooftop drug drama proved to be officer’s ‘hairiest job’
FOR firearms police officer Scott Patrick, May 15, 2019, started off like any other day on the job.
And when a call came for him and his colleagues to carry out inquiries at a property in Carmarthen in connection with a wanted man, the officers thought little about what was awaiting them at the scene, which PC Patrick would later call “the hairiest situation” he’d been in.
When they entered the property in Carmarthen to relieve other officers inside, they walked up to a tiny attic space and were met with a violent and unpredictable man who was being recalled to prison.
Not wanting to go back to prison and in obvious distress, the man smashed his way onto the roof and began running along the roofs of the four adjoining houses, threatening to jump to his death.
“I have no hesitation in believing that if we weren’t there trying to calm him down that this man would not have jumped, but fallen and died. The roof was so slippery and dark, the weather was wet, he would have fallen,” said Dyfed-Powys officer PC Patrick.
“We weren’t thinking about what could go wrong, we were just thinking ‘we need to help this man and this needs to come to a conclusion’. We were thinking more ‘one step at a time’ rather than ‘what could go wrong’,” added PC Patrick, who lives in Cardigan.
But the harrowing situation was about to get worse when the wanted man revealed a chocolate Kinder Egg that was stuffed with unknown drugs.
He then inhaled the contents and became instantly drowsy and even more unpredictable – and the already dangerous situation became more unstable.
The officers knew that they needed to act fast.
“It was a pressure cooker and I remember thinking we were in the middle of the devil and the deep blue sea, we needed to act quickly to get him down safely but obviously needed to look out for our own safety,” added the 47-year-old police officer.
The three officers, including PC Patrick and Inspector Reuben Palin, continued to negotiate with the man and try to reason with him.
“He had pulled himself through a very small hole in the roof and Reuben got him to put his leg back through so we could grab hold of it. We didn’t know how he would react, but when he knew what was happening he started thrashing around and throwing his weight back.
“Three of us were holding onto his leg, and he started trying to take his trousers off to get away from us. It was exhausting trying to keep hold of him, and we were getting into a really precarious situation, it was boom or bust,” said PC Patrick.
PC Patrick then motioned for his colleagues to pass up a saw, which he used to cut through the roof to get to the man, who told the officers he’d taken a cocktail of drugs including heroin and sleeping pills.
“It was getting really dangerous. We as officers were exhausted, we knew we needed to do something drastic. At first I was worried that he was going to go for the saw and get cut but instead he picked up pieces of the slate that had broken off from the roof and started using it as a knife.
“He thrashed around and went for my neck with the slate. We had to look out for our own safety and Tasered him, and we could cuff his hands so he could go to hospital and get the help he needed,” added the firearms officer, who has been working on the force for 23 years.
“It was by far the toughest job I’ve been on and the most dangerous, there were moments of anxiety but we were focused on the task at hand and helping this guy. I don’t think I realised how things could have gone so horribly wrong until we got down and I breathed this huge sigh of relief, not just that me and the guys were OK but that we helped this bloke as well,” he added.
“I felt for the bloke really, he was terrified and he knew it had gotten too far. I trusted my colleagues and my training and realised we were in a pressure cooker that could explode at any minute but that we had to deal with it.”
But like most modest police officers, PC Patrick, who moved from Australia to Wales when he was 14, says that the success of the incident was down to his colleagues’ bravery.
“The decisive moment was when Reuben made the call to go from a constant dialogue with the suspect, to saying under his breath ‘grab his leg.’ He was the hero of the moment. If the man had fallen, he would have done himself catastrophic damage, and Reuben’s call was pivotal in ensuring we got him down safely,” PC Patrick said.
“I have been given two commendations before but I’ll always remember that day as being the toughest situation I’ve been in,” said the police officer, who is also a dad of two.
In recognition of the decisions made under tough conditions and swift action taken by all involved in the incident, the following officers have been commended for the parts they played: Operational firearms commander PC Emyr Thomas, PC Glenn White (retired), PC Scott Patrick, Inspector Reuben Palin, Chief Inspector Jonathan Rees, Sgt Phillip Jones, PC Matthew Roach, PC Elinor Evans, PC Mike Andrews, PC Samuel Phillips and South Wales Police officers PC Julian Knoyle and PC Steven Fox.