Cops and Robbers: The Story of the British Police Car. Ant Anstead
to show they could hear. By 1918, the British had mastered plane-to-plane radio communication, which would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. After the war, this first generation of radio operators became the roots of the amateur radio movement, something that would lead to broadcast radio.
The first major police operation that was assisted by using radio telegraphy was the 1923 Epsom Derby, where the force used aircraft as well as the Crossleys for traffic control, not crime prevention. The Met arranged for the use of a radio-equipped Vickers (Type 61) Vulcan fixed-wing passenger aircraft to cover the Derby traffic. This bi-plane was unwieldy and under-powered; its single 360hp Rolls-Royce Eagle engine gave it a maximum speed of about 105mph, but it had restricted banking capabilities and very restrictive small windows so it was unsuitable for observation duties, especially over the confines of the Epsom Racecourse. It was, wonderfully, nicknamed the ‘Flying Pig’. The blue and silver Vulcan the police used, G-EBBL, was operated by Instone Airline Ltd and it carried the name ‘City of Antwerp’. The head of the Met’s Traffic Department, that man Arthur Bassom, was taken aloft along with two police wireless operators and their equipment by Donald Robins, the Instone pilot. The police team were in constant touch with Percy Laurie, who was in charge of the control room at Epsom, from where dispatch riders took instructions to traffic officers at the affected road junctions.
From these beginnings the radio technology developed quickly, and although we are not covering it in detail here, make no mistake, the organisation of police force cars into the categories of use discussed in the following chapters only happened because the police relied ever more on the improving radio technology.
| Operator: | ‘Police emergency, how can I help?’ |
| Caller: | ‘A bloke’s going berserk with a knife down at the Rose and Crown.’ |
| Operator: | ‘OK, we’ll get a unit to you straight away.’ |
| Operator: | ‘Foxtrot five-one.’ |
| Crew: | ‘Foxtrot five-one go ahead.’ |
| Operator: | ‘Make the Rose and Crown pub in the High Street, male going berserk with a knife.’ |
| Crew: | ‘Foxtrot five-one making.’ |
A typical ‘send the area car’ call. All over the country, every hour of every day, divisional area cars and their crews will be dispatched to attend local emergency calls just like that one. This was something I was all too familiar with during my time in the police force. The area car is the emergency response unit for each shift, the backbone of the force – the real front-line cops.
The divisional area car, or response car as some forces call them these days, will generally be a mid-range saloon or estate with a fair degree of performance. The aim is to get a double-crewed unit to the scene of any local emergency as quickly as possible. It’s worth noting at this point that your area-car officers are usually hand picked because they have a lot of front-line experience, are trusted to make life or death decisions, to take control of certain situations and have driving skills that are way above the average, having completed a four-week intensive driving course. Current-day models undertaking this role include the BMW 320d, Skoda Octavia vRS, Ford Mondeo 2.0d and the Vauxhall Insignia.
A Vauxhall Insignia area car deals with an RTA in Birmingham in 2016.
Unlike the panda car, whose introduction was down to one man and has a confirmed starting date, the origins of the area car are slightly more difficult to define. Nottingham Police may have been the first to have wireless cars in 1932. They used two-way wireless telegraphy (Morse), which was fully operational in vans, combos and single-manned cars. The method of operation was bizarre and would have gained them a £200 fixed penalty notice and six points on their licence today, whilst the health and safety people dived for cover to fill out their next claim form! Using his left hand, the driver would operate a Morse key on a large box where the passenger seat would normally have been fitted. He listened via an earpiece attached to his hat, whilst continuing to drive using his right hand! The Chief Constable of Nottingham in his 1940s book Mechanised Police Patrol refers to Radio Motor Patrols in an area scheme and in specimen exercises speaks of No.1 Area Patrol, No. 2 Area Patrol, etc., so it is likely that the term was eventually shortened to just Area.
The other early form of system came from the Metropolitan Police, who, in 1934, introduced the ‘Area Wireless Car Scheme’, whereby the Metropolitan Police District was divided into 75 wireless areas, each patrolled 24 hours a day by a radio-equipped car, manned by two uniformed officers in direct radio contact with the Information Room at Scotland Yard. Their mandate was to deal with all matters and incidents that required immediate police attention. The Met’s very first area wireless cars were Ford 14.9hp saloons, followed by Hillmans, Wolseleys and Humbers.
In 1937, Wolseley produced a special ‘police tourer’ version of the 14/56 chassis. It was not offered to civilian customers.
One of the earliest forms of area cars belonged to the Southampton Borough Police, who in 1956 devised a new concept in mobile policing that is still used today. Called Team Policing, it involved the use of Series 1 Hillman Minx estate cars, one being placed at each of the six sub-divisions within the Southampton Borough, and they were responsible for attending emergencies that fell outside of the remit of the Traffic Division. The cars were painted dark grey with a light grey roof and the only police markings consisted of a telltale roof-mounted radio aerial. To get through the traffic, crews would put the headlights on, and that would be enough in those days to ensure that the public would obligingly move out of their way! The team car experiment was a huge success; in later years the word ‘team’ was dropped and the term area car was adopted.
Unlike the panda car and indeed the Traffic Division cars, which were vehicles of a very specific type, the area car could be almost anything, depending on the force it belonged to and how it utilised the role. For example, in the 1960s the Cardiff City Police were using the Austin Cambridge A60 as an area car, whilst the Met Police used the much more powerful S-Type Jaguars, and by the late 1970s Kent County Police were sending their crews out in Morris Marina estates whilst the Met again gave their boys Rover 2.6 SD1s. We will concentrate on the most common cars, with perhaps an occasional oddity thrown in for good measure.
One of the big hitters in the 1960s was Austin and its Farina-bodied Cambridge. With its B-series 1622cc engine and