Anything to Declare? (16 page)

So, back to the original question: is machine better than the man? The answer, at this present time, is that, like it or not, the ever-twitching antennae of that uniformed human radar – the Customs officer – beats all the technology, hands down.

There are also a couple of very important things that machines can’t do but a human being can (Customs officers, you may be surprised to hear, also being human) and that is to show some discretion and display some empathy. And, funnily enough, after years on the job, a search on my last ever day as a uniformed HMRC preventive officer fell into this category.

It concerned a young male steward who had been on a long-haul British Airways flight. He was visibly shaking as he entered the clearance area for crew, so that was immediately a strange thing for an employee that travelled through Customs controls every day. But as we’ve already established, and as you may be glad to hear (unless you are an aircraft employee), the aircraft crews were no more trusted than ordinary passengers.

I decided it wasn’t really worth going through the palaver of the normal passenger questions with this young chap as he’d know the procedure off by heart, so I just got down to a search. It didn’t take too long to discover why the nerves were taking hold of the lad. Inside his washbag was a soap container and inside that there were twenty neatly rolled joints. Even as I opened the container, the steward was starting to cry, which I was a little shocked by. I guessed that in his mind he was quickly running through all the possible consequences and seeing that very few of them were good. Aware that a member of his crew was in distress, the captain, who was walking past, strode over and demanded to know why I had his crew member in tears.

Now, this was a fifty-fifty type of situation. Rules and regs stated that I had to do something with the lad and, whatever was going on, that was just between me and him. Also, if this captain found out, then British Airways would have to be told and the lad could kiss his job goodbye. On top of that, American law regarding drug possession (even minor incidents) would prevent him from ever working the Atlantic route again – aircraft crew being expected, understandably, to lead by example. How could they expect the best behaviour from passengers if they themselves decided to cross the line?

So there was an awful lot riding on what I would decide to do, and all of the possible consequences, I had to admit, would be a result of what was a pretty minor infraction. As well as some natural sympathy for his situation, he had one more thing in his favour – the fact that his captain was being a bit of a twat. He was standing in front of me, hands on hips, loudly demanding to know what was going on. I had been in the job too long by now to be flustered by someone that Customs officers generally considered to be little more than posh, jumped-up bus drivers. And, on top of that, I thought he should have known full well that his own staff member would not have been upset without a reason, and that the reason may well have been that he was carrying something he shouldn’t have – as was the case here.

As this was my last day on the job, I decided to get as much fun out of this as I could. All the other aircraft crew members had now stopped and were watching on, so I pointed to the exit from the channels and loudly said, ‘Take a hike, Biggles. Your crew member is just helping me out with a misunderstanding. If we need you, we’ll send up a flare.’

Crestfallen, but knowing better than to tackle a Customs officer on his home patch, the captain’s hands dropped off his hips and he turned and departed.

Once he’d gone, I escorted the steward into an interview room, grabbed a passing officer, quietly whispered what I had in mind and got down to one very fast interview. The poor lad was all tears and it was obvious from the state of him that this was the first time he’d done anything like this. I had to admit that this must have been the easiest interview that I had ever conducted as all it took was one question from me and the accused blabbed the lot. He explained that he had purchased the joints in Amsterdam and they were for his boyfriend. Apparently, it was the old ‘you would do it for me if you loved me’ threat. It is amazing how many people will put so much on the line because of a demand from a girlfriend or boyfriend. He knew as well as I did that this would be the end of his career. My fellow officer, Ben, and myself stepped out of the room for a second and decided what to do. Ben did what we called ‘testing the drugs to destruction’ – which was our way of saying that he flushed them down the bog. Then I gave the steward a strong enough bollocking to ensure he didn’t ever try it again. I said that neither his captain nor British Airways would be informed of the situation as long as he kept his nose clean. As we had to show some reason for the detainment and interview, we took a £40 fine from him, which we later wrote up as fine for 400 fags, and placed the money straight in the cash register so that no one was the wiser about the cannabis. He dried his tears and looked happier than I think I’d seen anyone look the whole year. We then shook hands and I escorted him from the channels.

So, even though my last job as a uniformed preventive officer was actually letting someone off rather than catching them, it felt bloody good.

From the first person I had ever stopped onwards, I had done quite well as an airport preventive officer. But I never quite believed that I had the Customs officer’s sixth sense, if in fact that sixth sense ever existed. So, after my years of working ‘on the bench’, I was now looking at making the move to something to give me a new challenge. The opportunity for that arose during the holiday we hold to celebrate the birth of a man executed by being nailed to a cross, though the holiday more often than not revolves around an Argos catalogue, the supermarket wine aisle and a fat man with a beard in a red suit.

During a Christmas party, held by Special Branch, I got into conversation with Gary, the only Intelligence officer at our airport. The poor bloke was working his legs down to the knees with the demands of the job. Though he was still in uniform, as all airport Intelligence officers were, his job was to gather the ‘intel’ (intelligence information) that might help the preventive Customs officers, like me, do our job better. It was the Intel officers’ duty to provide local intelligence for their own airports or ports. The Intel officers would use any means or route possible, such as airline computers, FedEx and UPS delivery info, and liaising with Special Branch or the Immigration Department.

One thing we uniforms didn’t need any help in doing better was drinking; the drinking culture in Customs was well established and ingrained. So take it as a measure of my Christmas party intake that, when, the following day, Gary came over to me and said that he agreed with my idea, I had no idea what he was talking about. I couldn’t remember any idea that I had suggested or even talking to Gary the night before. I just hoped that, if the idea was for me to have gender reassignment surgery and change my name to Barbara, Gary hadn’t already bought me a dress, a wig and high heels. That would be just silly. I was obviously more of a Margaret.

Apparently, I had suggested that the Intelligence team – i.e. Gary – should grow by 100 per cent by adding me to the lineup. I’d always fancied the hush-hush world of Intelligence and I knew I had to start somewhere. Gary said he was going to have a word with the surveyor about it and see how it went.

A week later, I was in my new Intelligence officer uniform (which was the same as the old uniform but minus the badges of rank). I arrived in the Intel office for training. As this was what we would now classify as the early days for Customs preventive intelligence, the training was basically officers such as Gary making it up as they went along. Intel work was still viewed with some suspicion by a lot of senior officers.

So, no training as such then, just Gary trying to explain what he got up to and what was expected of us. And this is where the first hurdle appeared. We were preventive Intelligence officers and, as far as our local management were concerned, our job was to find smugglers for our local staff to stop and arrest. But intelligence information is strange stuff and is rarely what you want it to be. During our duties, I found that much of the intel we came across had nothing to do with our airport, and the other intel we discovered had little to do with Customs. We would come across police targets, Europol suspects and Interpol’s most wanted, etc. All interesting stuff – and stuff I filed away as something I could move on to later – but of no use to the airport officers. And our management were unimpressed with the amount of nonlocal intelligence that we processed as it didn’t improve their stats and, as such, to them was a waste of time.

At this time, we had one computer and that was for CEDRIC (i.e. Customs database) and PNC (police database) use only. We had no other forms of intelligence storage except a card index for suspects that we had come across or smugglers that we had caught. It sometimes felt like our intelligence methods were no better than sticking a pin into a list of names. But we stuck with it and gradually our methods improved and we actually started to talk to other ports and airports. One method that we used was simplicity itself: we would stand behind the Immigration officers in the airport at outbound (departures) and we would memorize the passport details of anyone we thought looked a bit iffy. That meant looking over a shoulder and remembering the full name, date and place of birth, plus what the suspect looked like. You soon started to improve your memory with practice; I could manage four of these clumps of details before I had to write them all down. Gary, with more practice, could do six, and the details would be perfectly correct. These details were then checked on CEDRIC and PNC as well as our index system. If we managed to get a hit, that passenger would be pulled for a search on their return. It was basic but it worked for us. The art of these early days of intel gathering was to be covert enough so that the smuggler never guessed that we were checking up on them. Our Intel team even became successful enough to add a couple more officers.

There were a limited number of people that I genuinely disliked but a character I kept running into fell easily into that category. We called him Benny the Dip, for the rather obvious reason that he was a notorious pickpocket. He’d been in more purses than a ten-year-old pound coin and in more pockets than pocket fluff. But Benny’s chief problem with his chosen career was that he was crap at it. If he’d tried to nick a kid’s pocket money out of a piggy bank – which he would’ve happily done – he’d have got his finger stuck in the slot. He was so inept that anyone who wanted to write a letter to him – such as a parole officer, a bailiff, a debt collector, the taxman, the DVLA, etc. – could send it directly to Benny at his local police station. And, as with many rubbish and habitual criminals, his crimes were directly linked to his drug habit. Benny would smoke, snort, sniff, chew, chomp, inject or lick anything that he thought could get him high. Personally, I wouldn’t have trusted him to babysit my goldfish, on the basis that he’d probably see if he could inhale it. It’s very hard to trust a man that you can easily imagine with bright-orange tailfins waggling out of one of his nostrils.

Not only did Benny make appearances at the local police station on a regular basis – matinees too – but he would also show up with distressing regularity at the airport. We began to think that he must have advertised himself as a drugs mule in the local paper:

Experienced smuggler available. Travels extensively. Own bag.

Good swallower. Will work for drugs (preferably not goldfish).

The trouble was that Benny was only ever caught on the occasions when he just had enough on him to be done for possession, not supply, but we were sure that we knew what his MO was, which was to purchase the gear in the Netherlands for a third party, and then post the drugs back to the UK. Our problem was that we had no idea who he was sending them to. Chances were that he would use a different address every time. We never seemed to get the intel at the right time or place to nail him. And this had gone on for a few years, with Benny ducking and diving through both UK and Dutch Customs. But then he finally ran into trouble. It seemed that the Dutch police had got as fed up with him as we were as he was constantly being arrested for drugs offences, being drunk and fighting. Benny the Dip was one of the only people I knew that actually got banned from entering the Netherlands.

So, Benny had to come up with a new system – and this was to fly to Belgium and then drive or use the train to cross the land border. He was still being picked up and deported by the Dutch and he still kept turning up on their doorstep like a dangerous boomerang. But all good things must come to an end, and his face was now so well known at our airport that he decided to change his travelling arrangements and fly back to Luton. The trouble on this occasion was that Luton was at a standstill because of fog, so on his day of travel Benny yet again arrived in our airport’s green channel. With this info, we tipped off the uniformed airport search boys that he was inbound and, as luck would have it, they were very quiet so we decided to give Benny the full treatment. He was put into the paper suit which is given out to those who have had their clothes removed for testing, and then he was given a nice holding cell. We never really expected much of the urine test as we all knew that he had a little bit of blood in his drugs stream, but, as it turned out, this time we were wrong.

The procedure was that, if drugs were discovered in the urine on the first test, then we would carry out a second test some time later to see if the reading had increased or decreased. Benny’s second test shot off the scale for amphetamine. This was a positive indication that he had gear concealed inside him as drugs were released into his bloodstream. With the good news of this new finding, Benny clammed up. He wouldn’t speak except to ask for a solicitor. Most of our cells were full that day so we were holding him in an overnight cell with bed and blanket and a babysitting watch waiting for the drugs to emerge. The on-call solicitor phoned the office and demanded that he talk to Benny without any officers within hearing range. Although this was against standard operating procedures, the senior officer said that this could happen as long as we could see Benny’s head. So the officers were pulled out of the cell and a phone was attached to the socket next to Benny’s bed. The officers did as they were told and waited for the call to end before returning to the cell.