The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case (27 page)

There has been some clearance, some redevelopment and the addition of new estates, but the appearance of Walton is broadly unchanged. There is a sense of tradition and continuity which has been lost to other areas of Merseyside. Tarmac has covered the old road surfaces, but cobbles break through in places. Small children sit on the front step and scratch at the pavement, boys and girls play in the streets or roam in groups through the entries.

Many of the houses have been individualised, with aluminium windows, stone cladding, pebble dashing, coats of brightly coloured paint. Still, there is a detectable air of neglect and civic failure in the rough grass and cracked headstones of the churchyard and in Walton Village, which curls down to Walton Lane, and the streets that encircle it to create a distinct, almost enclosed, community. Here the pavements are crumbling, the roads lumpy, pot-holed and patchily repaired.

Many of the shops in Walton Village have closed, the sites derelict. There are still corner newsagents and grocers, a couple of chippies, the video rental, Monica’s Cafe, The Mane Attraction Unisex Salon, and the Top House pub, with The Anfield just around the corner.

The Village stands in the heart of Liverpool City Council’s County Ward, which is currently represented by one Labour and two Liberal Democrat councillors. County Ward is almost entirely white and primarily working class, though not all the working class are working.

On the City Council’s Deprivation Index, Walton is some way below the bleakest areas of Everton and Toxteth, where the unemployment rate is
running at over 40 per cent, and fewer than two out of every ten households own either their own home or a car.

County Ward’s unemployment rate is just over 20 per cent, rising to nearly 30 per cent among men and young people. The level of unemployment has more than doubled in the last 20 years. Half the households in the area are owner-occupied, though two thirds have neither central heating nor a car. The proportion of single-parent families is under ten per cent, as it is throughout Liverpool, though the ratio in County, and city-wide, has tripled over two decades.

Walton’s crime is typically urban, and not significantly high. In any one month some 650 offences are likely to be recorded at Walton Lane Police Station, and a majority of these will be burglaries and thefts of, or from, cars. Criminal damage, shoplifting and violence will claim a sizeable proportion, with some robbery, a few stolen bikes, and a handful of drug offences. Less than a third of these crimes are likely to be detected, which is a little below the average detection rate on Merseyside. Of those crimes that are detected, about one quarter will have been committed by juveniles, and a majority of those juveniles will be cautioned rather than prosecuted.

The juveniles’ misdemeanours will be described on cards, and filed alphabetically in the two-drawer – male and female – card indexing system which is maintained in the Youth and Community Liaison Office at Walton Lane by the two YLOs (formerly JLOs – Juvenile Liaison Officers), Bev Whitehead and Brian Whitby.

PC Whitby is in his mid-thirties, and has two children of his own, a seven-year-old daughter and a boy the same age as Bobby and Jon. His own childhood, though not spent in Walton and perhaps more stable than many, was not so very dissimilar to that of the youngsters he now encounters.

He knows that much of his job reflects the worst of the area – young people in trouble, or causing trouble. He knows it’s not all like that. He’ll be visiting a school during assembly and only recognise say two dozen faces out of a thousand, as he looks around. He’ll go into one classroom and they’ll all stand up respectfully as he enters. He’ll go into another, and they’ll chorus, ‘Fuck off, bizzy!’

When he started as a JLO five years ago, he was full of crusading zeal. He was going to save the children and put the world to rights. At the moment, Brian can think of about ten kids he saw in those early days. Only one has stayed on the straight and narrow. The others have become probably the worst juveniles in Walton.

He’s learned to pick out the ones that are going to be a problem. Others will hang their heads when confronted, and ‘cry and seem genuinely remorseful. It’s the ones that stare you straight in the eye and deny everything that you’ve got to watch out for. They’ve got O Levels in lying before they’re ten. They’ll be going for the degree.

It usually starts at home, when they’re seven or eight, stealing from mum’s purse, swearing. The parents’ll call the station and say we’ve tried everything, now can you have a go, have a word with him. One time, a little lad comes into the station with a note in an envelope. He hands it to Brian. ‘Dear ofcer, this little bastard of a son of mine has been robbing, can you speak to him, please.’ Good enough. So what you been doing? Stealing from me mam’s purse. Brian tells him the rights and wrongs, shows him round the cells … this is where naughty people go who steal … he doesn’t do that so much any more, employing the shock tactics, but anyway, he’s shown the lad round, and sat him on the desk to give him a final talking to. The lad says I wanted to buy me mum a mother’s day present, and I didn’t have enough money. It was two pound fifty, and I only had one pound fifty. That finished Brian. How can he tell the lad off now?

Another day, and Brian’s on a home visit. He knocks on the door and a small boy answers. Brian’s feeling chirpy, so he says, hello sonny, you the man of the house? Fuck off, I’m only six. He goes inside and speaks to the father. He asks the father, do you know what your son just said to me? Brian recounts the doorstep exchange. Well, what do you fucking expect, says the father. Brian leaves, and finds a big nail under the wheel of his car.

If they’re going to make a career of it, the next thing will be trouble at school. There’ll be a phone call from the head teacher. Brian will be called in to have a word. In his greener days, he used to go around with a more senior JLO, and they were at a school to see a boy, let’s call him Mickey, who’s been collecting for charity and pocketing the money. Mickey’s from a big family. They’re all built like bulldogs, and they’re all trouble. Brian’s got a bet on that Mickey’s going to murder someone.

Anyway, they’re up at the school. Mickey’s mum’s there, the teacher, Brian, and his colleague, who’s shouting at Mickey. Suddenly, Mickey keels over, in a dead faint. His mother’s over him, get up you little bastard, she’s pulling at him, and Brian’s concerned, fending her off, trying to give the boy some air. He comes round, and starts crying. End of telling off.

Two years later, Brian’s up at the school to see Mickey’s younger brother, who’s in trouble for something or other. Brian is giving him what for, when, suddenly, younger brother keels over, in a dead faint. It won’t work. Not this time it won’t. Brian gets the lad up and carries on, unmoved by his ploy.

There are another two brothers that Brian has dealt with, off and on, over the years. They’re only in their early teens now, and often in some trouble or other. People think they’re just plain nasty. Cheeky bloody hard-faced kids, Brian calls them.

They were smoking cannabis when they were seven or eight, mixing with older lads, coming on like mini-gangsters: Our mate’s doing a five stretch for a blagging … pulling the tarts … on the skag. The boys have been in and out of care, and used to go missing for days at a time, getting picked up
somewhere in the city in the early hours of the morning. There was always some kind of trouble at home, and Brian has been there when one of the boys took a hammer and a snooker cue to his mother. Brian does not know what will become of them, but fears the worst. There’s a rumour going round at the moment that they’ve got a gun. This is information that will need to be checked out.

Brian has been preoccupied lately with the fate of a 12-year-old whom he and social services have been trying to get into secure accommodation, as much for the boy’s own protection as for anything else. The boy just can’t stop robbing, and the locals are sick of it. When he stole and killed a racing pigeon, allegedly worth £2000, people were coming into the station saying, if you don’t sort him out, we will. We’ll kill him.

The boy looks like an angel, and is so plausible he can talk his way out of anything. He’s forever turning up, miles from home, in some trouble or other. The other day it was St Helen’s. He’d had fifty pounds out of a till, and was in the police station. The station sergeant is on the phone to Brian, telling him he seems such a nice lad. Says he’s keen on bird-watching. The sergeant gets a bit funny when Brian starts laughing. A week or two before that, the boy is caught in the back of a shop in another centre. A police woman is called. He cries and cries. He’s lost, he can’t find his mum, he’s frightened. The policewoman takes his name and date of birth, and let’s him go. Then it transpires that four other nearby shops have been robbed. The policewoman calls Walton. The name the boy gave is false, but the date of birth is all too familiar to Brian.

No one’s counting, but the boy has come to police attention more than 80 times. Many of these will be reports that he’s absconded from care homes. None are crimes of violence, and not all are far from Walton Lane Police Station: a policeman is walking into the station one day, and sees the boy wheeling a motor bike out of the yard. It turns out he’s just stolen it from round the back of the station, where it had been stored as recovered stolen goods.

Sometimes, Brian can’t help admiring the wit and resourcefulness of the youngsters, and the scams they pull. He used to work the director’s gate at Anfield on match days. You’d get boys coming along, saying they were from
Jim
’
ll Fix
It,
and Jim was fixing it for them to get into the match. Boys trying to slither in under the turnstiles, standing outside wailing that they’d lost their ticket and waiting for some kind soul to come along and get them in, boys that Brian knew lived up the road saying they’d travelled from Speke without a ticket, ‘blagging’ one from somebody, and then trying to sell it on at an exorbitant price. ’Ere matey, got a spare ticket? No. Well, lend us fifty pence for some ciggies. Like they’re seriously intending to pay you back next time they see you.

They mind the parked cars of visiting fans, even of the police officers in
uniform, who can’t get into the station car park, and have to leave their cars nearby. Brian knows you have to pay. If you said sod off you cheeky little beggars, your tyres’d be flat when you got back. Or they’d ve scratched fuck off pigs into the paintwork.

It’s a bit of a game, all this, but Brian believes there’s a new mood creeping in. More youngsters showing less respect. The other night a boy of about 15 came up to him and pointed at Brian’s chest. What’s that on your tunic? Brian looked down, and the boy’s hand flicked up, knocking off Brian’s helmet. Hah, got yer officer. What can you do? You can’t give ’em a clip round the earhole.

There’s another boy causing a few problems on the street, and Brian’s having a word with him. The boy says he goes to one of the local schools which just happens to be the school where Brian is on the board of governors. He tells the boy. The boy says what do you want, a medal? The boy turns to his mates. Give this fella a Blue Peter badge, he’s our school guv’nor.

It might only be a minority that’s bad, but the minority’s getting bigger all the time.

Brian doesn’t think the new directive on cautioning is helping very much. Trying to keep kids out of court, penny pinching. There isn’t the same flexibility any more. In the old days you could have a word with the boss. Look boss, this kid is stepping out of line a bit, but he’s got a good mum, and the offences are very petty, let’s try and do something for him. Now it all goes up to the juvenile panel; it’s just a paper exercise, and there isn’t the scope there was before to work with the kids.

The youngsters have noticed the change too. They’ve twigged that there’s a new leniency, that they can get away with things like knocking a bobby’s hat off, and worse.

Take, for instance, a teenage girl, arrested the other day for criminal damage. She smashed a door in after a row with somebody. She’d done exactly the same thing a few days earlier. She’s already got two cautions for shoplifting, and seems to be under the impression that she’s entitled to three before she gets prosecuted. Her attitude can only be described as cavalier.

It’s as if you’ve got to get two or three cautions under your belt to be taken seriously out there. Everyone looks up to the baddie, and wants to be like them. A few cautions will see you on your way. Go on, smash that window, all youse’ll get’s a caution.

Nowadays, Brian goes on home visits after an offence has been committed and they’re saying, if I admit it, will I get off with a caution? Does that mean I won’t have to go to court?

He’s gone round to see a 15-year-old about an offence. The youth answers the door and Brian explains why he’s there. What the fuck’s it got to do with you, the youth replies. Brian says he’ll be helping to decide what
happens. I’ve already admitted it, says the youth, I’m going to get a caution. He’s standing on the doorstep, verbally abusing Brian, when the father comes out, telling his son not to be rude to the officer. The boy tells his father to mind his own fucking business, and punches him. They’re all in the house now, Brian restraining the struggling youth, mother and father dancing round them, saying go on officer, give him a good hiding.

Brian doesn’t know what it’s all about. They say it’s the Sixties and the do-gooders, but if you ask him what the difference is between his own son and some of the boys in trouble, he’d say it was care and affection, and teaching them right from wrong. At an early age, Brian would slap his boy’s hand if he was naughty. He loves the bones of his children, but he will smack them, and he thinks they do learn from that. Then he sits with his son of an evening, gives him time. They’ll go through schoolwork, always have a cuddle. That’s what’s missing for so many of them. You see families and you think, if you can buy them all these material things, why can’t you give them love. Brian sees these kids and, sometimes, he just wants to put his arms around them and give them a great big hug. There’s one lad, in a group Brian goes bowling with occasionally. This lad’ll be acting all tough with his mates, but Brian’ll say, come here, put his arm round him, and the lad’ll do it. You can see that he wants to.