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Article

Ascension The most isolated IPA member in the world Dave Sismey , Derbyshire Branch

When talking about Ascension Island I often have to explain where it is. It is a pinprick of an island in the South Atlantic Ocean about half way between Brazil and Angola.

A scension is policed by the St Helena Police Service (current home of former Section UK President, Mick Luke), 810 miles away. It is a British Overseas Territory so UK law applies. I retired from Derbyshire Constabulary in 2005 and then, in 2008, I saw a job advertised for a Police Sergeant on Ascension Island. After several telephone interviews I took up my post on the other side of the world. There was the Inspector Reg Williams, me and four Constables: all St Helenians (known as Saints). The Police Service of St Helena then consisted of about 30 officers, six of them were on Ascension Island. They even had a small CID Department. The population of St Helena then was about 4000, most of them indigenous to St Helena. At the time the population of Ascension Island was about 1000, boosted by about 3000 tourists each year. There are no indigenous people on Ascension, so everyone there was working under a contract or were the dependants of contractors. The island had full employment, as there was no visa without a job to go to. The main employers were: the RAF base, the US Air Force base, BBC World Service, European Space Agency and the Ascension Island Government. With only five shops and five bars there was not much crime. There were only two flights a week from RAF Brize Norton and it was a stop over for the onward flight to the Falklands. Once every couple of months a MOD supply ship visited the island, as by then most of the fresh vegetables

in shops had gone, and the ship brought new supplies. The only other vessel to visit was the RMS St Helena: a passenger/cargo ship which visited every couple of months on its route from the UK; taking in Ascension, St Helena, Cape Town and back to the UK. After being there a while, I noticed that you never saw an aeroplane in the sky or a ship on the ocean unless it was coming to Ascension. The place was very remote. One night over Christmas, I was in the mountains looking down on Georgetown, the island’s capital, which was just a small village by UK standards. The small cluster of Christmas lights on the coast stood out in every direction as there was darkness as far as you could see. On arrival, Reg showed me to my bungalow and, handing me the keys, he said, “you won’t be needing those”. “Hmmm,” I thought, “I have been a cop for thirty years and I am not leaving my house unlocked”. By the time I left the island, I had to search the house to find them in order to hand them back. No one locked their house on Ascension and most people left the ignition key in their unlocked vehicles. Policing a small remote community like this means that everyone knows you and you are always on duty, like it or not. It is very different from a city, where you can take your helmet off and mingle with the crowd. On or off duty, everybody called me “Sarge”. When my sister visited me, she was referred to as “Sarge’s sister”. After a few months I knew most of the people. When driving around the island the drivers of all oncoming cars waved to you.

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POLICE WORLD Vol 64 No. 1, 2019