华尔街中级英语学习教程第4课：糟糕的遭遇Act4 (MP3和文本下载)

HELEN: I'm WPC Helen Hanks, and I'm stationed at Lewes Police Station, which is in the county of Sussex in England.

STEPHEN: My name is Stephen Rowle. I'm a Police Constable in the Sussex Police. I've been a police officer now for twenty-one years.

CLARE: And this is Clare Martin. Hello, again. Today I'm investigating the police.

CLARE: Woman Police Constable Helen Hanks and Police Constable Stephen Rowle are well known on the streets of Lewes. They are community police officers. But what exactly does this mean?

STEPHEN: Community Officer. It's trying to build bridges with the community. Getting back to the old-fashioned way of being a police officer. For people to see a policeman walking the beat in uniform, they find very comforting. And I am there to be seen, to see people, help prevent crime by my sheer presence. And if I can be seen to be walking the streets, both in the town centre and in the residential areas of town, then, hopefully it puts a few minds at rest and will deter thieves, villains, burglars from visiting our town and our area.

HELEN: Basically, it's just to get to know the people. Get to know the area, and try and build up a relationship between the police and the community. And, hopefully, improve policing and quality of life in those areas.

CLARE: "Building bridges with the community"? "Getting to know people"? Well, this sounds good for the image of the police. So is it really just a public relations exercise, or does a community police officer actually catch criminals?

STEPHEN: Yes. I do catch criminals. Particularly shoplifters in the town centre. People that go into shops and steal property, leave without paying. Anybody committing any offences in the town which I see, then, I will arrest them as and when necessary.

CLARE: No doubts there. Police Constable Rowle is convinced that he is effective. But, how big a town is Lewes, and how many people does he police?

STEPHEN: As Lewes is a town of some 28-29,000 people there's an awful lot of people for us to look after. So, therefore, they don't get the coverage that they perhaps deserve from somebody who is solely walking the beat.

CLARE: Police Officers Rowle and Hanks don't police a town of 28 or 29 thousand on their own, of course. There are also the traffic police and the special squads like the CID - the Criminal Investigation Department. But the community police officer is very much in the front line. How difficult a town is Lewes to police? Is it generally a law-abiding town?

STEPHEN: I'd say, I'm very proud to work in Lewes. I live in the town. I'm very pleased to live here as well. It's very quiet. We have a few problems in one or two little areas where people misbehave for want of a better word. But, yes, it's a generally law-abiding town.

CLARE: So, it's generally a peaceful place. But some people "misbehave". For example?

HELEN: A lot of burglaries, unfortunately. A lot of criminal damage. Um, a lot of problems with motor vehicles. That's where thefts from motor vehicles, and also, thefts of motor vehicles. I suppose, that's the main bulk of the work.

CLARE: And what about traffic offences - speeding and parking. Does that take up a lot of time?

STEPHEN: It takes up an awful lot of my time. Traffic in Lewes is an absolute nightmare. The town was never built for the car. It's a very old town. It's a town full of very narrow streets. We do have town centre car parks but it does cause an awful lot of problems. People are basically lazy, they don't like to walk. And if they can park outside a shop, then, they will park outside a shop. They won't park round the corner and walk a hundred yards.

CLARE: And what happens if someone is illegally parked?

HELEN: Um. You generally wait to see if anyone returns to the vehicle, or speak with the person that's with the vehicle. And just ask them what they're doing there. If they have a legitimate reason for parking there, then, that's okay. If they're delivering to and from premises, or it's a disabled person, then as long as they're not causing an unnecessary obstruction there, there is no problem really. But, obviously, if it's clearly a matter of a person who's parked there just to pop in and get a newspaper from a shop and there's a parking space sort of within a hundred yards then, yes, they probably do get dealt with.

CLARE: "They get dealt with". I don't like the sound of that. What does it mean exactly?

STEPHEN: They either get a warning or a fixed penalty ticket, which is a fine payable within 28 days. The fine for parking illegally is twenty pounds, but dependent on the circumstances they can also receive a little yellow notice which I also issue to people in foreign vehicles because the notice is actually printed in six different languages. It warns the driver that they're parked illegally and it's very convenient particularly for foreign visitors. They don't necessarily know our parking rules and regulations and therefore they do tend to park illegally. And it's handy to put one of these little notes on there, and they like it because it shows that the British Bobby has got a human heart after all.

CLARE: Mmn. The British Bobby may have a human heart. But sometimes he - or she - has to take action. How popular does that make them?

HELEN: Um. It makes you very unpopular with the person you're dealing with, but, um, I think you have to deal with everyone with a certain degreee of tact and diplomacy.

CLARE: "Tact and diplomacy". Very important qualities for this very difficult job. And is it a more difficult job for a woman officer? Are Woman Police Constable Hanks' duties the same as Police Officer Rowle's?

HELEN: My, my duties, the, the jobs that I do and duties that I perform are the same as a man. I am employed on exactly the same basis as a male police officer. I have had on a couple of occasions when I've turned up to places to deal with jobs, it's "uh", you know, "I was expecting a man". And I say, "well, I'm all you're going to get", and they have to accept that. And accept that women police officers deal with things as adequately as male police officers do.

CLARE: I'm sure they do. Perhaps there is even sometimes an advantage to being a woman police officer?

HELEN: I think possibly there is. Yes. I think it probably takes a bit of aggression out of, um, out of men in particular. I don't think there's much cudos in hitting a woman although that does happen unfortunately these days.

CLARE: Does Officer Hanks worry about this possibility of violence?

HELEN: It's something that you do have at the back of your mind. And it's something that every time, say, you stop a car at night or something like that you do have a certain amount of apprehension. And you try and take, obviously, as many steps as you can to avoid situations where there is violence and aggression. And that's the best you can do unfortunately.

CLARE: Officer Rowle, on the other hand, is quite a big chap, and he can certainly look after himself. So what does he think are the worst parts of the job?

STEPHEN: I think your tape would run out before I finished that long. It's...there are very difficult parts of my job. There are some very unpleasant parts of my job. Difficult parts are, passing on death messages. When a loved one has died and you have to go to a house to tell somebody. It can be quite harrowing for police officers when they deal with accidents, involving children in particular. It's a dirty job that nobody else wants to do that the police officer ends up doing because there is nobody else to do it.

CLARE: So, it's the police who do the jobs - the dirty jobs - that no one else wants to do. And all the time, Officers Hanks and Rowle talk about "tact and diplomacy" and "being human" and "getting to know people". But how do the public see things? Do the police have the support of the public?

HELEN: It depends whereabouts in the country you are, I think. Um. In Lewes it's not too bad. Um. I must admit I do feel quite sorry for police officers in big inner city areas because I don't think they have an easy job at all and I don't envy them their, their job. I think in Lewes you have quite a good support from the community and that does help policing quite a lot.

STEPHEN: In this country we police very much by consent. If we don't have the consent of the population we are out of a job because people just won't take any notice of what we do and what we say. So yes, I would say that 99 per cent of the population respect us for what we do and the majority of those people respect the individual police officers.

CLARE: "Policing by consent". Policing with the support of the community. Perhaps it is this principle which explains the importance of the officer on the beat...which explains why getting to know people is not a public relations exercise. So, is community policing a good use of police resources?

STEPHEN: I think it's an excellent use of police resources. I think there ought to be more community beat officers. I think that the community officer plays a very important role, as I said earlier, in building bridges between the police and the community. It's got to be a two way thing. Not only has the community got to be able to talk to us, we've got to be able to talk to the community.