RECENT months and years have not been kind to the reputation of the police. The rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, the sharing of photographs of the bodies of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry by officers of the Met, and revelations of appalling misogyny, racism and bullying at Charing Cross police station in London, have all contributed to a collapse in confidence in the police.
Here in Scotland, the inquiry into the death in 2015 of Sheku Bayoh – a 31-year-old father of two from Sierra Leone – whilst in the custody of police officers in Kirkcaldy is ongoing.
However, despite the mounting evidence of a deeply worrying culture of discrimination and violence within the UK’s police forces, the representation of the police in television drama remains overwhelmingly positive.
According to Adam McNamara, a former police officer of seven years standing, most TV cop shows haven’t moved much beyond the Dixon of Dock Green stereotype of the kindly Bobby on the beat.
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Indeed, it was McNamara’s first-hand experience of working on a BBC police drama that led him to quit the project and turn, instead, to writing the stage play Stand By.
Set among riot police who are awaiting orders in the back of a van, the play (which premiered in 2017) reflects the writer’s experience within the police service.
After two years working on the BBC drama The Job, McNamara was, he says, “so jaded” that he had to pack it in.
“The police advisers that they have [on TV police dramas] feel that they have to continually show the police in a really positive light,” the playwright continues.
For example, the perceived need to sanitise the police, combined with matters of taste and decency, led to a farcical situation over the use of language.
“The c-word gets used quite a lot within the police,” says McNamara.
“The BBC said, ‘oh, we can only use that once.’ I was like, ‘once an episode?’ And they said, ‘no, no! Once a series!’”
Unable to thole the BBC restrictions, the former cop turned to the comparatively uncensored space that is theatre. On stage, McNamara says, “we don’t have that issue [of restrictive producers]”.
“My play is taken from my own experiences [as a serving police officer]. Conversations that I’ve had, or heard, incidents that I’ve attended, the opinions of cops that are never really shown on television.”
Stand By premiered at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews in 2017, before going on to have a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe of that year. Pleased though he was to receive positive reviews in Edinburgh, McNamara was particularly delighted to get positive feedback from police officers.
“I really wanted cops to say to me that they enjoyed it,” he explains. “And that’s what I got from them, which was brilliant.”
Which is not to say that the play paints a positive picture of the police or policing in the 21st century. McNamara remembers online criticism, during the 2017 run of the play, which accused his drama of being recruitment propaganda for the police.
He considers that to be a ludicrous suggestion. “If people see this play and it makes them want to join the police, they shouldn’t be allowed to join,” he says.
“This is a warts-and-all story. This is about the people who, yes, put themselves in harm’s way, and I know there have been a lot of good cops.
“But I also know there are a lot of quiet cops. There are a lot of cops who don’t want to rock the boat.
“They don’t want to be the squeaky wheel. They don’t want to complain about colleagues because there’s a culture in the police that’s very like criminals, where you don’t grass people up. That is inherent in the police.”
The writer “doesn’t care”, he says, if some cops or commentators challenge the veracity of his picture of the internal culture of the police.
“I’ve seen it and I’ve heard it, and I didn’t say anything. I was part of the problem.”
Writing the play was, McNamara says, a process of personal “catharsis” for him.
“I feel that the police should be held to the highest standards at all times. People should do that when they’re in uniform as well,” he says.
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It is incumbent on serving officers, he believes, to “call out” bad and discriminatory practice by fellow police officers. “We used to have question and answer sessions after shows” he remembers, “and some police bosses would stay behind and try to defend the status quo.
“They’d say things like, ‘there’s a lot of poetic license in this play, right?’ And I’d say, ‘no, there isn’t’.”
McNamara's time in the police was spent in Dundee and Angus. Dealing with an overwhelmingly white population, he recalls stopping a person of colour only once in his seven years of service.
Many Scottish officers have a similar experience of predominantly white populations and can be “apathetic” about police racism as a consequence, the writer believes.
All of which leads to the inevitable question, what led McNamara himself to leave the police force? “Because I’ve always wanted to be an actor,” he says, simply.
A friend coaxed him into auditioning for drama school and he soon found himself on the acting course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).
“On my last night shift in the police I was assaulted four times and dealt with a suicide,” he says, “and on the Monday I had a movement class.”
From there McNamara – who plays one of the officers in the drama – was soon being advised by award-winning stage and screenwriter Gregory Burke (of Black Watch fame) to turn one of his screenplay scenes into a stage play. The result is Stand By.
Stand By tours Scotland between March 11 and April 9. For further details, visit: scottishtheatreproducers.com
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