POLICE HISTORY LOOKBACK:
Alex Duncan soon after becoming a police officer
FROM BRISTOL TO THE BOARD After 20 years at the Federation, we look back at outgoing National Secretary Alex Duncan’s policing past as he retires from the service
Passing out at the age of 19 at Avon and Somerset Constabulary in 1990, PC Alex Duncan quickly got a taste of policing riots in Bristol and walking the beat on notorious council estates. A new-in-service Alex was called out
to his first riot in Lawrence Weston at the end of an evening shift and recalls the challenge of trying to put on full public order kit in the back of a moving van with the rest of his unit when they were on the
38 | POLICE | AUGUST 2022
way to the estate. PC Duncan and his unit scaled the block
of flats and encountered a man in his 20s with a pit bull terrier, who refused to go back inside for some time. After some altercation, he complied. An elderly lady, who overheard the commotion, brought them out cups of tea in her finest china, in a moment he described as “surreal for a new officer”.
On 16 July 1992, three days of rioting
began in Hartcliffe, after two men who had stolen an unmarked police motorcycle were killed in a chase with a police car. Shops were attacked, cars were set on fire and rioters threw stones and petrol bombs at police.
There were 65 arrests during three
days of rioting and officers were called in from Gloucestershire, Dorset and Wiltshire, with Alex being one of the first on the scene.
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