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From London to Jamaica: The real life 'Death In Paradise' policeman
Leslie Green swapped the streets of London for a beat in sunny Jamaica - but it turned out to be anything but easy
The idea of swapping the grey streets of London for a beat in sunny Jamaica would sound appealing to any policeman.
But for one senior detective who did just that, the reality of life on the Caribbean island turned out to be far from the hammock-swinging world of sea and sundowners of hit BBC1 show Death In Paradise.
Leslie Green was one of Scotland Yard’s toughest chief inspectors, responsible for busting gangs who used violence and murder to run their drug empires.
Then he was asked to join a government-sponsored task force in Jamaica.
His job was to help local police deal with the criminals “at source” before their drugs could reach the UK.
Any thoughts Leslie, 54, may have had of an easier life were soon banished.
His experience of Jamaica is as a place where life is cheap, guns rule, drugs are rife and the job of a police officer is every bit as tough as any in the UK.
In 2004, he left behind his wife Annette and two children, Helen, now 23, and James, 21, in Henley-on-Thames and flew to Jamaica for what he then thought would be a couple of months.
Eight years later he was still there... now as the island’s Assistant Commissioner of Police.
It was only in 2009, once the children had gone off to university, that Annette upped sticks to join him.
Meantime the family had to make do with regular holiday visits and contact via Skype.
Leslie says: “Jamaica is a beautiful island and there are fantastic people there, but what I found pretty quickly was while most people can go about their lives comfortably and happily, there are a cluster of places where violence is likely to break out at any moment.
“The main problem is drugs, and it is drugs which allow access to easy money which is then spent on weapons.
“Unlike the UK, the answer to conflict is very quickly violence and extreme violence.”
He tells how at one stage the island was third in the world for violent crime,
with around 60 murders per 100,000 people compared to just 1.2 in the UK last year.
“In 2009, we had 1,600 murders while in the UK it is always around 700,” he says.
“There were occasions when there were several murders in one attack. Once we had 13 different firearms used in one attack on a house.”
He explains how the AK47 is a popular weapon because it is “simple to use, very effective and very robust”.
The most popular weapon for murders is the 9mm handgun, but he also had to deal with machete and acid attacks.
Despite his background investigating shootings in London’s Jamaican community as part of the Met’s Operation Trident team, he still found the level of violence took some getting used to.
Only three weeks ago London schoolgirl Imani Green, eight, was shot dead in a suspected revenge attack while on a family holiday on the island.
It couldn’t be more different to TV drama Death In Paradise, which sees Detective Inspector Richard Poole, played by Ben Mitchell, transferred from London to the fictional Caribbean island of Saint-Marie.
Leslie says: “I arrived in October and it was very pleasant weather, warm and sunny. Arriving at Kingston, down by the waterfront, it looks very pleasant.
“When you move up to New Kingston, there are a lot of commercial enterprises, banks, telecom companies, everything you’d expect from a modern city.
“However, when you start to look at the more deprived areas you see a very different Jamaica from the postcards. A lot of the houses look like shacks and are of wooden construction with corrugated iron roofs.
“They are very close together with tight alleyways which are ideal for ambushing police officers when they are looking for criminals.”
Leslie says that on the whole the West Indian people were very welcoming and often concerned for his safety.
“People are very aware about how important tourism is and keep their eyes out for you,” he says.
“I actually had a lot of problems going to crime scenes because they thought I was a tourist and they would literally stand in front of my car trying to stop me going into these areas.”
In the BBC show, DI Poole is able to call on forensic scientists to help solve cases but Leslie says that while officers routinely carry guns in Jamaica, other equipment used in the UK wasn’t so readily available.
“When I started as a 16-year-old cadet, the police radio was about the limit of the technology. Then I witnessed a real revolution with computers and forensic science.
“In Jamaica it was like stepping back in time. When I first went there the forensic capability was very poor and ineffective.
“There it still takes up to two years to get DNA results, unlike in the UK where you can get them in two days. In Jamaica there is nothing like the sense of urgency I had in the UK where I would send someone out to take a statement and they would do it immediately.
“Here I could send someone out for weeks on end and eventually they would come back with a statement.
“If a pretty girl walks past they will look at the pretty girl instead of what they are doing. There is always tomorrow, always another time to do something. There’s always a drink or a pretty woman to distract them.
“It would take an age to get any official documentation because everything is paper and you physically have to go and collect the paperwork.
“It was frustrating, painstaking and you have to have a very methodical mind to manage that process, especially *dealing with 1,600 murders a year.”
One of the highest profile criminals Leslie brought to justice was Donald “Zeeks” Phipps, a notorious gang leader in west Kingston who was convicted of a double murder and sentenced to life. Another case he dealt with was that of the murder of Richard and Julia Lyn, from the island’s Manchester parish in 2006. The couple had gone missing from their home a couple of weeks before Christmas. Leslie’s team got information linking their disappearance to a nearby refuse tip, and their bodies were found there. Two suspects were later convicted and sentenced to death.
In Death In Paradise much is made of DI Poole sweltering in a suit. Leslie says: “It takes some getting used to because it is so hot all the time.
“I soon learnt if you weren’t wet from the sweat it was wet from the rain. An umbrella wasn’t much good because the wind blows sideways.”
Another difficulty he found was making himself understood.
“There were a few language issues,” he says. “Obviously there is a Jamaican patois, and if you are speaking to some of the more illiterate members of the community or those from rural areas it could be a problem.
“Their drawl and use of patois *terminology could be difficult to understand but on the whole most people you speak to with no problem.
“Local officers were very useful as they could speak more effectively but sometimes the locals had trouble understanding me.
“Sometimes they would translate and turn my English into a much more effective and shorter version.
“I would ask a nice question and they would translate it to an abrupt one.
“Sometimes you would say something and they wouldn’t understand it and a colleague would then say it to them in the same way and then they would *answer. But it played to my advantage being white-skinned because the people trusted white-skinned people much more than they would trust a black officer.
“In some rural communities they would run out and buy a lottery ticket simply because I had come into their community because they associate things with numbers, and a white man is a particular number for a lotto ticket.”
It was always a high-pressure job but when Leslie did get some down-time he took advantage of the outdoors.
He says: “I did get to relax, I’d play golf ...but actually that could end up being more stressful!
“I learnt to scuba dive, which was wonderful and you couldn’t get that in London. It was a wonderful release from the pressures of the phone.”
He tells how every divisional police station has a bar... considered some of the safer places for *officers to relax.
The murder rate in Jamaica has fallen by a third since he first took up his post, but Leslie has now retired and he and Annette are living in France.
He says he has watched Death In Paradise but wasn’t overly impressed.
“It just didn’t have a true ring for me as to what I know life is like for a *policeman on a Caribbean island,” he says. “Most people’s view is Jamaica is somewhere you go and enjoy the sun and the beach and sit around drinking rum but it is not all like that.”
He says he doesn’t miss his job there as it was so stressful and very hard work with long hours.
“It was a tremendous strain over
the eight years,” he says. “I think I only swam in the pool twice.
“I miss the climate occasionally but it is nice to have some seasons.
“They say there are seasons in Jamaica, but as far as I am concerned there was only one *season... it was very hot with the *occasional shower.
“I could have done the weather forecast for 365 days of the year.”
- Death In Paradise, Tuesdays, 9pm, BBC1, Tuesday 1:30 AM, PBS
Check out all the latest News, Sport & Celeb gossip at Mirror.co.uk http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-li...#ixzz2XChcZvU8
Leslie Green swapped the streets of London for a beat in sunny Jamaica - but it turned out to be anything but easy
The idea of swapping the grey streets of London for a beat in sunny Jamaica would sound appealing to any policeman.
But for one senior detective who did just that, the reality of life on the Caribbean island turned out to be far from the hammock-swinging world of sea and sundowners of hit BBC1 show Death In Paradise.
Leslie Green was one of Scotland Yard’s toughest chief inspectors, responsible for busting gangs who used violence and murder to run their drug empires.
Then he was asked to join a government-sponsored task force in Jamaica.
His job was to help local police deal with the criminals “at source” before their drugs could reach the UK.
Any thoughts Leslie, 54, may have had of an easier life were soon banished.
His experience of Jamaica is as a place where life is cheap, guns rule, drugs are rife and the job of a police officer is every bit as tough as any in the UK.
In 2004, he left behind his wife Annette and two children, Helen, now 23, and James, 21, in Henley-on-Thames and flew to Jamaica for what he then thought would be a couple of months.
Eight years later he was still there... now as the island’s Assistant Commissioner of Police.
It was only in 2009, once the children had gone off to university, that Annette upped sticks to join him.
Meantime the family had to make do with regular holiday visits and contact via Skype.
Leslie says: “Jamaica is a beautiful island and there are fantastic people there, but what I found pretty quickly was while most people can go about their lives comfortably and happily, there are a cluster of places where violence is likely to break out at any moment.
“The main problem is drugs, and it is drugs which allow access to easy money which is then spent on weapons.
“Unlike the UK, the answer to conflict is very quickly violence and extreme violence.”
He tells how at one stage the island was third in the world for violent crime,
with around 60 murders per 100,000 people compared to just 1.2 in the UK last year.
“In 2009, we had 1,600 murders while in the UK it is always around 700,” he says.
“There were occasions when there were several murders in one attack. Once we had 13 different firearms used in one attack on a house.”
He explains how the AK47 is a popular weapon because it is “simple to use, very effective and very robust”.
The most popular weapon for murders is the 9mm handgun, but he also had to deal with machete and acid attacks.
Despite his background investigating shootings in London’s Jamaican community as part of the Met’s Operation Trident team, he still found the level of violence took some getting used to.
Only three weeks ago London schoolgirl Imani Green, eight, was shot dead in a suspected revenge attack while on a family holiday on the island.
It couldn’t be more different to TV drama Death In Paradise, which sees Detective Inspector Richard Poole, played by Ben Mitchell, transferred from London to the fictional Caribbean island of Saint-Marie.
Leslie says: “I arrived in October and it was very pleasant weather, warm and sunny. Arriving at Kingston, down by the waterfront, it looks very pleasant.
“When you move up to New Kingston, there are a lot of commercial enterprises, banks, telecom companies, everything you’d expect from a modern city.
“However, when you start to look at the more deprived areas you see a very different Jamaica from the postcards. A lot of the houses look like shacks and are of wooden construction with corrugated iron roofs.
“They are very close together with tight alleyways which are ideal for ambushing police officers when they are looking for criminals.”
Leslie says that on the whole the West Indian people were very welcoming and often concerned for his safety.
“People are very aware about how important tourism is and keep their eyes out for you,” he says.
“I actually had a lot of problems going to crime scenes because they thought I was a tourist and they would literally stand in front of my car trying to stop me going into these areas.”
In the BBC show, DI Poole is able to call on forensic scientists to help solve cases but Leslie says that while officers routinely carry guns in Jamaica, other equipment used in the UK wasn’t so readily available.
“When I started as a 16-year-old cadet, the police radio was about the limit of the technology. Then I witnessed a real revolution with computers and forensic science.
“In Jamaica it was like stepping back in time. When I first went there the forensic capability was very poor and ineffective.
“There it still takes up to two years to get DNA results, unlike in the UK where you can get them in two days. In Jamaica there is nothing like the sense of urgency I had in the UK where I would send someone out to take a statement and they would do it immediately.
“Here I could send someone out for weeks on end and eventually they would come back with a statement.
“If a pretty girl walks past they will look at the pretty girl instead of what they are doing. There is always tomorrow, always another time to do something. There’s always a drink or a pretty woman to distract them.
“It would take an age to get any official documentation because everything is paper and you physically have to go and collect the paperwork.
“It was frustrating, painstaking and you have to have a very methodical mind to manage that process, especially *dealing with 1,600 murders a year.”
One of the highest profile criminals Leslie brought to justice was Donald “Zeeks” Phipps, a notorious gang leader in west Kingston who was convicted of a double murder and sentenced to life. Another case he dealt with was that of the murder of Richard and Julia Lyn, from the island’s Manchester parish in 2006. The couple had gone missing from their home a couple of weeks before Christmas. Leslie’s team got information linking their disappearance to a nearby refuse tip, and their bodies were found there. Two suspects were later convicted and sentenced to death.
In Death In Paradise much is made of DI Poole sweltering in a suit. Leslie says: “It takes some getting used to because it is so hot all the time.
“I soon learnt if you weren’t wet from the sweat it was wet from the rain. An umbrella wasn’t much good because the wind blows sideways.”
Another difficulty he found was making himself understood.
“There were a few language issues,” he says. “Obviously there is a Jamaican patois, and if you are speaking to some of the more illiterate members of the community or those from rural areas it could be a problem.
“Their drawl and use of patois *terminology could be difficult to understand but on the whole most people you speak to with no problem.
“Local officers were very useful as they could speak more effectively but sometimes the locals had trouble understanding me.
“Sometimes they would translate and turn my English into a much more effective and shorter version.
“I would ask a nice question and they would translate it to an abrupt one.
“Sometimes you would say something and they wouldn’t understand it and a colleague would then say it to them in the same way and then they would *answer. But it played to my advantage being white-skinned because the people trusted white-skinned people much more than they would trust a black officer.
“In some rural communities they would run out and buy a lottery ticket simply because I had come into their community because they associate things with numbers, and a white man is a particular number for a lotto ticket.”
It was always a high-pressure job but when Leslie did get some down-time he took advantage of the outdoors.
He says: “I did get to relax, I’d play golf ...but actually that could end up being more stressful!
“I learnt to scuba dive, which was wonderful and you couldn’t get that in London. It was a wonderful release from the pressures of the phone.”
He tells how every divisional police station has a bar... considered some of the safer places for *officers to relax.
The murder rate in Jamaica has fallen by a third since he first took up his post, but Leslie has now retired and he and Annette are living in France.
He says he has watched Death In Paradise but wasn’t overly impressed.
“It just didn’t have a true ring for me as to what I know life is like for a *policeman on a Caribbean island,” he says. “Most people’s view is Jamaica is somewhere you go and enjoy the sun and the beach and sit around drinking rum but it is not all like that.”
He says he doesn’t miss his job there as it was so stressful and very hard work with long hours.
“It was a tremendous strain over
the eight years,” he says. “I think I only swam in the pool twice.
“I miss the climate occasionally but it is nice to have some seasons.
“They say there are seasons in Jamaica, but as far as I am concerned there was only one *season... it was very hot with the *occasional shower.
“I could have done the weather forecast for 365 days of the year.”
- Death In Paradise, Tuesdays, 9pm, BBC1, Tuesday 1:30 AM, PBS
Check out all the latest News, Sport & Celeb gossip at Mirror.co.uk http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-li...#ixzz2XChcZvU8
It is a VERY fluffy topic.
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