My son is stopped by the police and found in possession of a crayon which, they say, could be used for criminal damage. Something in our house has changed fundamentally

A week ago, at 11.30pm or so, my 19-year-old son came home and burst into the sitting room, where I was watching television. He crouched, spitting fury: "Dad, it's the fucking police." He startled me: in the family, we know him as the gentle giant who rarely uses expletives. "Tell them I'm at fucking college. Get up, Dad, and tell them." He was shaking

from head to toe, arms outstretched. "They're at the fucking door."

I could not keep my eyes off him. This was someone I had never known. I went to the door, confirmed to the police that he was my son and that he lived at our house. He stood next to me and would not let the officers speak. He rattled off that he had been coming out of the train station only five minutes away when the officers stopped him. They wanted to search him. He refused. "I wasn't doing anything, Dad, but they said I was acting strangely. I was only walking. Can't a man fucking walk?"

One officer said my son had bent down on seeing them and fidgeted with his right sock. They had found a large-sized crayon in his pocket and he could be charged with possession of the crayon with intent to do criminal damage. I had told the officer my son was going to college; now he wanted to know if the crayon was part of his tool kit. I had never before heard of a crayon being an instrument of crime. I knew David Blunkett had added to the list of offences. Maybe this was one of them.

The officer admitted that my son's uncontrolled rage was really the reason they had accompanied him home. He wanted to explain to us, the parents, the justification for the stop-and-search. I knew then that my son and the police officers were living in two different worlds and that my son had entered a space of revolt from which there was no turning back.

I said only that 35 years ago the police had drawn my fury for just about the same violation of my rights and that nothing had changed. The officer babbled awhile, handed over the crayon, and left. Nothing was said in our house that night. Something had changed fundamentally.

Two days later, the doorbell rang. Two officers stood in my doorway. They wanted evidence that my son lived at the house. Unlike the previous two, they would not accept my word. It was a request, they said, from Bromley police station, where my son was now detained for criminal damage to a car. After several attempts I spoke to an officer at Bromley. They had received a report that two black boys were seen in the area attempting to steal a car. They saw my son hiding in the bushes and arrested him. They released him five hours later without charge, claiming that whoever had made the report was unwilling to come to the station for an identification parade.

When he got home I asked my son: "Why were you hiding in the bushes?" "Dad," he said, "Bromley has no bushes. I was on my way home from a party when I was arrested for no reason." I believed him.

He is a rap artist. Later that night, he went to bed and I found an envelope on which he had scribbled some lyrics. They were all about death, whether there was life after it, whether there was anything called the soul, whether it was noble to die in the cause of freedom.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website