Seaford ex-policeman meets nearly every chief constable

David Rowland, from Seaford, joined the Brighton police force in 1958, and has met every chief constable ever since, bar one.

The former officer, now 87, recently met with the current chief constable of Sussex Police, Jo Shiner, where the pair chatted about how things have changed from David’s days in the service.

“I was around during the mods and rockers, and our bosses more or less said ‘make sure they don’t come to Brighton again, give them a tough time’. And that’s exactly what they got,” he said.

“It was the best weekend I ever had. We could do things and get away with it, whereas today, if you even thought about doing something like that, people would be after you.

David with Jo Shiner

“In my opinion, the public are the losers for it. Because you could just say something and people wouldn’t argue. Now, if you tell people to clear off, they up their fists and be ready for a fight.

“It’s a totally different ball game now. It’s difficult to judge what life was like in those days and what it is now because I’ve been retired for 35 years. The public in general are different.”

David’s career saw many notable moments, but none more poignant perhaps than when he was first on the scene at a devastating car crash.

“It was the early hours of the morning at the top of Ditchling Road,” he said.

“I was car crew, and we were told there was some sort of incident up there. I was driving, just pootling along at 30 miles an hour, and we got there, and it was an absolute mess.

“This car had gone round the road, and crashed through a garden wall. And the impact of that had thrown an elderly lady off the back seat, through the windscreen, across the garden and head first into a tree.

“She was laying in the garden. Dead.”

The driver and front passenger were trapped inside the car by their legs, David said. There were two passengers in the back of the car who sustained injuries to their legs.

“There was nothing we could do, you can’t bend metal back,” he said.

“I was shouting and screaming for the fire brigade, the ambulance, and our governor, and it seemed hours before anyone came.”

It later came to light that the people travelling in the vehicle were relatives of one of David’s colleague’s in the force.

The pair chatted about their lives in the force

“There was no alcohol involved, sober as anything, and to this day we still have never found out exactly what happened. The car just seemed to run away.

“The governor had to go up and tell him that his granny was dead.”

The two passengers in the back of the car survived.

David’s presiding memories of his time in the force, however, are happy ones.

“I absolutely loved every minute,” he said.

“I did 27 years and was medically discharged in 1985. I worked for various supermarkets and did security after that.”

David is also a founding member of the police museum in Brighton, and organised cribbage tournaments to raise money for charity.

His charity work did not stop there, after he helped raise £1,300 in 1970, which put a lifeboat service in to Brighton Marina.

David now lives in a nursing home in Seaford, and looks forward to chatting with any future chief constables at Sussex Police.