I’ve always felt that justice for the victims of crime is important.

I found the burglar asleep on a bench – and everybody got their property back. I’d also helped to solve a crime after our children’s home was burgled. But my experience had mostly been with the local beat officers, who were nice to me. When I visited my dad and his Caribbean friends in London and told them about my ambition, they said, didn’t I understand that the police were our enemy? They hated the police because of the hostility they experienced. I suppose they were quite moralistic – the cops were always the good guys – and Auntie Margaret was always keen to talk about knowing the difference between right and wrong, and then doing the right thing.Īuntie Margaret was the only one who encouraged me to join the police. I used to watch all the 1960s TV police dramas in my childhood with ‘Auntie Margaret’, a remarkable woman who was the carer at our children’s home in Surrey. I’d always wanted to be a police officer. They thought I’d come from a privileged background, but when they heard I’d been brought up in care, that grabbed their attention and several of them said they thought I should write a book. I wrote it after talking to a group of West London College students. The title, though shocking, symbolises my feelings of being targeted, combined with the sense of isolation and marginalisation I often felt in my career.ĭespite my experience, I want my story to give hope and inspiration to others. I was the only black police officer on the frontline of the Brixton riots in 1981 and it was shouted at me by a black rioter. I called my memoir Kill The Black One First because it was once said to me. “ I thought my colour would be irerelevant.

Michael fuller kill the black one first