The last Scarborough People feature for now and again I quite enjoyed this interview. It must have been a scary prospect to be caught up in the middle of the infamous Brixton Riots especially when you are hit by a petrol bomb.

POLICEMAN Tim Gargan is a familiar face on the Scarborough beat. Here he talks to reporter IAN DUNCAN about starting out in 1980s Brixton and facing rioters armed with petrol bombs…

IT IS an unusual claim to fame – being one of the first people to be hit by a petrol bomb in the Brixton Riots – but PC Tim Gargan is one who can make such a claim.

Policing was in the blood, his father Tony was a detective with York City Police and his brother Nick is currently an Assistant Chief Constable in Thames Valley, so in 1980 he enlisted with the Metropolitan Police and was posted to Brixton, which he admits was a culture shock.

He said: “It was a conscious decision not to be in the same force as my dad. It was a small force so when you make a mistake it would have been a question of ‘wait until your dad hears about this’.”

At the time Brixton was the busiest police station in the country, covered an area of 2.94 square miles and the area averaged a murder every two weeks.

A year later on Saturday, April 11, 1981, the infamous Brixton Riots erupted and PC Gargan was caught in the middle.

He said: “I was working the afternoon they started. It was a big adventure. If you look at all the photos you can tell the Brixton officers because they were the ones still in their shirtsleeves. The first three petrol bombs to be thrown in anger were thrown simultaneously and I was hit by one of them.”

He added the missile hit his riot shield, which protected him from the flames, and also hit the Windsor Castle Pub behind him – he was unscathed by the attack but the pub received serious fire damage.

The riot has been described as one of the most serious riots in London in the 20th century and resulted in almost 279 police injuries and 45 members of the public being injured.

More than 100 vehicles were burned, including 56 police vehicles, almost 150 buildings were damaged, including 30 which were burned.

PC Gargan said he could remember clearly when the riot started. He said: “It was 4.40pm and I was watching the football results in Brixton Market when the riots kicked off about 100 yards away. We went straight to where it was happening. It was 10pm before we got back to the station for a break.

“There was a big angry crowd of black lads throwing bricks and bottles at police cars. I was too young to be scared. The riot developed from there.”

He added he did not have time to feel scared because there was so much happening around him and the police were outnumbered by rioters by 100 to one.

“Fortunately I was uninjured, apart from the little nicks that you do get in a riot, I wasn’t badly injured at all. It was very exciting and a massive adrenaline rush,” he said.

His eldest son, also called Tim, is a member of 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards) and recently carried out a six-month tour in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. “Looking back on it now I think that the Brixton riot was nothing compared to what my lad’s just been through in Afghanistan.

“I had received some riot training. One of the most frightening things that happened to me was standing across the road and have police horses charge right at me. You have to split into twos and the horses go right past your nose – you know there is one right behind you as well.”

PC Gargan has always remained a uniformed officer and not followed in his father’s footsteps into CID. He said: “Brixton was the perfect grounding and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

He added he gained experience working on various squads set up to investigate serious crimes such as murders and drugs offences. He said: “As murders came up they start to draft people in.

“As well as the murders there was drug dealing and domestic related stuff. Murders were commonplace, they only made page four or five of the South London Press.

“There was a murder in Brixton where I found the victim’s head – we couldn’t find it for a while.”

But by 1988 he and his wife Mary decided to head back to North Yorkshire and initially he was based in Whitby.

“The idea always was that I’d come back to North Yorkshire eventually. I got married and the first couple of kids were born there. We had to think about their education.

“Scarborough has got very, very busy now but with the training that I’d had it leaves you prepared for just about anything. The advantage is there’s nothing that this job can throw at me that I haven’t got an idea of how to deal with it.”

After two years at Whitby he transferred to Scarborough in 1990. During that time he has been held up at swordpoint at a domestic in Newby.

He said: “Two of us went round there and we were held up at samurai swordpoint for three quarters of an hour. It was just after this that the force had introduced rubber bullets.

“I was explaining to him that the way he’d parked his trailer out front didn’t give the baton man enough range so the baton would kill him anyway.”

Now at the age of 50 he will be entitled to retire after he completes 30 years’ service in February 2010 but has not made any plans for his retirement yet.

He said: “There’ll be a lot of aspects of the job that I’ll miss and there’ll be some aspects of the job that I won’t miss at all.

“I enjoy getting out and meeting people and doing some good for some people – just being able to help.”

As well as 24-year-old Tim, he and wife Mary have another son, 21-year-old Jack, who is hoping to join the Royal Marines, and 16-year-old Bethany. They live in Burniston.

PC Gargan said he was very proud of his son Tim’s achievements in the army because it was his ambition since he was a small boy when he used to play with toy soldiers in his sandpit.

He said: “I think the work he’s done in Afghanistan was difficult and very fraught. We know he’s been through the training but we don’t have a massive amount of faith in the equipment he’s got.”

Question time:

Favourite film: The Battle of Britain

Starsign: Taurus

Favourite TV: Sky News

Favourite food: Steak and Chips

Favourite drink: Red wine

Favourite CD: Anything by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention

Favourite holiday destination: Crete

Favourite part of Scarborough: The cliffs at Burniston and Cloughton

If you could invite any two people to dinner who would they be: Winston Churchill and Lord Nelson

Ambition: To live a healthy life

From the Scarborough Evening News on Tuesday, October 14, 2008.