Into the Valley

Encouraged by the sizeable pay increase and high divorce rate, Chris Clement-Green decided that answering a recruitment ad for the Thames Valley Police was just the thing for a much-needed overhaul of her life. It was 1984, a time before political correctness, at the height of the miner's strike and in the middle of five years of race riots. Perfect timing.

Expanding her police knowledge, her love life, and undeterred by sexist remarks and chauvinists, she decided to make her mark, while kissing goodbye to her previous dull and conventional existence. Chris captures the colorful characters and humor in many of the situations she found herself in, but the job had it's serious side, too. She was at the center of a riot in Oxford, during which her life was saved by a young black man she had previously stopped and questioned, and was attacked by a man with mental-health problems who was a consequence of the decision to move "care" into "the community." Consistently coming up against the effects of Margaret That