Intro:
Life had never promised Callum Dale much. If he’d been a few weeks later in joining the Army he’d have likely ended up on the wrong side of the Toxteth riots and his life would have gone down a very different path. As it was, he ended up serving in the Royal Military Police for most of the 80s, including in Northern Ireland, before leaving the military police for the civilian, initially in the West Midlands Police, before moving to Nottingham in the late 90s. Although he was, and remains, a committed Everton fan.
Strengths:
- Generous and forgiving by nature.
- Good understanding of the impact of organised crime on individuals and communities.
- Sense of personal integrity.
- Hands-off approach with junior officers allows them to use their own initiative whilst working cases.
- Good at navigating office politics without losing his way or getting subsumed into silly game-playing.
- Willing and happy to act as a mentor to less experienced junior officers.
- Continuing faith that eventually, Everton will achieve something.
- Secret pool hustler.
- Killer Frank Sinatra impersonation seen at office karaoke nights.
Weaknesses:
- Finds giving up smoking so easy he’s done it half a dozen times.
- High blood pressure.
- Hands-off approach can lead to inadequate supervision of unscrupulous junior officers.
- Sometimes too accommodating to demands from other units and superiors.
- Although open and explicit racism and sexism is not tolerated in Dale’s team, he has a blindspot for the damage that casual, endemic prejudice can do.
Trivia:
- Dale was Jenny’s superior in the Army, but joined the police after her and is junior to her in police terms.
- In the early Noughties Dale was one of fewer than twenty five Nottinghamshire Police detectives trusted to lead the fight against widespread organised crime in the city. He was shocked at the time to learn that the head of the Major Crimes Unit was not
- Dale identified five detectives in Central Nottingham CID as corrupt shortly after taking over command of the unit. He was only ever able to take action against two of them, managing to push them both into Neighbourhood Policing Teams. Two others retired on full pensions, and the fifth was protected by his friendship with a Superintendent.
- Dale was initially reluctant to accept a seconded detective from another force, but was impressed by reports of Paul’s arrest of a child sex offender in 2004 – having been concussed by a blow to the head, Paul chased the man down across half a mile of beach to make the arrest.
- He would quite like to own a pub after retirement, but has seen many officers start either pubs or restaurants with their pensions and quickly fall into debt.
- Neither of his divorces were especially amicable, and he has strained relationships with all three of his children. His first wife stopped speaking to him altogether when their son was caught in a heroin raid and Dale refused to intervene on his behalf.
- Dale flirted with the fringes of the Everton firms in the late 70s. West Midlands police considered him for an undercover role among Birmingham football hooligans earlier in his career, but decided against it as he was unable to disguise a strong Scouse accent.
- Jenny Brown credited him with being her first superior in the Army to recognise that she was good for more than making tea. He pushed for her to take on a more active role on intelligence-gathering patrols in Northern Ireland, and was one of her referees when she applied to the police. She later returned the favour for him.
Easter egg
- Dale was first created in the summer of 2008, and his name combines the first names of my two favourite Bill characters – Sergeant Callum Stone, and Sergeant Dale Smith.
Attempted Murder 