Before rugby went professional, in 1995, Dean Richards had spent 13 years as a police constable in the Leicestershire force, serving most of that time on the beat in Hinckley. During the appeal hearing, Lorne Crerar, one of the three panel members, suggested that Richards would be experienced in the preparation of witness statements as a result of his time in the police.
It was, Richards responded, a “different format” and that he had simply received answers to ERC’s questions and converted them into formal statements. He may have forgotten his belief, published in his 1995 autobiography, that: “As a serving policeman I have no time for any officers, however few and far between they might be, who have changed or fabricated evidence in order to secure a conviction.”
Attending his first road accident as a young officer, Richards came to the conclusion “the first thing needed is a cool, accurate assessment of the forces required to deal with the situation”. He had to handle a variety of violent situations that brought him into contact with genuine tragedies, among them telling families of the deaths of relations in traffic accidents.
He was a serving officer in 1988 when, after the Scotland-England match that year, he was involved in horseplay with the Calcutta Cup. Richards and John Jeffrey, the Scotland forward, took the cup on a pub crawl in central Edinburgh after the formal dinner during which it was damaged and he was banned for one match. Richards was also carpeted by his chief constable and threatened with dismissal for any recurrence.