'I dreamt of being in police'

Dubai: Sixty-seven-year-old Major Abdul Qader Abdul Karim Al Sa'adi has served over 40 years in the police force and one of the few to cover different departments and tasks.

"I have always dreamt of being in the police force. My father used to be a military man and I developed a passion for the profession," he said with his deep voice.

He went through a rigorous military training for five months and was initially assigned to the traffic department to register and renew vehicles.

"You would be surprised but back in the early 1970s there were handful of cars registered daily, around 10 to 15 vehicles were either registered or renewed," he said.

He was later transferred to the central jail, which was situated in Jumeirah at Al Wasl road until it was transferred to a hi-tech facility in Al Aweer.

When he first joined the central jail of Dubai Police, Al Sa'adi worked as a police guard and provided services to inmates such as accompanying them for court hearings, and arranging their flights after serving their sentence.

"I have come across many prisoners throughout my duty. During this time I only kept one aim was to do my work faithfully," he said while adding that he regrets one incident during his service.

He financially assisted an inmate charged with theft to pay off his debts. The Jordanian inmate completed his sentence and had debts impending his release. "I gave him around Dh25,000 in return for a piece of land in Jordan. The man was old and sick so I decided to assist him," he said.

"The man deceived me as he didn't have any land in Jordan and he later died of an illness. His relative paid a small sum of his debts to me," he said.

He was later assigned to the public prosecution to register cases and later to the police ports station as an administrative staff. A decade later he was reassigned to the central prison where he supervised minor inmates for months and now he heads the crafts department.

First encounter

Al Sa'adi spoke of his first encounter with a dead body in 1976 at the ports — the first body was of an Asian worker who was murdered. At the time the officer was required to attend the autopsy.

"I literally couldn't eat properly for several days after seeing the decomposed body. But later I got used to it as we saw around 3-4 bodies every 3-4 months. Of course not all of them were criminal cases some had drowned and died of natural causes," he said.

Upon returning to work at the central jail, he faced few challenges dealing with the handful of minor inmates. "The youngest I have seen was 16 years old who were mostly convicted on theft and drugs charges," he said.

The toughest incident was going to a horrific accident scene where a speeding Pakistani chauffeur was driving nine girls from the same family to a wedding.

The vehicle overturned five times killing all passengers including the driver.

"The scene was absolutely horrific," he said.