People often say to me, “I couldn’t do your job”. When I ask why, they give a range of reasons for why they feel that way. Quite often it is because we have to deal with death or see gruesome injuries and situations. Other times it is because we see heart breaking situations such as dealing with child abuse and domestic violence or we have to pass on news that devastates people and changes lives. But most often I get one response above anything else…..”I couldn’t deal with the idiots”.
I think as Police Officers, we often feel that the general population don’t understand what we actually have to put up with – and to a certain extent, that is right. However, they know the basic difference of right and wrong, good and bad and normal people and complete and utter idiots. We all want the same things; we just come at it from different angles. We over complicate, and they see the simplicity.
I believe that the general public just want us to keep those different types of people separate. They want us to keep the wrong away from their own lives, to keep the bad locked up and prevent them having to see and deal with the idiots all too often. But somewhere in the last 20 years we have lost sight of this.
For all the laws that this land has, for all the powers, procedures and policies and despite the fact we are still seen as probably the pinnacle of world policing with a criminal justice system [that for some reason] is envied the globe over, we just don’t seem to have things right. Any Officer who has some kind of dealing with or impact on the public can see it. It’s not some kind of unobtainable Holy Grail, or secret formula. It’s a simplistic set of principles that were introduced all those years back by Robert Peel and used for generations, but for some reason we have lost sight of in our battle to try and keep everyone happy.
We are far too reactive rather than proactive. This isn’t the fault of individual officers; it’s simply that there aren’t the numbers and manpower to be more proactive. I think pretty much every Officer I have ever spoken to, joined this job to catch bad guys and lock them up. To catch a burglar in the act, to prevent a violent person from strolling around the streets with a weapon in wait for their next victim and to prevent drug dealers swamping our communities with drugs. However, the simple truth is our workloads are that big that if you couple the calls coming in that we have to deal with, on top of our allocated crimes that need investigating and you just do not have the hours in the shift to stop and search people and proactively to find those bad guys. It is true that you have taskforces that are more proactive and have time to complete more of this type of work – but in the bigger picture it is a small amount of Officers out of the total figure that are in this position.
I find that I end up feeling guilty when I speak with these good members of our general public, as though I am personally responsible for why things are the way they are. They just want to be safe, to be kept away from “idiots” and to know that their Police are trying their hardest to bring this. For example, I was taking a Burglary report the other day from a man who lived alone in his mid 70’s. We got chatting and he said he couldn’t do my job because of the idiots. I tried to offer reassurance that these “idiots” were few and far between and that the chances of being subject to them again were very thin. He proceeded to recount endless stories of his friends who have also been subjected to burglaries, or assaults or anti social behaviour. He stopped me in my tracks and I ended up being quite stumped for a reply. He said “It's not your fault Officer, you try. But you’ve got no one helping you out”. I ended up saying “Sorry”.
When I left I felt dejected. Totally low. I never joined the Police to feel like this, yet it is a common occurrence these days.
I feel like I am letting people down. My colleagues feel like they are just “keeping a lid” on things and not really making any difference. Large portions of the public feel like we are trying but swimming against the current. Yet the only people who seem content are the ‘powers above’ and the bad guys and idiots. Maybe they’re not as far detached as people may think?
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