Doing something we rarely get to do.........anymore.

This past week I had the opportunity to do something I haven’t been able to do for a number of months. Not because I haven’t wanted to do, but simply because I haven’t had the chance due to workloads. 

It was glorious weekend weather wise and the number of people visiting The Metro was greater than normal due to a collection of events and shows, coupled with the warm English sun that reared its rare face.

I parked up the Police car in the middle of a public park and tourist hotspot and got out and actually spent over an hour just chatting to various passers by and taking in the beauty of the local area. I made a conscious effort [in my high spirits] to say “Hello” or “Good Morning” to pretty much everyone who walked by. 

One young family began chatting about how nice it was to see a Policeman smiling and this developed into me letting the children sit in the Police car and play with the lights and “Nee-Naws” much to the delight of the parents who got some cracking photographs. This in turn led to more people to come over and with their own children and soon enough I was almost like a fair ground attraction with a number of kids getting the opportunity to play Cops and get their cheesy grin pictured by their parents. 

I must admit, the whole experience took me back a few years to when I used to be able to do things like this a lot more. It’s something that costs nothing, takes very little effort but can have a long and lasting impact and effect on the people you meet. I’m not going back a large number of years here either; it’s not the Dock Green days by any stretch. But it got me thinking a whole range of things. Primarily………….where has this all disappeared to? 

Often now it’s through no fault of the Officers that they get little opportunity to do this. It’s more habitually that when it is done, that its more of a pre arranged PR stunt organised by someone far higher up the chain of command than us lowly PC’s.  I can guarantee that almost every Officer would love the opportunity to do this more. We aren’t the unapproachable, stern faced, cold hearted bastards that we can often appear to be as we waltz in and out of people’s lives in a whirl wind, or as we drive past in a car that only further provides a barrier between communications.  We are still matched in the very ethos of what a Constable was developed to be by Robert Peel all those years ago………..we are normal people who are just doing a job at the service of the rest of our peers. 

We have chosen to make some sacrifices in our life for the better of our families, friends and wider society – not always life changing sacrifices, but forfeitures none the less. We have chosen to deal with the minority element of society that the majority would choose not to have any contact with. We deal with the bad, to try and keep the good safe and happy.

One other thing I noticed early on in my little independent hour of community engagement was that people thought I was only there to catch or look out for someone. God forbid that I could be there just to chat to people and see what was going on. There was a slight nervousness in people that was only broken when they saw me chatting and laughing over a slightly longer period of time than the usual “flying visit” . 

Again, I feel I must reiterate at this point I’m not saying “look at me, I'm great”, nor am I criticising Officers. I am frustrated at the system and state of Policing that means that the vast majority of us do not get the opportunity to do this. 

When I joined the Police it was based on community contact and chatting with people. Being friendly and interested was the best way to gain Intel – either consciously or not. It seems we have become that busy in recent years, and are numbers on sections have dwindled that much as we try to squeeze more work out of each Officer that this has been lost or overlooked, but to me it is a core principle of what we do. 

People see that little of us these days, other than in a quick fleeting visit or by passing them whilst preoccupied whilst on foot – or more likely – by car. When they do see us we are generally busy thinking about what we have to do and that we have X amount of outstanding jobs that are “backing up” and need dealing with and that we have a pot of crimes that need investigating between all the calls for service. Thing is, people aren’t interested or sympathetic to this generally, and why should they be? They don’t know. They don’t know because as a service, we don’t tell them. We don’t advertise ourselves enough and communicate enough – either individually or as forces. We shouldn’t be scared of telling people the truth. Of how things really are. 

All of this has resulted in people forming opinions of us. We are arrogant, unapproachable and uninterested [being some of the most popular ones]. In turn, we have formed opinions that the public don’t like us and that we are unappreciated and not understood. It’s a vicious circle. 

We cannot control what opinions people form, but we can try to influence the reasons why they think them. 

If only we had more opportunities like those I had this week. I think all of us would benefit from it. But I didn’t get a “tick” for doing it, and it’s not measurable by some kind of statistic. 

After an hour or so my fun was disturbed and my mood was changed in an instant as I was shouted up by the control room:

“Can you deal with a harrrassment for me please? There are no other Officers free. The complainant has called to say they were using Facebook this morning when…………….”

Back to it then.