Knifecrime – It’s not right

Last night I called at a general hospital, one not unlike any other near you. I went to the cardiac unit – again, just like one near you.

I saw a friend, who as soon as he saw me, I could see was pleased to see me. He smiled and stretched out his hand and we shook warmly. But he didn’t let go. Kept hold of my hand, unnaturally so. I noticed it instantly, but he didn’t. He held my hand that much longer for a reason. A reason that I was going to take the next hour to work out exactly why.

Something wasn’t right.

My friend had been out with his family for a meal and had fallen asleep in the car on the way home – doubtless because he’d consumed too much – but he woke briefly because of a dispute outside the car involving his family and he left his seat to attempt to restore peace.

Returning to his car he felt the most indescribable pain in his chest and alerted his wife. He told her he was having a heart attack. He rang a friend who himself had recently had a heart scare. His worst fears were confirmed.

Younger than me, he was in panic and told his wife to get them as fast as they could to the nearest hospital. Staff assessed him on his arrival reporting chest pains and they swung into action. Lifting his shirt, they could see his clothes were covered in blood.

You see this was no heart attack – my friend had been stabbed.

An ambulance was summoned and he was rushed to a regional cardiac team with the help of blue lights. Arriving there he described is incredible detail what dying was like. Screaming out in the most acute pain, whilst at the same time fighting to simply breathe. Chest getting tighter and tighter as his heart and lungs began to shut down.

That’s not right.

He describes the emotions that rushed through him. Those that only a father can think of about his children, a husband of his wife, a son of his parents and a friends too- so many more than just me. He articulated with a lip tremor of what it was going to be like not seeing any of them ever again.

He them talked of the colours that he could see, until they too faded and he saw his last pale images and the most excruciating pain in his side, before nothing – telling himself that this is exactly what it is like to die. He then recalls passing out. It was all over. Done. Decades too soon.

That’s definitely not right.

Mercifully, it wasn’t so. Sometime later, he doesn’t know how long, opened his eyes to see a Doctor standing above him. That same Doctor who had caused the most acute pain in his side before he should have died. But that angel in a uniform had inserted a drain through his side and up into his chest cavity that reduced blood pressure caused by sever internal bleeding to allow his heart and lungs to carry on for a few decades more. He had saved his life.

Recounting the story, the lip trembles again. If I’m honest, the lip tremor is more than a little contagious in the room as the emotion pours out as he tries to comprehend what could have been. He could never have seen his kids grow up. He would not have grown old with his wife, surrounded by his friends and family. He would have died before his own parents.

That’s just not right either. Not right at all.

Witnessing the emotions was hard enough, but living with them – literally refusing not to stop living with them with the help of a heroically skilled Doctor – is quite another. His journey is just beginning in trying to compartmentalise the trauma he had undergone and survived.

He faces more surgery soon, to tidy some things up. Nothing too serious at all now, the hard yards have been done. The heroic medical team have assured him of a full recovery. Not overnight, but a full recovery nonetheless. He was sat in his bed watching his beloved football team win on the television. He is already returning to normality. His dressings and chest drain however, give a pointed reminder that the recovery will take longer than the football game he was watching. His football team are returning to where he has always suggested they should be. He is returning to where we want him to be.

But it could’ve been far worse. Others have not been so fortunate. Some will have seen the graphic aftermath illustrations on social media where emergency interventions in hospital trauma rooms were not so timely. Families broken, friendships ended, children orphaned. Needless and senseless death.

That’s not right.

And it cannot be in any way be acceptable for those who cause this misery and murder to do so because they thought it cool, necessary, trendy or indeed any other pointless reason to try and justify taking a knife to any argument. To stab a stranger in the back. To attack someone because of where they are standing, or because who they may have befriended. Worse still to enforce some drugs debt, worst of all because your behaviour is controlled by another you are terrified of.

It’s never right.

Now I am no film or TV star, neither am I a supermarket chain that has seen fit to stop selling single kitchen knives. I am a copper who has seen, read and listened to the now daily reported menace that is knife crime. Yesterday brought it closer to home though. The senseless and cowardly attack on a mate that could easily have left him dead.

I don’t have the answers, nor will I point the finger at those who may be more likely to carry them in the first place. Nor will I enter into any political debate over funding – but I know it’s time to start dropping the knives. Time to educate, to warn, to confront and to work with anyone who shares the same view.

We’ve sorted other such trends before, we can do it again. Together.

It’s time to pick a life, not a knife!

 

I Took it Home

Early in my policing career, which has seen most of it within a response/operational environment, I saw my first dead body. I took that incident home. I wasn’t aware I had, but my family were concerned at the fact that I was washing my hands constantly. They were shocked at my sudden tendency towards additional personal hygiene as I subconsciously tried to wash away what I had perhaps wished I had never had to touch.

Later still in my service I was involved in follow-up enquires after a serious road traffic collision when I saw things you don’t expect to see inside a car which had until recently been on a road. When you look and learn from those senior colleagues around you who had become hardened to it – so as to be almost blind to the horrors – but who never fail to feel the effects just the same. They take those home too.

Worse was to come when I was one of the first responders at a fatal road traffic accident and a doctor stopped my efforts at life support as, with their enhanced skills and equipment, they saw it as hopeless. Boy, do you take that home.

You attend the report of a house on fire with persons reported and you arrive there some minutes before your fire service colleagues and as you battle the smoke you hear noises that linger long after the smell of the smoke has been washed from your uniform. You take those noises home too.

Then you are called in to investigate the utterly tragic circumstances around a sudden infant death and as part of those enquiries you see things that you simply wish you hadn’t had to see.

One of the first responders at a mercifully rare, but nevertheless mass-fatality type incident, you see things there that you simply not only take home, but that you simply never ‘un-see’ if such a word exists.

Now I am just an ordinary officer with some tales of approaching nearly thirty years in policing. I am not unique, I have done nothing that countless others will have done far more of before me, that others will do today and that indeed many others will do tomorrow and the day after as they build their own experiences of policing and keeping people safe.

These officers will take it all home.

Home is where the support starts perhaps, because none of us have done this alone. But that said, I am proud to be part of an organisation now that is unafraid to talk about what they have had to take home. Further, that in taking it home, they bravely bring it back to work the following day and share their experiences with perhaps colleagues or maybe even a counsellor – not only to reduce the impact of what they had seen, heard or felt – but to demonstrate to others that its absolutely the right thing to do.

I am indebted to one-line manager who directed me to a counsellor after one such incident. That brief engagement was thankfully all I needed. I recognise and am humbled by many that needed so much more.

I am proud that so many are now more comfortable in speaking about incidents they have taken home. It reduces any stigma at all in the act of talking about them, it reduces the silence and establishes once and for all that it is okay to talk – and to accept that in such talking about whatever it is/was that you took home, that there are avenues and support structures now to help you deal with that which you wish you hadn’t.

 

A Yuletide Blog….

A Yuletide Blog

Christmas is approaching and the car parks at work appear more relaxed as holidays or other preparations are well underway. you cannot fail to overhear the conversations of others around you as ‘cover’, ‘on-call’, or ‘annual leave that booked ages ago and can’t possibly change now…’

It makes me smile because December comes around every year without fail and no matter the developments in technology, the same issues return!

That said, for me it’s traditionally a time for reflection, both for my own service and that of so many colleagues too. Years before automated rosters and computers, you remember the days when as a young PC, you were told what your Leave was by the nice Station Sergeant who you were trying to impress with your thief-taking.

‘You are working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day because you haven’t got kids and we have’ seemed quite fair as the quid pro quo was that ‘You are off New Years Eve though, so count yourself lucky’

We all got older and children of our own children arrived as well as the younger officers on the shift – who, yes you guessed it, were told to ‘work Christmas …..’ – you know the rest!

Advancement in either rank or experience brought further memories of both the heart-warming and heart-wrenching of Christmas Past. When detectives will have recovered presents stolen from those barely enough to have afforded them in the first place and returned them to priceless pictures on the faces of ever grateful families; when officers will have worked tirelessly to reunite a lost but never forgotten missing person with their loved ones, just in time for Christmas; when officers working in a partnership environment rally others to the cause and create record amounts of food and presents to distribute to the most vulnerable and in need.

Those memories are also tinged with the less than pleasant stories such as when the front door was knocked at the home of a police officer at lunchtime on a Christmas Day by a person with blood on their hands and a confession of the most awful kind….

Or the officers who will have worked tirelessly to have picked up the fragile pieces of an assault or serious disturbance in the hope of restoring some dignity to a festive period after a brief but most violent cessation of the spirit of peace on earth and goodwill to all men.

It is also a time to reflect on those who are unable to be with us to reflect themselves this year. Either taken from us too soon, or perhaps ravaged by an illness such that they have no comprehension of the festivities around them.

Time to reflect also with those who feel that type of pain at its most raw this Christmas – apart from their loved ones, right at the time when they will never have wanted to be closer.

That said, it is a wonderful time of the year. Togetherness, perhaps the exchanging of gifts, socialising and catching up with friends and family, your favourite film or perhaps your favourite walk to your favourite pub to be near your favourite log fire?

Whatever you do this Christmas, I hope that you remain safe and that it realises memories that live long with you for the right reasons as opposed to the opposite. If you see a police officer at work over the holidays, they are likely to be of the younger kind and perhaps not yet blessed with parenthood, for the reasons I have mentioned above.

The same goes for Nurses, Fire Officers, Ambulance Staff and indeed anyone that wears an uniform or is part of an organisation or association that is there over the holidays to keep us safe. If you see one and you have time and inclination, please approach them and thank them for what they do this Christmas.

I have said it before, it will simply mean the world to them – and may, just may, be the start of Christmas memories that will last their own lifetime.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

A Yuletide Blog

A Yuletide Blog

Christmas is approaching and the car parks at work appear more relaxed as holidays or other preparations are well underway. you cannot fail to overhear the conversations of others around you as ‘cover’, ‘on-call’, or ‘annual leave that booked ages ago and can’t possibly change now…’

It makes me smile because December comes around every year without fail and no matter the developments in technology, the same issues return!

That said, for me it’s traditionally a time for reflection, both for my own service and that of so many colleagues too. Years before automated rosters and computers, you remember the days when as a young PC, you were told what your Leave was by the nice Station Sergeant who you were trying to impress with your thief-taking.

‘You are working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day because you haven’t got kids and we have’ seemed quite fair as the quid pro quo was that ‘You are off New Years Eve though, so count yourself lucky’

We all got older and children of our own children arrived as well as the younger officers on the shift – who, yes you guessed it, were told to ‘work Christmas …..’ – you know the rest!

Advancement in either rank or experience brought further memories of both the heart-warming and heart-wrenching of Christmas Past. When detectives will have recovered presents stolen from those barely enough to have afforded them in the first place and returned them to priceless pictures on the faces of ever grateful families; when officers will have worked tirelessly to reunite a lost but never forgotten missing person with their loved ones, just in time for Christmas; when officers working in a partnership environment rally others to the cause and create record amounts of food and presents to distribute to the most vulnerable and in need.

Those memories are also tinged with the less than pleasant stories such as when the front door was knocked at the home of a police officer at lunchtime on a Christmas Day by a person with blood on their hands and a confession of the most awful kind….

Or the officers who will have worked tirelessly to have picked up the fragile pieces of an assault or serious disturbance in the hope of restoring some dignity to a festive period after a brief but most violent cessation of the spirit of peace on earth and goodwill to all men.

It is also a time to reflect on those who are unable to be with us to reflect themselves this year. Either taken from us too soon, or perhaps ravaged by an illness such that they have no comprehension of the festivities around them.

Time to reflect also with those who feel that type of pain at its most raw this Christmas – apart from their loved ones, right at the time when they will never have wanted to be closer.

That said, it is a wonderful time of the year. Togetherness, perhaps the exchanging of gifts, socialising and catching up with friends and family, your favourite film or perhaps your favourite walk to your favourite pub to be near your favourite log fire?

Whatever you do this Christmas, I hope that you remain safe and that it realises memories that live long with you for the right reasons as opposed to the opposite. If you see a police officer at work over the holidays, they are likely to be of the younger kind and perhaps not yet blessed with parenthood, for the reasons I have mentioned above.

The same goes for Nurses, Fire Officers, Ambulance Staff and indeed anyone that wears an uniform or is part of an organisation or association that is there over the holidays to keep us safe. If you see one and you have time and inclination, please approach them and thank them for what they do this Christmas.

I have said it before, it will simply mean the world to them – and may, just may, be the start of Christmas memories that will last their own lifetime.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

“We’d do it all again – without hesitation.”

I read @policecommander and his “I was there” blog earlier and like many others, had flashes of my own instances and indeed of others when we too had all ‘been there’ at some time or another….

Those mercifully few events in a career of caring, but where within in a job we all love, it presents us with those “when it’s good is brilliant, but when it’s bad it’s awful” kind of moments.

Those kind of moments that nothing can really prepare you for and that no Manual of Guidance or other doctrine has yet been written to guide you through. The kind that lets you find yourself and realise your own limits, indeed some cases when that limit has been passed and what you thought you could face is way back somewhere down a broken and uneven road behind you.

The kind when we’ve been there and seen death in a variety of guises and appearances when we have stared at both it and the effect it has had on others in oh so many different ways – so as to be better enabled to sit and listen to others when they ask the most soul-searching of questions. The kind that sees those apparently hardened to those tasks, weakened in an instant. The kind that may have seen those previously hesitant, acquiring almost Herculean strength in such adversity.

Perhaps where a house fire will have started and officers will have beaten the fire brigade to the scene, only to be beaten back by intense heat and smoke when noises from within make them go back in again and again until the fire service arrive to take over.

Or maybe broken bodies at road traffic collisions and other locations; others of all ages at mortuaries – where the sights remain in an officers mind forever, re-visiting once in a while to remind them.

We’ve been to other places too, where officers have perhaps not seen but felt real fear too, at times. At a football event possibly, when, within serious disorder and armed with only a truncheon, officers were never so glad to hear the sound of galloping police horses to assist in splitting rival fans.

Others may perhaps recall more modern times and watching in awe on CCTV footage as a single crewed colleague is seen to leave the relative protection of his vehicle in a city centre street and present as such a force that he singlehandedly stopped two sets of rival gangs, each in considerable numbers, sprinting towards each other intent on goodness knows what – but so as to stop them all, without exception, in their tracks and turn them around from whence they came.

Some may have been there and given the most awful news about a loved one to their loved one, when in doing may have sometimes involved travel to another country to deliver that news in person when it was the right thing to do – that again gives an officer the experience but never the pleasure of listening to the concerns of a colleague when they have also walked that most awful of walks too, or indeed when they are about to.

Some will have been there when a gun is pointed at them that in some bizarre way gives almost a qualification to listen to others when they’ve had the same, terrifying experience.

In another emotional setting, a colleague once said that the sad thing is that the police ‘do a very good funeral’ – the tragedy being that we have to lose one to go through one. We’ve all been to them when magnificent people have been taken from us all, years too soon, to hear the crying and wailing of those left behind.

The job has changed so much, the challenges remain though. We’ve also become better at facing up to the pressures of those exposures and that, mercifully, talking about them is now seen as something of a strength as opposed to a silent weakness.

None of us are the same, yet we do the same remarkable job. A job that I have said earlier, that when it’s good it is very good – but when it’s bad its awful. The even more remarkable thing about this job is that when it’s bad, it is bad – but when it’s good, it’s the best there is.

And that is why when it happens tomorrow, no matter what it is, we’d do it all again – without hesitation.

 

“The Public Don’t Know”

“It’s nearly midnight into a Friday morning. I am on night shift command duty in my Force and earlier in the week I had been invited to contribute to a guest blog by my boss. Ideas flashed by, but the solution was quite easy really. These are the musings of my evening up to the point of reading the e-mail requesting that blog – a very busy few hours indeed…..

The sun had been out most of the day, a rarity in itself this past summer and I had been fortunate to have been able to have taken advantage of some of it earlier as I’d been asked to cover this particular shift as a favour to a colleague to cover his night duty. The grass has been cut, the car has been washed and the kids have even had McDonalds. Life is good.

I drive into work and ring our Control Room Inspector to get briefed on a picture of the Force – only to be told, “Boss, its bouncing here. Give you a ring back when I can, firearms job on the go – oh, and a possible murder!”

The line goes quiet…..

Moments later the phone rings, it is my Chief Inspector. He is part of our team that runs the Control Room and is well over his scheduled tour of duty. His conversation starts with a “Hi…” followed by that all too familiar ‘there is something badly wrong’ pause!

“Our command and control system has crashed, we are working on the cause as no-one knows why yet, but don’t worry I am here and will stay here until it’s sorted. You can leave this to me!”

The line goes quiet…..

Moments later the phone rings again and it’s the Control Room Inspector once more. “Right – could be a murder, might not be. Can’t say why as the command and control system is still down. Oh, hang on, I’ve got to go….”

The line goes quiet…..

Moments later I phone an experienced Divisional Chief Inspector colleague who is now at the scene of the potentially suspicious death on a beach at a nearby beauty spot. The tide is coming in to wash away her scene and a body lies nearby with the family emotionally broken as they try to pass through our cordon. She says, “It’s in hand, I’ve got this…..”

The line goes quiet…..

Moments later, the phone rings and it’s my Chief Inspector colleague for the night. I brief him on the suspicious death. He briefs me on a sensitive abduction matter, before a separate incident where a child has been dragged into a car in broad daylight in our capital city. Both are rare and unusual, but he has already spoken with the Duty Inspector for the city who, with experience, has initially assessed the latter incident as a ‘false call, with good intent’ – as we had only received one, solitary call and not the very many you would have expected in our Nation’s capital for such an event. “I will keep you updated on both….”

The line goes quiet…..

Moments later I am on the phone to the on-call Specialist Crime Detective Inspector and we review the circumstances of the potentially suspicious death. I am the stronger for his advice and experience. “I am here if you want me….”

The line goes quiet….

By this time I am in the Western area of the Force speaking with colleagues where I overhear radio traffic of a female found in the street, distressed, reporting that she had been raped. At the same time a motorcycle is reported as having collided head-on with a car in a quiet country lane. The Roads Policing officers around me respond immediately to both in my presence. “No dramas, sir, we’ve got these….”

The station goes quiet……

Once more the phone rings and a Detective Constable from another area of the Force rings to secure advice around the disposal from custody of a male who has assaulted his mother – who in turn was refusing to make a complaint. His evidence is weak at the time and I am asked to consider the possibility of a Domestic Violence Protection Notice. He is quietly encouraged to use his experience and secure further evidence and potentially an admission that would realise a charge. “Thanks Boss, will keep you updated….”

The line goes quiet….

The phone rings again and it’s the familiar voice of the Divisional Chief Inspector, still on duty and more importantly displaying clear leadership and direction at her incident. Reassurance flows up the phone-line. Fast track actions have identified and an independent witness found who confirms the most tragic of accidental circumstances that takes away a loved one, decades too early. “It’s all in hand here….”

The line goes quiet…..

The phone rings and it’s my Chief Inspector for the night again. He briefs me on the tragic circumstances of the hanging of a young mother who had appealed for help locally via social media. Neighbours had responded to find her with a scarf around her neck. They went to her immediate aid, but despite the best efforts of all, the children had lost their mother. Professionally, and as an aside, he also advises me that since our last call he had also applied Policy to two, knife-related incidents that have been resolved without injury.

The line goes quiet……

Then the phone rings once more, almost immediately. This time it’s my own Chief Inspector again. I say ‘again’ because he has featured throughout this story. His calls had remained a constant throughout the evening as he battled with our ICT colleagues to rectify and restore our command and control system – as all of the above incidents were managed, by and large, without it. The Control Room has ‘stood up’ and delivered an incredible piece of command and control without the technological support that it normally relies upon. I have said many times that the most incidents start there and tonight it had demonstrated it in some detail. A potentially suspicious death, two apparent abductions, a serious sexual assault allegations, a serious road traffic collision, knife enabled violence, more death and more violence – all managed and resolved. He has reassured me.

The line goes quiet….

An hour passes that confirms our command and control system is stable once again. The Control Room is catching up and committing to keyboards what it had previously committed to paper.

A young woman lies resting, now at peace, in a hospital mortuary as her family make their way to the most painful of visits. Another young mother lies in another mortuary, her children unaware of their devastating loss. In a bizarre twist of circumstance, a son is in a police cell having now been charged with assaulting his mother.

The incident involving a female alleging sexual assault has been resolved. In one of the abduction incidents enquiries have been finalised whilst detectives painstakingly check CCTV to make absolutely, doubly, sure that no young child was abducted into a car in the second. The road network has been cleared of accident debris and a sense of calm returns.

In the background, quietly and professionally, the service I am so proud to be a part of catches up with itself. A service that prides itself on being the best at understanding and responding to the needs of it’s communities has done so magnificently tonight and my own department has played no small part in doing so.

It truly is a job like no other.

By and large, the public don’t know of what has happened tonight. A few will have been touched by it, some in the most desperate of circumstances – but the wider public will remain blissfully unaware of our part in it all. Tonight however, with the exception of the command and control issue, was a night that was generally not that unusual – which perhaps goes some way to explain why the public don’t know.

However, as I have always said, “those that know, know.”

That makes me even prouder.”

When a ‘thank you’ to all who have helped me tonight can never be or sound good enough, a first blog is written.