Good Work Undone

It was a set of response shifts covering days and evenings in the heart of the city during the summer, many arrests were made for various offences including some persons of great interest to the local police intelligence department. Every crime for every arrest for the team came out as a detection - e.g. cleared up either charged to court, cautioned or given a fixed penalty ticket.

What was said to those officers involved the following week???

'Well done, but on occasions you were seen without your ties and hats on!!!!'

My response - under my breath - 'Your Welcome'.

Traveller 1 - PC 0 - a tale for Dogberry??

A family group of travellers took over an area in a town and told the local council officers attending, 'Well Sir, we'll be leavin in the mornin', two days later they were still there and the local community werent happy. The council served forms on them to move within three days and they still hadnt gone so after another couple of days with Police help they were moved on.
On the morning that the local inspector was to serve more papers it was arranged for a PC to film the group including the vehicles for intelligence and evidence.

The PC was given a new handheld digital video camera without any training I might add. They were to walk around the site and video all the caravans, vehicles, the set up and any damage caused to the locality. Having never been in this situation before and not wanting to look silly in front of colleagues he worked out how to switch it on, insert the tape and use the different modes without asking any questions. He took two colleagues with him and proceeded to the site just in case the travellers didnt like the tactic being used.

He exited the police vehicle alone switched on the camera opened up the side viewer and set it to record and pressed record. He saw the red light come on and proceeded, it was a sunny day so he couldnt see a picture in the side viewer but didnt think much of it as the red record light was on. Not knowing exactly what to do he identified himself, the location and time and date whilst walking around and covered every vehicle, caravan and anyone on the site most of which covered their faces.
After just over two minutes a young chubby lad with an Irish accent pointed at the officer with the camera saying "OFFICER WOULDNT IT BE BETTER WITH THE LENS CAP OFF".

The embarrassed officer took of the cap and suddenly the picture appeared on the side viewer, he carried on walking around leaving the chubby lad laughing. After another six minutes of taping he walked back to the police vehicle informing his colleagues, what a mistake that was.

The embarrassed officer is now known around the nick as Spielberk!!

Change - a good thing???

I have been in one force or another for about a decade, working in large urban areas to small villages and towns. I have worked alone and as part of small units and large teams from undercover auto crime to shoplifting squads, beat bobby to response car.

I have seen a lot of change in such a short time, some of it for good some of it for bad. At the end of the day I am a police officer and am employed to catch criminals, to protect the community and keep the Queens peace.

It is becoming harder and harder for the criminality that we arrest to get a custodial sentence and this is due to many factors -



Home Office

Prison Service

Probation

CPS - both at court and as part of the Direct Service.

Police

Social Services

Education

Human Rights Act



'People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones' - I don't know who first said this but I agree with what it stands for. All of the above factors except the Human Rights Act need to look at this and need to get their houses in order before blaming each other for society's problems and that includes us, our dreaded red tape and force procedures that just complicates and adds to our workload which is usually unnecessary.

Well the prisons are full, our force will be housing some Home Office prisoners soon so I will benefit by working extra shifts as a custody officer. But this also means shorter custodial sentences for criminals and lots of early release programs coming online. Meaning more work for us and the crime rate going up. At the end of the day we know that if a prolific criminal goes down we see a drop in similar crimes being committed. Its a simple equation - scumbag goes to jail = cant commit crime = safer place to live for the public.
Sorry common sense is not used by our criminal justice system.

Miscarriage

This post is written about the weeks surrounding the eve of mothers day 2008 and I thought last year was bad One Man and his Plod: Worst Weekend of my Police Career to date.

This year was a more personal time where it wasn't work related and hurts even more physically and emotionally. My partner and I are trying for a baby and in January we hit the jackpot finally and she became pregnant, I was overjoyed and couldn't wait to tell everyone but I kept quiet for a while. The last week in February I started to tell friends and family as she was starting to show and I had to start planning holidays, getting overtime to allow for a healthy bank balance when my partner was to take 9months off.
This is when it all started to go wrong, my partner started to get slight pains in her stomach area and started to spot bleed. We looked this up on-line and it is common for women when pregnant to bleed slightly, some minor discharge. It slowly became heavier over the days and we became concerned so went to the doctor, they backed up what we had found on-line but still booked us in for a scan. It was early but they should be able to see something on the scanner.
My partner started to become very worried and upset thinking that she was going to miscarry as two of her friends at work at the same stage as her had only just miscarried. The wait at the clinic didn't help with 4 out of the 5 women in front of us coming out of one room crying and being ushered down the corridor to another room, with only the 5th one coming out smiling with a letter and copies of the ultrasound.
The scan started and all the nurse could find was a black blob which wasn't encouraging, but she then proceeded to use an internal version and again no sign of life just a blob. We tried to work out how many weeks we were pregnant and why there wasn't any sign. The nurse said it could be just too early or our worst fear a miscarriage.

We booked in for another scan for two weeks time and went home very upset, even more so than before as we were left with no answer at all. Either yes or no would have been helpful but to have to wait for two weeks not knowing was unbearable. The bleeding became worse that night but we were told that might happen after an internal examination.
Two days later I had just finished a night shift on the Saturday morning and my partner had gone into town with her mother shopping, I was woken by my partner ringing me and crying down the phone stating she was now heavily bleeding and in pain wanting the on call doctors number. I asked if it was that bad would A&E be better. About two hours later the front door opened and my partner fell onto the floor doubled over crying and obviously in pain. I didn't know what to do, I helped her up and took her upstairs, I could see blood, I was shocked, this was my partner not some drunk on a Saturday night.
I called for the doctor but they were unavailable, when I called back they had just got back into the clinic and would ring me back.
I finally got the call and he advised me to give her some strong painkillers and that they weren't free to come out to us. I explained the situation again to him and the call ended with him stating he would call the Hospital.
About five minutes later he called back stating that A&E would be expecting us including someone from the gynaecology dept.
I rushed my partner up to the hospital and booked her in, the pains had become worse and the bleeding uncontrollable. She went to the toilet a few more times before being examined. The examination revealed blood clots and more followed large ones at that. My partner was in trouble but was in the best place possible, I felt like a spare part, all I could do was stand there as useful as a chocolate teapot. I held her hand when I could stayed out of the way when the nurse and doctor took turns to take blood pressure, blood samples and observe what was happening when she had painful cramps followed by ejecting large amounts of blood matter.
It was definite, a miscarriage, my partner was crying as the doctor explained that an operation was needed to stem the flow and to make sure there wasn't any other internal problems. I went to the ward with her, not understanding how this could have happened. What started this, how did it start, why did it happen.
My partner was blaming herself for losing our baby, I tried to make her feel better, to reassure her that it could have been anything, it wasn't her fault and that it just wasn't meant to be. We were now on a ward and it was 11pm, and the staff got her ready for the operation. I left as they said they were ready to take her to theatre.
I thought about my partner all the way home and it took a while to get to sleep. I woke the next morning to my partner ringing me to come and collect her. I arrived to the ward I found my partner tired looking. She explained that when she got back from the operation she woken every hour by the staff taking her blood pressure and if it wasn't them there were two old females on the ward one of which sounded like she was sucking through a straw the other snoring or shouting out VERA VERA all night so she was shattered. I didn't want to tell her that I was also tired as I might have received a kick or punch to the family jewels.
We got home an hour later and now the grieving period starts. This has got to be the toughest period in our relationship and something we will get through.

I have learnt that 1 in 3 pregnancies don't work out but that we can try again soon. I hope next time will work out but know that there is a chance it again may fail. I don't want to see her go through that again it was heartbreaking. I cannot do anything, I just have to be there for her that is the main thing I have gained from this experience.

Here are some links for advice if you have to go through what we have

The Miscarriage Association

Understanding miscarriage - BabyCenter

Miscarriage - causes, symptoms and pregnancy problems