I may actually smile

My recent posts seem to be a lot of me moaning about certain things such as the influx of call takers who i think shouldn't be on main channels just yet (i gave another example!), or our AIM Team who supervise our jobs from the safety of their desks and computers or the abuse we receive from the people we are supposed to be protecting.

Firstly, I am not always complaining, honest!

Secondly this is probably the first time i have noticed now things have changed in the time i have been in the force, which i would agree isn't very long but so much has changed which quite frankly is depressing. I in all honesty some days cant understand why people join the police.

Part of the problem recently has been the quality of the jobs we are attending, they are piss poor and i don't mean we still get the odd quality job, i mean we get all crap with no detections at the end just mindless paperwork for paperwork's sake. And when i get a good job which seems clear cut to me, the CPS (cant / wont prosecute service) wont charge "just yet" even though the suspect admitted the offence on tape and the advice was to just decide what charge to put to him.

But we have had some fun recently, i am always of the opinion and i say this to all the new people that come onto shift, to always have fun whenever possible in this job or it will get you down.

On one of my weirder shifts i came across 3 jobs that took me 11 hours to complete and none of the 3 were remotely similar which i just loved as it is what makes this job, one minute we are fighting the next we are doing something silly.

1st job comes in "immediate suspect suicide" we attend and yep the guy has died his family are on scene and are very distraught, which is understandable given the method in which they found him and the way he died. This was my first suicide of this type and i had a younger in service crew mate but we did well given all accounts.

2nd job comes in "Sheep in road" i actually volunteered for this job and i needed a bit of a laff, we go on scene to find several 8 year olds desperate to assist us in our search. I thought ah well community relations an all that and off we went to find the lone sheep which we eventually found and we had to carry it once we had cornered and rugby tackled the sheep.

3rd job was to assist ambulance with a person who had taken an overdose, no biggy until we found him and he was a big lad who didn't want to go to hospital. I section him under the mental health act, he tried to escape, the ambo crew run away and i get lobbed out of an ambulance along with my crew mate. I call for assistance and the controller who wasn't listening even though i had said listen out as he may kick off, asked me to repeat my transmission twice. Luckily everyone else herd me and came as quick as. Long story short, we turn up mob handed and eventually with a struggle get him into custody.

This was a good day and believe it or not it reminded me of why i enjoy this job. It was emotional, it was funny and we had a fight and a laff and i went home thinking "what other job can give you this mix of jobs in a day" and the answer is probably not many. Actually thinking about it you need to be mad to enjoy this job.

So for one day i couldn't care less about the people behind the desks, i did my job and enjoyed doing it. And i came away from work with a smile on my face.

Its amazing how one day can change your outlook on the job.

Lets hope we have many more.

JS