I caught a burglar!

Yep for the second time in my career i managed to catch a burglar.

Quite a good one really as when we got to the scene, a member of the public (MOP) shouted to us. "Hes over there" i promptly jump from the panda and give chase as hes running with stolen property under his arms down the busy high street.

I scream at him to stop as he runs past other MOP's but he just carries on (there's a surprise!)

He ditches some of the property but is still making off as MOP's just stand at watch him run past while i give chase.

I thought to myself.

I'm never gonna catch him in all this kit but surprisingly to me i am gaining on him. We go around a few corners and i still have sight of him closing the distance and he lobs the last of the stolen property in my direction, now i am closing quite quickly and im not out of breath.

One of the things i have thought about is "what do you do when you catch someone who's running away" i mean, do you rugby tackle them, baton there legs, push them over, grab an arm and do a "take down".

Its not something i have ever really done to be honest until recently at other jobs where i have been more hands on than i would have been 6 months ago.

Well crunch time, i am in range of him and i just jump on him and we both hit the deck, well he hit head first and i landed on him, gripped his arms up and a colleague came and assisted in restraining him.

Cool i thought.

By this time i saw behind me a number of MOP's standing watching and laughing. Matey boy was cuffed and nicked and taken away. I walk back to the scene to what surprised me the most. A few people clapped and someone came out of a shop asking if i wanted free drinks as he had seen what i did and had watched from the start.

Made me smile somewhat i can tell you.

Now back to the hands on thing.

I in the past have been a bit wary of going straight hands on with no control as we are trained to control people. A lot of times we have no control and getting that control is quite hard compared to training.

I think a lot of policing is down to confidence. In the past year or so i have grown, not only in confidence but in size as well (no not the doughnuts) which i think has helped somewhat.

I have commented in the nick about the new kids that join up and do all the training and are afraid to go hands on or use their tools because of the way we are trained. It takes ages to retrain them from this and get them to go hands on when necessary.

In my view we need to be able to be many people.

We need to be kind, caring and considerate to victims of crime and the the police "service"

But in a split second we need to be forceful and to a degree agressive when dealing with suspects and become a "force".

It takes a lot of juggling to become a balance of the 2 and sometimes we can be aggressive when it is not appropriate and other times to considerate on the flip side.

When you learn the balance then the job becomes enjoyable. As a lot of us are taken the piss out of by suspects or "youths" when giving us lip when we need to be more robust in our response.

But there is also a fine line between aggression and assault.

And public perception is everything. A push in the chest can look from a distance a punch in the throat.