NEWS
‘WHO WOULD WANT TO BE A POLICE OFFICER THESE DAYS?’
PFEW National Chair John Apter recently answered that question, put to him by LBC’s Iain Dale, and took questions from the public on the theme of ‘Policing the Pandemic’ – here’s what happened.
Iain Dale (ID): I was watching one of those police reality programmes and said to my partner ‘who on earth would want to be a police officer nowadays?’
John Apter (JA): You’re right, who would want to join the ‘job’ – as we call it now? However, I’ve been a police officer for over 28 years, and the vast majority of officers I speak to every day love doing what they do. They don’t like the bureaucracy, the politics or the hatred which has increased significantly over years, but they do the best they can.
We want to get bad people locked up. We want to do the best we can for victims, but that’s a relatively small part of the job now. On the issue of officer safety, when I joined, I had a wooden truncheon to defend myself – now we’ve got Taser, body armour, specialist teams, better technology to help and protect us but I always want more. Nothing is more important for me than the safety of my colleagues.
ID: You presumably have regular meetings with politicians and with the
10 I POLICE I JUNE 2021
Government. You must have an agenda of things you would like to change? Are you being listened to?
JA: It’s no secret I’ve been very critical of the previous Prime Minister Theresa May and her stance on policing and criminal justice. I think she bitterly let down the public and showed contempt for policing. But you need to have a relationship with politicians, or you get nothing done.
Because of the crisis we’ve been dealing with over these past 12 months, I’ve probably spent more time talking to the Home Secretary than I have my own children! When horrific things happen, I cut through the red tape and take the reality directly to the Home Secretary. When officers in London, or recently in Manchester, were horrifically injured, I spoke with those officers, they told me of the trauma they’ve gone through physically and psychologically. I take those messages directly to the Home Secretary. And, following those conversations, on many occasions she’s reached out privately to those officers and they tell me privately that this means a lot.
Are we being listened to? Yes, we are, but pay and conditions have suffered significantly. Police officers are subject to a pay freeze this year. This is on the back of 10 years of austerity so, in reality, the police officers who politicians praise in times of crisis have had about an 18 per cent cut in take-home pay. That’s not a Government which is listening and supporting.
ID: So, do you get a bit of flak from your members on that?
JA: I do get an awful lot of frustration and anger, but I accept it goes with the job. My colleagues deserve the absolute best and I genuinely do my best. I accept that’s not always good enough for some colleagues and I understand that frustration. It’s really important to me to stay relevant for my colleagues which is why I spend a lot of my time getting out on patrol with them. They don’t realise I’m a police officer! But when I do spend time with them and witness the challenges they are facing, I can raise those challenges directly with chiefs so they hear it first-hand.
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