NEWS
– physically and emotionally. I knocked on many doors of bereaved families and changed many lives. That really affected me, and I had to get help. Many of my colleagues have had to do the same – and I’m not ashamed of it. Complex PTSD is rife within policing and is a real issue. Throw in life’s everyday problems, whether that’s a divorce or money worries, and the culmulative effect can be significant. Just because you are a police officer, you’re not immune from that. I sincerely hope that the Police Covenant, that will be in law later this year, will be a massive step in the right direction – something we have campaigned for.
Chris in Staines: I understand new police recruits are required to undertake a degree course during their first three years. Does this not exclude a large number of good people?
JA: I couldn’t agree more. We want all sorts of people in policing from all sorts of backgrounds. What this current model of recruitment has caused is that recruits are now far younger. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it does mean the percentage of older officers is decreasing. We want all sorts of people from different backgrounds such as the public sector and the military.
James in Gillingham: As a former rep, I used to deal with officers who were exhibiting mental health crises. When I
was in the job, I would be representing an officer who was having a serious depressive illness and would be told to ‘man up’ by his superiors.
JA: When it comes to the mental health crisis, not only in policing but in society, it’s been ignored for far too long but I do think it has been recognised now. It certainly has in policing over the past five years or so, but before then it certainly was ignored. If you dared to say you had a problem, you would either be laughed out of the room or considered a problem by bosses. That is changing.
I was a family liaison officer and a specialist road death investigator. My colleagues and I were exposed to more trauma than you could imagine
James in Watford: Do your police colleagues feel politicised? Do you adjust your approach to say the Black Lives Matter protests, compared to the lockdown protests?
JA: In terms of being politicised, I would say that policing is more political than it has ever been before. You hear people say that police should be ‘defunded’ – if that was said five years ago I would have just laughed at them but this now seems to be being taken seriously by people. I would argue we were are already underfunded and we need more money in policing. On protests we approach every one differently – we don’t look at the politics. We look at the type of protests because we don’t want protests to turn into something more violent. Sadly, that’s what we see time and time again.
11 I POLICE I JUNE 2021
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