keefysher
Senior Member
- Joined
- May 4, 2007
- Messages
- 4,506
- Reaction score
- 2,695
- Location
- Hampshire
- Your Mercedes
- W166 GLE350AMG Line 3.0 2017. BMW Z3 2.8 1998.
As a former special, I saw a mix of police officers and their attitudes and its fair to say, traffic coppers were the most....difficult by personality, but most of them were alright as long as you allowed them to say their bit, unless you were doing something really daft, they would let you off with ticking.
However, the working day as a cop can be pretty grim, as I well know, especially when most RTCs are caused by excess speed and then poor decision making by the one driving or by spooking other drivers who react to what you are doing. And then its left to you to pull someone out of the wreck, maybe console them as they are dying, holding limbs and puncture wounds in place whilst the paramedics stabilise the fluids and monitors and the fire crew cut the car apart, and then the glorious job of telling their families the bad news.
So I can see why it would rub a copper up the wrong way, especially when the excuse you used was the oldest one in the book. All he has done is witnessed you breaking the law, regardless of the circumstances, he doesnt know that sat behind the wheel of his car. You don't know, but he may have just dealt with a grim situation or another cocky so and so and you were another one doing something daft. So its not always as clear cut as you may think.
It's changed a bit these days. My BiL is a Fireman in Bristol, he is the crew medic as the FB are the first responders in an RTC. The fire brigade get the mucky bits, told not to rescue kids trapped in a car where the father deliberately drove it into the floating harbour in Bristol as last week for example. A similar event with a couple topping themselves in a similar way and he had to watch as they drowned due to it not being 'safe' to get them out according to some control room bod miles away in warm comfy chair behind a computer screen. He is also on the boat for water based incidents, jumpers off the Clifton suspension bridge which is particularly harrowing, the Police don't attend the find and recover bit. The bomb factory that was reported as a firework accident (not in the press that one). Cutting the kids from the car where the father drove like a nutter overtaking on blind bends and having a head on, the second time in 6 weeks. Having to then stop said driver bleeding out whilst extracting him from the car where his ankle was pinned both from the previous incident and the steering column, well before the para medics arrive. Multiple shouts where lives reported over a single tour (4 shifts) and lives lost. Then on the first day off your best mate who you trained with and worked with on the same watch tops themselves. Being petrol bombed and attacked with stones, paving slabs and knives when attending a drug den fire. Unable to get to that pile of fat in the frame of a chair that was a person a few minutes ago. The car battery that blew up and sprayed acid all over you after a hit and run had dumped and torched it, despite being at a prescribed safe distance and letting it burn as no life reported. With a lot of those also being the crowd control as the Police hadn't got there yet.
Those are just a few highlights from the last 3 months of his working life.
Does he ever have an attitude, no. Does he get sharp with people, no. Does he swear, no.
Can he get the new mega turntable through the narrowest of streets, through log jammed traffic to meet the response times, of course he can and without a Police escort.
Then fill in the paperwork, and undertake training to work out the population profile in your station ground, the building density under the guise of CPD, when its actually to reduce headcount on the fire ground, but with increased box tickers at HQ.
Heroes, my BiL and his watch mates and the other watches.
All for a pittance in pay and no rise in years.