So much of what has been said on this thread resonates with me. I'm a cop with 15 in, all front line uniform and I genuinely believe that Policing is heading for a huge crisis. Many would say it's already at crisis point but at the moment nobody is listening. It's going to take another Davies type review to salvage things but with so little public support for the Police I just cannot see any government implementing this. The system would need to completely shatter for this to happen.
It's become almost cliche these days to read blogs from serving cops talking about the horrors of the things they see day to day and the lack of support from the organisation/management/public. The attitude is very much "this is what you signed up for" and to a point that is true. But nobody can truly know when joining the job just how much of an effect this will have on you after 5, 10, 15 years. It's all very well going into something with eyes wide open but until you've done it for a long time you can never truly know how it'll impact you. Burn out for a cop with my level of service is standard and I'm not even half way through.
The bad stuff you see and deal with is not the main issue for me though. For me it's how the job impacts you off duty. When I first joined the Police I was obviously very careful who I told what I did for a career but I was quite proud to tell decent folk how I paid my bills. But now I can honestly say that I would not tell anybody I'm a cop. The level of hate and disrespect for the Police has ramped up in the last 5 years to unbearable levels. Even amongst decent hard working, law abiding folk. We are constantly reminded of this silent majority who support us, but it feels like this silent majority are just a figment of some senior cops imagination. It's like being told to behave in life so you go to heaven in the afterlife, there's no tangible proof it exists beyond pure faith.
Simply put the decent public have lost faith in us. The criminal justice system stacks the deck to work in favour of the accused. This is done for good intentions, it's to stop miscarriages of justice, fit ups, corruption etc and this is all fair enough and proper. But the flip side is that it makes it very difficult to actually prove the guilt of a suspect even when it appears the evidence is all there. Beyond all reasonable doubt is such a high burden of proof. For high stakes stuff like murder etc the time and money is rightly invested to make sure the evidence is gathered. But to the average Joe Bloggs in the street who is affected by what is known as "volume crime" it becomes much more difficult. As such the Police are the scapegoats for the publics frustration. Couple this with dangerously low officer numbers (unless there's a football match then there seems to be hundreds of us- this adds to the negative public perception), National Crime Recording Standards (literally everything that is reported now has to be recorded as a crime, a large percentage of which is impossible to even begin to prove, so naturally detection rates will fall) and ridiculous levels of bureacracy then you realise what a difficult and thankless task you have. Swimming against the tide every day does become mentally draining.
It feels as though the Police as an organisation ignore the problems because of a stubborn belief that they'll always be able to recruit. More recently the shift has actually become focused on people doing the job short term in order to keep the front line fresh faced and enthusiastic. Old sweats like me are only useful when things go wrong and they need an experienced head to sort it out. But yet I've been overlooked for promotion a few times now whilst watching officers with 3 years in become Sgts. Maybe it's my lovable optimistic nature thats stopping me progressing
Sorry for the whinge. The crux of the matter is being a cop has become very much a love/hate affair. I'll always love the job and have had some amazing experiences, met some great people and I know I've done a lot of work to be proud of. But I'm at an age now where I feel if I did this for another 15-20 years then I'd retire with a pretty decent Pension (although vastly less than the one I signed up for!) then die of a heart attack the next day! As negative as that sounds I've lost count of how many retired cops I know who have not lived to see 2 years of their hard earned pensions.
I'd love to get on the railways but I doubt I'd pass the assessment centre for driver. I'm bloody rubbish at the dots test, I've had a few online practices and can't seem to get the hang of it. But anyway thanks for reading