During national response policing week, Express were invited to ride along with an officer for a morning to see the challenges that can crop up in the role
Kit Hannah went out with A shift - one of three 10-hour shifts available to officers - and was paired up with Ricky.
He has been a Police Constable for three years, quitting his old job in finance and making a new start in the middle of his life. He called it a “dream job” which gets him away from the desk day in, day out. But his new role is not without its trials and tribulations.
Long days working with little time for on-the-job rest or a sit-down lunch due to continuing pressures and limited resources. The police station, which I was given a tour of, is in a very poor condition. Boxes of snacks lay around the building to grant staff a quick calorie hit in the absence of time for proper meals.
The public are also unaware of the more strenuous parts of the job. Scrambling around the cliffs in the middle of the night looking for people, after working non-stop for several hours, is not visible to the public, Ricky said.
Nevertheless, he said he enjoys the public facing side of the job, especially when cruise passengers are visiting, and on seafront Sundays. The life skills he has gained are a “massive, massive plus”.
Pictured: Express spent the morning with a PC on the roads.
Police Constables start their shift with the “parade” meeting switching over from the previous set of officers, with briefings provided by the on-duty inspector and sergeant.
Logs are checked and outstanding paperwork, like sorting arrest warrants or court sheets, are completed before officers can hit the road for whatever the shift will bring.
Nobody was in the custody cells that morning, which freed up officer time. Ricky said the first order of business would’ve been to review all notes on hand, interview the individual to get their side of the story and then discuss with superiors what action should be taken.
This is usually the case for officers on the early weekend shifts with many people put in the cells for being drunk in a public place. Officers sometimes offer lifts home in those cases to get people off the streets.
It’s a common feature of weekends in Guernsey or major events, with police capacity doubled up to meet demand and ensure officer safety.
Setting off from the police station just after 07:00, our electric police car, known colloquially as an echo, headed through Town towards St Martins and the Airport.
Police also have access to fast response vehicles, motorbikes, and vans, which are named deltas, limas, and kilos respectively.
Nothing had come through on the radio as we approached Pleinmont, but at 08:00 on the dot duty called and a stream of issues poured through.
A two-car road traffic collision was called in on Vale Road. A traffic warden on a ‘lemur’ was dispatched and the road was cleared seven minutes later.
At 08:15 our car was requested to carry out a welfare check. Ricky turned back towards the station to gather some additional information on request from the individuals involved.
Minutes later we hear reports of a broken-down car on the Rohais with traffic building up. A cement mixer then breaks down too in the middle of the Le Val de Terres. Again, wardens were requested through the radio to help managed traffic.
Pictured: One of several electric 'echo' cars used by police.
Once back at the station, Ricky weaved between the various departments to gather all the information required before attending the sensitive welfare case. We get back in the car and start our way to the property. Minutes later though, the control room requests all cars to begin searching the island for a missing vulnerable person.
Ricky turns around and begins to search the coast around Bordeaux as requested. He said it would be like trying to find a “needle in a haystack”, but within half an hour the individual was located by another team.
Work on the welfare check continued immediately after the update. Once Ricky has spoken to a few individuals at the address the initial report turns out to be incorrect. He labeled it a “classic waste of time”.
He said polices’ time is increasingly being taken up by mental health cases, especially since the pandemic. This often consists of welfare checks, with no two cases being the same.
Ricky said this can be challenging as police are “obviously not mental health professionals”, and those complex cases take up a significant amount of time. Often those requesting help in those circumstances are taken to the hospital to be evaluated by psychiatrists.
He added that, since the pandemic, Bailiwick Law Enforcement has been locked in a “vicious circle” of people leaving employment, poor recruitment, and limited retention.
Ricky said the strain is felt by those at the coalface, with extra work created by vacancies piling the pressure on, and leading to stress and dissatisfaction, resulting in more people quitting.
He feared that some think law enforcement have “superhuman powers’ to solve crimes, when in reality “police don’t always have what is needed”.
Approximately one in three police incidents have “direct link” to mental health
Real and "relatively unfiltered" look into 24-hours of Guernsey Police
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