I write as a serving police officer, a uniformed response officer answering 999 calls in one of the Scottish cities, to highlight the increasing concern and confusion amongst officers as to why we are not being prioritised for the Covid vaccine.
I fully accept and understand that the elderly and most vulnerable must be the absolute first priority. And I know that many other key workers also have a case.
But since March last year I’ve been brought into daily contact with the public and at distances of less than two metres.
I have had to perform CPR with other colleagues, doing so with no PPE on while paramedics suit up outside.
I’ve arrested numerous people and had the resulting physical contact and proximity for prolonged periods in police vehicles and small holding cells while we wait to be processed.
I’ve dealt with detainees who have had epileptic fits and had to provide first aid. I’ve been one of the first on scene to those who have been stabbed. I’ve broken up fights. I’ve attended countless house parties and broken them up. I’ve policed mass protests. I’ve been sent to the side of rivers to find those contemplating suicide, having to protect them and convey them to the appropriate help. I’ve been one of six police officers required to physically restrain someone on an acid trip in an A&E resus bed, the saliva-filled spit hood inches from my hands once it was taken off for medical attention to be given.
I’ve been in more houses than I can count, numerous hotel rooms, various hospital wards, ridden in the back of more than one ambulance (on occasion restraining those inside to stop them being violent to paramedics), been in at least two A&E departments countless times, and attended at three different mental health units multiple times. I car-share with a colleague for about eight hours a day, and that car is used on average by another four people in the day. I have been deployed operationally across five local authority areas and in all of this dealt with hundreds of different people and households.
The immediacy of our work doesn’t always allow for nice considerations about PPE. There isn’t always time to get a pair of gloves on before you jump out of a car to split up a fight. To date I haven’t knowingly had any symptoms but I believe I must have been asymptomatic given the sheer volume of contacts I have.
If this virus, and the new strain, is really different, if we are being told that younger people shouldn’t be complacent, we shouldn’t think it won’t affect us, if it can be deadly even to us, then am I required to carry on regardless? When will I be offered protection from this horrible virus? Or which of my duties above do I stop doing to protect myself?
I took an oath to preserve life. But at what cost to me?
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To me this is plain common sense but as we all know any UK Government and common sense are so far apart .
That police officers are not at the top of the list is a total disgrace, but hardly surprising.
Government does not care about the police. At every turn, police are investigated, criticised and generally treated like second class citizens. Actually, that is wrong. They are third class citizens, coming comfortably after illegals in our country.
They put themselves in danger every minute of every day and 70 officers a DAY are being injured on duty. Keep this up and the entire national front line force will be off sick.
Crime has risen consistently since the early sixties. Back then, an officer wore the blue serge uniform, his only weapon was a short wooded truncheon and means of communication were either hitting the truncheon on the pavement or using a whistle. Of course, the ladies did not do nearly so well. They were not even issued with a truncheon. My point is that at that time, this uniform and equipment was sufficient to police right up to 1977 when the Notting Hill carnival went sour.
I went up to have a look and found officers with bits of sticking plaster on their chin straps to prevent chafing and using galvanised bin lids as shields. That started the trend towards current equipment levels.
Meanwhile, the punishment for crimes has become less and less, making crime much more profitable. This in turn has led to increasing levels of violence towards everybody, which has in turn meant more and more kit being issued to defend officers. To put this in perspective, driving examiners will be issued with body cams as protection against violence toward them if they fail someone.
Because there are no consequences, people do what they like and keep pushing the envelope, which is becoming very frayed now. There was the story of a man who stabbed a PC and ended up with a 2 year sentence plus 6 months for carrying a blade. What sort of nonsense is this? What sort of message does it send to people who behave like this? This chap will be out in 15 months, if not sooner. Cheap at twice the price.
Had he been locked up for 4 years for carrying the blade and another 10 for stabbing someone, plus another 4 for attacking an emergency worker and no remission, to run consecutively, this thug would have been off the streets for 18 years. Come out and do it again, and you will never see freedom again. It is that simple. Unless of course he is not a British citizen, in which case he must be interned pending deportation in perpetuity.
If we do not clear our streets and country of criminals and recidivists, they will proliferate like rats, which is already happening.
The government has a duty to protect all of its citizens, something it has failed to do for 50 years now and still the illusion of community sentences continues to hold sway. If someone is deported or jailed, they cannot commit crime. It is as simple as that. If they are jailed for increasingly long periods, only the lunatic fringe will think this is a good way of spending a life.
Unless and until we instill the concept of responsibility and personal choice in the criminal underworld, coupled to serious punishment, things will get worse, not better.