…or try to.
As cited on the ‘About this Blog’ section, at the end of Week 27 as a police officer and nearing the end of Street Duties, I received a call from the Borough Commander’s (The Big Cheese at WW) PA advising me that the Borough Commander wanted to speak to me urgently about my blog and I was urged to bring with me a federation representative.
Now, a) the Borough Commander doesn’t normally have time for any of the lowly PCs, never mind a new probationer and b) you are normally asked to bring a fed rep with you if you are ‘discussing’ something like a disciplinary matter. It is fair to say, I was crapping myself!
Anyway, the meeting went better than I could have hoped for, no disciplinary measures were discussed and actually everyone seemed very fond of and impressed with my blog, they were just concerned about a few of the comments in it (I suspect things like my unsavoury views on the diversity training at Hendon). I was advised that it would be in my best interest to stop this blog and being a brand spanking new probationer I felt it certainly wouldn’t hurt my career to follow these orders.
So, it stopped there and I regret now that I did not continue blogging offline as there are so many things that happened in the two and a bit years that followed that I would have loved to have been able to publish here with my sentiments at the time as it is difficult to look back on it all retrospectively but I didn’t, and apart from anything else, I am not sure I would have had the time to continue with it as I seemed to have less and less free time as my career progressed, particularly in to CID.
Here’s a brief summary then on what happened in the time that followed the blog ending. I’ll refer in more detail to funny stories / horror stories that I want to share about my time as a PC PC on my PC (Politically Correct Police Constable on my Personal Computer) and about why I left the police in future entries.
I joined a response team at Tooting Police Station once Street Duties finished and remained there for about 6 months. I then moved to a different response team based in Lavender Hill where I spent about another 6 months. From here, and at my earliest opportunity, I left uniformed policing to join CID and spent 6 months in the Robbery and Burglary Squad at Wandsworth Police Station (here it was that I lost my mind!). And finally, I moved to the Case Progression Unit at Wandsworth Police Station. From here, after years of endless unsociable shifts, overtime that went on and on and a stark realisation that the only way to continue to do this job well was to compromise on every other part of my life, particularly time spent with friends and family, I decided to leave the police and return to my former career of software testing in IT.
Leaving the police was not an easy decision to make and one that took me at least a year to be sure about but one thing is for sure, whilst not a day goes by where I regret joining the police, as I have had some fascinating experiences that many people will never have the opportunity to go through, equally, not a day goes by where I regret leaving the police.
Whilst reading through my police blog again as I posted it here, I stumbled across a few interesting comments, one being how I swore I would never return to an office job as I would apparently find it far too boring. Did I sell out? Not really, I didn’t think at that point I would return to IT and back to a normal Monday to Friday 9 – 5 job but when you have certain things taken away from you, things you really care about like time with family and friends, health, hobbies and just a general sense of happiness and calm, only then do you realise how important those things are to you. Don’t get me wrong, software testing doesn’t blow me away, I’m not sure I’d trust anyone who said it did, but it is calm, settling and pleasant and ultimately, it is just a job. I am now able again to consider work as something I do to allow me to earn the money to do the things in life I really want to do and this is a luxury I just didn’t feel I had as a police officer, largely from a time, unsociable long hours and then health point of view.
In short, life is very much calmer now and I am back to being a person I like being, someone who can smile and have a laugh, someone that people generally like to be around. I fear anyone who knew me in the police will have only seen one rather negative side of me where I felt frustrated and angry all the time with the bureaucracies, the paperwork, the public, the hours, the Senior Management and so on and so forth.
I’m pleased most of all to have me back and I am very happy to say goodbye to PC Wood 484 WW.
