I’ve previously written about how things become routine in Policing. How we deal with the same people, the same types of crime, and have the same arguments on a nearly daily basis.
We become immune to what we see, to what we hear and to what we do. We have to. If we took every job home with us, if we took every abusive comment to heart, we would break within less than a day.
That said, sometimes things hit a nerve. We hear things that even as Cops we can’t be immune to. We see things that even as Cops we can’t help but take home with us. We are human after all.
A year ago, to the day, I attended my first ever fatal RTC. Car vs person. It would be a lie to say I don’t still think about it. No, it doesn’t affect me and I don’t lose sleep over it, but I still think about it when I drive down the road, or read about other similar incidents in the media across the Country. Killed at the age of 31.
Yesterday I took a statement from a significant witness of a serious offence. We talked for literally hours about what they saw, what they did and how they felt. “His eyes were dying”. Jesus. Killed at the age of 17.
Sometimes, there are no words for what we see and hear in this job. Sometimes, you hear something and it feels like you’ve been kicked straight in the stomach. Some people are just evil.
What can you say to somebody who has witnessed the worst things possible? Sometimes just taking a minute and saying nothing goes further than trying to make small talk I suppose.
It bothers me that often our witnesses are innocent members of the public, going about their day and they witness just pure evil. It’s hard enough for us in our job, and we see it all the time.
Those poor, poor people.
