Stress

In relation to David Copperfield's post today 'On Combat'. Here's an excerpt from a paper on stress in the Police, this time from Canada. It would be longer but you can't copy and paste from it ho hum...

Physical Evidence of Police Officer Stress

"The results...demonstrate that police officers experience both physical and psycho-social stress on the job, anticipating stress as they go about their work, while suffering anticipatory stress at the start of each shift. The results demonstrated that the highest levels of stress occur just prior to and during critical incidents, and that officers do not fully recover from that stress before leaving their shift. Overall, the results illustrate the need to consider stress reactivity and repressors in the assessment of police officer stress wile clearly demonstrating the need for debriefing after critical incidents and increased training in stress management and coping strategies" (Anderson, Litzenberger & Plecas, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 2002:399).

If anyone wants a copy of the whole thing please email me because it's only accessible through my uni passwords and I'll get into all copyright troubles etc if I post it or attach it anywhere.

Results

Hi, I've posted some results on the Police Communication site, I can't stratify them into ranks, but as 77% of respondents were PCs I think we can safely say these are the general views of PCs (those who read blogs at least!).

These general views being that yes - you get too many emails, most of which are irrelevant, and therefore very, very annoying...you didn't need me to tell you that did you!

Would you step in?

There's a poll on the daily mail today 'Would you step in if you saw somebody being attacked?'

I don't think it's a yes/no answer that can be selected that easily, it would depend on the circumstances. I really don't know if I could though, and not for fear of being prosecuted as many of the comments say on the related article, I don't think that's something you think about in the heat of the moment. Basically I would be afraid of what the attacker would do to me. I would feel better if we lived in a society where people would back each other up against the attacker and hold him until the Police arrive. But what if there's no-one else around? I suppose in those cases you must ring the Police first so they know where you are, or they might be looking for two dead bodies!

I think some people are using the related article to complain about the fact that the innocent are prosecuted and the criminals go free, as I say, I wouldn't think about that at the time. It's true though, and we need an excuse to voice this complaint - here's a perfect excuse, it's completely astoundingly, unbelievably disgusting what that bastard got away with (and I'm sure he's not the only one).

Just think about how much courage it took that woman to stand up in court against the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with at one point. Think about how many people haven't got friends who will alert the Police. Think about all the Police time wasted for a fine that won't even make a dent. Just like the attackers in the first story, criminals are being allowed to think they can get away with things without being punished - and it seems often they can, no matter how hard the Officer on the street (when they get the chance) tries.

Grammar

Starting a sentence with 'but' in my last post reminded me of a great quote from linguist Naomi Baron - it took me a few seconds to get the whole thing ;)

"My composition teachers railed against using contractions, beginning a sentence with a conjunction, or ending one with a preposition in a written text, acts which were permissible in speech. (But obviously, these were suggestions I didn't always listen to.)"

I don't know if I'd have the guts to joke in an academic paper!

Acronyms

Just found out Chunky is an ABC SPOC, she knows no-one has time and they're all made up, she remembers the old beeping box, and the pens, barcodes and clipboard. She doesn't remember that I'm not in the Police and have no idea what half of the things she says to me mean!! Well I did get this one actually because of the comments on PC Southwest's post. But the Police are full of acronyms.

The NHS is just as bad. I've changed this slightly but I'm quite sure you could have got a letter to my department just by putting:

MHU
PGH
AUM

on the envelope!

In my induction (how many months after I started!!) they warned us against using too many acronyms. We were told the story of (a different Trust of course) where someone had written DOA and the date in the margin of a patient's notes meaning 'date of admission'. It was an unfortunate nurse who got the call from the relative asking how the patient was doing, to which she broke the news that he was 'dead on arrival'.

I'm gonna be rich!

I'm back on my 'world's gone mad' view (suffering from a mental illness sorry) where everything's PC and it's the words that are important not the meaning behind them (remind you of the promotion crammer?)

Looking at my conditioner bottle in the shower today it said ' use with [insert own brand name here] shampoo for best results'. If I write to them and say "well I've found I get best results using it with dum-de-dum brand shampoo and unless you can prove you have tested every possible combination of shampoos and found yours is the best I want a settlement of £1 million in my bank account a week next Tuesday or I'll sue you for misleading me for all the time I've been using the two together (two washes) when I could have been using cheaper and better dum-de-dum brand. This has cost me 37p I needn't have spent and two days of marginally less shiny hair and I am deeply affected by this."

Do you think I'd get anywhere?

Two Eye Openers

Everyone should read this, particularly if you're not a Police Officer. Of course, I knew Policing was nothing like the Bill, but North East Policeman's post is a fantastically written look into the real world of Policing, and that's only a tiny fraction of the sort of things they and not to mention the kids have to deal with.

There are 'unofficial' Police blogs full of these heart-wrenching experiences Officers have to deal with. ACPO and the like should spend less time trying to close down these blogs and more time actually reading them. Then they might start to get the slightest idea what these guys are going through and why they complain about all the bureaucratic red tape stopping them from doing real Policing.

It's interesting to note that both the posts I've linked to above say they don't mind doing the paperwork (in triplicate) if they've actually been able to make a difference; it's all the other stuff that gets in the way.