Chicken goujons, came the reply to my email asking my police team what they’d like for the buffet. Two types: plain and mild sweet chilli.
My team, E section response, are working what we call a dog late this Christmas Eve; a 10 hour shift finishing at three in the morning. The plan is to have a buffet after our handover to the night shift, who will take over dealing with the 999 calls. We know the likelihood is that we won’t get the opportunity to eat any of it.
Once the night shift come in our job will then be to provide a visible police presence outside the pubs and clubs of our town. It’s a shift that is typically characterised by fights, vomit and repeated requests from people asking if their pregnant friend can wee in my helmet. But the beauty of it is that it’s the only time of the year we have the opportunity to get together as a team and, hopefully, eat together.
Why plan a buffet if we probably won’t get to eat it? Because, within the often-reported and dramatised, miserable, cold, dispassionate heart of every police officer is positivity, hope and optimism. There has to be, why else would we do the job?
I am not brand new, I am not in an elite team, I am, and always have been, a frontline, uniformed, bog standard police officer. And I love it. I joined because of a genuine desire to help people. Not, as many service users believe, because I love locking people up who have done nothing wrong nor that I was horrendously bullied at school and am seeking retribution on life (despite possessing an 80s hair parting that could be seen from space and trousers that were perpetually too short). All of the colleagues I know joined for the same reason as I did.
It is the people that we work with and the public that we serve that keep us putting the stabbie on, early morning after early morning, night shift after night shift. We do this, despite the seemingly constant barrage of criticism we receive from all angles. We are all guilty of forgetting that at times. Negativity and uncertainty are corrosive; positivity, although often difficult to muster, is infectious. I have huge amounts of pride and satisfaction to work with those I do, and wear the uniform I wear.
Christmas, to me, is about hope, optimism and people. Being a police officer at this time of year allows us to view it from a unique perspective. This Christmas Eve, like the past six, (I’ve had two off in eight) I won’t be with my wife and three beautiful children. I will be a part of a frighteningly small group of incredible individuals aiming to keep our patch safe and to get everyone home to their loved ones.
I don’t know what we will deal with this Christmas, in the same way that I never know what incidents I will be called to day-to-day. I might get injured like the first Christmas I worked, when I was bitten by a lady with hepatitis. I might bring Christmas traffic on a dual carriageway to a standstill, to help a guy trying, and failing, to change a tyre and get home to his family.
I might attend an incident that will change my life and my family’s Christmas forever, by entering flood water, trying desperately but failing to save a man’s life. Or I could be lucky enough to have a young and slightly drunk person run up to me excitedly exclaiming that he is about to become a police officer himself; just as I did to a poor cold bobby on the New Year’s Eve before I joined. I will smile and tell him he made a great choice.
I will undoubtedly be the hi-vis star of more than one person’s festive social media photo album. I will happily have a selfie, but nobody gets to wear the helmet!
I will return home on Christmas morning, hopefully on time and in one piece, to grab 20 minutes sleep before dealing with a different public order situation; three children unwrapping presents. And if I’m lucky, I might even have eaten, not one, but two types of chicken goujons.
Happy Christmas, season’s greetings and a happy, safe new year to all.
Rob Wilson is a police constable.
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