A former frontline officer revealed some of the harrowing ordeals that he witnessed, while working in Croydon.
Inspector Jack Rowlands, now a member of Tridents prevention and diversion unit, recounted that he witnessed a four year old "dying in front of him" as part of the trending hashtag, #itookhome on twitter last week.
The hashtag, saw members of the police force from all over the country reveal the associated and often overlooked scarring events that a week in the job brings.
His tweet read:
As a PC at Croydon #ITookHome a hanging, a fatal motorcycle collison, a 4yr old dying in front of me & a women stabbed to death - in 1 week
— Insp Jack Rowlands (@earlyyearscop) April 20, 2017
The 34 year old said: “There was a lot of trauma in the tweets. The things that I mentioned was a snapshot of things that I took home, it had a detrimental effect on me. I used it as a springboard to make me a better police officer, it makes your care about the public. It’s the type of things people don’t think that we deal with.
We have been dealing with it so much over a period of time. We have good weeks and bad weeks it. It can catch you out because you don’t know what you are going to deal with at the beginning of a shift.
We have to deal with it because we want to protect the public, so we can deal with crime.”
Got a story? Get in touch touch at samantha.mordi@london.newsquest.co.uk
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