Forensics needed in police recruitment
WHEN we were children I bet most of us thought that the police were people we could unconditionally trust – the only souls good enough, kind enough, brave enough and dutiful enough to keep other people, complete strangers, safe from harm, or even certain death.
I certainly trusted them, especially as a child, because it was the police, aided by firemen, who rescued my family’s howling beagle, Rufus.
He’d escaped his lead, headed for the sea, got out of his depth and was stranded on a rock in rough, grey, thrashing waves off the coast of Brighton. He’d been howling for hours as the tide rose higher and higher.
It was the police who went looking for my younger brother and his friend, Gordon, when, as junior school kids, they disappeared for two freezing nights on the South Downs.
I’ll never forget my mum’s searing, premature grief as her mind became occupied with the unthinkable, especially when the next day the boys still hadn’t materialised.
When they finally turned up, accompanied by two police officers, after spending the nights in an old air-raid shelter, she let out a wail that was as if they were both dead on the floor before her.
So is it just me, or following the savage murder of Sarah Everard, are we all finding it hard to think of police officers in the same way these days?
As people with a sense of compassion and duty toward their fellow human beings, and the occasional dog, we’d like to think the police tower well above prospective criminals in their compassion for the public and our safety, but some of them seem to be hiding behind personalities they don’t actually possess, taking part in despicable behaviour, like actors in some dodgy soap.
Just this week, two police officers admitted sharing murder scene photos of two sisters. What larks, eh?
Surely now forensic character assessment must be employed before recruiting police officers. An in-depth series of interviews should be carried out in order to assess character, and references must be examined and taken seriously.
This ought to be already happening, hopefully, and if it isn’t, it really should be.
After all, if we can’t trust our police officers – our appointed upholders of the law, the people we’re told to turn to if we’re in trouble – then who are we to rely on if some of them also turn out to be the main offenders?
The police should tower above criminals in compassion for our safety