They went to work – but didn’t come home

FEW things have a more profound impact upon serving police officers, or the wider police family, than to hear that a colleague has been killed in the line of duty. Few words are spoken, few are needed. The heart just sinks. Their sorrow is deeply felt yet remarkably, they carry on regardless.

The work to keep the peace in our urban centres is not a war that can be won or lost, or defined with a beginning and an end. It is a constant battle that officers fight for as long as they serve, hoping that at the end of their 30 or 40 years’ service, they held the line and did their bit to make our country a better place than it might otherwise have been. For many, though, the physical and emotional scars remain just like army veterans.

The tragic loss of PS Matt Ratana and PC Andrew Harper brings home the risk officers face each day, because at the beginning of every shift no one can predict how it will end.

While I know our police are not perfect, they never were nor ever will be, I often struggle to understand why they are so frequently criticised for the very problems they confront. We don’t blame nurses for a rise in infections, or the doctor for the wait in casualty, but I often see people blaming the police for violence or other crimes that blight our county and criticised on social media for “doing nothing” when I know they are rushed off their feet by competing priorities.

The Chief Constable and I see most of the new recruits when they join and the Chief Constable reminds them that, unlike most of us, they will be required to put on body armour just to go about their daily business every day of their active working lives; that they will move towards danger while directing others away. He then tells them to wear their uniform with pride because some of their colleagues have died wearing it. Imagine that at the end of a team meeting.

Last weekend saw the annual Police Memorial Day. I hope you will join me, His Royal Highness Prince Charles and many others who honoured all those officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty, most recently PS Matt Ratana and PC Andrew Harper, not forgetting loved ones they left behind.