I felt angry that Cregan still had the capacity to affect so many lives KATHERINE BAINBRIDGE
“IHAD lost too many people and I had just had enough. I couldn’t do it any more.”
These are the words of an ex-police officer who has spoken out about how the brutal loss of close colleagues eventually led to her quitting the force.
Many of us think of police as superheroes who can cope with anything.
But Gemma Hines’ story shows they’re just people too.
The terrible things officers see on a daily basis can have a devastating and lasting effect.
Gemma, 31, from Stockport, started out as a special constable.
She says she ‘fell in love’ with the job by her second shift. She was soon accepted as a fulltime officer by Greater Manchester Police, and spent 10 years on the beat in Tameside.
But after a while, the pressures of the job began to catch up with her.
And then, on one terrible day in 2012, Dale Cregan murdered her fellow officers, Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone.
Four years later Gemma’s good friend Andy Summerscales, thought to have been the first person on the scene following the deaths of Pcs Hughes and Bone, took his own life.
That, she says, is when she decided to leave the police. Gemma officially resigned in January this year.
Now she has written a book about her experiences in the force, called ‘Only Human: 21st Century Cop’, which was published last week.
In it, Gemma describes the impact Andy’s death had on her.
“Devastated was an understatement,” she said.
“I felt angry that four years on, Cregan still had the capacity to affect so many people’s lives.
“Every time I closed my eyes I could see him [Andy] all alone, feeling like he had nothing left.
“When I closed my eyes I could see him where he died, in the way that he died, constantly in my dreams day and night.
“He was there every time I closed my eyes. Sleeping didn’t come easy for a while.”
Gemma also describes the moment she found out what had happened to colleagues and friends Fiona and Nicola, while out shopping with her partner and their son.
She said: “Time stood still. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t function.”
The mum-of-two had a difficult upbringing herself.
Trapped between feuding parents, she was excluded from a number of schools, and looked after herself from the age of 15.
By 18 she was working as a personal trainer at a gym.
Gemma says she applied to be a special constable because she was looking for something to do with her life, and one of the members at the gym suggested it.
“I just thought it was worth a go,” she said.
“I think I had been out on two shifts when I fell in love with it. It was the adrenaline – we were going to different jobs every hour, and you never knew what you would be dealing with next. When I found out I had been accepted into the police full time, I felt like I had made it.”
Over her years of service Gemma witnessed many terrible things, such as riots, suicide, child neglect and rape and murder cases.
The horror began to take its toll.
“It’s not a job you can leave in the office,” she said.
“I think most people think cops go and deal with situations and then just move on. I can remember things from years ago – sounds, smells, what was said – as if it were yesterday.”
After suffering from anxiety and depression, Gemma started writing things down as a form of therapy, before realising that it could work well as a book.
Only Human also deals with how being a woman informed Gemma’s experiences in the police, and she says that despite being highlytrained, she still experienced some incidences of sexism.
An example she gives is when she and her colleagues were sent into a house where an armed man who had robbed a shop was holed up in the loft.
Gemma says the inspector questioned why she had brought her kit and said he ‘only wanted the men kitting up’, leaving her to stand at the front door.
But the tables were turned when the man managed to escape with-