Falling from the Thin Blue Line
A few disclaimers before we begin: this piece is written from my personal and professional perspectives, discusses suicide and is long (25 min read), as the topic is too important for bullet points. I’m also going to focus mostly on the negatives of police wellbeing and that isn’t to dismiss or downplay the incredible work and people that are doing so much in the organisation (we’ve come a long way) but our aversion to bluntly discussing our faults and weaknesses is one of the reasons we’re in this mess to begin with.
“Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.”
Brené Brown
So, let’s start at the end and work back in discussing why we have such an issue with the wellbeing of our people; suicide. The thing that everyone needs to talk about but so few do and not to the depth and understanding necessary.
In 2019 it was reported that police services “had no idea” regarding the number of officers/staff they lose to suicide. This was promptly picked up by the Federation who took it to the NPCC where it was agreed they would begin counting these figures from 2020 though it’s not clear how, where or when these figures will be released which, to my mind, defeats the purpose of public proclamations. We can say that more police die by suicide than in service, thanks to crime reporter Carl Eve (again) and ONS figures, but given how few die in service in the UK (in comparison to the US for example), that’s not a hard target to beat however sombre the statement is to share. As it stands, statistically we lose an officer to suicide every fortnight here in the UK.
And the cynic in me can’t help but feel that, as an organisation, we don’t count suicides because to do so would end the feigned blissful ignorance that absolves many of the responsibility and duty of care we have of our people to prevent them.
Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Uniformed services and the military have lower suicide rates than those in the general population but it feels higher because they are vocational sectors that act as communities where everyone knows everyone. Unfortunately, with this sense of community, particularly with the use of social media, it means that the estimated 60 people said to be affected by each suicide exponentially increases, allowing great swathes of the frontline feel the loss of one, leading to the potential of something known as “suicide contagion” or “clusters”. This means that the first suicide gives permission for others to follow suit.
We saw this in Police Scotland recently, where they lost 4 men and a woman between October ’19 to February ’20, including one who took his own life in his station. And the East England Ambulance Service lost 3 staff members in 10 days last year, highlighting the importance and need for postvention. Even in the States, the NYPD experienced a catastrophic cluster of suicides in 2019 and nationally the police lose more law enforcement officers to suicide each year than are killed in action, which is a sombre fact to share, and something I’ll be discussing in detail when I present on the topic to the international Law Enforcement and Public Health conference in March.
Our officers and staff who die by suicide need and deserve (with family approval) to be recognised by the police memorial and included in the honour roll. Not including them dishonours them in their memory, as though we are ashamed of them for how they died, viewing it as some kind of personal failure instead of a service and/or societal one. It prevents those left behind in publicly grieving their colleague because of the shame now posthumously attached to them.
Unlike the military however, there is little consideration given to those who resign and retire from the organisation even though they’re at higher risk of mental health crises and suicide, as leaving the organisation can lead to an identity crisis, which is one of the biggest risk factors for suicide in uniformed services. Which is why it’s vital we create a multidisciplinary approach with the Federation, College, Oscar Kilo, Police Superintendents Association, NARPO and PFOA etc to build an engaging and impactful exit programme that discusses mental and emotional health after service.
We can’t expect our frontline to spend years surrounded by trauma and leave the organisation in the same way they came into it; the duty of care we hold for our people doesn’t end when we receive their papers.
We talk about suicide so vaguely both in terms of organisational wellbeing and in our communities, but do you actually know what it takes to reach that point? The calm that washes over you as you decided and prepare to die? The devastation and shock to realise you’ve survived it when you tried so hard not to? The exhaustion of continuing to live and smile through it all so nobody discovers what you did? I do, and the truth is far uglier than the shiny posters we put up on our toilet stall doors telling people to “reach out”.
Let me discuss suicide in the way I present it to police services:
If a Job vehicle breaks down, you take it to the station garage to be fixed. Why? Because, logic and life experience tell us that only a mechanic can fix it.
Suicide is the mechanic to our broken minds.
Why, therefore, would someone in suicidal distress call you to talk them out of it, when it would be akin to knowing they need a mechanic but expecting to be told they do, in fact, need to see a dentist to fix their issue?
I’m not saying that logic is right but that is the logic you face when you broadly tell suicidal people to “reach out.” A vast majority of us won’t seek help because we don’t want to be talked out of it. We want to die or, at least, our suffering and distressing situations to end. That’s the uncomfortable bit no one wants to discuss. Despite encouraged narrative to the contrary, it’s not that common for people to tell others they’re going to kill themselves or call someone expecting to be talked out of it. And it’s even more rare in men, who we can often lose in a matter of hours after a severe life stressor.
I saved a senior leader’s life last year but it wasn’t until weeks later that he told me I had. I’d called him and we talked for a while, through laughter and tears, but what I didn’t know was that he was actually in his car ready to kill himself, with notes written to his children and uniform packed away. Sometimes there are no warning signs.
Because sometimes knowing we are cared for and loved by others isn’t enough or feels suffocating instead of comforting. We feel a burden. Ashamed for how we’re feeling. Damaged goods.
As an organisation, you’ve got to stop viewing suicide as a weakness of the individual and instead as an (often) direct consequence of what we, as their services, leaders and processes within, have driven them to. If they are reduced to suicide because they don’t feel they have any other options left, it is because we have removed their options. I am, of course, not saying that every suicide can be prevented nor that the organisation or those within it are solely at fault but until the organisation and its people is willing to take a long, hard look at themselves in a non-magical mirror, many individuals will continue to absolve themselves of the responsibility to effect the necessary change to prevent mental health crises and suicides. Yes, there’s an incredibly strong anti-police narrative currently used by everyone from armchair experts to ministers and we need to get better at defending ourselves against that, but we also need to get better at accepting criticism where it is warranted.
And the reason I have the privilege to discuss my suicide survivorship, as well as my mental ill health and trauma in general, is that my disclosure won’t affect my career. I don’t need safeguarding because I’m already doing everything I can and should be to look after myself which both confuses and terrifies the organisation because that understanding far exceeds current training on the topic. When we’re doing so well at being strong and high-functioning despite our mental illness and/or trauma, you don’t know what to do with us because all the training tells you we’ll be in acute distress and need safeguarding. The fact that mental ill health costs the economy £94bn annually but those with mental health conditions contribute £226bn means we have to stop viewing our colleagues as low-functioning members of society that need safeguarding and see them as high-functioning people who simply need rest and support a lot of the time.
The majority of what I (and many of us working in this sphere) support officers with has nothing to do with the trauma of the Jobs they attend but what the Job does to them in how it treats them. If you want to reduce rates of ill health in the organisation, one of the most effective (and cheapest) ways would be to put our people at the centre of every policy and wellbeing initiative by consulting them for their lived experience, insights and knowledge to build what we need. But more importantly, stop allowing some of the most disingenuous and duplicitous people in the organisation to lead wellbeing, HR and/or its practices for sycophantic reasons. If you have the wrong person leading it, you will continue to haemorrhage funds on disengaged initiatives when such limited funds could be better spent in other, more meaningful ways to benefit our people. I have lost count of the amount of officers I’ve supported who have reached out to leaders (after invitation to do so) only to be met with deafening silence. What do you think that does for morale or trust in our leaders and wider service and organisation?
Don’t mistake what I am saying; I know a great many incredible leaders, senior leaders and executive officers who have built their careers and reputations on being good people (I wouldn’t have continued with my rape investigation had it not been for the support of two Chief Supts) but a great many of us in, and on the periphery of the organisation, know the prevalence (and untold damage) of their opposites.
Similarly, Mental Health First Aiders and even Blue Light Champions will be minimally effective if we’re not addressing the toxic people, processes and environment surrounding the person struggling.
The only difference between the bullies in our organisation and those we left on the playground are that they now use their titles and epaulettes to wield the damage, instead of their fists. But we’re not supposed to talk about that.
Much of our frontline and many teams will feel and act like a family, always looking out for each other, but organisationally we lost our ability to call ourselves family when we became “pen pushers” out of governmental insistence, who allow process over people to dictate how we treat one another under the guise of accountability and analysis. Accountability that I can’t help but feel often punishes those who are remorseful for genuine human errors (even when investigations have cleared them), whilst promoting and celebrating those who climb their career ladders by stepping on the hearts and minds of others to do so.
When speaking to one senior leader, I highlighted in passing that I am considered predominantly “for the frontline” and he immediately warned me not to come across as “too militant” in this regard, lest I be seen by senior leaders to therefore be “against” them. And as much as I respect this senior leader, I really want to take a moment to highlight how ridiculous that one comment alone is and the embarrassingly casual way in which it was ushered. Why is there an “us and them” mentality between frontline and leaders to begin with and how and when did we accept such childish, imaginary lines drawn in the organisational and wellbeing sand? I know of PCs who should be sacked for their immoral and criminal behaviours and actions just as much as senior leaders should; bad behaviour isn’t and should never be a competition but neither is any group in the organisation morally righteous (myself included).
The reason why so many feel there is a disconnect is because neither the frontline or senior leaders etc are listening to each other. The frontline don’t feel senior leaders listen to their complaints and take necessary action (so stop engaging), whilst many senior leaders feel the frontline don’t understand the high, and often conflicting, pressures of their roles. If the frontline view the College of Police and many senior leaders as the “untouchables in their Ivory Towers”, who make decisions they’re not on the receiving end of, then as the College and leaders, it is our duty to build bridges. And you know the easiest way to do this? Transparent communication and action. We have got to stop over-complicating the simple solutions.
And given that I came into policing as a rape victim and am open and vocal about it online (as I’m still processing the trauma of it all), it also means that I’ve ended up supporting women who have been subjected to sexual harassment, assaults and rapes by colleagues and leaders. Police sexual predators are emphatically the minority I hasten to add, but a statistical guarantee given our size, though there is currently an on-going super complaint regarding how the organisation manage this issue. But we’re not supposed to talk about that either, though I take every opportunity to do so, especially with chief officers I speak with and will include my women in policing when I start running victim impact training with services, beginning later this month.
We are great at discussing equality, diversity and inclusion when it comes to the demographics of the people we recruit yet fail abysmally to acknowledge the diversity in mental health. There is a huge stigma in the black community for attending therapy; what’s the NBPA doing to counteract that? Many women will suffer mental ill health due to sexual harassment; what’s the Federation and BAWP doing about that? We have a high suicide rate in our Asian community; who’s leading that? Men are 47x at risk for suicide when they become fathers, who’s discussing that? There is a disproportionality of suicide against men (though women attempt and survive it at three times the rate) but no one wants to talk about that nationally because to be seen to support the natural majority (white, heterosexual men) suggests we are somehow against our minorities. Even each rank will have their own, differing pressures and barriers to help-seeking that we need to understand and support; what’s the Federation, PSA and NPCC doing about that?
So I’m going to say it; if you don’t know how to support one group without excluding another, you’re not doing it right. Whenever I present to police services on the topic of men’s mental health, I always include women where appropriate and when I ran overarching mental health sessions for West Midlands Police last year, included as many groups as my expertise could encompass. Specifically supporting one group does not mean we don’t care about or aren’t supporting other groups. Every group deserves their own focus at different times and in different ways. The biggest group I support are Sergeants and Inspectors – our leaders – so who’s looking after them, whilst they’re looking after others?
But are we really saying as an organisation that we’ll accept increasing rates of suicide in our men because we don’t have the courage to give them a specific and urgent voice for fear of angering our women and other minority groups? Strong leadership isn’t about always agreeing with others but making the right, though often difficult, decisions in the face of adversity.
Do you think it’s easy for me to support, advocate and campaign for men in a male-dominated sector as a recent rape victim, when both police and men in it have caused me so much pain? Or challenge professional/powerful men who are the biggest triggers to my trauma? Do you think I enjoy being called a “Badge Bunny, just looking for a police husband?” Or have officers I once respected call me “broken?” No. But I support my men because it’s the right thing to do. We have got to stop this “us and them” mentality and appreciate that every group in our organisation deserves specific focus in their own, specific ways.
Trauma and ill health are not competitions.
Specifically acknowledging, understanding and supporting male mental health is key to suicide prevention in all uniformed services and will, not only benefit our men but also many women who take on male personalities and mindsets to succeed in the organisation, as well as men at risk in wider society. Only around 50% of men are asked how they are in the workplace and less than 60% of managers (which will statistically be men in policing) feel confident discussing mental health with their people. In an organisation that is operationally 70% men (and 38% of staff), that’s a vicious cycle that will only continue to spiral in the wrong direction. This is considerably worrisome when you recognise that job satisfaction consistently rates as the key factor in determining a man’s (good or bad) mental health. Yes, it’s true that men struggle more than women to discuss how they’re feeling but I also know it’s true that men do talk under specific circumstances, to specific people and in specific ways because I’m constantly listening to them.
The issue isn’t simply that our people don’t talk about their mental health but that not enough people know how to listen and respond to them and there are still career consequences for doing so. Are we really (naively) expecting AFOs, for example, to tell their skipper or Gov that they’re mentally unwell or suicidal, when it’ll mean a loss of their certification, temporarily or permanently, without appreciating the anxiety of potential job role change (or loss) that would create?
More and more services are beginning to start their own men’s networks and run specific events and days for men which is a fantastic step in the right direction I will always welcome, but the gap in training about the specificity of male mental health remains. There is no point in telling our men (or women) to reach out if we don’t have colleagues and leaders who know how to listen and respond. If we get that wrong, we may as well not bother. Whilst one study found that 35% of men spend over two years in crisis before disclosing mental health problems (if at all), another found that of the 41% who did disclose, 53% said it would prevent them from ever discussing it again.
When I presented to Chief Constable Vaughan and his SLT, they all but admitted I had shared so much evidence and research on the topic they couldn’t fail to act but we have to act in the right way and with a sense of urgency the organisation doesn’t currently appear to hold. Men require far more trust (psychological safety) than women to discuss their feelings so whilst the way I work is time and labour intensive (which the organisation doesn’t want to hear), it also gets results. I haven’t been credited with changing and saving the many police lives that I have because I invested money into them, but my time. It can take me weeks to get men to trust me enough with their vulnerability and sometimes means I have 5 suicidal leaders in 24 hours and I’m arranging care whilst on a beach, but it allows me to support them in the best way possible; their way. Some of my officers prefer trips to the pub to talk and hug it out, whilst others like WhatsApp messages only; everyone is different and requires tailored offerings but the key principles are the same; genuine compassion and understanding. There are moves to create a national men’s network but how many more men will we break or lose to resignations and suicides until such time it passes through needlessly tiresome bureaucracy, red tape and egos?
The majority of our people perceive medication and/or a formal, clinical diagnosis as a failure (though of course, it isn’t) which means that by the time they reach the need for formal support, it’s often too late. And if you have a formal, reactive support initiative with a waiting list of 6 weeks to see a counsellor (for example), what are you going to do to support them until that formal support begins or turns out not to be as beneficial as you had expected? Because if your answer is “they’re on the wait list”, you’re part of the problem. And if your further answer to that is the legal liability of informal support, you fail to understand the realities of mental health or organisational wellbeing, the power of simply extending compassionate humanity to one another and how little some of our people (quite rightly) trust the organisation and many within it. I’ve been supporting others with their mental health for almost twenty years and I have yet to lose a soul to suicide even when they’ve been on the brink.
A reactive model for wellbeing won’t work for a large number of our people. How are you expecting people in crisis to take responsibility for sourcing and coordinating their own care when they need less responsibility, not more in their time of need? One of the simplest but most effective ways I supported one of my men last year? Whilst he was in crisis, I called his GP practice to arrange appointments, then spoke to his GP, his partner to explain what was happening and colleagues I knew he was close to and set up a WhatsApp group for us all to keep an eye on him, as well as seek Fed Rep advice on his behalf. None of that cost money. We have to stop over-complicating wellbeing when it’s simple humanity that can often be the most needed and effective. In June 2019 I wrote an ebook on the topic of police wellbeing, but 18 months later still not much has changed.
How are you going to argue that it’s reactive, formal support or nothing if 2/3 of those suffering the psychological markers for PTSD/CPTSD don’t recognise they’re traumatised to begin with? Time and time again, studies our own organisation set up and analyse show us the problems and time and time again we fail to take the action required. For men, the strongest predictors of trauma symptomology were lowest rank (constable), their gender and humiliating behaviours (there’s those bullies we’re not supposed to speak of again) but in women the strongest predictor was sexual harassment (and the predators we can’t discuss either). Even the government’s Frontline Review tells us the necessity of emotionally intelligent leadership but still, we throw our hands up and wonder why record numbers of officers are lost to sick days and resignations. 114; that’s the number of years that West Midlands Police lost in absence to psychological disorders in just the year 2018-19, not forgetting to mention the 481,419 rest days the organisation owes to its people.
We still have such an antiquated view on trauma and wellbeing organisationally. It seems, for many, that I am allowed to be a professional or a victim but not both simultaneously. So a reminder that you don’t get to benefit from my trauma (or anyone’s trauma) and how I’ve chosen to recover from it then dismiss me when I present symptoms of it. We don’t need safeguarding but compassion, empathy and support and receive it in the way we ask for and need to and not the way you think is best for us, which invariably it isn’t.
We keep talking about trauma in respect of PTSD/CPTSD but you don’t need a clinical diagnosis to suffer the effects of trauma. The narrative we have built around trauma in policing and wider uniformed services is that you have an acute crisis (blanket labeled as PTSD), take time off work and come back ‘recovered’ when the reality is that it’s rare someone will ever completely recover from trauma (especially given austerity, meaning relentless trauma); more that we learn to live with and manage it when it presents itself. As I always say in my presentations; it’s not the trauma of the job that necessarily kills our officers but life trauma and trauma of what the Job does to them (something known as “sanctuary trauma”). We lose 40 construction workers a month to suicide but their sector isn’t traumatic by its nature; it’s male dominated. That’s the key. But we’re not allowed to discuss that herd of bull elephants either.
As an organisation, we can be great in a crisis but given austerity, we are fostering a workforce generation of chronic mental ill health meaning we have to switch our model from reactive, crisis management to one of proactive, continued support.
Have you seen a grown man break? I mean, really break down? Not someone you’re safeguarding on a mental health call but a colleague you respect and look up to? A man you consider strong in almost every conceivable way? To look past his tears and see the abject fear staring back at you. The loneliness. The confusion and distress of finding themselves in the state that they’re in. The embarrassment and shame they feel. To hear him describe, in detail, about how he planned (and/or attempted) to take his own life? I’m 5’4” and one of my first experiences of seeing an officer cry was having a 6’2”, well-built cop in uniform bend down to hug me who promptly broke down in tears, holding me so tightly it was as if his life depended on it; and me. To have a physically, mentally and emotionally strong man crumble into your tiny frame and arms is a feeling I wouldn’t wish on anyone despite the painful regularity of which I see, hear and witness such tears from our men. But again we can’t talk about that.
The federation launched their #ManUpManDown campaign in February last year to highlight men’s mental health but there doesn’t appear to be much substance behind this campaign, with even fed reps admitting to me they don’t know what the point of it is. Similarly, I’ve had to tell frontline officers of the existence of Oscar Kilo because they didn’t know about them or what they do (though even OK champions tell me that don’t always know themselves which is embarrassing), despite them being the national wellbeing service. And that’s not to attack either body but does suggest we clearly have issues around transparency and communication we need to address and improve upon.
Why, for example, are Oscar Kilo focusing on fatigue when workloads and shift patterns can’t be controlled or changed to the degree necessary to offset their impact? Would it not be better to focus on recognising, nurturing and celebrating the emotional intelligence of our leaders who hold so much wellbeing power in their teams and wider services? Be better to fund initiatives and practices that help reduce emotional and mental distress which will naturally give rise to better sleep? I’m seen to be ‘against’ resilience training for no other reason than I have highlighted how it is negatively perceived by many i.e. blaming the individual for not being resilient (strong) enough.
Resilience training (coping mechanisms) can work when you have the ability to curate a strong work/life balance but not when we’re systemically under-resourced and refuse leave requests etc. You can’t ask individuals to be resilient when the organisation itself, is on its knees, which I explained in depth on Twitter. Again, I remind us that I’m not attacking anyone here but simply asking questions to spark discussions and improve our collaborative knowledge and understanding on such important topics.
There’s much fanfare around the 20,000 new officers but what are we doing about retention? And the answer is, not much because it doesn’t pay for us to do so. It appears we rarely thank them for their service when they leave these days, much less appreciate them in service and ask them what we could do to make them stay. At this point, with record resignations against record sick rates, reduced experience, pay freezes (and woefully low starting wages), we’re not just experiencing a “healthy churn” of officers and knowledge, we are haemorrhaging them. But we don’t work harder on retaining our people because it’s cheaper and easier to repeatedly train low-pay recruits (who view it as a job to leave in 5 years and not a life vocation) than it is to keep our long-serving, expert people on the pay roll.
So many have told me or inferred that I am a legal liability because I’m not academically or professionally qualified but what’s the greatest liability here? Building a strong relationship/friendship and informally supporting an officer in an attempt to reduce their mental health crises and prevent their suicide (and achieving it) or being retrospectively sued, as a service, by a family because we didn’t? If you’re that concerned about the liability of suicide, I suggest we do more and work harder to proactively prevent them!
That means we need to discuss the prevalence of toxic bosses, teams and cultures. We need to dissect, deconstruct and rebuild DPS and disciplinary processes so that we don’t create catastrophic identity crises that lead so many to suicide. It means we stop ignoring the ugly truths recent leavers (who we often break) now feel comfortable sharing because they have the freedom to speak their truth, without fear of consequence to their careers. Stop making our people fight for ill health retirement, often to the point of acute mental distress, because as a service you don’t want to pay their more expensive pension.
We don’t recruit embittered people, we create them so it is our responsibility to rebuild what we have broken.
I am told that I will be “taken seriously” when I have academic qualifications or I become Job despite knowing many people and partner organisations and charities who hold and do both and still face the same bureaucratic obstacles and blocks I do.
Not being clinically qualified, being independent of the organisation and having lived experience of mental illness and trauma is precisely why so many seek me out in the first place. They don’t fear being analysed or judged; don’t have the anxiety of fearing career consequences for talking and know that I’ll understand what they’re going through. We have to acknowledge the many barriers we create and uphold that prevent our people from seeking support and do what we can to offer alternatives. Informal and formal support initiatives should co-exist and compliment each other to offer our people choice and person-centred care in their time of need.
I don’t challenge the organisation and many of its people and practices because I derive some perverse pleasure in being considered argumentative. I challenge the organisation and its people because I want it to be better; because I know it and many within it can be. Nor am I conceited enough to suggest that my way forward is the best or only way as some have suggested; I am merely attempting to present different perspectives so that those in key positions can reflect our people’s differing needs.
Many services and individuals within are happy to seek and take my advice and expertise when they are free but not when I place a value on them (something many of us experience), which not only tells me that they don’t truly respect me and/or my work but that they’re not willing to invest in wellbeing as much as public protestations to the contrary.
And I don’t think anyone appreciates the private (and often traumatic) price I’ve had to pay to support my officers. The sexism and misogyny I’ve faced. The lies spewed to me. The outright hostility. I could have walked away when the first senior leader stole my work and passed it off as his own. When I was unceremoniously dropped (for reasons I still don’t know) from the Federations’ national working suicide group. I could have walked away when a married executive officer told me I was “hot for a rape victim” as he came on to me, which triggered one of the most horrific trauma meltdowns I’ve ever experienced. And at this point, I don’t know if I continue to attempt to engage the organisation around its wellbeing out of sheer dogged determinism or blind optimism and outright stupidity.
My (police) friends either joke that they’re surprised I’m still continuing to attempt to help an organisation that doesn’t want it (and to a point, I would agree) or they (from PCs to executive officers) ask me to keep going because my work is so important. And whilst I will always continue to support my individual officers, for now I have grown weary of the politics and egos surrounding our people and the passive expectation that I, and so very many of us in general, are to accept such poor behaviour from so many as “just the way it is”. So, an important reminder; just because a behaviour or action is accepted, it doesn’t make it acceptable.
Many of you don’t feel able to publicly say all this or be in positions to do so but I have the privilege to write this without fear for my career by sharing truths many are unable to speak themselves, though I’m not sure anyone will work with me after this. But if that is the price I have to pay to uphold my integrity, then so be it. Because let’s be clear here; though I have included my personal experience, the majority of what I have written is nothing that Job and ex-Job, anonymous social media accounts, reported misconduct hearings and quick Google searches won’t already tell you.
I have followed the rules of the organisation. I have been respectful in my challenges. I have bide my time and where has it got me apart from the receiving end of astoundingly poor behaviours and actions by many? And the most painful irony of it all is that highlighting this will make me look like the unprofessional one. I have lost count the amount of tears that I have shed over the last two and a half years; both in general frustration at the political and egotistical blocks I continually face but the way so many officers and leaders have treated me in that time.
After our most recent police suicide, I said on Twitter that I was finally going to publish the piece that I needed to write, but didn’t want to and the reason I didn’t want to write and publish this is because I have come to accept that many within the organisation do not want the honesty I (or many of us attempt to) deliver, however factually and respectfully it is presented.
But when did impassioned, but respectful, honesty ushered for the betterment of our organisation and people within it, become considered so radical and a threat to an organisation which should be both founded on it, and seek it out in those it engages with? I built a national reputation around men’s mental health in uniformed services whilst going through the worst, most traumatic years of my life; can you appreciate that? The time, strength and commitment that it has taken? And yet, I am being punished for demonstrating the honesty and integrity we should come to expect from everyone in the organisation. And are you really trying to tell me that I “embarrass” the organisation more because I have some perceived audacity to reflect organisational failings, than those who commit or uphold such failings to begin with? I have consistently and repeatedly been shocked that I have been expected to demonstrate stronger morals and greater courage as a rape victim and a professional, than many within the police.
Though I wouldn’t, many consider me part of the Thin Blue Line (which I find humbling) but I have fallen from it (or been pushed; I can’t quite work out which) so, for now, I am done. I have tried my hardest but after over two years of relentless hard work, whilst navigating my own trauma and full time jobs, researching and writing two books, as well as continually supporting dozens of officers and civilian men, I am left feeling frustrated and humiliated knowing that I am blocked from helping create the change so many hope and believe that I can deliver. It has been made abundantly and repeatedly clear that I am not welcome at the national tables of wellbeing discussion, even if I continue to engage with many at service level. I am angry that I have and continue to be expected to help the organisation when it consistently fails to even acknowledge, much less thank or engage with me, for my efforts because so many mistake the love I have for my officers to mean I don’t recognise the value of myself or my work.
All of the above infuriates and disheartens me on a level I can’t articulate, not because I believe I have all the answers but because I know that I have some and they are important ones that hold many of the keys to preventing mental health crises and suicide in both our men and women, as many more I know hold other important keys to the issues. I am heartbroken that I hold the knowledge, expertise and reputation to potentially help thousands of our men in police and other uniformed services but am blocked from doing so by bureaucracy and fragility of egos. I am not trying to help policemen (or our people in general) for “fame or fortune” because a chronically under-funded, public sector organisation is not the place I would look for either; I am trying to help because it’s the right thing to do but for now, I am done. I will continue to support my individual men and women and go where I am invited but it truly pains me to acknowledge that my morals and integrity will preclude me from working with many, when the organisation purports to be founded on both. It has broken my heart to be repeatedly taught that not everyone in the organisation can and should be trusted.
If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values: they’re hobbies.
Jon Stewart
The organisation I grew up revering broke me; can you understand that? It treated me so badly throughout my rape investigation that when I attended for the decision on my case, I thought I would be arrested for wasting police time. I wrote a book about my experience, exploring why we have just a 1.4% conviction rate for rape, and still spent an entire chapter defending police, evidencing how poor wellbeing directly impacts us as victims! But it has become obvious that whatever I do/don’t do, say/don’t say, I will never be good enough for many. Despite everything I’ve written and much more that I haven’t, I am still here trying to help the organisation but I can’t do it anymore.
And as I sit here contemplating the state of police wellbeing and how I feel about it, as I have done many times over recent weeks and months, I wonder what I could have possibly done that warrants exclusion by the very people I’m trying to and want to help. Why I’m not good enough. Why an organisation I grew up feeling I belonged to doesn’t want me.
I honestly don’t know what else I can or am expected to do? I built and launched this website purely to encompass an informal men in police network and I’m still refused a seat at the table.
When senior leaders ask me why I’m not Job, I tell them I can’t. Not because I believe I wouldn’t make an exceptional response or firearms officer but because of the emotional and mental cost of doing so. A toll charged, not by the communities in which I would serve and the jobs I’d attend, but by an organisation that takes far more from many than it is willing to give in return.
My dream to become Job didn’t end because I wanted it to but because the rose-tinted glasses I didn’t realise I viewed it in, have been repeatedly smashed by the realities of the organisation and many within it. I have had to grieve for a dream I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to, whilst being forced to discover and accept an ugly reality I didn’t want to see.
I loved “the Police” and it has broken me for doing so.
I loved it.
Once.
If you have been affected by anything written in this piece, please know there is help and support available to you and some of those resources are:
Police Care UK
Breathe Centric
No Duff
PTSD999
Call4BackUp
