If you've submitted the Police survey, thanks!
The survey was created primarily out of a thread on Policespecials.com which was discussing the fact that many members of private security firms look much like police officers. I was curious to see how many people could recognise police from security, so I await the results. I'll leave this a few weeks and then post the answers for all to see. Thanks if you took the time to fill it in.
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
Police or Not Police?
Police or Not?
Is the person in the photograph a member of a UK Police force either as a Constable or Police Community Support Officer?
* Required
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Can programming be taught?
This blog post is specifically targeted at Teresa again as she rewrote much of the first year undergraduate Computer Science Programming Principles course a couple of years ago.
A friend pointed out Jeff Atwood's blog at codinghorror.com. If you're not aware of Jeff, he's a co-founder of Stack Overflow and has many thought provoking articles. The one that really caught my eye is from back in 2006 called Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats. The paper mentioned (the blog links to a draft here, but look on your preferred academic repo for the final version) discusses the high rate of failure on these types of foundation programming courses and suggests that students who fail the course can be determined before they even start the course with a high degree of accuracy.
I find the following quote, like the author, quite disturbing and also a little hard to believe.
Also linked to this, is the UK government's intended changes to secondary IT education to make it more computer science relevant likely to change the results if the experiment was to be rerun in a few years?
A friend pointed out Jeff Atwood's blog at codinghorror.com. If you're not aware of Jeff, he's a co-founder of Stack Overflow and has many thought provoking articles. The one that really caught my eye is from back in 2006 called Separating Programming Sheep from Non-Programming Goats. The paper mentioned (the blog links to a draft here, but look on your preferred academic repo for the final version) discusses the high rate of failure on these types of foundation programming courses and suggests that students who fail the course can be determined before they even start the course with a high degree of accuracy.
I find the following quote, like the author, quite disturbing and also a little hard to believe.
But it's still a little disturbing that the act of programming seems literally unteachable to a sizable subset of incoming computer science studentsCould it really be possible that some people simply can't be taught how to program? If so, what are the root causes to this?
Also linked to this, is the UK government's intended changes to secondary IT education to make it more computer science relevant likely to change the results if the experiment was to be rerun in a few years?
Assessment - Required in all learning? - Revisited
So, it's been a while since my last blog post and I haven't been quite as active as I would have hoped, but I've got quite a few new posts all half written, begging to be finished, so what this space.
Since my last post on assessment, Teresa has offered a retort to my ideas here. I couldn't resist picking up on a few issues that I'm sure Teresa won't be surprised me bringing to her attention.
The first point Teresa has even admitted I'd be shaking me head at. She was spot on. I am and here's why:
My original example of where this is the case diversity training for Hampshire Constabulary. To even start to assess this type of training you need to set out what the competencies are. It's very tempting to qualify this in terms of what the tutor is trying to teach: "To demonstrate to students that different cultures and backgrounds can affect the way an Officer should deal with a situation" rather than what the student should learn. The problem arises when you try and define it for the student as the outcomes can be different for different people.
What you're trying to do it change beliefs and subtle behaviours in everyday encounters. How do you assess change in beliefs? Are there a set of rules that define exactly what a person's beliefs should be in this instance? I would suggest not, and that to attempt this would be very difficult. The teaching here is more about giving people a set of tools, giving people a brief set of instructions and (for want of a better word) hope that they use them properly. Here's an analogy: say you give someone a knife and show someone how to use it. You can never be sure what someone's beliefs on the knife are. Do they respect it? Do they think it's a utility rather than a weapon? Do they appreciate it's power? Will they ever forget to use it or misuse it? More importantly here, can you ever assess any of these things? People often are unsure of what their beliefs really are until they are tested in real life. Real life is often far removed from simulation or the classroom, I can't see how you can pass or fail someone on this.
Teresa makes the point that this is about the teaching, not the learning, but only a learner could even start to assess beliefs. Teresa also says that the "assessment" could be from the learners perspective and that they can be small, atomic and unconscious. I agree this is useful, but is it assessment? The though provoking image is a good example, people could challenge their initial perceptions and perhaps change them in future, but is this really assessment and do it really qualify the standard of teaching?
Since my last post on assessment, Teresa has offered a retort to my ideas here. I couldn't resist picking up on a few issues that I'm sure Teresa won't be surprised me bringing to her attention.
The first point Teresa has even admitted I'd be shaking me head at. She was spot on. I am and here's why:
A student can either do something, or they can’t – a miss is as good as a mile. The only skills or knowledge that we can assume a student has are the ones they can demonstrate.My first issue with this is that whether someone can demonstrate a skill depends totally on how well that skill or competency is defined. Driving is a fairly easy situation to define what the competency is an how to assess it; there is a whole book dedicated to defining it's rules: the highway code. When you move away to anything more grey and difficult to define, this assertion falls apart.
My original example of where this is the case diversity training for Hampshire Constabulary. To even start to assess this type of training you need to set out what the competencies are. It's very tempting to qualify this in terms of what the tutor is trying to teach: "To demonstrate to students that different cultures and backgrounds can affect the way an Officer should deal with a situation" rather than what the student should learn. The problem arises when you try and define it for the student as the outcomes can be different for different people.
What you're trying to do it change beliefs and subtle behaviours in everyday encounters. How do you assess change in beliefs? Are there a set of rules that define exactly what a person's beliefs should be in this instance? I would suggest not, and that to attempt this would be very difficult. The teaching here is more about giving people a set of tools, giving people a brief set of instructions and (for want of a better word) hope that they use them properly. Here's an analogy: say you give someone a knife and show someone how to use it. You can never be sure what someone's beliefs on the knife are. Do they respect it? Do they think it's a utility rather than a weapon? Do they appreciate it's power? Will they ever forget to use it or misuse it? More importantly here, can you ever assess any of these things? People often are unsure of what their beliefs really are until they are tested in real life. Real life is often far removed from simulation or the classroom, I can't see how you can pass or fail someone on this.
Teresa makes the point that this is about the teaching, not the learning, but only a learner could even start to assess beliefs. Teresa also says that the "assessment" could be from the learners perspective and that they can be small, atomic and unconscious. I agree this is useful, but is it assessment? The though provoking image is a good example, people could challenge their initial perceptions and perhaps change them in future, but is this really assessment and do it really qualify the standard of teaching?
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Assessment - Required in all learning?
Last Friday I was jogging with a friend of mine Teresa when an interesting conversation came up. Just to give a bit of context, Teresa is currently working an her PhD, the topic of which I always ask but never seem to remember. Anyway, it's very much related to e-learning, so she's pretty clued up about the academic side of education theory. I'll mention now, that my knowledge in this area isn't great and what I'll say here may be fundamentally flawed. If it is, I'd love to know in the comments, or you could just comment if you just disagree with me.
I was talking about some recent Police training I had been on, and my feelings on it. I had then mentioned that some of the training I do for the Police isn't assessed. Teresa's feelings on this were made very clear: if you don't assess learning, then there is no point taking it; I disagreed with this.
I'll be honest and say I don't think I really explained my reasons for this particularly well, but we moved on to other topics and/or we became out of breath and therefore decided that running in silence may be more sustainable.
So in particular Teresa style, she's been stewing on this for a week and decided to challenge my assertion via a few questions in an email:
The set of desired behaviours aren't really taught, instead the instructors tend to challenge the perceived "undesired" view and this is generally done within group discussions. Sometimes, these are pseudo assessed via role-plays, but how do you really assess whether someone has the desired behaviour when they are out on duty? I don't see how you can. Often behaviour won't be changed in the 2 hour training session either. Perhaps the trainer gives an interesting anecdote which challenges your existing beliefs, it may take may days or weeks of mulling over to accept it's merits and change your beliefs and therefore future behaviour. Again, how could you possibly assess this?
So to answer the questions put to me, no, I don't think it's worth teaching or learning something you never have a possibility of using it, however, where you are changing beliefs and behaviour, is this really an "ability"?
I agree that having misconceptions or not fully understanding certain topics can be damaging, especially in the Police, and I agree that when we're taught legislation and we have concrete information to learn that assessment is vital. That said, how can you possibly assess whether someone is more accommodating of other races or whether we understand what it's like to be mentally ill so we can treat them the best possible way? Answers on a postcard please.
I was talking about some recent Police training I had been on, and my feelings on it. I had then mentioned that some of the training I do for the Police isn't assessed. Teresa's feelings on this were made very clear: if you don't assess learning, then there is no point taking it; I disagreed with this.
I'll be honest and say I don't think I really explained my reasons for this particularly well, but we moved on to other topics and/or we became out of breath and therefore decided that running in silence may be more sustainable.
So in particular Teresa style, she's been stewing on this for a week and decided to challenge my assertion via a few questions in an email:
a. Is it worth teaching or learning something if you are never going to use it?I'll directly answer these questions in a moment, but the context in which I made my assertion was quite specific. I've done a few courses for the Police where the majority of the course isn't necessary to gain new knowledge per se, but to alter or reinforce (depending on existing position) particular behaviour. This focus on soft skills is rather different to normal teaching.
i. Where “using it” includes incorporating or translating it into another, larger ability that can be used.
b. Which is better in situations that require correct, full knowledge about X:
i. Knowing nothing about X
ii. Having half-knowledge or a misconception about X, but a belief that you know it fully
The set of desired behaviours aren't really taught, instead the instructors tend to challenge the perceived "undesired" view and this is generally done within group discussions. Sometimes, these are pseudo assessed via role-plays, but how do you really assess whether someone has the desired behaviour when they are out on duty? I don't see how you can. Often behaviour won't be changed in the 2 hour training session either. Perhaps the trainer gives an interesting anecdote which challenges your existing beliefs, it may take may days or weeks of mulling over to accept it's merits and change your beliefs and therefore future behaviour. Again, how could you possibly assess this?
So to answer the questions put to me, no, I don't think it's worth teaching or learning something you never have a possibility of using it, however, where you are changing beliefs and behaviour, is this really an "ability"?
I agree that having misconceptions or not fully understanding certain topics can be damaging, especially in the Police, and I agree that when we're taught legislation and we have concrete information to learn that assessment is vital. That said, how can you possibly assess whether someone is more accommodating of other races or whether we understand what it's like to be mentally ill so we can treat them the best possible way? Answers on a postcard please.
Friday, 30 March 2012
Playing the System
I mentioned in my previous post that after failing an
evidential breath test, you will get a “statutory option” if you’re reading was
under 50µg. This means that you can opt to replace that evidential
breath test with either a urine or blood test, but that test will be the new
result regardless if it’s higher or lower.
The other thing to note is that you don’t get to choose whether its
urine or blood, the police officer taking the test makes this decision.
Most people of good character would say that they’ve failed the
test and there is no point opting for another, especially if the reading is
closer to 50µg than the 35µg limit.
However, unfortunately for all of us, the people that do this regularly will
always choose the second test because as it stands they will already be charged
and a second test gives them precious time to process more alcohol before we
get a doctor out to take bloods for example.
The worst that will happen is that they will just get another fail, at
which point they are in no worse position than what they started with.
It’s often the case that people won’t know the implications of
choices such as these, and however much we feel for someone, we can’t advise
them one way or another. The people that
do know the implications are often the ones that we don’t want to take the
option, but we can't stop them and sometimes they do get off prosecution because of it.
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
Drink Driving
Following on from my post about road safety, I mentioned
that I attended a RTC recently that was carrying a group of four girls. As part of any RTC, we breathalyse both
drivers as a matter of routine; drunken behaviour can often be masked as shock
sets in, so getting a definitive reading is useful to rule out any other
offences.
The 18 year old girl that I spoke to was shaken but
otherwise ok bar a few bruises and was happy to blow into out breathalyser; unfortunately
for her, she blew a roadside reading of 53µg per 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35µg, so the rather shaken 18
year old had her first arrest. Perhaps I’m
being a bit naïve here but I honestly believe that this girl didn’t intend to
drink and drive, nor did she think that she was unfit to drive. She said that she had a bit of a heavy night
and stopped drinking a bit after midnight.
She was most certainly over the limit in the morning and this had come
to a bit of a shock to her, so on top of having the guilt of seeing one of her
friends being stretchered into an ambulance and another in pain with some broken
bones, she now had the ordeal of being arrested by me.
I spoke with one of the ambulance staff to see what their
intention was for the young driver.
Usually, we would take her to the police station and require her to use
the evidential breathalyser for the readings that would be used in the charging
decision. We try and get them to custody
as soon as possible because every minute they are on the roadside their body is
metabolising the alcohol and we are essentially losing evidence. However, the ECP (Emergency Care
Practitioner) said that they recommend
she be taken to hospital just to check there were no unobvious injuries. I knew at the point that this job would keep
me tied up for the rest of the shift.
We have a procedure for people being taken to the hospital;
it involves a rather long form and a kit for taking blood. One of my colleagues remarked that the form
is like an adventure game book, you read a paragraph and then get sent on a
quest to page 78 for the next part of the story. It’s not quite so confusing when you get used
to it, but it takes a minute or so to figure out. Once the patient/detainee has been assessed
by a doctor we need their consent to take a sample. We then have to call out our own doctor to
the hospital to draw the blood for impartiality reasons, all whilst the person
is losing alcohol from their system. It
took about 2 hours between being arrested and finally getting consent from the A&E
doctor. After having the consent form
signed, we were told that she was being discharged from hospital, so although
we had started the hospital procedure, we decided that going to a police
station would be quicker than waiting for our doctor to arrive, as well as realising
A&E wanted the bed back.
So around 3 hours after being arrested my prisoner is
finally on an evidential breathalyser. My
colleague and I were convinced that she would not only blow under the limit but
quite substantially below the limit. She
hadn’t had a drink for around 12 hours and her body wasn’t absorbing any more alcohol
in her system and at a rough guess we estimate that most people metabolise 10µg
per hour of alcohol, so we expected a reading of maybe 20-25µg,
well under the legal limit.
The result surprised us both: the lowest reading of the two
we take was 45µg, remember the legal limit is 35µg. As she had blown over the limit but was under
50µg
she had what is called “the statutory option” of having a urine or blood sample
instead. We can’t offer advice on what
to take but she was given the options and declined. I’ll follow up on the implications of this in
another blog.
As she was still over the legal limit, we couldn’t interview
her until she had sobered up a bit more which means she probably wouldn’t have been legal to drive until around 1530 in the
afternoon at the earliest. Many of the general public don’t realise quite
how long after the night before it can take to properly sober up and this
really prove that.
So after just wanting to get a Mc Donalds, this otherwise
law abiding 18 year old had written off her car and another, injured three of
her friends and one other motorist and will likely get a drink driving
conviction for simply not realising that she needs longer to sober up the next
day. The funny thing is that it could
have been so much worse and they are actually quite lucky.
Monday, 26 March 2012
Questionnaires
So as part of most people's university life, they will, inevitably, at some point in their course, end up needing to compose a questionnaire. Now, as someone who has been there and tries to help other people get the necessary responses to their questionnaires, I know it's not a trivial task.
Questionnaires are actually really difficult to do right; whenever someone posts on one of the many forums I frequent to get responses I usually try and spend the couple of minutes to fill it in. The first issue I sometimes hit is when it takes more than a few minutes to fill in. I don't mind spending perhaps up to 5 or 10 minutes of my oh so precious life to help someone's research, but I've seen some which literally take between 30-45 minutes to complete fully. I'm sorry, but that's just too much. You can't reasonably expect people to give decent quality answers as well as getting the quantity of respondents you need to make an analysis that actually has any statistical relevance. People need to realise that they can't always get all the answers to all their questions in one go.
When I finally actually look at the questions I am usually disappointed with a few things. The first one tends to be that the author hasn't really thought about what sort of information they want to capture. Sometimes it seems that they're doing a questionnaire because it's written in the assessment rather than actually having clearly defined what they want to find out.
The next thing that usually leads me to make all sorts of painful faces is the possible answers the author has given me to express my opinion. I had one questionnaire that continually changed whether "strongly agree" was on the left or right. Apparently this was to make sure people properly read the question and answer, but the obvious flaw was that if they hadn't read it properly they would have all sorts of unintended answers.
The next bit that annoys me is when I am given say three answers to a question, none of which I agree with and there isn't a other or N/A option. This is further made frustrating when it's made a mandatory field so I have to click something. I just find this infuriating and I usually won't actually submit the form if this is the case. Why people can't just add a free text field I don't know. Perhaps they find it annoying to have qualitative data rather than just quantitative data as it complicates their analysis?
This all leads me to think that universities should really spend more time making students think about how to create a questionnaire and especially make sure the results they are getting are going to actually be useful to what ever work they are submitting.
Questionnaires are actually really difficult to do right; whenever someone posts on one of the many forums I frequent to get responses I usually try and spend the couple of minutes to fill it in. The first issue I sometimes hit is when it takes more than a few minutes to fill in. I don't mind spending perhaps up to 5 or 10 minutes of my oh so precious life to help someone's research, but I've seen some which literally take between 30-45 minutes to complete fully. I'm sorry, but that's just too much. You can't reasonably expect people to give decent quality answers as well as getting the quantity of respondents you need to make an analysis that actually has any statistical relevance. People need to realise that they can't always get all the answers to all their questions in one go.
When I finally actually look at the questions I am usually disappointed with a few things. The first one tends to be that the author hasn't really thought about what sort of information they want to capture. Sometimes it seems that they're doing a questionnaire because it's written in the assessment rather than actually having clearly defined what they want to find out.
The next thing that usually leads me to make all sorts of painful faces is the possible answers the author has given me to express my opinion. I had one questionnaire that continually changed whether "strongly agree" was on the left or right. Apparently this was to make sure people properly read the question and answer, but the obvious flaw was that if they hadn't read it properly they would have all sorts of unintended answers.
The next bit that annoys me is when I am given say three answers to a question, none of which I agree with and there isn't a other or N/A option. This is further made frustrating when it's made a mandatory field so I have to click something. I just find this infuriating and I usually won't actually submit the form if this is the case. Why people can't just add a free text field I don't know. Perhaps they find it annoying to have qualitative data rather than just quantitative data as it complicates their analysis?
This all leads me to think that universities should really spend more time making students think about how to create a questionnaire and especially make sure the results they are getting are going to actually be useful to what ever work they are submitting.
Road Safety
I haven’t always been such a staunch supporter of basic road
safety, primarily due to the fact that I was ignorant to the reality of the
often horrific consequences. That said I always wore a seat belt if nothing else, just because it seemed the common sense thing to do.
I attended a road traffic collision (RTC) yesterday, where
by a car had pulled out of a junction and collided with another oncoming
car. Road speeds were somewhere around
40mph and inevitably there were some injuries.
The first vehicle was a small car carrying a group of four teenage
girls, all aged around 18, who were merrily on their way to pick up breakfast
at Mc Donalds. As it happens, my colleague
and I were also on our way to get a full English breakfast at a local café –
neither of us got our morning meals that day.
When we got on scene two vehicles lay strewn across the carriageway
both with reasonably severe front end damage.
The road was blocked and traffic was queuing in three directions as it
was on a T-junction. What saved this scene from being absolute
carnage was the fact that all parties were wearing seatbelts. We know this for two reasons: firstly, all
people involved had some nice wide bruises from the seatbelts and secondly, although
there were broken bones and a suspected fractured vertebra, the injuries were
not life changing, that is to say that they will in all likelihood make a full
recovery. This would not have been the
case if they hadn’t been belted up and we’d most likely had been dealing with a
life changing if not fatal accident.
Despite this, I am still amazed of how many people I see not
wearing seatbelts when I’m driving. It’s
not just that it affects the person that isn’t wearing it. If you are in the back seat of a car
unrestrained, then you become an 80kg (or insert your current weight here)
projectile flying towards the front seat passengers at whatever speed you were travelling. Not only that, but its people like me that
end up having to see the horrific scenes and scrape you up from the road
surface into a body bag. These people are
totally ignorant and it really does anger me.
Another part to road safety that I feel strongly about is helmets. When I was a kid, I never wore a helmet
whilst cycling, and I cycled a lot. It
wasn’t until I saw a rider on a moped go over the bonnet of a car at what
seemed a slow speed at which point his egg exploded like an egg on the
pavement. Seeing events like that really
do make sure you’re protected.
Friday, 16 March 2012
Sudden Deaths
One of the roles of a Police Officer is to act on behalf of the Coroner for sudden or unexplained deaths. Unlike the US TV shows, the coroner doesn't attend murder scenes or anything like that int he UK. In Hampshire (and possibly other parts of the UK) we don't refer to a sudden death in those terms. The form we must fill out is called a G28 and this is a report that goes to the coroner with details of the person who has died, circumstances and next of kin etc, so we refer to sudden deaths as G28s.
It's funny, for people who deal with violence, blood and nasty people on a daily basis, it's interesting how we don't like to use words such as bodies or death. A lot of this reason is in case people over hear the police radio. I'd like to make clear that police radio in the UK is totally encrypted on a propriety digital network called Airwave , so it's not like you can by a normal VHF scanner and listen in to police chatter like you can in the US. However, with that said, we don't generally say things like "the body has been taken by the undertakers", instead we use police speak like "funerals ltd have resumed", just in case. I think this is also related to the fact that officers need to distance themselves from connecting people, and using police speak seems to help.
G28s are something that inevitably end up with many war stories being told by various officers about the worst smelling or otherwise nastiest situation. The worst was mentioned recently when a body had been found in the bath at a house. The problem was, the body wasn't a fresh one; in fact it had probably been there for around a year. Now, I'll tell you now, that although I am fortuitous enough not to have seen this first hand, it is quite obvious that leaving an organic body half submerged in water is not going to lead to a pleasant situation. The body wasn't so much of a body as I thick sludge, with a skeleton in amongst it.
There are many issues that present themselves when seeing a situation such as this: is it suspicious? How could you tell? How do you recover the body? The officer attending did suggest to the controller that pulling the plug may have been the best option, but instead FSU was called. FSU are the Force Support Unit, similar to the Met's TSG which are normally called for public order situations, but also help in events such as this. FSU then proceeded to recover the bath and all it's contents, which although rather drastic, seemed the most practical method.
From the few G28s I have attended, which on the grand scale of things have been pretty tame, I can tell you quite categorically that there is a smell that is so distinctive and strong that it will not just sit in your nostrils for the rest of the day, but attach itself to your clothes in such a way that it will never wash out. Perhaps that last bit is only a false perception, but it many officers will swear blind it's true. It was mentioned that this particular smell was so bad that when the windows were opened to ventilate the bathroom the smell was so bad that there were several calls to the police with people fearing a major gas leak.
The saddest thing about the story above, is that a person can die and not be discovered for a whole year. There was no friends or family to wonder about his welfare, even the neighbours didn't notice not seeing him come or go.
The first G28 I ever went to was to a male, probably mid fifties or early sixties, who had tried getting up from his armchair in his living room, hit the deck and died lying face first on the carpet. He had been there around three days and although had started to ferment, a unit that had been there first had aired out the house so it was easily bearable. Newbie officers who go to these sort of jobs are usually debriefed afterwards to make sure that the experience hasn't adversely affected them. Some people deal with death better than others and I didn't feel that this experience affected me that much. It's was surreal as most of my expectations come from the wonderful world of TV or movies and to be honest, this particular body seemed to have been made up from SFX people working on a B movie who had very much run out of budget - it simply didn't look real to me as bizarre as that sounds.
This brings me to to my most recent G28, a relatively simple job of a pensioner who had died at a care home. The gentleman was in his 80s and had been admitted to the care home as his was having issues with his digestive system. I'll start to generalise here (which I try and refrain from where ever I can), but from the older people I have had personal experience of, they are often very proud and only accept help when they absolutely have to. This was certainly the case with the gentleman I had the sad situation of dealing with; he had not been eating as he was getting diarrhea and was emaciated. There was what looked to be a recent photo on his window sill and he looked a much healthier weight, so it looked like he hadn't been eating for a while at least.
As the guy hadn't been eating for a while, he had been admitted to the care home to allow him to gain weight. Unfortunately he had been found in the morning gasping for breath and it was clear to the care workers that this time was limited. A paramedic in a fast response car was on scene a few minutes later and took over the CPR from the care workers who must have been pretty tired even a few minutes in.
Most of the public don't realise how tiring CPR is and also how degrading it can be. If you're doing CPR right, then you will likely crack ribs and you may even get to the point where the front of the rib cage is floating on top of the organs; it's not a pleasant situation to get to. The paramedic mentioned that he was doing CPR for around 30 minutes before he called it off and that even when people are obviously dead, they still have to perform CPR even if this It's also interesting that paramedics can't certify death, they can only say that someone "is in a condition that is incompatible with life". I think I remember that during training we can only say someone is dead if we find their head severed from the torso; that's usually a rather large hint to death.
So after the paramedic briefed me on the circumstances, I asked the control room to call the undertakers. They can take anything from 30 minutes to several hours, so it's worth doing as soon as you can before you get started on the paperwork. Actually filling out the G28 isn't so bad when the paramedic gives you most of the details you need. Next of kin details can be hard to get, but we managed to ascertain that none were local. We like to give the death message in person. Some officers don't mind doing it over the phone, but I much prefer doing it in person. As the nearest next of kin was in the west country so we had to ask a local force to deliver the death message.
The last responsibility of a police officer in these circumstances is to make sure we're classifying the death correctly. Obviously some deaths will be non-suspicious natural causes and some may be obviously suspicious with many shades of grey in-between. This requires that we check the body. Now, I must admit, handling dead bodies is not the nicest of things. Luckily rigor mortis hadn't set in yet and so they were easy to move if eerily cold to the touch. No gaping stab wounds were found on either side of the torso, so that was a relief and to make it easier for the undertakers we also removed any jewelry and left it on the bedside table.
After this was finished and the paperwork completed as much as possible my colleague and I had to continue to stay and wait for the undertakers. In this time, it's a rather surreal experience to be honest; your standing in a small space with a rather large elephant in the room. The other thing that happens when your dead is that you lose the ability to retain certain solids and fluids that you would usually like to be discrete in disposing of. Although he was wearing a incontinence pants the smell was gradually getting worse and worse. Despite this, my colleague and I were talking the normal types of conversations and absolutely not looking up the latest sports results on the MDT (mobile data terminal), albeit closer and closer to the open windows.
After an hour and a bit the undertakers arrived and recovered the body and our job was mostly complete. Just about an hour worth of writing up, following up making sure the death message has been given and making sure the old gent was wanted for murder or something. All in all, about 3.5 hours out of our day for such a job.
It's funny, for people who deal with violence, blood and nasty people on a daily basis, it's interesting how we don't like to use words such as bodies or death. A lot of this reason is in case people over hear the police radio. I'd like to make clear that police radio in the UK is totally encrypted on a propriety digital network called Airwave , so it's not like you can by a normal VHF scanner and listen in to police chatter like you can in the US. However, with that said, we don't generally say things like "the body has been taken by the undertakers", instead we use police speak like "funerals ltd have resumed", just in case. I think this is also related to the fact that officers need to distance themselves from connecting people, and using police speak seems to help.
G28s are something that inevitably end up with many war stories being told by various officers about the worst smelling or otherwise nastiest situation. The worst was mentioned recently when a body had been found in the bath at a house. The problem was, the body wasn't a fresh one; in fact it had probably been there for around a year. Now, I'll tell you now, that although I am fortuitous enough not to have seen this first hand, it is quite obvious that leaving an organic body half submerged in water is not going to lead to a pleasant situation. The body wasn't so much of a body as I thick sludge, with a skeleton in amongst it.
There are many issues that present themselves when seeing a situation such as this: is it suspicious? How could you tell? How do you recover the body? The officer attending did suggest to the controller that pulling the plug may have been the best option, but instead FSU was called. FSU are the Force Support Unit, similar to the Met's TSG which are normally called for public order situations, but also help in events such as this. FSU then proceeded to recover the bath and all it's contents, which although rather drastic, seemed the most practical method.
From the few G28s I have attended, which on the grand scale of things have been pretty tame, I can tell you quite categorically that there is a smell that is so distinctive and strong that it will not just sit in your nostrils for the rest of the day, but attach itself to your clothes in such a way that it will never wash out. Perhaps that last bit is only a false perception, but it many officers will swear blind it's true. It was mentioned that this particular smell was so bad that when the windows were opened to ventilate the bathroom the smell was so bad that there were several calls to the police with people fearing a major gas leak.
The saddest thing about the story above, is that a person can die and not be discovered for a whole year. There was no friends or family to wonder about his welfare, even the neighbours didn't notice not seeing him come or go.
The first G28 I ever went to was to a male, probably mid fifties or early sixties, who had tried getting up from his armchair in his living room, hit the deck and died lying face first on the carpet. He had been there around three days and although had started to ferment, a unit that had been there first had aired out the house so it was easily bearable. Newbie officers who go to these sort of jobs are usually debriefed afterwards to make sure that the experience hasn't adversely affected them. Some people deal with death better than others and I didn't feel that this experience affected me that much. It's was surreal as most of my expectations come from the wonderful world of TV or movies and to be honest, this particular body seemed to have been made up from SFX people working on a B movie who had very much run out of budget - it simply didn't look real to me as bizarre as that sounds.
This brings me to to my most recent G28, a relatively simple job of a pensioner who had died at a care home. The gentleman was in his 80s and had been admitted to the care home as his was having issues with his digestive system. I'll start to generalise here (which I try and refrain from where ever I can), but from the older people I have had personal experience of, they are often very proud and only accept help when they absolutely have to. This was certainly the case with the gentleman I had the sad situation of dealing with; he had not been eating as he was getting diarrhea and was emaciated. There was what looked to be a recent photo on his window sill and he looked a much healthier weight, so it looked like he hadn't been eating for a while at least.
As the guy hadn't been eating for a while, he had been admitted to the care home to allow him to gain weight. Unfortunately he had been found in the morning gasping for breath and it was clear to the care workers that this time was limited. A paramedic in a fast response car was on scene a few minutes later and took over the CPR from the care workers who must have been pretty tired even a few minutes in.
Most of the public don't realise how tiring CPR is and also how degrading it can be. If you're doing CPR right, then you will likely crack ribs and you may even get to the point where the front of the rib cage is floating on top of the organs; it's not a pleasant situation to get to. The paramedic mentioned that he was doing CPR for around 30 minutes before he called it off and that even when people are obviously dead, they still have to perform CPR even if this It's also interesting that paramedics can't certify death, they can only say that someone "is in a condition that is incompatible with life". I think I remember that during training we can only say someone is dead if we find their head severed from the torso; that's usually a rather large hint to death.
So after the paramedic briefed me on the circumstances, I asked the control room to call the undertakers. They can take anything from 30 minutes to several hours, so it's worth doing as soon as you can before you get started on the paperwork. Actually filling out the G28 isn't so bad when the paramedic gives you most of the details you need. Next of kin details can be hard to get, but we managed to ascertain that none were local. We like to give the death message in person. Some officers don't mind doing it over the phone, but I much prefer doing it in person. As the nearest next of kin was in the west country so we had to ask a local force to deliver the death message.
The last responsibility of a police officer in these circumstances is to make sure we're classifying the death correctly. Obviously some deaths will be non-suspicious natural causes and some may be obviously suspicious with many shades of grey in-between. This requires that we check the body. Now, I must admit, handling dead bodies is not the nicest of things. Luckily rigor mortis hadn't set in yet and so they were easy to move if eerily cold to the touch. No gaping stab wounds were found on either side of the torso, so that was a relief and to make it easier for the undertakers we also removed any jewelry and left it on the bedside table.
After this was finished and the paperwork completed as much as possible my colleague and I had to continue to stay and wait for the undertakers. In this time, it's a rather surreal experience to be honest; your standing in a small space with a rather large elephant in the room. The other thing that happens when your dead is that you lose the ability to retain certain solids and fluids that you would usually like to be discrete in disposing of. Although he was wearing a incontinence pants the smell was gradually getting worse and worse. Despite this, my colleague and I were talking the normal types of conversations and absolutely not looking up the latest sports results on the MDT (mobile data terminal), albeit closer and closer to the open windows.
After an hour and a bit the undertakers arrived and recovered the body and our job was mostly complete. Just about an hour worth of writing up, following up making sure the death message has been given and making sure the old gent was wanted for murder or something. All in all, about 3.5 hours out of our day for such a job.
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
Production Value
This will be one of two blogs on a couple of videos that I can't seem to stop listening to recently.
This particular video is by Nanalew and Meekakitty. Of of my first thoughts was about the production value of what are amateur videos on Youtube. I am continually surprised about how well the are scripted, shot and edited. The overall feel of the video to me is of one that could quite easily be professional. Whilst this video is a particularly good example, it's far from unique.
This makes me wonder, is this going to affect how professionals make material? If two people can film a professional quality music video with not much more than a laptop and a Canon D60, why go the expense of investing in professional equipment? Are we already well into a quiet revolution where anyone can make all sorts of video content cheaply and quickly?
This obviously has all sorts of implications, my first thought being documentaries. Think how fast we can give well produced material to an international audience, which may inform us of specific situations or indeed change our attitude to our existing beliefs. Once again, technology seems to have meritocratised information, which I think has more profound effects than we may currently realise.
This makes me wonder, is this going to affect how professionals make material? If two people can film a professional quality music video with not much more than a laptop and a Canon D60, why go the expense of investing in professional equipment? Are we already well into a quiet revolution where anyone can make all sorts of video content cheaply and quickly?
This obviously has all sorts of implications, my first thought being documentaries. Think how fast we can give well produced material to an international audience, which may inform us of specific situations or indeed change our attitude to our existing beliefs. Once again, technology seems to have meritocratised information, which I think has more profound effects than we may currently realise.
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Occasional Police Officer
So, as some of you may already be aware, in my spare time I like to volunteer to write some paperwork. This is commonly referred to as being a Special Constable.
For people who aren't entirely clear what a Special Constable is, we are simply volunteer Police Officers who have all the powers of a regular constable, and although perhaps not the same experience of a regular, the majority of the training. In Hampshire, where I am, we wear exactly the same uniform as a regular, not just similar but exactly the same. The only way you may identify us is by our collar number on our epaulettes. Our role is to do the majority of what any Police Officer does: drink tea and do paperwork.
If you're interested in finding out more, have a look here: http://www.hampshire.police.uk/Internet/jobs/specialconstabulary/
I'm sure I'll tell a few stories on here about my work on duty, but this is just a heads up for people who may not know how I choose to spend my free time.
For people who aren't entirely clear what a Special Constable is, we are simply volunteer Police Officers who have all the powers of a regular constable, and although perhaps not the same experience of a regular, the majority of the training. In Hampshire, where I am, we wear exactly the same uniform as a regular, not just similar but exactly the same. The only way you may identify us is by our collar number on our epaulettes. Our role is to do the majority of what any Police Officer does: drink tea and do paperwork.
If you're interested in finding out more, have a look here: http://www.hampshire.police.uk/Internet/jobs/specialconstabulary/
I'm sure I'll tell a few stories on here about my work on duty, but this is just a heads up for people who may not know how I choose to spend my free time.
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
TED - Leadership
I seem to be watching a lot of TED talks lately; I'd recommend this to anyone who has a little bit of time to kill, it's much better than 4Chan.
Following on from my last post, this is a short talk about every day leadership which I really like:
Have you had a lollypop moment? If so, did you tell that person whet impact they had on you?
Following on from my last post, this is a short talk about every day leadership which I really like:
Have you had a lollypop moment? If so, did you tell that person whet impact they had on you?
Managers
Managers seem to be a necessary evil of pretty much any type
of company larger than a few people. Management
is made up of so many things, but one key aspect is decent leadership. It’s difficult to define leadership in a
context where it is universally effective, but it’s quite easy to define bad
leadership. Unfortunately, although I’ve
seen some very good leadership, I’ve also seen some which is absolutely dire, yet
these people often don’t seem to be aware of it.
The added complexity comes in when you have such a diverse
team or workforce which you need to manage; people respond to the same
situation in different ways and certain styles of management work better in
certain industries or size of companies.
What works well in one company can be highly frustrating in another; a
good leader will see this and adapt their style, bad ones will plough on
regardless.
After wondering what traits make a good leader, I ended up watching videos on this subject on Ted.com. I love this site, but I'll profess my love and reasons for it in another blog post. Anyway, after watching one particular video, I came to the realisation that I don't like to be "lead", I work my hardest when I'm "inspired".This video by Simon Sinek really seems to verbalise what motivates me. If you get me to believe in what you're doing, I'll back you to the hilt, if you don't engage with me, you won't get any loyalty and I won't be intrinsically motivated.
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