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.
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