They don’t hesitate. They don’t wait to see who else is going.
They just go.
Today, I’m at my husband’s team BBQ, the very team I adored being part of before kids.
Now we’re here, with our kids.
It’s been eight years since I worked alongside them. Only a couple of familiar faces remain, but it’s obvious… they’re still a tight, tight unit.
I loved my days on team, both as a PC and a skipper. The camaraderie, the unspoken trust, the way you can read each other in an instant. The humour that gets you through the hardest shifts. You share more than a workplace – you share life’s extremes.
We don’t talk enough about the immense bravery on response.
Ordinary people who walk into situations every single day that most will never experience once. They see it, face it, deal with it, and then go back and do it again.
They run towards danger while others run away.
They face aggression, trauma and chaos head-on, often with no time to prepare and no idea what’s waiting for them. They do it with professionalism, restraint and courage that rarely gets the credit it deserves.
Response officers see people at their absolute worst – frightened, furious, broken, desperate – and still manage to treat them with dignity and humanity. That takes a strength of character you can’t teach in training school.
The work is relentless. You never know what’s coming next. There’s rarely time to catch your breath, process what’s just happened, or shake off the last call before the radio goes again. And yet… they keep showing up.
And here they are today. Eating burgers in the sunshine. Laughing, teasing each other, playing football, swapping stories. You can tell how deeply they’ve earned each other’s trust – a bond forged in the toughest moments, but carried into the best ones too.
I’ll always be proud of my days on team. I’ll always be proud to know these people. And I’ll always want the world to understand just how much courage, humanity and heart is behind that uniform.
To every response officer out there, thank you.
Not just for the job you do, but for the person you are when you do it.
The jewel in policing’s crown.
#ResponsePolicing 🚓
@JJSharpers on X
The Pocket Notebook 