The Rich Girls Are Weeping
January 4, 2007 by inspectorgadget
I have that nervous feeling you get while trying to drive, read a map, listen to urgent updates coming over the radio and talk to Control on the hands-free. As usual I’m on my way to a serious drama. As a PC a small percentage of the calls I attended were real dramas. Now, all the calls I attend are real dramas.
This is because there is only one uniformed Duty Inspector at a time in F Division, and we are expected to attend the serious incidents personally. F Division is so huge that there is more or less always a serious drama for me to rush to.
Dealing with the incidents does not present me with a problem. I have spent my entire career in response or specialist uniformed front-line policing of one kind or another.
One of my correspondents summed it up nicely once by saying it is like going to watch the same play each night, only with different actors.
This one is a double fatal road crash on some fast road in the North of F Division. Four more are seriously injured.
I’m using the map to see how to avoid the road closures the response teams have already put in. The Controller; he is phoning me every ten seconds with information I already know, easing the conscience of a man who can only stand by in horror by transferring the tension to someone else.
This is the worst kind of drama for us. It’s the kind where we have arrived before the other emergency services, specifically, before the paramedics. The officers from the response team are trying to save lives and calm the shattered pleas from relatives who were in the car behind and saw it all.
This has taken place outside a private school for girls. The daughters of the privileged have just returned from the ski slopes of Europe.
The snow is not as good this year in Villars-Gryon.
And now life will never be as good again because you shouldn’t see what they have just seen, and are still seeing, at 15 years of age. Or at any age.
My people work fast without speaking. They eye their Sergeant as he sweats under his armour. He nods at a car, points at a victim, puts a finger to his lips indicating a distressed witness and all the time on the radio closing roads, eyes tightly shut as he accesses his mental map of the area. They know what he means by every gesture and they respond.
I arrive. It’s my old section. I was their Sergeant once. I’m there to keep a broader perspective and to think strategically about what the Division need to do next. This lasts for as long as it takes me to see the first body.
Everyone is here now. Like some bizarre, colourful ritual; fire and rescue personnel, paramedics, an air-ambulance. The huge rumbling dual carriageway is a silent, deep red stained strip of concrete. I stand and catch my breath.
And behind me, the rich girls are weeping.
The officers that I admire most in these circumstances, are the Family Liason Officers. I would much rather deal with a dead body than have to speak to the relatives.
Wonderful post. Can almost taste it.
Hope some senior management teams and government cronies are reading this, then they might think twice about targets and productivity figures!
Can’t think which boxes could be ticked for the time spent at incidents like this.
An most eloquent and excellent post gaffer. Had a fatal last week in similar circumstances. Hard to put it over in words.
I always tend to be harsher on traffic offences after going to a fatal as the normal excuses always seem more hollow than usual.
No detections for the bosses though.
Another tragedy, described with great compassion.
We can all relate to similar jobs which makes it so real, like max, the dealing with relatives after such a tragedy is what makes it difficult for me. You always go home and give your own family members that extra big hug.
I always finds it saddens me greatly just to read these tragedies, even more so when we attend. Very well written boss. I’m no traffic officer, but the accidents/collisions that occur on our road are often so much more horrific than most days spent crime recording, and I always have the satisfaction (grim though it may be) that I’m at a live and dynamic scene, doing what I’m paid to do, and possibly able to make an impact. Always wonder when the suppressed emotions will come out though.
This is the best entry you have made on your site.
Thank you for what you do.
It’s a great pity that the obvious professionalism and compassion shown by officers at jobs such as these cannot be measured. KPI’s only ever seem to deal with quantity and not quality. This is why the service has lost the respect of the public over the years. If we were to stop number crunching and bean counting for a while we might get it back.
We are just told to do what we can measure, instead of measuring what we actually do!
The importance of how you do your job in such a situation as this impacts profoundly on the lives of so many, including your own, in ways which defy measurement. This is when all the arty unquantifiable soft-skills words get used to describe the value and quality of “just doing your job” but they are never reflected in auditing of performance. This is the type of intervention which needs to be highlighted to managers and recognised.
Lucy
Gadget: Out of interest, how often do you attend a scene like this (a very serious road accident)?
five or six a year, and I’m only one of a team so it’s probably 30 or so per year between us.
I get head butted at xmas office party by female staffs jealous boyfriend whom she has wound up. Police do a great job and he gets cautioned. End off story. not in the politically correct council I work for, I now find my behaviour is being investigted with a view to convicting me of bullying and harrassment. ‘If it wasnt true you wouldnt beleive it.
How are the convictions for death by dangerous driving and lesser driving offences in your region? Here they’re shockingly low - I’ve seen too many cases of drunk drivers cabbaging someone and getting a tiny fine and ban.
Guv
Superb post. Am lost for words. Had 2 friends die in an RTC due at an unfit driver before I joined the job.
I’m off to give out FPN’s later. Maybe it will save someome someday. Sounds so minor compared.
Best I stop writing as I am actually lost for words. Best post so far.
Cheers
Exceptionally well written post sir. As a civilian I am lucky enough to never have been involved in such a situation, and I hope that i never do.
My hat is well and truely raised to yourself and the rest of the fine policemen who have the strength of character and resolve to face these scenarios and those of equal intensity everyday. This is a job that I could never do, yet have so much respect for those that do it day in and day out.
As Dave has said “lost for words” there are no words that could possibly convey the emotion invoked by your post so i will end with a heart felt “Thank you for standing on the line”
I feel I ought to say something but yet you’ve said it all and far more already.
All I can say is that I’ve got nothing but total respect for you and your fellow Police, and the ability to do difficult jobs like this one is one of the biggest reasons why.
You all do a very difficult job to the best of your abilities, often despite the best efforts of the govt. and general public, and whenever I’ve needed the police I’ve always received the help I needed when I needed.
Thanks for being there. I’ve been first on the scene at a couple of messy RTAs, and I’d rather I hadn’t - I still get nightmares about one - I’m fairly sure I couldn’t do 5 or 6 a year and stay sane. Mucho respect for keeping it together time after time.
Reads like a piece of poetry. A truly excellent post from a gaffer I’d take pleasure in working forl My actualy gaffer never leaves the nick. In fact he didnt leave when a PC was shot at, I had a gun pointed in my face nor several murders….
It doesn’t matter how many times you experience it, it doesn’t get any easier. I guess when it becomes easy and I don’t leave a piece of myself behind at each job it’s time to quit.
SD
Very eloquently put Boss, you have painted a true picture of the scene of utter carnage and devastation following a fatal RTC. Unfortunately I have attended more scenes such as this than I would care to mention. What did the last stats say about KSI RTC’s - approximately 70 people per week are killed on the roads of the UK. Could you just imagine what would happen if we had 70 murders per week in the UK? Traffic policing is not given the funding or resources that it deserves, and I’m not saying that just because I am a Traffic Officer (Not a “Roads Policing Officer” thank you!).
Like grumpy traffic man says, there are not enough officers working RPU these days. But then detections are everything these days are they not.
So many people say that phrase we have all heard so many times, haven’t you got anything better to do, when pulled for a traffic related offence.
The traffic officers I remember not only dealt with road traffic matters, but stoped cars full of scroats and stopped criminals using the motorways with their loot and drugs.
A truly excellent post. It sums up everything we all feel at one of these incidents.
Thanks.
Also liked Justacops comment. I’ll be stealing that one.
Our job is to keep order on the streets and roads. Due to other KPI’s set to keep New Labour in power we have lost control of both. Good point made by grumpy traffic man and an excellent post by yourself.
Sir,
This post will, I hope, make people reflect on prority. The Home Office need to rein in PI’s. PI’s are dangerous.
I was on holiday. My wife took me shopping, twas a nightmare to just stand there and watch her shop, but in difficult times, it was a blessing to spend some time with one’s loved one.
People now need to take notice of what is being said by officer’s here. I am not confident, that the term, yes man or woman, won’t still be a pre-requisite for upwards movement in the service.
Twining.
I,ve attended many such scenes and every time it puts your own mortality into perspective.
Thoughts of bills or of minor arguements with the missus before starting the shift fade away. And you cant help but to feel for those that started their journey not knowing that they were going to die.
“…there but for the grace of God go I…”
The most disturbing ones are the ones which were totally preventable…the drink driving, the unroadworthy vehicle, the tired drivers.
And its even more disturbing when the ones who get killed are the ones who are innocently caught up in the preventable crashes.
A very heartfelt post and I feel for all police officers first on scene.
http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/content/news/story.aspx?brand=ENOnline&category=News&tBrand=ENOnline&tCategory=news&itemid=NOED06%20Jan%202007%2010%3A01%3A47%3A103
Brilliant post. I too am ex-Traffic and was an FLO - a job which I was good at. Too good unfortunately.
I recall an appraisal several years ago when my Sgt said I was spending too much time with the families of the deceased from fatal RTA’s, and that my ‘performance’ was suffering as a result, i.e I had not issued enough speeding tickets that year.
This view was endorsed/supported by my Inspector who said I should spend less time with the families and start issuing more tickets or he would have to consider my position on RTD.
I told him where to stick his ‘performance indicators’ and left Traffic shortly afterwards.
Can I just say how moved I was by this post. It has deepened my respect for the job that the police do, besides tryting to keep the streets safe for the weak and the vulnerable.
I must be honest and say I don’t agree with a lot of the political proposals made on this site, in terms of policy, but I kinda see that as similar to why greiving relatives aren’t supposed to decide punishment for murderers. I believe that is a legal principal, but I’m not a lawyer, so don’t have a go at me!
I think a part of me dies at each of these type of jobs - at least for a while. It’s the innocents and the family left behind that I find hard to deal with.
I hope it never becomes easy though.
IG,
Left a reply to your comment for help on KingMagic’s site as I couldn’t find an email link for you on yours - then realised I haven’t got one on mine either -do’h
If you’re still after some assistance on photos and stuff for WP drop me a line at
magwitchthedog@yahoo.co.uk
The problem is this lack of interest in traffic issues is now affecting the younger officers coming into the job.
The other day I was talking to a probationer who proudly excalaimed that he had never issued an EFPN in nearly two years and had no intention of doing so.
Lovely prose. and very moving.
I was at a rather large train crash a few years ago, yes the one you saw on the news where the first police units were carrying the victims stretchers made from bits of Sainsbury’s mangled wire fence.
A truly tragic day.
The one thing I’ll never forget when we climbed into the first wrecked carraige was the crying.
The one thing i’ll never forget about the second carraige, was the silence! the total, absolute silence.
I get to deal with the aftermath of these events regularly, often looking after the critically injured, the relatives and the onlookers. I am ashamed to say that it is very rare that us as professionals give a thought to the poor traffic units on scene. Like us it is expected of you to perform, to manage, to comfort, to protect, to clear up but who does it for us? We get through it, we manage, we support each other with our sense of humour, we shed a tear…………….. and then it starts again.
I have seen things from the other side having lost two close relatives in an rtc caused by a drink driver. I do my bit now by taking forensic bloods as a custody nurse, hoping that it helps in some way. What i have just realised though is i have forgotten someone throughout all my caring, and your excellent posting has bought that home.
A touching, emotional blog.
Damn. Hope everyone receives the support that they need.
Hi.
I just want to re-iterate what nurseinthemiddle said about the wonderful job you guys do. Your post is amazing, and I’ll certainly be checking back. I’ve only been involved in patients from one rtc, but it made me realise how precious life is, and how fragile it is. I can’t even imagine what it must be like at the scene.
Thank you so much for the amazing job you do, and the compassion you show.
First time i’ve read your blog. Very moving. All you can do is the job in front of you and you guys in blue do it very well. Have been to a couple of fatal eccidents and the Police in each case have been superb.
This post reminds me a lot of my youth. My Dad was a volunteer fireman and sometimes when the alarm went there was no-one to care for me so from the age of 10-16 I routinely got flung in the back of the car and taken to shouts. This post reminded me of a horrible RTA where a lorry driver had been decapitated by his load shifting and hitting him (it was a gruesome as it sounds). Hard to deal with when you are twelve but I stayed out the way and searched the vegetation for sections from the lorry. Unfortunately, I was the one who found his head. I will never forget having to pick it up, wrap it in my jumper and carry it down the hill as all the firmen were trying to put out the fire and help the other unijured passenger. I remember giving the head to the ambulance man and he swore very badly. The first dead body I ever saw. I’ve seen a few since but it does not get any easier. Thanks for your writing - it’s powerful and precise. I hope I haven’t upset anyone by sharing my tale.
“Could you just imagine what would happen if we had 70 murders per week in the UK?”
I think if you check the figures you’ll find.
Around 900 pa England/Wales
137 in Scotland 2004-5
N.I - can’t find any figures in a quick trawl - I’ll guess at 40
Getting on for 1100 homicides pa - that’s about 21-22 per week. Not 70, but not a small number either, and these are not accidents.
Good post btw. Sorry to stray off topic.
A very honest, brutally honest post.
I feel for all those involved and echo Toms comment in that I hope everyone recieves the support they need.
Hope some of the idiots who drive on the roads read this post and take some notice.
Sorry, just catching up after another busy weekend.
Notacriminal. January 5th 2007 at 10.21 am.
Trust me! One is enough!!
Hello
amazing piece of writing. Congratulations on the complexity and impact of your prose. When I mark my students work I try and tell them an area in which they can improve. Can’t add anything here, but would like permission to show to anyone who wants to be a police officer.
Keep posting.
Bewildered Scots Cop: I was really hoping they would be very rare, but unfortunately it sounds like there’s one every fortnight in Gadget’s town. It’s very sad really. A friend of mine was killed in a car crash about 10 years ago (I wasn’t there) and I still think about him even to this day.
‘Damn. Hope everyone receives the support that they need.’ - Tom Reynolds
Unfortunately, they don’t. We live on a stretch of fast road that has seen 12 fatalities in the last 10 years. We had a multiple fatal outside our house some months ago.
I was one of the first on the scene. I had never seen a dead body before and a car full at once, all youngsters, was a lot to deal with.
Support for this event in our lives? Bugger all. Not even a knock on the door from anyone that was there from the emergency services. As bystanders, we are outside the loop - it is just the cross that we have to bear for living where we do.
I think that flashbacks, ‘ghosts’ and sadness will be a big part of my life fand my family’s life or a long time to come.
BTW - I have changed some of the facts because I don’t want to be identified, but the sentiment remains.
BTW rich girls? Please. Many children at public school these days are there because the state provision is crap. They are not necessarily rich, their parents just go without holidays and plasma tv’s to pay for it.
BTW good piece of writing though.
I understand the frustration of being first on the scene ( I am not a police office but have had to attend the immediate aftermath of a bomb blast) and how helpless it can make you feel. what can I say except ‘Great post’.
Having had dealings with an FLO following the loss of my husband in an RTC last year, I am amazed at the dedication involved in the role.
Your post has also given me a little more insight. Up to now, I had visions of the police treating my husbands accident as just a routine job, now I can see that they don’t and do have emotions to deal with under these circumstances. I actually find that a bit of a comfort knowing that he wasn’t seen as just another job.
I’m an ambulanceman, not a copper; I thought that we had it hard, until a couple of weeks ago when a youngish, laid back, and popular young PC disappeared with stress. He hardly seemed the type (as though there was one). Upon making inquiry, I discovered that the “final straw” was having to assist my partner (who was working on her own) with a young man who had cut his throat. The Inspector I was talking to simply said “One death too many” - and mentioned how often the traffic bods in particular go down under the pressure.
I’m not hard; I’m just stupid. The ambulance service goes to something horrible and we regard the dead simply as people we can do nothing for. It’s sad, but we’re too busy with the living, and - having done our stuff - whizz them heroically off to A&E, give them to someone else, tidy up, mop out, cup of tea, and ready to go again.
Meanwhile, out in the cold, still with the dead. ……The smell of a fatal RTA is dreadful, and it gets worse as the weather closes in - and that’s before the police even start on the families, the statements, the inquiry, the prosecutions……I’ve never even thought about it.
I am so sorry, girls and boys, for all of the times that I have unintentionally (usually by being old, knackered, and grumpy) made your lives worse. I won’t do it again, and I’m actively looking for two PC(W)s to whom I owe considerable (recent) apologies.
The nurses are right - who looks after those who look after? Well actually, people like me. I’m thinking a lot about the emergency serviecs at the moment having just recently read Tom Reynold’s book and been reading police blogs. Extreme occupations are very difficult and often the culture of those occupations works against acknowledging that staff suffer in the aftermath of horrible incidents.
I read your blog regularly with a mixture of admiration and disbelief. Also with exasperation at the sheer stupidity of ‘management’ and our political masters. This was very moving. I’m a school teacher and the next time a teenager ‘bitches’ about the police I shall show them this. Thank you so much for what you and your colleagues do.
But Moira (2007-01-05) comes quite near the point:
How are the occurrence rates and corresponding convictions for death by dangerous driving (and lesser driving offences) in your area?
Nationally, the murder rate is only some 25% of the rate of deaths caused by drivers.
(And with murders, one has usually a good idea of who did it.)
B.N. Wilson
(Bob: reasoned discussion, please)
As so many have acknowledged, very evocatively written.
I’m a paramedic, have been for over a dozen years now. For anyone reading who’s fortunate enough never to have encountered this sort of scene, I have to say - that’s as close as I’ve read to the real thing. I can smell the hot oil, the petrol, the blood and the steam even as I sit here. I too know that feeling of helplessness and horror before the training kicks in; the absolute determination to be tactical and professional in one’s approach until the horror washes over you.
I’ve attended calls very much like this myself and for many I can picture pretty much every detail to this day. I recall being first on scene - on my own in a fast response car - and dodging traffic during my recce as idiots who just couldn’t wait drove through the wreckage to get past. I had arrived quite some way ahead of all the other services (and my own back-up!) and the wait between reporting in what I needed and hearing the distant sirens that told me I wouldn’t have to cope alone for too much longer was just excruciating.
I was no green recruit at the time - far from it - but trying to do the best for about half a dozen seriously injured patients with just one pair of hands, and limited kit was terrifying. We all rely heavily on the support and teamwork of our colleagues to get us through these incidents but we’re still the ones who leave the scenes and ultimately go back to our own lives; some will never leave them and others will carry every terrible moment with them as long as they live.
I guess paramedics don’t much like getting there before the other emergency services either…
Both a pleasure and a pain to read, I truly feel for all the officers who have to deal with such horrific scenes. As a soldier I expect to see the evil that humanity can do, it doesn’t bother me, but I get sick to my gut when I see senseless deaths because of stupidity.
KPI’s need to go, they can never measure the realities Police deal with. The government is hung up on making money and not protecting lives, instead of speed cameras why not safe distance cameras? Enforce the 2 second rule, it would save more lives.
As to driving habits and standards in the UK, last week I tried to buy a Highway Code to refresh my knowledge of the law. I spent 3 days and visited over a dozen shops and post offices before I could get a copy.
you write excellently and that is not the sort of thing i could properly deal with, let alone having to be the one taking the big picture view and running the scene…
I don’t need to comment on how thought provoking this piece is, but if only every driver would think before they pick up their mobile phone, have a drink, pick up a map, light a cigarette, unwrap a sandwich (the list goes on) whilsst driving, perhaps the awful accidents and statistics on our roads would reduce. I drive from Tunbridge Wells to Egham each day on the M25, and cannot believe the number of careless accidents I see. In the 8 months I have being doing the journey I have already been involved in a minor one myself (I was stationary and someone ran into the back of me) and wonder how long it will be before worse happens.
My father was a cop and I worked as a civilian myself for a few years, I cannot tell you how much admiration I have for anyone doing such a job, cop, para, firefighter etc. None of you are paid enough for dedication you have and the wonderful job you do! With thanks from the public.
I was doing my best to give first aid at a serious RTA, when, just as I could hear the approaching sirens, the casualty went in to cardiac arrest.
The sirens were a police car, rather than the ambulance I was praying for.
So the policeman and I tackled the CPR together, the first time for him and for me.
Reading your post brought back the horror of the accident; it chilled my spine and made me cry.
You capture the atmosphere impeccably.
A few days after the accident, the policeman called to see me, I thought he had come to take a statement, but no he had called to see if I was OK, we sat and had a cup of tea and talked it through, it helped so much to talk to some else who had experienced the scene.
I don’t imagine he knows just how helpful his call was. It made all the difference to me and my perception of what happened, and I know that if I had to, I would do the same again.
Your post is so moving. I’m not a copper, a paramedic or firefighter, and I’ve never felt the need to be. It’s too easy to set targets and criticise performance when you’re comfortably sat in a protective bubble whilst everyone else deals with the wreckage of life. At the end of the day, you do your best, sometimes people don’t die, and those that do are cared for and relatives / bystanders are helped to get on with life. It’s all you can do.
When I see idiots driving so recklessly (whether it be at 30, 60 or 100mph), I wonder how they would handle killing an innocent motorist that happens to get in their way. I’d rather never get behind the wheel than cause that level of pain and destruction.
Thanks for your post, i’m planning to learn to drive this year and hope that I will be one of the responsible ones on the road.
Well done on portraying it as it is, I can remember (wish I didnt!) all my fatal rtc’s throughout 25 years service - I look back now and wonder how we all coped. Perhaps one day your account can be used in driver education. Best regards,
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