The 28 officers, hand-picked from the Metropolitan Police to guard the flame and its bearer as they make their way around the UK, are to be seen by a force psychologist to help reintegrate them into their everyday working life.What, they’ll be all out of citizen-assaulting practice? Forget how to fiddle their allowances and crash impounded cars?
According to the Times, senior officers want to ensure the 28 officers - as well as eight reserves - are fully aware of and prepared for the impact of potentially being in the media spotlight.And if you think that’s crazy….
A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard told the newspaper the task was a 'unique' role never performed within British policing before and that 'specialists' from the Met's occupational health team were making sure the team's welfare was considered at every stage.
She told the Times: 'They are going to be away from their homes for some length of time, having an amazing experience, and then will have to go back to their normal roles.
'For some people, that could be quite difficult. We are going to prepare them for the fact their bodies could get broken, and mentally for being in the media spotlight they could find themselves in.'
A 41-strong team of Met officers and civilian workers will be supporting the police runners, who will be rotated during the relay.A 41 strong team. To ‘support’ them…
Gosh, the terrible danger those government cuts to the policing budget could put us all in, eh?
16 comments:
Pity they don't give our troops such devoted care when they come home broken and psychologically damaged.
Come on MTG,where are you? It's an anti-police story...you are like a shark sniffing blood in the water when one of these is published.
Julia,why don't you re-visit this story in a few months time and see how many of these police officers actually visit the counsellor? I bet it will be none,but that won't make a story will it?
Don't you think us ordinary Plod are fed up with idiot schemes like these? It makes us all look stupid but i'm sure a senior officer thought it would be a great idea.
Anyway i'm off to work now.I will probably stab a drug dealer,push a man out of his wheelchair or kill a drunk man walking past me*
Jaded
* delete as applicable.
Carrying the Olympic flame?
Hmmm, I am sorry to say the Olympic ideal burnt out years ago. All that will happen is Britain will get its fingers burnt, as it were.
Poor little lambs.
Anon - I'm surprised you have time for any of that, what with all the fining motorists for not wearing seatbelts and stuff.
There's an implicit admission there that the Olympic Games aren't as popular as the media thinks if they even need a coach load of guards to get the symbol round the country.
What happened to the traditional British protest whereby as the torch passes you turn your back and boo or possibly whistle Colonel Bogey?
Quite right Bucko, not to mention nicking motorists for no insurance, not because they don't have it, but because the computer says so. Pointing out that "Your computer is not updated in real time and my ability to ring my broker at 10pm on a friday night to prove otherwise is an impossibility" just falls on deaf ears.
So after being abandoned at the side of the road, £95 for a hotel, and £150 to get my car back after getting insurance details faxed through the following morning, the duty officer on the desk asks "So why did they nick you?". The answer to which is because modern police have been reduced to moronic automatons, who are allowed little to no discretion in their dealings with MOPs and treat us as the thieving, lying, drunken, druggy lowlifes they know us all to be.
Now as MOPs go I'm not anti police, they have a job to do, fair enough.
But Gadget the next time one of the boys are getting a kicking and no one steps in to help, you might want to ponder why MOPs act so because contrary to what some of your colleagues believe, we weren't born that way.
"Anyway i'm off to work now.I will probably stab a drug dealer,push a man out of his wheelchair or kill a drunk man walking past me*
Jaded
* delete as applicable."
Feel free to stab the drug dealer, I would prefer if you didn't do the other two though, because that is not why we employ you.
One out of three isn't bad Gordo,i'm here to serve and I like those odds....
Jaded
The Olympics are a redundant farce but the police are catching up fast.
What 'Jaded' said - you would not believe how many serving and former colleagues e-mailed this around incredulously yesterday. It is one of those what if scenarios in a twelvety page risk assessment that has been leaked. it surprises no-one who joined before 1994 and appalls ALL normal right thinking people!
"I will probably stab a drug dealer,push a man out of his wheelchair or kill a drunk man walking past me"
Avoid sitting too (plod for to) close to the radiator, Jaded. It will certainly induce your repertoire of colourful daydreams, dear.
"Pity they don't give our troops such devoted care..."
Good point!
"Julia,why don't you re-visit this story in a few months time and see how many of these police officers actually visit the counsellor?"
Whether they want to or not, I suspect the pressure will be on to do so, just to justify the expense.
"There's an implicit admission there that the Olympic Games aren't as popular as the media thinks..."
I wonder if that occurred to anyone in the IoC?
"...modern police have been reduced to moronic automatons, who are allowed little to no discretion in their dealings with MOPs..."
Sadly true.
"What 'Jaded' said - you would not believe how many serving and former colleagues e-mailed this around incredulously yesterday."
I bet! And yet whoever dreamed it up will probably get promotion...
If you were allowed to personally ask the Officer's involved, i would be very surprised to find anyone asking for the level of support outlined. One or two mischievous ones might do so but only out of humour. I've done over 20 years frontline, but i still like to ask the Sgt if i'm going to need my torch if it gets dark at night....makes him feel i value his advice !!!
You..the public...repeatedly voted in New Labour with their nannying and control freakery agenda. They have steam-rollered the police and placed puppets in power in ACPO. Don't blame the ordinary copper for adhering to the thought-police instructions YOU lot voted for.
I won't have time to pick on motorists...sigh...too busy dealing with you lot...the public..raping, robbing, assaulting and saying nasty things over facebook to each other.
If you can regard all the police as the same, why can't i regard you, the public as all the same? Probably because i am a bit more mature...and when i do speed enforcement its too try and slow people down so i don't have to deliver a death message. If you don't like the seatbelt law...lobby your MP and get it changed. If it isn't law to wear it...i won't bother you.
Have a nice day.
There you are Melvin (2150),I knew you couldn't resist.
Jaded
"You..the public...repeatedly voted in New Labour".....
I agree with you up to a point, and that point is the same nannying by the state has taken hold throughout Europe, and last I looked zanu-lab has no influence/jurisdiction (call it what you will) outwith the borders of the UK.
"They have steam-rollered the police and placed puppets in power in ACPO".
In that we're in agreement, but in any other walk of life, it's middle managements job (Gadget I'm looking in your direction here) to keep the workforce working in the tried and tested way, and keep fast tracked Chief Super Freshface (and above) busy doing what they do best (Press calls, jaunts to study Bermudan community policing in November, after dinner speaking at some golf/rotary/masonic fund raiser, you know the type of thing) and out the hair of the boots on the ground.
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