Police Officer Letter

“I love my job and helping others. Being a Police Officer is truly the best job ever!”

PC Chapman

So, hello to anyone reading this...

The year is 2020 and we are still in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. I am a police officer and I work in Essex, just on the borders of London, and throughout COVID 19 we have seen many changes.

In our job we unfortunately can’t socially distance from our work friends as we have to go in pairs to stay safe and keep the public safe. We must now go to many incidents in full protective gear to keep ourselves and all our colleagues safe also. Wearing PPE makes doing day to day tasks really difficult, even things like searching inside small spaces. It can become very hot and hard to breath as we try to protect ourselves. We have to wear face masks all the time, when in the car and double crewed, so pretty much every day and then at incidents it really does depend.

Particularly in the early stages of lockdown, we were granted with new powers to issue fines to people who didn’t conform to the rules. This new power enabled us to disperse and stop people coming out, especially the naughty ones!

Safety is our number one, so always looking after you and your work friends is crucial in my job and one great skill we use every day is communication. We talk to lots of different people and have to find so many ways to communicate to try and sort out any issues or problems. One skill I have continued over lockdown is to try and stay fit and healthy through exercise. Exercise is good for your body and mind which is always brilliant for my area of work. Keeping fit also means it helps us, especially when the bad guys run away from police officers and we need to catch them.

If I was to give any advice about my job it would be to try everything and get as much life experience as possible. This means being brave to try new things even if you are not good at them. Life skills and working with people is super useful in our job.

The best thing about my job is every day is different, some days are really fun and some days are not so fun but no day is the same. We also get to drive police cars with our flashing lights which is always fun! We get to meet very young people to very old people and we all try to help everyone as much as we can. All police officers are brilliant at getting on with the task in hand so don’t forget to focus when you are young at school. School is the most important time of your life and is there ready to set you up for your future and help you find a career.