Will Freake

“Who would wanna do The Job? Yeah you’re fighting crime and helping victims, it’s just sometimes it feels the other way round. The Job is being spat on by the people you are arresting and sometimes the people you’re helping. Turning up, when no one else will. Being left holding the baby, or the casualty, or the inmate. The Job is being slaughtered in the media for the mistakes of the few of us amongst, what; 50,000? Being attacked for doing too much stop and search and too little. You’re supposed to leave ‘The Job’ in the locker. Yeah, right. It becomes how you see the world; they’re ’Job’ that car’s ‘Job’, North Face, Jeans, Timberlands, he’s definitely Job. It can be action and adrenaline, but it’s 2% excitement, my 98% routine. But if no one did this or that Job, no one could do ‘The Job’. It’s too much paperwork, too much no realistic prospect of conviction, and too much being called out because someone won’t share the TV remote. The Job is why you missed your kid’s school nativity, and your soon to be ex’s birthday. The Job can be; comedy. It’s the London no one else knows, sights no one else sees. The Job is growing a thick skin and wearing a stab vest over the top, it’s suspecting anyone you meet, but trusting everyone you work with. The Job is for some, what you live for. And for three Officers last year, what they died for. The Job is going to war with the gangs and the thugs and the thieves and that feels good. The Job is hearing a victim’s relief when Officers arrive. It’s stopping things happening, and because they don’t happen, no one knows how bad it would have been. Except other Old Bill who’d rather rip it out of you, than pat you on the back and you’d do the same and it’s a laugh and that’s The Job. But despite all the danger and the distrust, despite all you have to see and do and do without; those who do it wouldn’t wanna do any other Job, than ‘The Job’.” #ThinBlueLine #NewYearsEve 🔥💯🚨