Mandy Cook

One night as a Part one and two (that means I’d passed the exam and a promotion board, but policing is farcical and you wait about a year to be posted to a Sergeants role) Acting Police Sergeant I came into work to be told it was just me running the two boroughs. I wasn’t that surprised it wasn’t a new thing to be honest with you. On this occasion though, as we came off parade there was also a declared firearms incident and the Guv’nor was running late. I had to wear three radios (when there’s a declared firearms incident, the borough channel is dedicated to that and the rest of the borough moves to a split channel) and manage two OI (outstanding incidents) lists whilst listening to the incident to see if Trojan (Met Armed Response) needed local units as well. I’m good at multi tasking, I’m good at assessing risk and making sensible decisions based on that risk, but that should have been impossible. You know why it wasn’t? As soon as a Met CC Controller heard me answer the Section Sergeant call signs for both Boroughs and the Guv’nors call sign, he called my landline. “Don’t worry mate you look after the troops and monitor the firearms channel, we’ll manage the new incidents coming in and triage them as best we can. Call me back when it calms down.” I worked with so many dispatchers and controllers who made my life so much less stressful, thank you all. 🫡 #ThinBlueLine 🚨