Tottenham riots

There are some specials who would bite their own arm off for the opportunity to do "riot" training.  I am not one of those people.  Crowds make me uncomfortable.  The idea of holding a line while my colleagues are getting pelted with street furniture makes my head explode.  I prefer to think of myself as a small cog.  Maybe while the riots have dragged the big boys and girls away from their normal duties I can fill the gap by taking the reports of the domestics and looking for missing persons.

I know you are asking yourself "where are you going with this, SCR?".  Every now and again a special must re-evaluate why he or she gives up his or her time to police the streets.  Being a special is hard.  Sometimes the frustrations seem to come close to overwhelming the positives. 

There have been some frictions in my team between those who turn up pretty much every week and put their full effort into the enterprise and those who tag along when convenient and get what feels like a free ride when it comes to training and development.  There is nothing more frustrating to a special who works hard than a special who doesn't.

Every now and again the penny drops again and I think to myself "this is why I do it".  And it's not because of the riots in North London this weekend, despite the impressive photographs.  My thoughts are with those injured by the criminals and I hope everyone makes a speedy recovery. 

Today it wasn't that which caught my attention.  I had a phone call to say my day job manager had been robbed by a group of youths on his way home on Saturday night.  My immediate reaction was "is there anything I can do to help" and my second reaction was "this is why I knacker myself on a weekend".  Not because I think that what I do makes a huge difference.  Not because I think that I personally could have prevented my boss from having his face cut up with a smashed bottle.  Not because I think the police service would collapse if I reduced my hours to the minimum required.  But surely when you add it all up, we must be making some kind of impact?