Response Policing Week: Response Officers Often Neglected or Taken For Granted

OFFICERS who work in response policing are often neglected or taken for granted, South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent has said.

Steve, himself a former response officer, said that officers on blues and twos see a great deal of trauma and often miss out on the credit for the difficult work they do.

He was speaking after the College of Policing held its Response Policing Week, which was designed to highlight the good work response officers do and to signpost to any additional wellbeing help that they need.

Steve said: “Response policing is often forgotten about. It’s almost the resource of last resort. Something I’ve learned since being Fed Chair and going out there and speaking to different departments, is that that they all integrate and they all work very hard and they all are as important as each other.

“But when you ask Joe Public what they see or what they need a police officer to be, it’s someone to be at the end of that 999 call. It’s that person who needs to be first at that burglary, first at that domestic, first to that assault, first to that public order situation. That’s what our response cops do. But they often get neglected. It’s often seen as a place where nobody wants to be. But really they are the department that society needs the most.”

Steve said the Response Policing Week was met with scepticism from some officers, but he said it was important to shine a light on what they do.

He added: “When we think about the amount of trauma that they endure and the drip-drip effect of being the first officer at the scene of those horrendous incidents… When you’ve got inconsolable relatives, when you get to road traffic collisions, it does take a massive toll on our frontline officers over time.”