Meet police officer Andy
Andy talks about his work as a police officer and how every day is different.
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My name's Andy and I'm a police officer with South Yorkshire Police.
There's not a usual day for a police officer. It's so varied. We, we just don't know what to expect. It could be you're trying to track down somebody who's maybe abandoned the 999 call. So you need to make sure that they're safe. We could be knocking on people's houses trying to find suspects. It could be that you're going to meet a victim of crime who wants to report something.
The other side of it as well, is when there's a threat to life and kind of mental health issues, or maybe somebody is acting in a violent manner, then we as police might attend there as well. Could be missing persons as well. Massive part of what we do.
You've got to manage your own workload, which can include a number of different investigations that you, as an individual police officer, are responsible for, and some cases that you're putting towards the courts.
I think one of the main skills that you need as a police officer is to be able to talk to people, to listen well and try to, in particular, see how they're perceiving the situation and try to enter into it from their perspective.
The ability to assess risk is massive, too. So you, you’re constantly juggling, you know, real people's lives essentially. It might be thinking at what risk is this victim right now realistically? And what do I need to do in the immediate future to safeguard them?
The jobs that I look back on with the most kind of sense of satisfaction are those where I've had a victim who's been vulnerable or intimidated and they couldn't look after themselves. And you, as a police officer, have had to take the initiative and sort it out for them.