You might have heard it said that policing is a job like no other.
Let me tell you a handful of stories…
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I’m a PC in Westminster, sent to my first Sudden Death. It’s a basement flat in a big old Pimlico townhouse. No suspicious circumstances – just some standard procedures to follow.
The old man died sitting in his living room chair. Now it’s just him and me and silence – waiting for the undertaker to arrive.
It’s ever so slightly unsettling for a 23 year old who hasn’t seen much of the world. I’m half expecting the old boy to cough at any moment – or to scare me witless in some other way.
But the one thought I can’t shake is that he died on his own. There was no one there to hold his hand; to say they cared; to ask if he needed anything…