Police Officers – Testimonials

The reason why a lot of people want to become a police officer is that, quite realistically, when you kit-up at the start of the day anything could possibly happen during that day. I guess it gives you a heightened sense of alertness; you need to be really switched on in case at the drop of a hat you get a call to something fairly dynamic. At the end of the day if nothing happened that’s fine but you still get those butterflies and get excited about what you’re doing on the day and that’s sort of the attraction that I had to become a Police Officer. I didn’t want have a job where I was just sitting in the office all day not being able to get out. Policing offers everything: you can be in the office doing paperwork, but at the drop of a hat you’ll be in a police car going to some sort of emergency, thinking about how you’re going to solve that problem. That’s why it’s dynamic and I guess that’s where the attraction lies for a lot of people.

I’ve experienced more than other people in this job than any other job. People are always asking me “what did you do at work yesterday” and obviously I can’t tell them everything, there are some things that are hush-hush, but some of it their jaws drop and they go “I can’t believe you’ve seen that at 22 years old.”

You know a little old lady and you’ve made her feel safe – you’ve gone to her house to check on her and check she’s ok, and quite often they’ll say to you, “thank you so much for being caring young people.” Or you might just drive down the street in the patrol car and young children will quite often wave at you. A parent once came up to me and said “can you wave at my children, they’re sitting over there and they want you to wave at them.” So I waved at them and they were smiling and waving back and I felt ecstatic, so that’s why you do it. It’s not all about the bad things and putting the bad guys away, it’s about your community.

There’s no discrimination whatsoever regardless of whether you’re female or Aboriginal like myself or Vietnamese or Gay; there’s a gender equity policy that’s in existence.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work in a lot of areas already. When I first joined SAPOL I wanted to go to the horses and I did and I worked there for a couple of years. Before that I spent quite a few years on patrols and that’s essential because you need to be able to investigate matters at a preliminary level. You need to build skills and acquire certain problem solving and decision making processes that are required.

Then I spent a little bit of time in CIB on certain tactical operations. One was the drug one and then a couple of other targeted operations with second hand dealers. From there I went to the Mounted Police. I then left Mounted and studied to be a prosecutor and I prosecuted for a little while at Christies Beach and I really enjoyed that. That’s a completely different side of policing because then you’re an Officer of the Court and you approach the Bar and help the Magistrate decide who is guilty and who’s not. Then I worked in Domestic Violence.

Currently I’ve come back to work only a couple of months ago after having my second child, so I’m working part-time. I negotiated a roster and a place for me to work that balances work and family life. So now I spend a couple of days working at the Christies Beach Police Station and I’ve also been fortunate enough to assist our local Training & Development Officer. That’s my aspiration at the moment: to get into the training & development of my colleagues. We have legislation changes all the time, we have policy changes all the time and we need training to keep up with that so that we can effectively provide a service to the community and a correct one. I really enjoy that side of things. It’s teaching basically, but I do enjoy that. I think the most important job is to catch the bad people and to keep the streets safe and we need competent Police Officers to be able to do that so that’s the line I’m taking is teaching people to be able to do their job properly.