Jim Spence on how police respond to violence

Those of us with family members in the police know intimately the challenges of the unique job they do.

At times for cops their work is a desperate dance with depravity and danger, which can sear the senses and soil the soul.

Such would be the hellish experience of those officers confronted with the grim scene which unfolded in Southport yesterday.

All death is a tragedy but to see it inflicted it on innocent children in an act of such gross, depraved wickedness is beyond comprehension.

At times like these you don’t need to be religious to feel the presence of evil in the world.

I remember vividly when I was still a law lecturer and hadn’t long been a dad, the nightmare news breaking of the Dunblane horror.

As the scarcely believable story began to seep through, I couldn’t concentrate on teaching as I tried to process the acute horror of the tragedy unleashed by the monstrous Thomas Hamilton just 50 miles away.

That terrible day’s events were felt intensely not just by parents, but by everyone with a vestige of humanity in their bones.

Unfortunately there walk among us those without a trace of goodness or common humanity in their bodies.

And those are the folk that our police and indeed all of our other emergency services have to deal with, so that we don’t.

The police see up close and personal the corrosive nature of the grime, the grit, and the gore, which the worst of humanity is involved in.

Floral tributes near the scene in Hart Street, Southport, where two children died and nine were injured in a knife attack. Image: James Speakman/PA Wire

Most folk I speak to have a high regard for our police officers and it is right that they’re held to higher standards than most other occupations, given the powers they have to curtail our liberty.

However, as the recent Manchester Airport incident showed, there are some folk in positions of authority, including some police bosses, who are too eager to rush to condemn them without first gathering then assessing all the information.

The now notorious head kick and stamp by an officer, seen by millions on television and social media, painted a picture which can’t be unseen, of apparent unrestrained violence towards a prostrate man.

Then, embarrassingly, a fuller picture of the scene emerged, showing an attack against police which broke one female officer’s nose.

Many who should’ve known better were too quick off the mark to make comments, rather than wait for the full picture to emerge.

Police must be trusted to handle violent situations

The rights and wrongs of the case will be heard in due course and with due process, but some folk seem to think police officers are trained to have supernatural powers in self defence tactics and superhuman qualities of self restraint when under life threatening attack.

It comes as a shock to their critics to find that their training a year in officer protection doesn’t endow them with the skills of the SAS.

Their job is indeed unique and they’re rightly held to higher standards than the rest of us

Police in Southport, Merseyside, on Monday. Image: James Speakman/PA Wire

However, we’re at a dangerous juncture: we’re increasingly asking them to deal with extremely violent situations, while demanding of them superhuman levels of control and restraint in situations where their lives and others are threatened.

We can’t tolerate a situation where officers rushing to incidents like Southport with incomplete information of an emerging, changing, and chaotic picture, and unsure of what they’re about to face, have to exercise levels of control and curtailment beyond the abilities of any human being, for fear of being thrown to the wolves by ambulance chasing lawyers boarding the compensation gravy train, or by politically posturing politicians.

The suggestions that, in light of the treatment of their colleague, some Manchester officers were reluctant to continue to carry their weapons, is a dangerous portent when terror threats are live.

I said police are rightly held to more exacting standards, but increasingly those are becoming unreasonable.

Between being judged with the luxury of hindsight on instant decisions made in situations of pandemonium, and the physical and emotional dangers they face, let alone the ever present threat of false allegations from the vexatious and vindictive, which could wreck a career at any given moment, many cops are concluding they face an unequal struggle and leaving the job.

The cop in the Manchester Airport situation may find even if no criminal behaviour is found, that he’s in danger of a gross misconduct hearing where luck of the draw will decide whether he gets a chairperson of integrity, who looks at the actual evidence, or a of politically correct appointee playing the politically correct game.

On such a toss of the coin, hang the careers of brave men and women.