Making a difference to people’s lives is the most rewarding part about being a detective.
However, a high workload and a lack of staff are among the challenges facing CID.
That’s the view of a detective constable with 12 years’ experience with the Force, who spoke about their role as part of the Federation’s month-long focus on detectives throughout January.
The DC, who doesn’t want to be named, said: “What I find most rewarding , it’s that cliché of actually making a difference to someone’s life.
“I think that could be said for many people but certainly in CID, dealing with the jobs that can lead to sentences in the double figures and the positive impact that has on victims’ lives, and often the genuine gratitude they express, is I think the reason we do it.”
They added: “The challenges of the role are the high workload, the lack of staff and the dwindling levels of experience through losing DCs to other departments or retirement.
“Fewer staff means fewer people to carry the jobs. We need to increase our numbers but also we need to be more robust.
The detective, who is based at One Smithfield, joined the police because they wanted “a good career, that would be well paid and have a decent pension at the end of it”.
“Something that was varied and the prospect of chasing criminals and speeding around with blue lights on seemed exciting,” they said, “So it seemed an obvious choice.”
They moved to CID seven years ago.
“I had picked up a few jobs that required a bit more thought and a bit more investigating to what was usually required,” they said.
“I sought some help from CID and found I enjoyed being that bit more thorough, and after doing a few attachments with CID found, due to the more serious nature of the offences, they were much more interesting and rewarding.”
The detective says that CID and uniformed officers have become more separated in the time they’ve been in the role.
“And it’s not a good thing,” they said, “When I first joined CID, I worked in a station where the office was close to the parade room.
“We would see response all the time. They would pop their heads in if they wanted advice on any jobs they had, we would pop our heads in to ask for arrest requests and other support.
“They would give us plenty of banter about wearing winkle pickers and all the usually elitist stereotypes and we would return the comments.
“Everyone knew everyone else, intel came into the office often before it went on the system because whoever came across it would usually nip in and tell us. When the good jobs came in, we were trusted to take the lead on the job and we trusted them to do what we needed in support.
“We all came together and then once the job was done, the banter started up again. The support really was both ways.
“Nowadays, we’re as separate to our uniformed colleagues as they are many of the specialist teams at headquarters. The impact this has is that a lot of them don’t know who we are or what we do.
“I think that also means that it can be hard to get response officers interested in joining us because they don’t get the opportunity to work with us or see what we do, and with new recruits joining the Force we are to lose the familiarity of who a lot of our response officers are.
“The main role itself has stayed pretty much the same, crime trends change, Force priorities change with them and how we investigate them also change.”
The detective says the role can impact on detectives’ mental and physical health.
“I used to live and breathe the job a lot more when I was a bit younger in service,” they said, “I suspect that can be said for most of us.
“I find these days I’m a lot more focused on work-life balance. On my rest days I literally try to hibernate, avoiding local news and avoiding any work-based conversations where possible.
“I find there’s a lot more politics than there used to be and too many agendas, and that makes me more negative and pessimistic than I used to be.
“While it doesn’t happen every night, it’s not uncommon for me to wake up thinking about a job, what I haven’t done on it, what needs to be done on it or what I have forgotten to do.
“When this does happen it’s usually on rest days which is when I can do nothing to fix the issue. It often leaves me mulling it over and ends with me sitting up until the early hours watching TV to try to fall back asleep which often makes me tired the next day.
“In comparison to others, though, there are those who’ve really suffered and they continue to be a credit to themselves in trying to push forwards.
“Despite some efforts being made the root cause, namely the volume of work, is rarely addressed.”
The detective said that their workload often leads them to feel under pressure.
“Everyone wants a piece of you,” they said, “That often means their priorities and your priorities don’t align. Investigations on my workload are my priority, but the high risk misper that comes in, or the threat to life package, or the sudden death or any number of other things that come in are often the priority of the SIO assigned to them.
“This means their priority trumps mine and my workload takes a backseat. It can be hard to play catch-up and find the time to work through what you’ve already got on.
“Before you know it, you’ve lost a whole set or more dealing with that one priority and that can equate to 15 days without progressing any of your investigations.
“It’s worse when the high risk misper or threat to life package runs into the next set because you get stuck with it again due to having knowledge of the job.
“You can quickly start stressing over the work you’re struggling to progress and the additional work you’re picking up in the meantime.”
But despite that, the detective said that CID is “a great place to work”.
“I think as a whole it’s at something of a low point,” they said, “But this could be remedied if efforts were made to encourage and entice more people to join.
“Increase the numbers to then correctly train and develop new recruits and to encourage and develop the skills of DCs, identifying their strengths and utilising them to the best of their ability.
“I also feel we need to move away from being separated from everyone and move back towards working closer to response and our other uniformed colleagues.”
