Student Police Constable Ben Redmond

Excuse me, I said, I write a blog about my conversations with strangers. 
"And I am today's lucky winner", he said. 

When I asked if it would be ok to take photos, he couldn't have been nicer about it. "I am a member of the public, just like you. Feel free". He told me that he was waiting for a recovery truck to take away an impounded vehicle, which had been driven without insurance, and then with fluency told me the rules which govern such things. Ben Redmond is a recently qualified Student Officer, which is what they now call probationers.

Only 24, it is amazing what he has already crammed in. Public sector cuts put paid to ambitions to get into the Police in Colchester, so this Essex boy applied to Suffolk. He came to the job with 4 years' experience as a volunteer Special Constable, which he did while working as a manager of a pharmacy. The knowledge of drugs, he told me, comes in handy.

One thing that really suprised me is that police officers patrol their beats on their own these days. Ben says it can get lonely. Especially so, I imagine, when you are new to policing. Only at night time do officers patrol in pairs. I think this is an unfortunate reflection on the times we live in, that when societal problems are now so complex, respect for authority diminished and violence a constant threat, officers are put at risk by working alone. And it can't be easy to learn the job when you are not paired up.

We talked a bit about the Police tractor; I told him that I am a teacher and we'd had the tractor at the school and that the kids had clambered all over it. Yes, Ben reckoned, I bet they were far more interested in the tractor than in the Police. I think it was all lost on us what the connection was between a tractor and the police in the first place, I said, and Ben told me that it has now been replaced with a flash car. But to my mind, all kids want to see is all the black kit and a police car. I got Ben to pose in front of his.

 PC 1794 Redmond's probationary year will soon be up. I have no doubt at all that he will do very well indeed. He certainly has the public relations thing down to a tee. And as we teachers know only too well, everything is about relationships. A calm, friendly yet firm approach is what modern policing is about.