My name’s Anne Brannan. I'm a Police Constable with North Yorkshire Police based at York. I’ve been in the police for two years and I'm just out of probation. During the probation period there are various training courses held at Force HQ at Newby Wiske as well as development within the job. Why did you choose the police?Every day is different, every job you go to is different, and chances are you could get to ten jobs in a shift so that’s ten completely different jobs. You never know what to expect and you never know what the outcome is going to be. What’s your working pattern like ?| "The more law you learn the more effective a police officer you’ll be." | |
We work on a shift pattern, we work six shifts out of every ten days on a normal working pattern. They’ll be two days, two evening shifts and two night shifts. Then you’d have four days off. What training did you need?When I went through training I was at Durham, we spent 15 weeks there then we spent about four weeks with forces. Those four weeks spent in force training concentrated on law and different force procedure. What was the training like?It was very interesting. It was even enjoyable, at times! It was like going back to school again. It’s learning to re-learn again, everything you do will be different from anything you’ve done before. You have to break down the law into something you understand and something you can put into practise at a later date. Is this your first career?I was in the ambulance service for 11 years in London, working in HQ, so this is my 2nd career. For a lot of people I trained with it was their first career and they’d come straight from university or maybe worked in another job for a year. What’s the best thing about being a PC?Meeting people. Imagine you go to a job where somebody has died, so it’s a stressful, difficult time for the family, you can go away thinking “I’ve helped them a little bit” even if it was only for a very short time. Then it’s onto the next job which could be completely different. You have to put things to the back of your mind and just carry on with the next job. What’s the worth thing about working in the police?The worst thing is if you put in a huge amount of work getting somebody to court, and then the courts don’t give out a punishment that fits the crime. That’s how we feel when they get off on a technicality. What advice do you have for anyone interested in working in the police?Work hard, take in any information that you can and take it seriously. The more information you take in and the more law you learn, the more effective a police officer you’ll be. The Bill or Frost?Frost, definitely. | 
