In a new feature, two of our new recruits will be publishing a weekly blog about their experiences in police training school.  Follow their progress and find out what it’s like to join Cambridgeshire Constabulary in 2015…

I can’t believe it has been six weeks already. Time flies! Week six was quite a difficult week, we covered topics which were very serious and graphic in their nature and topics which some found upsetting. Also we began getting the hang of our drill practice… At the end of our course, we will be doing a marching parade around our training centre watched by friends and family. I’m really looking forward to it!

A light moment during drill in a fairly dark week…

This week the two groups were all together, so we’ve decided to halve the week so we aren’t just telling you the same thing.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, we had two guest speakers from Mental Health First Aid who came in to deliver a course to us all regarding the different types of mental health and how we should be able recognise them. It was good to work as a big group again and we all found it very informative and it gave us an appreciation of the difficulties faced by people with mental health.

Wednesday – Today we started off with Sexual Offences. I was particularly interested in this lesson as I chose to specify in sexual offences whilst at university. It was different to be learning another side to all the theories I studied in university. We started off by learning the basic law of the most common offences and the definition of consent so that we could build a foundation for the other offences. We then were all separated into groups to research rarer sexual offences and make them into presentations to give to the rest of the class.

Thursday was a day full of harrowing stories. My class first had Safeguarding of Children, whilst Doug started off with a Specially Trained Officer from the Rape Investigation Team in Peterborough. Safeguarding involved being able to spot the warning signs from children who are experiencing abuse, as well as how we can help the children and the paperwork we have to do. We were also shown some photographs of children who were injured, and how to tell the difference between abuse and other injuries. The class taken by the Specially Trained Officer was very interesting – she emphasised the importance of our role of being first on the scene of a rape or sexual assault, and how essential it is that we get the evidence and the paperwork done properly. She told us some cases of past women, and how the stigma of rape affected their attempt of bringing the case to court.

On Friday morning we had a traffic officer come in and speak to us about sudden deaths and what the police officer has to do when we attend. We act on behalf of the Coroner at a sudden death, and we have an important job to do when there. The traffic officer involved had lost his young son in an accident, and he really brought it home to us how our actions at the scene can have a profound effect on the family and friends of someone who has passed. In the afternoon, a detective constable from the cybercrime department came and taught us how to identify fraudulent documents, including studying our own passports and driving licenses to see what hallmarks and security features are inbuilt that none of us knew about!

Next week is a very big week, including our midterm assessed role-plays and our second big exam. Better get revising…