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Monday 12 August 2013

Reflections on the 8th Police Special Course

The previous posting may have intrigued some - the police Special Course.   Nowadays every other recruit to the police is a graduate.   That probably says more about universities than it does about the police.   In 1969/70 there were just two graduates on our Special Course - and only one woman.

43 years on we will have all retired - the standard police career was just thirty years.   I retired at 52 - hardly life's scrap-heap.   I have not followed the careers of all of my co-Special Course 'flyers' of 1969/70.   One became a knight of the realm.   One at least became a Chief Constable - but he died in post.
One went to Cambridge and got a starred First.   One went to prison.   One became head of Scotland Yard's Flying Squad.

Every one of us will have faced danger, terror, ridicule and abuse.   Also supreme reward and satisfaction of a job well done or wrongs righted.

I suspect that all of us are glad to be out of it.   We all paid in 11% of our salaries towards our pensions and probably begrudged it at the time.

Now is pay-back time.   Time to enjoy water towers, family and railway trucks.

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