The Last Good Reason

1995:

When I was sixteen, or thereabouts, on a dark Autumn night I was stood at the bench. Surrounded by my friends.

The slow life of the village disturbed by the presence of noisy kids drinking 20/20 (for the girls) and 'K' cider (for the boys).

Smoking Embassy Number Ones (for the boys) and Silk Cuts (for the girls).

I had my Schott jacket on. I'd saved for two months for it.

For the first time Emma is looking at me.

Emma Kate Harlow. I loved her.

She was the kind of girl that you looked at and, your teenage boy hormones went mad and: the world stood still. She was beautiful.

I remember it taking a few seconds to realise, she was smiling at me.

Emma Harlow, smiling at me.

My heart stood still, as only a teenage boy's heart can stand still.

This is Emma, always will be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH986VE47M8

In a blur she's on the back of the 50cc, neither of us with crash helmets on.

Slowly rolling down the alley to the Meadow, in the pitch black.

Her hands are around my waist, she's pressed up against my back; her head resting on my neck as we talk. We smile. We laugh.

She has a soft laugh.

I stop, we walk, we kiss.

We sit on a bench; “budge up” she says.

I budge up. We kiss.

We kiss.

2001:

Taking flowers to my mother's grave, a new cross; on the lower end of the field, down in the sun where mum lies. The same row, but to the left of the path instead of the right.

I catch the name and stop.

The flowers drop to my side.

Emma Kate Harlow lies there too. A droopy pair of daffodils, protruding from a teddy-bear pot her only company.

I change the water, remove the dead flowers, pull up the weeds, straighten up Ted.

I separate the flowers into two bunches and put half down for Emma. Mum understands.

Then I sit down on the bench and cry.

Seems foolish but I don't know what else to do.

The sun comes out and then, out of nowhere, I get the overwhelming sensation I'm being told to budge up.

I budge up.

Emma died alone, in the dark, on her father's grave. She took an overdose.

In the end, the only people who were looking for Emma that night were the police.

She hadn't committed any offences, she hadn't been a victim of crime; yet it was the police who were looking.

There was no one else.


Up and down the country police numbers are shrinking, budgets are being cut; we're being told "cut crime, nothing more".

The crime figures are being manipulated downwards and the reduced figures used as justification for the reductions in numbers.

In November, the elections for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are coming. Another layer of politicians, up and down the country that, from what I can see, nobody wants or cares about.

All the while companies like G4S are being sought as the solution to all of the woes, outsource is the new mantra; peddled by unaccountable think tanks, with an unhealthy access to politicians, and direct, unelected influence, over all of our lives.

This will all end badly, lives will be lost, people injured. It can't be dressed up.


Police officers, who know their jobs, who know what will happen, are being told not to speak out about it.

The regulations designed to prevent corruption being used for this purpose.


Well, I'm speaking anyway. Others too.

Doing it without the benefit of a safety net, we're not representatives of the Federation (the nearest thing officers have to a union).

In fact the Federation can only offer those of us speaking out rather limited protection, if any.

In short, we are putting our jobs on the line.

We do it gladly though, because it's the right thing to do.


We are putting everything at risk, because people need to know what's coming.

This isn't about pay or pensions, despite the fact this has a direct impact on the families of officers.

This isn't about officers working long shifts and having hundreds of thousands, of hard earned days off cancelled; to cover growing gaps in police capability.

I'm speaking up, for one, because public safety comes first. Every time. Full stop.


Even so, this has begun to feel like an uphill struggle, like a hill that may never be climbed.

I almost bowed out, just yesterday.

Then I thought about Emma Kate Harlow.

The only people, there at the end, were the police; despite the absence of crime.


With Support or not, risk or not, this is a fight that cannot be walked away from.


The odds are bad, the gloves weighted; the likely outcome not pretty.

But...if you can, no matter who you are, or where you are, please stand up too.


Me and others like me could use a hand; to make sure, maybe for the last time for some of us, that the right thing is done.



Whatever happens, even if no one else stands up, know this:

There are good coppers out there and, if people want to stop us, from being there when someone needs our help, when they have no-one else to turn to...

...they had better be ready for one hell of a brawl.