If you are looking for Glamour, Gadgets and Grissom you won't find them here. Forget what you think you know about 'Forensics', these are the tales of one man and his brush. Of course these views do not represent the views of any Police Force or indeed reflect any Force Policies ya da ya.

Saturday, 27 October 2007

Praying on a Victim.

The other night I was on call, the significance of this is, if I get turned out in the wee hours of the morning, then, thanks to the European Time Directive, I basically get the following day off. When my turn on call falls on the Wednesday before my long weekend off (Fri, Sat, Sun) then I am usually at home praying for a call out to help secure an extra long weekend for myself.

The obvious problem with this is, that it is incredibly selfish to hope that a crime occurs, sufficient enough to need examining, just so I can start my weekend early. Of course crimes are not going to occur as a result of my wishes (unless there is a God and he/she is a bastard) but it goes to show that at times I am so far detached from the reality of my job.

In the end the decision to get called out is way out of my control, but I know that if I do I will treat the examination with my usual level of professionalism (as professional as you can get on 2 hours sleep), I will be thorough and do everything within my power to assist the investigation. But is it enough?, if you cannot emphasise with the victim are you giving 100% to this particular incident? Probably, probably not, sometimes not being emotionally involved in something can give you a clearer perspective and sometimes getting caught up in the drama can spur you on.

Either way there will be days when jobs will peak my interest and days when jobs pass by in a blur. Whichever way it goes I hope that it makes no difference to my contribution and I feel I have been doing the job long enough to know what I am doing. Still I think its healthy remember why I am doing this and put it into some sort of context within this world.

(Bloody hell thats a bit deep, think I need a beer!)

1 comment:

Roses said...

I wouldn't give yourself a hard time about it. It's only human. The fact of the matter is you've got to have some kind of barriers in place to do your job. I'm sure it's fairly mundane and dull most of the time, but then there must be times when it's all gone Pete Tong.

I'm sure you aren't the only person who hopes they get a long weekend.