It’s not you, it’s me!!
So, heres the thing I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. Does experience make you an expert or create bias without realising it?
At 18 I began my life of crime by studying criminology at university. For most of my twenties I was in police custody (working, not just a mispent youth). During this time I worked 12 hour shifts, day and night. Now believe it or not, most people brought into police custody did not want to be there and some of them would even fight us physically to express their disdain. Some would lie to our faces, some would call us names that I could not repeat in this article. All of them were people, human beings with a background and a story to tell. Something that I now fully admit, and am ashamed of, is that I think along the way I forgot that to an extent.
My husband opened my eyes one day when I was actually crying whilst pregnant at the state of the world. There was rioting and looting happening in London at the time and my main concern was for my police officer friends going down to the capital and the danger that they were in. I was crying at the world I was bringing my child into, thinking that the country was riddled with crime and violence as it was all that I saw. He turned to me and explained that my perspective was totally skewed. I spent the majority of my time with a minority of people and it wasn’t a true representation of the world.
He had absolutely hit the nail on the head and now nearly 10 years on and eight years after leaving my role in custody I can reflect on that life and perspective.
I can now look at disputes between the public and the police and remove myself emotionally from either side, trying to see the bigger picture and wishing that everyone involved could see eachother without it being tainted.
I still find that even now, I can be sceptical about people and their motivations. Although I have always been an optimistic person and a people person I can jump to some often unfair conclusions about people and situations. If a stranger knocks on my door, I assume they have an accomplice currently trying to break into the back of my house (normally they’re just selling double glazing)
I see the difference now on social media on how my criminal justice related friends and my other friends respond to things and I can now see both perspectives from being ‘on the outside’ for a while now. I look back at my time in custody and remember all of the good people who had made mistakes that I came across, the people with tragic backstories that were living the only life they knew how. I often only saw a brief snapshot of their life and it wasn’t always favourable.
I teach personal safety as my main living so even now I am constantly faced with stories about aggression and violence and I am warning people of the dangers in the world. The difference is that now it warms my cold tainted heart when I am faced with shock at these stories by people who have not lived and worked amongst crime all these years. People who have only ever had the pleasure of asking a police officer for directions or watching them dance at a festival. People who had never needed to call them because they were a victim or afraid. This, I remind myself, this is the majority. The world is not turning into some kind of hell where you cant trust anyone but it is full of mainly good kind people.
So please, next time you see a good news story, share it. Next time you see a police officer, smile at them, remind them that there is good all around them. You have no idea how much they may need it that day and the positive effect it may have.
