Today we were set up in a group meeting with 9 detectives and the chief. Also some police workers who helpw ith crime rates and prevention schemes.

Upon arrival at Crownhill we were greeted by Heather at the front door who escorted us up to the meeting room. Before the big meeting was to commence we had a smaller meeting with 2 detectives where they expressed problems within the student community and police. The main bases of the problem was that students don’t trust the police. I expressed myself that whenever I see a policemen its always when they are arresting someone or dealing with a problem. My course mate Carmen also expressed that policemen are not very approachable, I 100% agreed with this. I’ve always felt police officers have a certain stance, they always seem to be padded out with there gear which almost acts as a barrier between us and them.

The main purpose of the big meeting was to gain an understanding of why students and police officers don’t have a great relationship. We discussed the ideas we previously had done in the smaller meeting with everyone and they all agreed. For this placement we have to do a project, in order to get students and police officers to be able to communicate more. We took our ideas away from this to then further come up with our project idea.

Todays session was quite daunting. We thought we were going in for a chat to a couple of officers about this topic. After being there for a few minutes we then realised we were going to have to speak in front of all of these people. I feel this has happened couple of times with placement where we haven’t been told in advance what was going on. If I had known we were going to be sat in on an important meeting I would have dressed appropriately. (I was sat in a bright red jumpsuit with flowers all over and trainers). I do feel a little annoyed sometimes when this does happen. But like anything within this type of work you never know what you are going to walk into.