I think that this is the second blog that I have written from a hotel room, the last one was ‘Suit repairs in a hotel room’ when we were in Chepstow.  Because of the nature of our work it’s not that easy to get training locally so we have to go away for most of our courses.

Our dive school is currently run by Northumbria Police.  Despite the fact that there are 17 dive units in the UK and around 150 police divers, it’s surprising that we only have one option and even this is under threat from financial cutbacks.  Recently it shut down leaving us with nowhere to get our training from but luckily it has been reopened, albeit for only another year.  Five years ago I came here (with Critch) for eight weeks to do my initial dive course, I had never dived before and we spent weeks diving in the scrap metal berth in Tyne Docks, Kielder Reservoir and various other places.  I discovered that if you could get over descending down a rope into the darkness and grub about on the bottom of the docks on your own in the cold and dark you could pretty much do most things.

This time around Critch and I are on our diving and dive supervisors refresher course.  We have to have a refresher between three and five years after qualifying to comply with our codes of practice and regulations.  The first few days were exams, diving physiology and legislation and then we were out doing open water dives and practising drills using different pieces of equipment.  Today we dived at Sunderland Docks and did a lifting bag exercise where we searched and found a safe, attached strops, lifting bars and other equipment to it and then a bag which inflates to raise it.  Usually we use lifting bags to recover heavy objects like safes and vehicles, once the bag is inflated we can move the object to a place where it can be recovered.

The Guys in Northumbria are so professional and are superb at teaching all levels of police diving and marine. The trainers are also part of the marine Unit which (apart from the fact that the have more boats than us!) are similar to us. They all work diving in strange places to do security searches, recover items of evidence and missing people and face the same challenges that we do.  It’s been so good to catch up with them and share experiences and support.

If you are interested you can see photographs from our time in Northumbria and some photos from the original dive course on our Flickr page.

Getting ready to use the lifting bag at Hendon Docks.  At least the sun was shining today!

Standby diver at Sunderland Docks

Recently we’ve had quite a few missing people so I thought it would be relevant to talk about our Police procedures and how we all work together to find a missing person.

When someone goes missing their absence is usually noted by family or friends and the first thing that happens is that a phone call comes into the police contact centre.  A police officer is then dispatched to take a missing person report and they try to find out as much as possible about the person as this will help us find them.  At this point we usually ask the family members if they agree to media coverage should this become necessary at a later point.

The missing person report goes back to the police station and is put onto the computer system, around this time the person is graded as high, medium or low risk depending on their vulnerability.  Examples of the reasons why a risk may increase are; age (young or elderly), or if the person suffers from illnesses like depression, drug dependancy, alcoholism, alzheimers or other issues. The duty Inspector at the particular police station will be in charge of investigating the missing person report but usually the duty sergeant will run the investigaiton and delegate enquiries so it progresses as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.  

If the person is classed as high risk then the Inspector will call out a police search advisor (PolSA), this could be any time of the day or night.  I am a PolSA so am quite used to getting these calls, we’re usually told the reference number and circumstances and then we’ll check that all initial enquiries have been done (like searching the home address and the place where the person went missing from and checking the hospitals and other lines of enquiry) and make a judgement call of whether or not there is an area for us to physically search.  If there is an identified area that could be searched

 I get myself to a police computer and read all of the report and see what enquiries have been done so far.  I then identify the areas that need searching and what resources I’m going to use.  Big members of our search community are the Neighbourhood Watch Search Volunteers, Sussex Search and Rescue and the Lowland Search Dogs, they are highly trained and regulated and I think they are just wonderful.  They are charitable organisations and good people give up their time for free, all for the sake of others -the missing person and their loved ones.  You can read more about our volunteers and a great example of how we all worked together to find a missing man in my previous blog ‘Serving Sussex’ and see videos with some of the Guys talking about what they do in ‘A search in the night’.  Police search trained officers, police dog units and of course the SSU would also be involved in the search.

As PolSA’s we have access to a data set that gives typical behaviour for certain people when they go missing, for example it will tell us how far people in certain categories usually walk and if a person wants to take their own life how they may do this.  We work from this data but we prefer to have personal information about the individual we are looking for, we call this ‘lifestyle’ information. Such information could be areas where the missing person has had happy times or feels comfortable, or friends that they may have in particlualr places, then we may search the routes to these places and the areas themselves.  You can read more about the practical searching of the places in the above mentioned blogs.

Missing person investigations are a real team effort.  The report stays with the sergeant at the local police station and it gets reviewed (at a minimum) at the change of every shift - at least three times a day to see how it’s progressing.  Over time it will have further in depth reviews by the sergeant, the PolSA and the detective inspector for the division.  Every effort goes into trying to find that person and making sure they are safe.  As a result of the investigation you all get familiar with that person and their life and you speak regularly with their loved ones.  A PolSA or search officer will enter their home and search their personal environment in an attempt to try and understand them and we will then direct our search to where we think they may have gone.  

Last week when I was looking for Alan, a missing man from East Sussex I realised that because you find out as much as possible about the lives of the people you are looking for, you then worry about them even though you don’t know them.  That person becomes personalised to you and I find I feel I know them a little.  I wonder each day if they have been found and inevitably the first thing I find myself doing in the morning before I book on duty is to log onto the missing person database to see if they are still missing or not.

If I feel this anguish without even knowing that person I can only imagine how the families and friends suffer and I will always continue to do my best to minimise the pain that the missing person and their loved ones must feel.

One of the most exhausting things is carrying over 50KG of equipment.  You go for a dive and whilst you’re ‘down there’ the tide goes out leaving you with about 12 meters of ladder to climb up when it’s time to come out…

There was some blog silence last week because I was in Hong Kong on holiday.  I have family there so go out as often as I can.  Each time I have visited I have often wondered how the Hong Kong Police cope with the large areas of water and logistics of the industrialisation if they need to dive.

This time around I was lucky enough to speak to Mark - one of the Guys who used to be on our Unit who put me in touch with Sunny who is on a similar Unit to us in Hong Kong.  Mark had been on the same course as Sunny at our police diving school some years ago and they have kept in touch ever since.

I had a few emails with Sunny and then phone calls when we arrived in Hong Kong.  We went to the ‘Special Duties Unit’ Base on Thursday.  Sunny was so hospitable, he showed us around the Base and all the kit and we talked about all the things we had in common even though we were thousands of miles away from each other.

Sunny has ten times the amount of trained divers as us on his Unit but the area they cover is massive, right up to China with so many islands and huge industrial areas.  The kit they use for SCUBA and Surface supply is similar if not the same as ours and I was most envious of his fleet of boats, the largest of which has a top speed of 60 knots and his ‘dipping sonar’ (a tripod with sonar that you drop into the water and it gives a reading of what’s under the water).

My visit reminded me that although we as police divers are under threat in England and Units are being closed all the time due to budget cuts,  we are not alone because there are teams like ours all over the World with people on who love their job and understand what it’s like to work in our environment.

It was such an excellent experience to meet Sunny and comforting to know that his Unit face the same challenges as us and are as dedicated to their difficult tasks as much as we are. 

We are always being asked by people what we can see when we go diving.  It’s hard to explain but I’ll try and describe it to you in this blog.  Last week I dived with an underwater camera, my aim was to try and show you what we see in pictures because a video is better than any way that I may be able to explain it. You can see the short video explaining about the underwater camera here:

What we can see varies depending on where you are but mainly we don’t get to see anything and we call this diving in ‘zero vis’.  Most of our police diving is in inland waters; ponds, lakes and rivers where you bump into traffic cones, shopping trolleys, bins and other stuff.  Because of the fact that Sussex is mainly clay soil the water is quite often black to start with, occasionally we may go somewhere where you can see stuff when you first enter the water but as soon as we land on the bottom to begin our search the silt and sediment gets stirred up and that’s it, the rest is in darkness.  When I first joined the Unit I used to try and keep my eyes open when the clouds of silt were billowing around me, as sometimes I might glimpse the odd thing but it really hurts your eyes doing this so it’s best just to shut them and get on with it.  The worst visibility I ever had was the Military Canal in Rye, it was literally pitch black as soon as you went beneath the surface, I searched for and recovered a body that day.  The best I have had was at a quarry in Surrey, I was searching for and recovering a body that day as well, it was strange seeing the body under water and as I brought it up.  (Having just written that last sentance I think it’s strange that the best and worst visibility examples I have had are body recovery jobs….?!)

Another thing that people say is that it must be eerie searching under the water and then suddenly seeing the face of a dead body right in front of your mask, but honestly, you don’t generally see that, you just bump into the body and have to feel it to check it is what you’re looking for and personally I’d rather have it this way than have the lasting image of it in my head.  Of course I see bodies on the surface when we deal with the recovery but that’s a little different and you get used to all of it in time, as gruesome as it sounds. (To learn about how I felt when I dived for my first body you could read ‘My First Body’).

After making the explanatory video I dived using the underwater camera, you can see what I saw here:

My aim was to keep the camera with me throughout my dive but when I got to the bottom and it all went black I decided it wasn’t worth continuing filming. I didn’t want to lose the camera so I turned it off and sent it back up the shot line to the surface so I could continue with my search.  There is distant audio on the underwater camera, you can hear me talking to Critch on the surface through our communications system.

If you have anything you would like to know more about you can always contact me via our Twitter account, Flickr site or via email.  Sometimes I just have an idea in my head of what to blog about but I’m not always sure if it’s that interesting for you.  I enjoy writing to you through my blog though and if you tune in then thank you and I hope you enjoy it too.

A short break to warm up during diving…Bret, Paul, Critch, Darran and Jonathan in the Dive Lorry

This photograph is a side scan sonar image that we took prior to a search in a river.  We have side scan imaging equipment on both of our boats, it gives us a picture of what is under the water by sending a signal down and creating a reading from what is recieved back from the signal.  It hightlights the shadows of the images rather than the images themselves.  You ignore the bit in the middle of the picture and you definitley get used to interpreting the images.

In this picture you can see on the left hand side a car which is on it’s roof, below the car you can see the shot line and buoy that we put in the water and on the right hand side you can what a body would look like.  It isn’t always possible to use this equipment but it’s definitely useful in some situations and reduces risk to us as divers and maybe a quicker result for the family or investigation team.

The on call issue is one that has raised it’s head again lately and without the risk of becoming too political it’s because any payments we were given for call outs have been reviewed.  As I have discussed before we have never had on call payment for our work on the SSU.  If we get called we go, but this is because of the goodwill of us as individuals on the Unit rather than an obligation (see ‘About the Unit’ and ‘A Sunday call out’).  If I am on call as a PolSA there is a payment of around £7.50 of ‘on call allowance’ to take home for each 24 hour period that I do.

I touched on the impact that call outs and our general long hours have on the SSU in previous blogs.  We’ve had people leave the SSU because the work on the Unit has had too much impact on their family life and it’s hard to balance the two things at times (see ‘Valuable Advice’).  My family is the most important thing to me but if I can continue to balance the demands of work with my home life then I will.  We still occasionally have an ‘MSD’ on the SSU, an expression from the ‘old days’.  It stands for ‘Marriage Saving Day’ where things have come to crunch point and you just need to take a day off and spend time with your other half otherwise you won’t have one for long.

So from a personal view point what does it mean?  My husband (Jason) works away a lot so I don’t get to see him much.  In May we will have a three week period where we won’t see each other even for 5 minutes, I’m away on a dive course and when I’m back he’s away and vice versa.  We spend a lot of time knowing that each other has been in the house because the kettle is hot, or the bed looks like it’s been slept in.  When he’s on late shift he wakes me up in the early hours when he comes in and I wake him at 6.30AM when I get up, we have weeks at a time when we exist in tiredness on notes and phone calls.  As a result of the fact that we hardly see each other it’s really hard to explain that on your one night or day off together you’re going to leave him alone at home/ in a restaurant/ on the beach and you’re going in to work - even though you don’t really have to.

I remember Christmas 2010 we had been doing long hours on the SSU leading up to Christmas and I was on call PolSA on Boxing day. I was phoned at 5AM to come to work and worked 14 hour days for the next six days, I wasn’t seen at home before New Year.  Jason said in a tounge-in-cheek way “I just wish everyone would just stop dying so we could see each other!” It sounds terrible in retrospect but I can understand why when you don’t know the circumstances of what had happened you would feel the need to lighten the mood. 

Last Thursday I was on call PolSA, I worked until 4.45PM and went home hoping for the best.  I decided to risk going out with Jason as I thought there would be other PolSA’s on duty on a later shift who could handle any calls rather than me being called out but yes - you guessed it, we had just sat down in a restaurant when I got a series of phone calls and had to leave sharply in a taxi, I wasn’t home until 3.30AM the following morning.  Jason is very understanding these days but it’s really hard to explain that you’re going to leave him eating in a restaurant alone on your only opportunity to see each other for the sake of £7.50.

I answer my work phone at home when I’m not on call and come in to work because I care, I care enough to sometimes fall out with my other half and be in the dog house.  It’s not about the money, it’s about helping people at the worst times of their lives, even though they may not even know you are there.  I’ve missed countless family meals, Christmases, nights out and in and other special occasions through being a police officer.  I know it hurts the feelings of those I should be with but if I’m needed elsewhere, some one else’s family, just that one time needs to have the best service that we can possibly give them and that may mean a sacrifice on my part.